Drift off and smell the jasmine

We can wake up and smell the coffee, and we can stop and smell the roses but this time of year in Los Angeles always enchants me with the seductive perfume of night blooming jasmine.

I had never smelled anything like jasmine growing up in Chicago.  There, lilacs, roses and geraniums rose above a palate of cut grass and wet leaves; but in March it was often still the smell of melting dirty snow and fog rolling in off the lake.

Smells are so powerful, and emotional.  Scent triggers memory, attraction and repulsion.  We have smells that take us right back to childhood, a hint of perfume that reminds us of a past romance—or of an old aunt.

We all have our personal labyrinths of smell—those that bring to mind love, sorrow, freedom, fun and of course parenting.  So many things can be analyzed, defined, packaged and marketed, but beyond all that, smell is deeply personal and so vivid a part of life.

There is a wonderful old film by Hal Ashby, Harold and Maude in which an enchanting older woman has a relationship with a suicidal young man and ultimately releases him from his lugubrious angst.  There’s a scene in the film where Maude, played by Ruth Gordon, uses a case of scents in vials to evoke feelings in her blocked young friend—a sort of proto-aromatherapy.

Strange random scents can be transporting, like that of old carpets, stale soup and dust in my Buby’s apartment building when I was a kid that was like depression and melancholy; or the subtle scent of rust in old screen windows that evoke twilight and crickets and fireflies; or how certain strains of diesel exhaust make me feel a free man in Paris, walking into the adventure of a summer holiday; or how rumbly summer rain on hot concrete smells like longing lapping at the shores of innocence.

Night blooming jasmine smells like The Big Sleep, and Farewell my Lovely.  It smells like black sedans winding up Laurel canyon with tires hissing over wet blacktop; it smells like men in fedoras and trench-coats and women in silk kimonos, whiskey, cigarettes and cool spring air perfumed by the fleshy white blossoms sobering and intoxicating.

The season of the night blooming jasmine is not Mayfly short, but it comes and goes in a matter of weeks, only further intensifying my association of life in LA—life on the edges of the movie business, the smell of hope and promise; other Marches brought the paired associations of group home kids and cooking in cheap apartments, but the jasmine blooms all night and all over and infuses every corner of this wide yet Dickensian city.  When I finally was able to buy a house, in my forties, Andy planted night blooming jasmine and trained it up the post by the front door.  This week, to come home is to walk beneath a fireworks display of blossoms after a long day and my nose fills with this evocative smell that is for me more distinctly LA than any other; it has become the smell of my home… my city of lost angels, laborers, writers, movie actors, shrinks, bankers, gardeners and so vastly many others… all united this week under a subtle blanket of scent.

What smells transport you?  Which ones take you back or fix you in the present moment?  Which smells bond you to your kids?  Can you remember the smell of your baby’s breath?  Or are you more in the chapter of locker-room car after the soccer match?

Let’s dedicate today (and tonight) to following our noses, perhaps into our good feelings that have lasted and which can bloom again in the here and now—and in the service of all our collective kids.

Namaste, Bruce