Summer Challenge Week Four: Scents of Summer

Memory

That was the second Fourth of July
I didn't go down to the river.
I thought of you though, and when the sparks
of rockets and Roman candles lit the neighborhood
I strayed
halfway down the street,
sparkler in hand,
the smell of sulfur in my nose,
when it burned out.

And I ran from there,
to the dirt road behind the Bowman's house,
dogs barking from screened-in porches
in the Country Club. This is where you and I
had stolen the oranges. Walked barefoot
next to the fire ant piles
juice dripping from our fingers.

Through the dark, the red beacon
of the electrical box, blinking slowly
a quarter mile down. I cut across
the vacant lot, burs sticking
to my shoelaces,
back to the driveway where my dad
was dispensing sparklers to the neighbors.

And we all ran
out into the street
writing our names, spinning
until we fell down dizzy,
like stars in the grass.

Challenge #4: Scents of Summer. If you were to bottle summertime, what would it smell like? Are there certain scents that you associate with each month of the summer? Or are there certain scents that make different locations distinct? Think about the scents of this summer compared to ones in the past. What is the same? What is different?

With this as your touchpoint, this week notice and be inspired by the scents of summer. Scents are a particularly powerful literary vehicle, and I encourage you to write a poem or a short prose piece that is rich in the sensory details of scent. You can also be inspired to go on an artist date to recapture a familiar scent of summer. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

To the boy Henry Adams, summer was drunken. Among senses, smell was the strongest—smell of the hot pine-woods and sweet fern in the scorching summer noon; of the new mown hay; of the ploughed earth; of box hedges; of peaches, lilacs, syringas; of stables, barns, cow yards; of salt water and low tides on the marshes; nothing came amiss. –The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams

Every summer my brother and I take on (what I consider) a semi-imposing literary classic. Last summer it was Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust, and this summer, The Education of Henry Adams. One of my favorite things about the book is the way that the young Henry’s education begins with the senses, from his learning the color yellow from the sunlight on the yellow floor of the kitchen, to his first memory of taste (a baked apple) and then to the rich scents of summer that distinguish the freedom of his summers in Quincy from the "compulsory learning" of fall and winter in Boston.

Scent is a powerful sense, especially in humans where it is highly connected to memory. Different from other animals, smells, when they are in the human brain are transmitted to two locations. First, the olfactory epithelium sends the scents to the thalamus in the frontal cortex of the brain, which then identifies the smell. But in primates, the scent also goes to the limbic area. This is a primal part of the brain that deals with motivation, emotion, pleasure, and types of memory associated with food.

Thanks to the connection with the limibic area of the brain, we have a phenomenon known as “Proustian Memory” which is the exceptional experience of a scent releasing a flood memories. It is named after the author Marcel Proust who began his novel Swan’s Way with, what could possibly be the most famous scent captured in literary history: a memory spun from the scent of a lime-blossom tea drenched madeleine.

Scents are an integral part of any season. Sometimes they are very prominent, such as the scents we associate with the winter holidays, and sometimes they are more subtle, part of the day to day activities that make the season and location distinct, as Henry Adams captures in the quote above.

When I think about the scents of summer, I think about the smell of ripe peaches, hamburgers on the grill, suntan oil, freshly mowed grass, and the smoky-sulfur scent of sparklers. This last scent is a scent that evokes for me powerful memories of the 4th of July, and my dad, who would always lead the neighborhood in setting off fireworks. There would be an air of excitement, danger, anticipation and exhilaration on those 4th of July nights, and all I have to do is light a sparkler to remember all of it.

All of this is inspiration for the fourth summer challenge: scents of summer. If you were to bottle summertime, what would it smell like? Are there certain scents that you associate with each month of the summer? Or are there certain scents that make different locations distinct? Think about the scents of this summer compared to ones in the past. What is the same? What is different?

With this as your touchpoint, this week notice and be inspired by the scents of summer. Scents are a particularly powerful literary vehicle, and I encourage you to write a poem or a short prose piece that is rich in the sensory details of scent. You can also be inspired to go on an artist date to recapture a familiar scent of summer. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Special thanks to Taryn McCormick for sharing her image for the post.
The poem Memory is from my chapbook Ophelia's Florida & Other Poems, published in 1999 by PPB Press.