<p>Mine has to do with the scent of lemon I smelled when hiking in a jungle that I recreate with a lemon oil.</p>
<p>What is a “proustian moment”?</p>
<p>A certain type of farmers cheese on a bagel, served with hot tea. Reminds me of food I was served in childhood. </p>
<p>And like for Proust, music is incredibly evocative. Play “American Pie,” Chicago or Elton John, and I’m right back in high school :)</p>
<p>I only have one when I go to bed early, and I have been doing that lately. LOL. It is a fried tarot cake mixed with pork that is usually served in Chinese dim sum. I haven’t had one in years since becoming a vegetarian, and so it is truly Proustian.</p>
<p>^^^ funny, padad</p>
<p>thumper1: A Proustian moment refers to the French author Proust, who recalled an essential memory of his childhood in Remembrance of Things Past. When he ate a bite of a French cookie called a madeleine, he remembered eating those cookies as a child and how he felt then. So whenever you see any reference to Proust’s madeleines, that is what it refers to. Here is the best sentence from that passage:</p>
<p>But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.</p>
<p>the scent of a little baby’s head.</p>
<p>Actually the scent of Baby Magic.</p>
<p>The taste of fresh home grown tomatoes…and wooosh I’m back to summers in the mid west.</p>
<p>Coppertone sunscreen immediately takes me to childhood summers in Lavallette, NJ. I cannot believe it still has the same scent.</p>
<p>*And like for Proust, music is incredibly evocative. Play “American Pie,” Chicago or Elton John, and I’m right back in high school *</p>
<p>Crocodile Rock- fall of 10th grade- algebra II</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be great if we could share music files? Elton John’s early music can immediately takes me to that solemn, angsty place that I would occasionally want music to take me to as a teenager.</p>
<p>
That made my head explode.</p>
<p>I can think of two powerful and moving moments when I saw it happen to others.</p>
<p>In one case I was at a reunion when the band played a song that a woman had not heard for many years and she suddenly and unexpectedly burst into tears, surprising herself and everyone else around her.</p>
<p>I was with another group of people who were going through old family photographs and laughing and talking about old times. Suddenly someone (it was a man) lifted one of the photographs and looked at it. Like the situation above, he cried out and began sobbing. It was a photograph of his grandfather who had died when he was a boy. He said he had not seen an image of his grandfather in many years. His outburst shocked and embarrassed him, I think, but I was touched.</p>
<p>R.E.M.'s album, Lifes Rich Pageant, takes me back to high school so deeply that I can only listen to it very occasionally. There are a few albums that do that but this one is so strong.
Ralph Lauren’s Polo takes me back to my first high school boyfriend. Those were fraught years. It can be uncomfortable to be back taken back in my mind. </p>
<p>Bruce Springsteen’s album, The River, takes me back to my son’s toddlerhood because he loved it and we were forever playing it in the car. These days I cannot listen to certain tracks off of it without crying…I miss my little boy sometimes, even though I am so grateful for the young man he has become.</p>
<p>Yes! This moment is from Woodstock - the concert. I met someone there who wore a very memorable cologne (not H2O of mud). After the concert I spent years in department stores sniffing cologne bottles, trying to find his scent. I never did.</p>
<p>Agua Lavanda Puig is like that for me. Not Woodstock, but those years.</p>
<p>Amniotic fluid evokes extreme happy anticipation cat, dog, human, horse. The smell took me by surprise when I had my own son, the smell is the same.</p>
<p>For many years it has been diesel fumes. A bus passes by, and am brought back to that year in Hong Kong in my 20s, when the diesel smell was such a part of the streets. </p>
<p>Coincidentally that year, I experienced for the only time that slightly crunchy, yet soft taro dim sum square mentioned by PA dad.</p>
<p>Chanel #5 and #19; my mother. Also Joy and Opium. Those scents make me think of her.</p>
<p>The worm sent me set of bath salts, lotion, spray in one of my favorites. </p>
<p>The way to my s/o’s heart is thru his taste buds. When I serve cabbage soup, l’l potatoes with sour cream, sweet & sour anything, macc $ cheese, he starts to reminesce about childhood. easy to please</p>
<p>Oh, many, many of these. (“Nostalgia is women’s porn,” H says–I could spend–waste-- the rest of my life in painful memories. . .)</p>
<p>After my uncle died, my cousin was cleaning out his house and found an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and tapes. He transferred part of one tape to CD and made copies for the extended family–I received this in the mail with a brief note–something like, “Thought everyone might like to listen to this. . .” I started playing it–quickly recognizing my grandfather’s, aunt’s, and uncle’s (all deceased) voices from the early 70s. It was nothing profound–they were sitting around talking about the weather, current events, etc. after Easter dinner. I can’t even express how it felt to hear their voices. I was absolutely stunned–it was just like going back in time. What a thoughtful, priceless gift from my cousin.</p>
<p>I worked at a park when I was in college–I’ve been there only twice in the almost 30 years since then. All of the smells–the food, the wind off the lake–the sounds, and many of the sights are the same. Workers still wear the same uniforms! Both times I visited, (15 years apart) from the corner of my eye, I saw people who looked like former co-workers. I turned to call out their names–then quickly stopped myself, realizing that “Sue” and “John” don’t work here, and they aren’t 20 years old anymore. Realizing that I’m no longer 20, either, and I that I have no idea whatever happened to Sue and John = saddest feeling in the world.</p>
<p>Here’s a silly one–when I first met H, he used a certain deodorant called “Shield for Sportsmen” (made in S. Africa)–I really liked the scent. Very recently, at a dollar store, I found a spray deodorant that reminded me of it–I bought it for H and insisted that he wear it. (He doesn’t like the spray or the scent, but he was a “good sport.”)</p>