This week❤️

Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”smells like Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil. My best friend Sandra (RIP 💔 ) and I are spending a weekend in Myrtle Beach, SC, and we have retreated to her old sedan to smoke a joint. She turns the car on to get the AC going, and Marvin is on cassette tape. It’s the late 1970s. Sandra will live for many happy decades, but then early onset Alzheimer’s and a massive stroke will take her. She’ll meet Marvin Gaye, I imagine, and she’ll tell him how Susan never stops placing that song in that moment.

Laying on the floor with the sun on my face (indoors) always reminds me of summer holidays as a child begging for my sisters to take me to the park there’s this hair product called pink lotion now that takes me backkkk to getting ready for school and being half asleep whilst my mum does my hair!!

Amazing how smell in particular is tied to memory! Pretty sure smell is the only sense that connects directly to the emotion and memory-related parts of the brain. It's so beautiful that you can connect with your dad across time with that shaving powder. There's a certain coconutty sunscreen scent that I get a whiff of every once in a while in summer in public places that brings me back to a camp I went to a few times when I was a kid. There were horses and my fav was a white mare named Mariah. Her light-skinned muzzle would get sunburned without sunscreen and I would always volunteer to reapply it. Whenever I smell that sunscreen I can almost feel her soft soft nostrils and warm breath

The smell of fresh cut grass takes me back to my youth and all the memories of growing up on a small family farm...carefree days with only childhood responsibilities and so much to look forward to and learn ahead of me.

Smells are so powerful for triggering memories. I’m glad Val was able to find that particular one for you ❤️ I have strong associations with music, in the 90s we didn’t have MP3s yet so I would listen to the same CD over and over again on long trips. Tool’s Aenima album takes me right back to feeling like a kid again. I remember the 8th grade class trip bus ride to Mesa Verde SO much more vividly than the destination because I was playing that CD on repeat for all 7 hours of the trip. It still puts me in a weird trance 30 years later.

Thanks for the plug for my podcast Frank! Only shared because this community is one that is very empathetic and politically aware, so some of you may enjoy! If anyone here does check it out and enjoys it, or has any questions about the topics we cover, my DMs are open (if that’s possible on Patreon idk) on social media with the podcast title 😁

Recommendation for the poll: Vox Machina and The Detroiters. VM is an animated show from Critical Role. It was their first campaign and they all voice their own characters. CR is also one of the companies behind the game Dispatch. It is on Prime. The Detroiters is from Tim Robinson and his bestie Sam Richardson. Tim was an SNL writer and as far as I know, The Detroiters was his first show. It is hilarious and only two seasons. It is on Netflix. The smell? I was walking to work one day and there was a woman ahead of me on the sidewalk. She was smoking something. Usually I physically can't stand the smell of tobacco, I'll hold my breath. But this. I don't know what brand it was but it instantly reminded me of the rez and family. I did not ask her.

Weekly answer: blue jays’ call takes me to my grandparents’ house in the rural Florida panhandle. I’m visiting from Arizona, so the blue jay isn’t familiar. My sister and I are playing in the sandy dirt of the driveway. The heat is crazy-humid, and I’ll accumulate a dozen mosquito bites in the early evening, and when the truck comes by to spray for them we’ll run out to stand in the cool pleasant spray of mild poison. 😎 Grandpa has tame squirrels who will come to his patio chair for cracked hickory nuts. Nana is canning lima beans. Blue jays.

Yay! Cherrywood pipe tobacco, a cologne that they don't make anymore, and like general car engine. I have my grandfather's pipe and cologne bottle in airtight containers. When I miss him, I go smell them. He was a Native American farmer and taught me how to live off the land because he believed eventually technology would fail us and I'd need to know how to get back to basics. The motor oil because he was a master mechanic for GM until he retired. Absolutely honeysuckle and fresh blackberries, it always reminds me of being a kid and running around in the woods all day. Living at the lake all summer in a tent. Thankfully, we have a ton of it in Louisiana so I never have to worry about missing them.

Ocean's Eleven is such a fun movie! The smell of honeysuckle always instantly transports me to my childhood. Even just remembering the smell does that.