Scent Memory

Today I put on some traditional Vietnamese music. You know, the kind with minor tones that sounds like the "Chinese music" you played on all the black keys on the piano as a kid. Or at least I did. Hearing the simple melodies of the strings inspired me to dig out the incense I bought in a town somewhere around An Giang Province three years ago. I'd never opened the package, let alone burned any; it's spent the last three years triple-bagged in a box with all my other Vietnam loot that I get out when I'm feeling sentimental. Today, however, I decided to burn some.

Now, anyone who's been to a Buddhist temple, or even near an altar in the home of someone who worships his or her ancestors, knows how potent joss sticks are. Their purpose is to carry the prayers of those who use them up to heaven, so some wimpy Glade scent isn't going to cut it. This is why they've spent three years triple-bagged in a box. Sentimental as I am, I didn't want everything I own to smell like a temple. But today the smell seemed pleasant. I'm sure this is due in part to the fact that they've been around for a few years and their potency has waned. But as soon as I opened the first bag, it didn't smell like the stinky perfume I remembered. It smelled spiritual, like something that belonged in a holy place. And I was transported back to that Sunday morning three years ago when a few of my new Vietnamese friends picked up a group of us Americans to drive around Long Xuyen on motorbikes and see what religion was like in Vietnam.

We started at some Buddhist temples, which is where the scent of incense comes in. It's everywhere in the temple, because it's commonly used for worship; as I mentioned before, the smoke carries one's prayers up to heaven. At the second temple, the student I knew best, Tam, cast her fortune. She started with a joss stick, which she held between the palms of her hands as she prayed. I think she rubbed her hands together rapidly as she did it to make the incense spin back and forth; either that or she shook her hands up and down together. (I've seen both done; maybe it has something to do with making the smoke travel farther?) Then she walked up to the altar and stuck the joss stick in a pot full of sand along with a bunch of other burned down or half-burned joss sticks. Then she took a pair of kidney-shaped objects that were mirror images of each other, each with a flat side and a round side. She held them between her palms with the flat sides together, then raised them over her head and dropped them. The object was to get one flat side and one round side facing up; this seemed to be some kind of signal of preparedness to cast one's fortune (she kept doing it until she got the desired effect). After this was achieved, it was time to actually cast the fortune. She took a can (roughly the size of a soup can, if I remember correctly) full of narrow, flat sticks, each with a number on it. She held the can at a slight angle and shook it until one - and only one - of the sticks fell out. Whatever number was on the stick, that was the number she looked up in an old spiral notebook placed by the altar. Each number was listed, along with a hand-written fortune. When she was done, we uninitiated Americans took our turns. This probably sounds a little Ouija Board-ish, but it felt genuine. It really did. And I was a strict, no-way-to-heaven-but-Christ Christian at the time.

My fortune didn't exactly pan out...in fact, it became anything but accurate over time. But it was a morning that's still fresh in my mind. I guess scent really is the strongest sense tied to memory.