Cleanses memories, leaving no residue

Living in Mauritania, there is never a shortage of visual stimuli: scrawny men draped in large boubous pushing taxis to a sputtering start, herds of goats just short of savage devouring tee shirts, plastic bags dancing in violent updrafts gusting off the plateaus, calloused bare feet chasing rusted hubcaps and giggles after school… my eyes are so gluttonous, I often forget to listen.

Today, though, I broke from my aural stupor. Walking home from school, I heard clicking. Nearly inaudible at first, the noise increased in volume, approached me from behind. A clicking roll, cadenced at a quick walking pace.

Click, click, clicking, clicking.

And immediately I am in New Richmond High School’s parking lot, listening to my soccer cleats pounding against the asphalt. I am late for practice or catching a bus for an away game or walking toward my rusted blue Chevy Celebrity parked in the gravel, but they are my cleats and I can smell autumn and I am not in Mauritania.

And then, just as suddenly, click click clicking I was in Mauritania and the clicking finally passed me on the paved road. A small boy wearing battered soccer cleats turned over his shoulder and looked at me suspiciously. I waved and stammered a local greeting, to which he immediately warmed. He returned my smile and trotted off.

This is an entirely human tendency, but I – more than most others – strongly associate sounds with periods in my life. Music especially, but apparently clicking soccer cleats too. Occasionally, certain songs are so loaded with temporal meaning (read: baggage), I listen to them in different settings in order to cleanse them.

Oddly enough, I do the same with certain smells. Most recently, I was rocked with nostalgia by a jar of Noxema¹. The last time I had smelled its trademark camphor and menthol was a decade prior while playing in an orchestra touring Europe. The time before that, I was twelve years old organizing the medicine cabinet while my parents took an afternoon nap. Still, so vividly, I can see the plaza framed by my shower’s porthole window in Austria-somewhere. I can feel the vibration of the red plastic bin sliding on white wire shelves.

By using Noxema in my concrete-lined shower, am I cleansing my previous memories? Or simply adding baggage to this olfactory trigger? Impossible to tell. At least partially now, cleats and camphor belong to Mauritania.

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1: I’m sure there’s some sort of TM needed here. Consider this my feeble attempt at corporate CYA.