In a Dear Green Place

So things are falling in to place here. I got my visa in record time (a week, can you believe that?), the computer is on order, I’ve decided which shoes to leave behind (painful decision, that), and I seem to be set financially to continue my life of student poverty (which means sacrificing the food budget to buy a book or go to a concert). Now is the time to finish those last little touches, little essentials for recording my time there.

When people plan the things that will help them remember their time abroad they usually include things like cameras and journals. I’m certainly bringing these things but lotion and music also will also be an important part of how I remember this time and fix it in my memory. Wait….lotion?

Yeah, lotion. I mean, we all have smells that evoke memories in a very powerful way. During my last two big stays abroad I used a particular lotion. Maybe it sounds weird but I’ve kept those two mostly empty containers just to smell them. I don’t use them anymore. I just save a bit so that I can smell them and remember.

When I was in France my mom sent me some lotion that smelled like lavender and rosemary. It was the perfect thing because I can’t think of a more appropriate fragrance for Southern France. I open the jar and smell Provence. I am back in my apartment in Nimes on the ninth floor where the wind of the mistral whistles through the shutters at night. I am back in my apartment in Aubagne with the insanely steep stairs and stucco-covered interior walls that were just waiting to injure us. The refreshing herbal fragrance of my lavender and rosemary lotion takes me back to the fields and streets of Provence in an incredibly vivid way like many smells have the power to do.

The second lotion that I have saved is associated with the term I spent studying at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. I had a tube of the pear lotion that Victoria’s Secret makes. Its clean, bright smell makes me remember… reading Jane Austin in a tiny dorm room, weekend trips to remote villages, and climbing hills in the rain.

I don’t use these lotions anymore because I don’t want their impact to be diluted by being associated in my brain with other things. So I just keep what little is left sealed in their containers so that I can open them every once in a while and take a Technicolor trip down memory lane. What can I say? I’m a freak. I wonder what the next lotion will be.

The other main mechanism for me to remember my experiences is through music. I know that my computer will certainly come in handy for all those pesky papers that I’ll have to write but the main value of any laptop of mine will be its ability to store lots of music. In addition to my own music, I can’t wait to find new stuff. Glasgow is famous for its amazing music scene and I already have tickets to my first show (Embrace is playing at the Academy in Oct). For the last several years I have sent out emails called Lyrics of the Day to whomever I thought might like the words that I was listening to at the time. I’ll continue that here occasionally to give a sense of the soundtrack of this part of my life and tell anyone who cares about music that I find.

I have no idea what music will become the theme for this year of grad school in Scotland. I look forward to whatever it will be and the way it will weave into my experiences to become forever tied up with what I live and who I become; that and the lotion that will become the olfactory on-button for my memories over this coming year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Preparations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.