“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls…bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” ― Marcel Proust
Ground Zero smelled of concrete, smoke, dust, glass and death. And then, all too suddenly, it didn’t smell of anything. Did four months of breathing toxic air destroy my olfactory sense? Or did my mind shut it down? It didn’t matter, I was grateful just to be breathing. The fact that most of us first-responders didn’t receive proper respirator masks until a week after the tragedy didn’t matter to us either. Each day alive was a gift. This may explain why, for a couple of years at least, I didn’t mind the fact that my sense of smell was all but gone. Among so much loss, this seemed so inconsequential. Anyway, what I’d smelled during that time was more than enough for one lifetime. There are certain smells which would prompt even the most stoic or adventurous among us to pray for escape. When my sense of smell began to return, about two and half years after the destruction of the World Trade Center, it wasn’t like a switch was suddenly turned on, nor was it like a character in a soap opera awakening with a smile from a screenwriter-induced coma; it was insidious and corrupt. When an alcoholic returns to drinking, despite years of sobriety, he picks up right where he left off. His disease was merely waiting in the wings. Such was the case here. My atrophied sense picked up where it left off: perceiving only concrete, smoke, dust, glass and death.
One of the most vivid sense memories from Ground Zero was this three-dimensional, pasty, powdery, concrete dust which pervaded the area and filled our lungs, mouths and eyes. The first tingle of the sense’s return (“Doctor, I think I felt my leg move!”) occurred when I walked past a midtown construction site. There it was. Dammit. Admittedly, this was more of a feeling, a taste, and my sense of smell followed the other more-developed senses like a baby shark. I expected this knock on the door to be a deliveryman from 1-800-Flowers, instead, it was the Grim Reaper.
If this story was fiction, I’d insert a moment where I stopped to smell a red rose and my sense was magically restored, Disney pixie-dust and all. Honestly, I don’t remember the moment when this traitorous sense granted me permission to perceive beauty again. I tested the waters with cheap candles and air fresheners from the supermarket – the scent of plastic flowers and faux ocean breezes. It was a start. Extinguishing even the cheapest of candles, one is rewarded with nature’s intrinsic gift of smoke and embers. A cheap synthetic flower cultivated in a laboratory mixed with an organic scent as old as the universe. The snuffing of a candle lit something in me and I soon noticed the aliveness of the world around me and sniffed with abandon. Kansas became Oz. I must have looked like a bloodhound in loafers, sniffing the wax on the library floor, the cigar smoke from a hundred yards away, or the beautiful woman in the elevator whose perfume kissed my nose as she reached to press a button. Perfume, I realized, is the scent of life itself: an intermingling of different smells which, at any given time, combine and pass a threshold, entering our minds as a whole. The perfumer, hopefully, chooses those notes which provide pleasure, but nevertheless, the comparison remains. Perfume? An artist’s portrait of only beautiful smells? Bring it on.
And bring it on, I did. I grew obsessed with fragrance. I was transfixed by the falling rose petals of Amouage Homage Attar, the dewy spring grass of Creed Green Irish Tweed, the dirty-clean of YSL Kouros. Losing one’s self in the beauty of fragrance is not an escape from life, it’s an escape into life. The juicy peach of Guerlain Mitsouko, the crashing waves of Heeley Sel Marin and the coffee-cup-comfort of Bond No. 9 New Haarlem. As my collection grew (and my shelf-space diminished), I was reminded that scent and memory are co-conspirators. The same biological infrastructure that causes my heart to sink when I smell concrete dust also links Amouage Jubilation XXV with Christmas and Acqua Di Parma Assoluta with a 2010 week in the Bahamas. By acknowledging and celebrating olfactory beauty, I could match wits with this molecular habitrail and harness its powers for good. My favorite summer weekend escape is a serene lake in western New Jersey. When I am there, I exclusively wear Neil Morris’ meditative masterpiece, Zephyr. That way, in mid-December, my mind can return to this tranquil place by merely sniffing the bottle. Those unfortunates who own only one or two bottles of fragrance cannot experience the full effect of this mind-game. Their memories become diluted, their days run together. Scent is memory, and as Oscar Wilde said, “Memory is the diary that we carry about with us.”
A gateway to the past, scent is also a gateway to the present moment. Today, I work near Ground Zero and pass by it often. My mind’s eye still sees it the way it was that day, but the present moment is restored when I smell the briny air that rests between two rivers. There is a purity now. If you pay attention, you can smell the sun warming the pavement on Vesey Street, the pushcart food vendors, and the grass, dirt and trees behind St. Paul’s Church. This is what gratitude smells like. The smells of life have returned to this place where once we, quite literally, inhaled death. To smell is to breathe. And with each breath I know that I am alive and with that, I am at peace.
“Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart -Proverbs 27:9
All pictures courtesy of the author.
–Michael Devine, Contributor