Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Suggesting To My Mind

So, the human mind is a weird thing. (As I am sure you are aware from my multitude of Weird Dreams.) But beyond my nightly brain dumps are the images and sensations that develop over the years and we aren't even aware of it.
Take tonight for example. It wasn't a cold day by any means, not baking but in the mid-60's. Fine for the last day of November in The Jungle. Even when the sun went down it didn't get too chilly. But right around 7pm this wild wind picked up and started blowing things around. Fairly heavy things, boxes, cans, chairs, trash bags. It blew and blew for almost an hour. (Poor outdoor kitties had their water bowl all filled with leaves and dirt and rocks and stuff.) As soon as the wind started howling - and it was howling, which is weird for here; there's not much room to pick up speed for a howl - I got really cold. Even being in the house, where it was warm, in my sweats and eating warm food, I was chilly and shivering. I can only suppose it comes from my time in The Frozen North where winds like that brought ice storms and blizzards and things like that. Don't know. But it started me thinking; what other sensations come from our past but trigger vivid feelings?
Does fire make you extremely warm too? Even if you're outside and taking two steps from the BBQ pit will start the ice forming on your nose does the feel of the fire make you think of July and heat waves?

This is me and am I just totally nuts?

2 comments:

Cath said...

It's not just you. Lots of memories trigger physical responses. The sight of snow makes me cold. In college, they came out with some snowy movie and my friends wouldn't let me see it, because I would just be cold the whole time! And of course talking about bugs makes me itchy. But it's mostly smells that I have the biggest reaction to. Some scents can take me back to such specific moments in time.

Anonymous said...

Ditto. Some research shows that the olfactory and memory portions of the brain are inter-connected triggering any memory associated with a particular smell. But the research was done to show that the absence or diminution of a person's capacity to smell is a precursor to memory loss.

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