Seasons and Seasonings
Richard McCambly, ocsoThere are special times throughout the year that capture our attention more than others. They can be short or fairly extended as well as anything in between. The passage of time, notably growing older, contributes to the blurring of distinctions and time between events. At the same time the more important ones stand out as they should. All the rest tend to fade away, again as they should. If this didn't occur, we'd be overwhelmed with a whole mess of information. The importance of these events vary from person to person. They lift us outside our habitual way of living and move us in a direction we may not have envisioned. If an event is really special, we wish to commemorate or even recreate it as with the celebration of a major milestone...a fiftieth wedding anniversary, for example. One way to make these these times more permanent in our memory is to consider the word " season. " It has a special connotation as related to a time of the year made all the more attractive by reason of its association with the sense of taste as well as smell. In other words, a season is a more comprehension snatch of time not unlike the Greek kairos for special event as in the New Testament. For example, a particular calendar season can be remembered by the scents associated with it: the smell of the ground in spring when planting, the scents given off by furniture during summer's humid days which otherwise aren't perceived, the burning of leaves in autumn and the almost pleasant exhaust from cars on a cold winter's morning. Each season and the scents associated with it are distinct and not bound by the limits of time. We have the ability of recalling them as though they happened yesterday regardless of how many years separate us from the initial experience. The same applies if we're in a season different from the one in which we had perceived a given smell. Note the paradox: smells are harder to nail down yet almost by reason of this, they register more deeply because something physical is involved. It's more so with taste because we are consuming something physical which seems to leave an equally physical mark within us. When down the line we recognize what we've smelt or what we've tasted, no explanation is needed. They are present before us with practically no time gap, simple as all that. By the way, this brings up an interesting association. Memory is usually thought of as something abstract. Here as with tastes and smells, the mere recollection of one whiff or taste is sufficient to actually perceive the smell and taste. We