Drowning

I wonder if art is just about keeping one from drowning in sensation. Or at least, the urge to create may be about that. Art has such a loaded meaning for everyone.

I know someone lacking a sense of smell. She wonders what smell memories are. She’s heard people talk of them. I told her my life was practically built around them. They pivot me from one moment to the next, simultaneously reminding me as they generate anew. I live the moment, while I remember another. And the moment lived, will come to me later in the future, while another present takes place.

This morning, the smell of someone’s cherry lip balm caused a swirl around me of Vicks cough drops on an October afternoon in grade school. The sky overcast and dark like evening, the class quiet and reading. A sore throat blurred by cherry menthol and pencil shaving smell coming from the sharpener. Outside, orange and brown leaves glow on the sidewalk through the grey light.

A moment later, walking up the stairs from the platform to the station, toasted bread and pastry smells flood me with Easter at my German grandmother’s house. Her egg bread is cooling on the counter, and I’m too small to see over the top of the counter or reach it.
A bird cheeping through the open window above the sink blows cool spring air in a stream and the adults murmur in the living room. The cuckoo clock ticks and the fridge hums. Cold cement and ferment smell slips under the door to the garage and basement, where I go to play.

Coming up for air, back to the present moment, the big electronic board in the station, displaying the departures and arrivals is malfunctioning. Instead of Bon Voyage/Have a Nice Trip, Have = Nice flickers and flashes. Have =nice. Have can equal nice, depending of what you have.

Leaving the station, out onto boulevard De Maisonneuve, toward University, the cars push and shove, the clouds darken and tiny sprinkles or rain flip around in the wind. A moment I will store for later, because I’m still immersed in my own history of sensations. Sometimes, so overwhelming, like standing in front of a deep pool of Mediterranean blue, knowing you need, must, want to dive in, be enveloped and surrounded. I could lie down in the middle of the street and forget the present entirely. “An outlet!” my mind and body yell. “Give me an outlet or let me live underwater! Let me drown.”