Pockets of Memory

generally speaking, my memory is not good. this thing call the mind, with its words, like names. but the nose is different. it keeps its own record of significant encounters, of so many mundane moments that i would never think to write down or recall. my vocabulary fails me to describe. we say that we smell with our nose, but that verb sounds much too active for me, as if we were dogs on the hunt. we need a verb more like to relax, a verb that signifies the undoing of action. for it is there in the undoing that the window presents itself, into which so many things lost suddenly appear.
Todd Brown, Vermont, USA