Forgotten Books

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Would you rather never write a book or write a book that’s easily forgotten?  This question springs from a recent exercise of trying (unsuccessfully) to count the books I’ve read.  I mean going through and putting a finger on each one and counting, if I’d read it.  I encountered a surprising number of ordinals that evoked a blank stare—I don’t remember the book at all.   Or I remember having read it, but don’t recall what it was about.  (In one instance, the book was one my wife read, and not me.  That explained a lot!)  This got me thinking about what it takes to write a memorable book.  I’ve always been one to prefer either speculative fiction or the classics.  (I’m aware that “classics” are now being dismantled because they don’t represent all groups.  I’d call them “white men’s classics,” but a surprising number of them were written by women.)  If a book has a speculative element strong enough I will recall having read it.  I like weird stuff.

I’ve read books where parts of them, at least, have stayed with me for half-a-century.  I remember specific things I read as a child (and no, I’m not talking about Barney Beagle—although I do remember that too).  I like to believe that even the bits that are hazy indicate that the book isn’t truly lost, but buried somewhere.  The human mind has an amazing capacity to absorb things.  I’ve read at least three thousand books in my life—I have no idea how many, actually, but Goodreads has me at 1,000 and I started using it in 2013.  I’d been intentionally reading for about forty years already, at that point.  Three of them while working on my doctorate.

I recently (within easy memory) read a Doc Savage novel.  I’d read the entire series, or pretty near, as a junior high schooler.   Anyway, there were well over a hundred of them.  I remembered nothing in my recent re-read beyond Doc’s band of five companions.  The story was completely unfamiliar to me.  One of the more recent books I know I read but couldn’t remember the story at all was a New York Times bestseller.  I guess if I’ve forgotten the author he’ll still be okay on Mars in the future since many others must remember something about it.  I’ll be long gone by then, both on Mars and down here, I’m sure.  I do hope even by then something will remain of all the books I’ve read.

Here and There

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There’s nothing like forgetting to make you remember.  Although we could scarcely afford it, we made many budget trips once we moved to New Jersey from Wisconsin.  As a family we used to keep detailed travel logs and we’d type up the results so that we could remember our trips.  For some reason, drifting about after losing a career, I stopped taking such notes.  Fortunately our digital camera time-stamped the photos.  I spent months organizing them only to have the external hard drive on which they were stored fail.  I’m now getting around to piecing together a bit of a chronology.  “Blog” was originally a portmanteau for “web log,” and since I’ve had no instruction on how it should be done, I mix an actual log with mental musings.  I’ve been doing so daily since 2009. Results may vary.

This blog has helped me keep track of travel, but those hazy days after the Nashotah House incident in 2004 up until blogging in 2009 remain undocumented.  Looking at the time stamps on those photos, it’s clear we traveled quite a bit.  Of course, New Jersey is a somewhat of a feast and it’s within easy reach of quite a few fascinating places.  Even a weekend was enough to explore someplace exotic, relatively local.  We used to make literary road trips on Memorial and Labor Day weekends.  Sometimes even later into the season.  Somewhere in that fog we made road trips to Maine, Connecticut, and upstate New York.  And although I grumble about technology sometimes, were it not for those digital timestamps the dates would be lost forever.  Of course, if we’d kept up our travel notebook…

As an historian, looking back comes naturally enough.  Gorgias Press downsized in 2009 and for a couple of years I made a living as an adjunct professor.  Even so, we managed a few trips (some of them mentioned on this blog).  Things must’ve been less expensive then.  Or else having a mortgage changes your perspective (the roofers are coming yet again this summer).  And the pandemic kept us at home for three years.  Whatever the cause, the urge to stretch wings and see new places remains.  Of course, it’s important to recollect where you’ve been.  In the meantime, I’m trying to piece together what happened those first few years in New Jersey.  That’s the historian’s task—putting together the events of the past from bits of evidence.  It’s pretty clear why historians get excited when they have diaries or notebooks from which to work.  We are, after all, the historians of our own lives.

Dangers of Bookmarks

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So you’re a busy person and you don’t always have time to act on something immediately.  Or you have to wait until the next billing cycle to afford something.  Daily life comes at you like a Russian missile, so you need to leave reminders around so that you don’t forget.  For me, those reminders often take the form of tabs.  On my browser I leave at least a dozen tabs open to remind me of things—I’ve got to get those cartons ready for mailing to recycle; thanks for reminding me.  I actually look forward to being able to click a tab closed because that means I accomplished something.  There are so many things to do and time is so rare.  Then the inevitable happened.

I was leading a Zoom meeting and I had to keep track of attendance.  Since I was leading I didn’t want to stop in the middle and write a bunch of names down, so I took a screenshot.  My poor laptop got confused and kept the screenshot on top.  Since the screen shot showed all the open windows (it’s not just the browser that’s open, but all the writing projects in the two different programs I use as well, all in various stages of completion), I couldn’t tell how to click out of the screenshot.  I couldn’t see the actual Zoom meeting or if someone was raising her or his hand.  I tried to keep the discussion going while trying to get Zoom back to the front.  I began clicking any window shut that I could.  Finally Zoom reemerged.

After the meeting I had to examine the carnage.  My browser had been closed and when I reopened it, the option to restore all closed tabs from the last session was grayed out.  I would have to rebuild my tabs from memory.  It was because of my overwrought memory that I’d kept those tabs open in the first place!  Before going corporate, when I could take my time and pay attention, I had a very good memory for things like this.  (As a professor I had time to act on things during the day instead of constantly thinking “I’ve got to get back to work.”)  Now too much is happening all the time.  I’m having Zoom meetings after work when I normally get my day to day business done.  So I’ve added a new task to all the others—trying to reconstruct my lost tabs.  Yes, it’s a classic “first world problem.”  At least that’s what I think it’s called—let me open a new tab and check.

A different kind of bookmark

Misremembered

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There may be a name for it, but if there is I don’t know it.  Like the more well-known Mandela Effect, it’s a strange memory issue, only it affects the individual.  The Mandela Effect is a collective false memory, often involving the death of someone famous.  Many people—sometime very many—think, for example, that someone famous has died.  The death, or other false memory, is posted in the past and people who don’t know each other all agree that it happened, only it hasn’t.  Instead, what I’m talking about happens to me once in a while and perhaps it happens to others.  Most recently I was listening to The Proclaimers’ song “I’m Gonna Be,” also known as “500 Miles.”  It’s got a catchy chorus and I was thinking it was an oldie, so I looked it up.

First of all, I didn’t know The Proclaimers were a set of twins from Edinburgh.  Second of all, I didn’t know they were (only) my age.  Third of all, I was sure I knew and heard the song from when I was growing up, but it came out in 1988, the year my wife and I moved to Scotland.  I was just stunned by this.  I was sure I’d heard the song, for instance, when I was in college and that it was an oldie even then.  I didn’t and it wasn’t.  In fact, the very year I could’ve first heard it I was busy making plans for an international move, getting married, and starting a doctorate.  This kind of time distortion can be very disorienting, and it says something about memory.

1988

Our lives are the stories we tell about ourselves.  Memory, in an evolutionary way, serves some basic functions such as recalling which other people you can trust, where good food sources are, and where the saber-tooths tend to hang out.  Those with better memories survive longer and procreate more and over time the trait becomes common.  Memory isn’t intended to recall specific dates.  I often wonder if something like the Mandela Effect isn’t behind Trump’s unaccountable popularity.  A kind of memory that refuses to believe the song came out in 1988 although clearly it did.  Believing false memories is the stuff of drama, of course.  That drama can take in whole societies because we misremember that we knew all about propaganda because we learned that in high school, but now we fall for it.  Or it may be a lonely moment when a song comes to mind and we think we’ve known it far longer than we have.

The Persistence of Streaming

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I’ve had to start keeping a list.  If I don’t I’ll forget which movies I’ve streamed.  I suspect I’m not alone in this.  Electronic information is vapid and eminently forgettable.  If you go see a movie in a theater, you’re likely to remember it.  Memory of place and occasion aid the memory of plot and effects, I suspect.  To my knowledge I’ve never had anyone ask if I’ve seen a movie that I didn’t remember, if I saw it in a theater.  Streaming—maybe yes, maybe no.  A few weeks back I found myself streaming a film and thinking “this looks awfully familiar.”  The longer I watched the more convinced I was that I’d seen it before.  When it was over I checked.  I had watched it only a few months earlier.

When you buy a DVD or Blu-ray (or even a VHS tape), the physicality of it serves as a reminder.  Unwrapping the package, handling the case, loading it into your player—these are all keys, hooks upon which memories hang.  As I’ve intimated before, movies are, I believe, our modern mythology.  The idea’s not original with me, but think about how movies are often our frame of reference around the water cooler or with friends.  What did you think of Nope?  It’s a safe way to express our beliefs and aspirations.  Even if it’s not great, it’s helpful to be able to remember it when you want to.  Streaming, it seems, often lacks commitment.  Particularly if it’s from a free site.  (I use such only when the media are otherwise unavailable.)  Maybe there’s a reason it’s free.

Streaming asks little by way of investment, financially or psychologically.  It costs time, of course, and perhaps that’s the greatest siphon of all.  If you’re a busy person time is a commodity.  Spending some of it watching a movie—depending on who you are—isn’t simply entertainment.  Mythology gives us meaning.  I suspect that’s why we value those auteurs who break through the noise and manage to stand out in our minds.  Those who know what it is to captivate an audience.  Those who are really invested in their projects.  Like most books I read, the movies I watch come from a list.  I have a reason for watching them, often related to research.  And if you put the time into it, you want to remember it.  For that, I recommend keeping a list. (Have a written a post like this before?)

Remember the Doorway

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I’m glad it has a name.  And I’m also, relievedly, glad it’s normal.  The Doorway Effect.  I’m sure it’s happened to you.  You walk into a room and immediately forget what you came in for.  I’ve been afraid of some early onset of something because I’ve noticed it more and more, but it turns out that this is a normal brain function.  A recent article by Jessica Estrada explains that our brains are constantly framing.  A large part of that framing has to do with our physical location.  When you step through a doorway that framing changes and some of the residue (what I came in here for) might easily get left in your previous location.  In other words, it seems to be an effect of humans making different rooms for different purposes.  Our thought lingers in the place it was first born.

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

Our brains are fascinating organs.  Every time I read about how children’s brains form, I wish I’d studied psychology instead of religion.  How we could help our children if we understood what their brains just aren’t capable of doing just yet!  How many spankings could have been avoided if parents understood brain development?  Beating someone doesn’t teach anything.  Instead, we might try to learn how minds use brains.  Young boys can be quite reckless.  One of the reasons?  Their brains haven’t developed enough yet to think through the consequences of their actions.  Yes, they can push limits for other reasons, but their thinking simply doesn’t yet involve adult caution that (hopefully) comes with a developing brain.  One of the real consequences of this, for which I’ll volunteer as a poster child, is religion.

Children’s brains are not developed enough to accept and comprehend religious thinking until they’re about 12.  We’ve known this for many decades now.  And yet, the theology of parents means they try to convince their children of religious truths before their brains are developed enough to sort it out.  Look at Congress and the Supreme Court to see the results of this.  Most people never seriously question their religion.  For many it was instilled in them as children, before their brains could properly process it.  The rest of the country pays for it with laws then enact.  We’ve known about this for decades and have decided that studying religion is a waste of time.  But I digress.  Now I forget what I started to say when I began this post.

Discovering Diaries

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When you move, there are always things that get lost.  I wrote about Nietzsche recently, but one of the puzzles from my latest move, now approaching four years ago, was my college diaries.  (I have to be careful not to write dairies, since my spelling could use some attention.)  I used to keep diaries.  I haven’t done so since early in my married life, and even a little before.  While looking for an empty notebook for use at work, I discovered two diaries in the attic.  I’d been looking for them for, it’s safe to say now, years.  I spend quite a bit of time in the attic, so the fact that I didn’t find them in plain sight—a virtual purloined diary—was odd.  But not nearly as odd as what happened next.  

It was still part of our internet-free weekend.  Unable to get online, and having done my morning writing and reading, and with family listening to things in the background (I can’t read or write with background sounds such as music or talking), I picked up one of the diaries.  It was a lesson in the fragility of memory as well as how reading your own words from the past can make the present seem unreal.  It was a veil, if that’s not too Pauline, that came over me.  Who was that young man?  Was my life really that chaotic?  Were friends really that generous?  Did I really know that many people?  Why have specific ones stayed in mind while others who clearly meant so much of me slipped and fallen in my gray matter?

Like encountering a younger version of yourself, reading diaries opens new windows of self-reflection.  I guess I hadn’t remembered myself being as self-reflective as that man in his mid-twenties was.  Perhaps still is.  If you’ve spent any time on this blog you’re probably aware of my tendency to look at things from different angles.  To think things through.  My own brand of neurodiversity is what I think I have to offer.  I try to save my academic stuff for my published writings, but when as many years have passed, I wonder if I will look back on my early posts here and find myself asking who it was that wrote them.  Youth is a time of acquiring new experiences unlike any other.  Having grown up with so very little, the world itself seemed only days old back then.  If memory serves.

Reading Memory

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I recently wrote about writing too much (as if such a thing were possible).  After posting that I thought of how much the same can be said of reading.  I like to believe that whatever I’ve read is stored in my brain somewhere, rather like my writing on all those external drives.  I get some hopeful hints of this when a fragment of something read long ago suddenly reappears.  It’s good to know it’s there somewhere.  What brought this to mind is that a book I’m currently reading used a significant term.  Overly confident as I only am when reading, I figured I’d remember where it occurred.  A few days later I’d forgotten.  “No problem,” I thought, “the index.”  Indexes are never perfect and I’m always amazed by what strikes me as being so important failed to make the author’s cut.  So it happened.

This particular book was compactly written, but even so, it was more than sixty pages ago.  It took a few days of skimming, and finally going through line-by-line to find the word again.  It was a capitalized word and I thought mere skimming would be able to pick it out.  No such luck.  Part of the problem, I suppose, is that since I’ve left academia I’ve pretty much stopped writing in books.  I always did it in pencil, but still—there’s something about that pristine page so carefully typeset and laid out.  Well, if I had all the time in the world I could re-read those first sixty pages again, but I don’t have time to read all the books I need to, so I grabbed my old Pentel and began marking the spots I wanted to remember.

When we age it’s recall that suffers.  I tend to think the memories themselves are still there, sometimes distorted, sometimes altered, but present.  Books, after all, can be reread.  If I read something while commuting to Manhattan, there is a good likelihood that some of it was occluded by the worries of work lying ahead, coupled with the anxiety of catching the bus back home at the end of the day.  Not to mention anything that might’ve been happening in real life—that place outside of work that you really care about.  I’m glad for the commute reading; I regularly read over 100 books a year.  You couldn’t take notes while on a New Jersey Transit bus, though.  It’s not possible to read too much, but reading memory, it seems, is a sometimes a scarce resource.

Upgraded at Last

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Those who pay close attention to labels may have noticed the tag “Neo-Luddism” appended to some of my blog posts.  Luddites were nineteenth-century protestors against machines because, their thinking went, machines denied people jobs.  I’m not fully in line with this way of thinking, of course, but I do occasionally point out the ironies of how our technological life has become, well, life.  Tech seems to have taken over life itself and some people really like that.  Others of us miss the outdoors and even the “free time” we used to have indoors.  Our computers, phones, iPads, left behind and maybe a physical book cracked open—this seems a dream at times.  I really do enjoy our connected life, for the most part.  It makes this blog possible, for instance.  What I object to is being forced to upgrade.  That should be a decision I make, not one thrust upon me.

Which cloud is it?

This is just one small instance of what I’m talking about: my laptop wants an update.  It has for a couple of months now.  Since it’s in rather constant use I can only devote the time to it on the weekends and the past four weekends have all been used up with other things, including two that had over eight hours of Zoom meetings scheduled.  Now, you see, the update isn’t just a matter of simply updating.  You need to clear space off your computer first.  I like to keep my files and the tech companies want to pressure me into keeping them on “the cloud” so they can charge me for the privilege of accessing the things I created.  Instead I back them up on terabyte drives, sorting as I go.  Photos, formerly iPhotos, take seven or eight clicks to upload and delete for each and every set.  If you snap a lot of pix that translates to hours of time.  It also means when I want to access my files I have to remember where I put the terabyte drive, and then connect it to the computer.  At least I know where my files are.

But do I?  If I were to crack open the drive would I have any means of locating what, on my laptop, looks like memories of family, friends, and places I’ve been?  Are they real at all?  If you’re sympathetic to this existential crisis created by the tech world in which we live, you might understand, in some measure Neo-Luddism.  Of course memory is available for purchase and it will surely last you at least until the next upgrade.

Remember This

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Have you ever had one of those days?  You know the kind I mean—a day when you feel like you’re forgetting something.  Wednesday was like that for me.  You see, the first full week back to work after a long weekend (Martin Luther King Day) seems to stretch out like a desert road whose end you can’t see.  It always hits me on Wednesday.  The previous week the third day of work was the day before Friday (and I mean “Friday” metaphorically, as the last work day of the week).  The first full week you’ve been at it three days and on Wednesdays I realize, “I’ve got two more days to go.”  So, although it was sunny around here, I sulked all day feeling like I’d forgotten something.  I had.

I post on this blog every day.  I have for many years.  The way this works on WordPress is you get your post ready and you’re given an option to publish.  I get my post ready before going to work (which in my case means going upstairs to my office).  I delude myself into thinking I have regular readers and that they will be looking for the post at its usual time—around 6:30 (I start work early).  Wednesday I finished my post even earlier than usual and I thought, “I’d better not publish now, or my readers won’t see it.”  I trudged upstairs, however, and began to work.  Once work starts, all bets are off.  Even with the sun warming my chilly bones, I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something.  I’d forgotten to click “publish.”  My post, which had been waiting patiently for publication (I know how that feels!) never got launched.  I didn’t discover this until Thursday.

You see, we’re not supposed to use social media at work.   Although I work remotely, unlike Republicans I play by established rules.  So I went through my day feeling I’d forgotten something, but not knowing what.  It’s not that I forgot you, my dear readers, I just forgot to click “publish” before heading up to work.  At the end of work, after staring at a computer screen all day long, I tend not to go online.  Most days I read a book, or get supper ready.  So I awoke on Thursday to find Wednesday’s post, well, unposted.  Some of us aren’t constitutionally compatible with the nine-to-five schedule.  My mind goes lots of places during the day.  Often those places are reminding me how many more days I have to do this before a break comes.  And some weeks, it seems, it never does.  If I recall correctly.

Photographic Evidence

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All photographs are lies. That moment preserved, formerly on celluloid but now with electrons, is gone for good as soon as the shutter is snapped. The camera doesn’t see as the eye sees. I was reminded of this during a mountain thunderstorm. I awoke early, coated with jet lag and the residue of my regular early morning schedule. It was still dark, but the reddish sunlight soon wrestled through a valley fed by a creek across the lake. The color was impressive, but my camera washed it out to a diluted Creamsicle orange. In reality the clouds were roiling overhead and lightning was streaking through a thunderhead like synapses firing violently in a massive brain. Thunder in the mountains can’t be photographed. Nor can it be forgot.

My work used to require quite a bit of travel. Before I would visit a campus I would spend some time on faculty pages, trying to put faces together with names. Impressed with how young these professors were, I’d knock on doors armed with foreknowledge of who might greet me. I wondered who these older people were when the door actually opened. It’s disconcerting to see someone age before your eyes. I would think back to the photographs online that had assured me this person would be much younger. The picture was a fossil. A moment frozen in time. The very next second after the photo capture that smiling face had changed. The best that we can hope for is a gross approximation.

Perceptions of reality, as all religions teach us, contain a healthy dose of illusion. While it contains ethereal beauty, this vision I’ve captured in my lens is only part of the picture. There is something deeper, more meaningful behind it. Photographs enhance memory. In the days before Photoshop they could be submitted as proof of an occurrence. They are a form of art. Whatever else they may be, they are also lies. Lies need not be of evil intent. Religions try to explain what some privileged individual realized was the truth. These who found a way of looking behind the photograph. The streaking lightning outside evades the slowness of my finger on the button. The thunder rolling and re-echoing through these valleys will remain in my head long after the sound waves cease to reverberate. Reality is more than it seems. Even my experience of this mountain thunderstorm is that of a single individual seeking enlightenment. Elsewhere others are up early, observing it too. What they experience may be something very different from me indeed. I have a photograph to prove it.

Fictional Fact

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Do you remember that tragic sinking of a Staten Island ferry when a giant octopus pulled it under? Sounds vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t living near New York at the time. A story in The Guardian tells how Joseph Reginella, a sculptor, made his commemorative piece of art for Battery Park for a fictional incident. Like the memorial for War of the Worlds in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, this is something we remember that never really transpired. We remember what never happened. It’s easy to forget that memory evolved for specific purposes. Mainly we remember for survival. Our brains evolved to keep us alive. If we don’t recall where we found water, or where that hidden cliff edge is, we don’t last for long. But we remember other things as well. The time that Oog borrowed your stone axe and didn’t give it back. Our social memory made us human, so we’re told.

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No doubt it is possible to develop a keen memory. Precise recollection of events just as they happened, in sequence. It’s also possible, even collectively, to misremember things. We tell stories. We make myths. There was no giant octopus incident. Maybe we saw such a thing in a movie one time. That movie, paired with the plausible evidence of a public monument commemorating the event becomes a modified reality. I’m just sure I can remember it happening, can’t you?

Studies of such phenomena tell us that memories aren’t what they seem to be. To make distant recollections Holy Writ, for example, we have to rely on divine inspiration. Without it we might just be remembering a story somebody told once upon a time. And where did I put the car keys? Yes, our memories are open to manipulation. Things that never happened become real this way. George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree and confess to his father because he could not lie. And yet we believe. We make myths because they give our lives meaning. Face it, evolution is a pretty boring explanation for why we’re here. Natural selection has no goals in mind. Things that work best tend to survive in the gene pool. And in some people’s memory there may be a giant octopus in that pool as well. Did the the Cornelius G. Kolff get pulled under or not? Would a ship with such a name ever be made up? Myths are still born every day, even as the octopuses cower in their caves, awaiting the next naive ferry to transcend reality.

Nine Lives

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A warm and wet holiday weekend is a good time to watch movies. Since my daily work schedule leave scant time to view anything from most Monday-to-Fridays (and it would claim even more if I’d let it), relaxing often involves watching. I first saw Cats as an ambitious stage production for a local outdoor theater some years ago. Andrew Lloyd Webber has acute talent when it comes to mixing show tunes and popular music; so much so that even a vague storyline will do to carry a show. Cats, of course, is based on a set of children’s poems by T. S. Eliot—Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. There is no narrative, and they show’s emotionally charged hit “Memory” had to be culled from among Eliot’s other poems. Nevertheless, the musical, now long off-Broadway, exists in a film version that is heavily endowed with religious themes. This weekend I watched it for the n-th time, and each viewing brings out new nuances.

The “story,” such as it is, has two very basic events: Jellicle Cats choose who can be reborn on the night of the Jellicle Ball, and Old Deuteronomy, the patriarch of Jellicles, is kidnapped (cat-napped?) and must be recovered before the choice can be made. The vignettes feature cats dealing with loss, love, and crime. The character who resonates with many viewers is Grizabella, the glamour cat. She is the has-been who sings “Memory,” the cat who was somebody before her fame and fortune faded to a tawdry existence among questionable society. The musical is about transformation, however. Transformation is a religious theme, the desire we have to be something more than we are, to transcend the hand life has dealt us. Now, I’m no theater or film critic, but I have to wonder whether the obvious fades and duets of “Memory” point to Grizabella as the older but sadder version of the young and lively Jemima.

Certainly as the finale builds, Grizabella is chosen to be reborn and is sent to the Heaviside Layer, but the camera keeps coming back to Jemima. She is often framed in the center and the suggestion is made that the new life has already begun. Religion thrives on transformation. I suppose that is the reason I find it so ironic that in politics religion, Christianity in particular, is championed as the pillar of the status quo. Whether they are new or old, religions serve no purpose if they do not challenge the “business as usual” model of the secular world. Perhaps that’s why successful artists such as Andrew Lloyd Webber thrive—they can pack theaters of seekers weekend after weekend, even for decades sometimes. Even those of us watching on the television at home click the eject button with a sense of hope that seems possible only on a holiday weekend.

A stray Jellicle cat?

Aroma of the Divine

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Religion is all about emotion. Those who approach religions rationally soon have to face the fact that believers approach the subject with a less-than-rational motivation. Religion fulfills basic psychological needs – we can explain our world without divine forces, but for many this cold and clinical approach lacks vitality and meaning. Belief in the divine is emotionally satisfying, and as long as humans experience emotion, God’s job is safe.

Aware of this emotional component, I was intrigued when I heard about Rachel Herz’s book, The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell. It is schoolyard wisdom that smells are closely associated with memory; everyone I’ve asked about this has had the experience of a firm memory being mediated by an unexpected aroma. What Herz has discovered, however, is that our sense of smell evokes memory just about as well as other sensory cues. The vital difference is that our sense of smell is vital for emotional development. The fragrance-induced memory is more fraught with emotion, therefore it may seem more intense that memories brought on by old photos or songs. In fact, those who lose their sense of smell often report living with emotional flatness. Laboratory animals with their olfactory organs removed show no motivation in their pathetic lives.

Considering the emotional component of religion and the fact that our olfactory perceptions are closely linked with our limbic systems, I wonder how religious satisfaction smells. Surely emotion is more complex than what our noses detect, but if emotional systems are shut down without a sense of smell, it stands to reason that religion must be related, at least in some form, to smell. The presence of the divine is often described as “inspiration” or inhaling. In Hebrew and other Semitic languages the world for “spirit” is also “breath.” Although Herz doesn’t discuss this aspect of scentology in her book, it would be an avenue to investigate for those with an interest in the origin of religion and the aroma of the divine.