[img]560|left|Nicholas D. Pollak||no_popup[/img]The subconscious holds everything we have ever seen, heard, touched, smelled or felt.
A sound, a sight, a feeling or a smell instantly brings back memories. Some good, some bad. Some warm, some cold. Some friendly, some scary.
Walking my dog the other day, when I detected an after-shave I had not smelled in 42 years.
That sense triggered a thought process, where I had last smelled the after-shave. Circumstances, the place, the date, the time, the weather and whom I was with. I could clearly see all of this. I was with my best friend with whom I had hitched through Europe, to the Spanish Balearic Islands, one of which was named Ibiza.
Birth of a Golden Memory
There we met up with his girlfriend whom he promptly dumped. He said she was “cramping his style.” I didn’t feel she would cramp my style — a gorgeous blonde, a great personality, someone I had come to know as a result of my friendship with her now ex-boyfriend.
I wondered what had happened to her. Our brief relationship came to an abrupt end when she attempted to kill herself. She called me to say she had slit her wrists. Would I help?
In a hurry I jumped onto a motorized tricycle on a cold, rainy night in London. Quickly as I could, I rode to her apartment. I found her very much alive but with a dollar-sized pool of blood by her wrist. I took her to the hospital. After awhile, a doctor advised me leave because she was being kept overnight for a psych evaluation.
I argued for her and asked for her to be released. I didn’t think much was wrong other than being desperate for attention, which I was gladly giving her. The doctor, fed up with arguing with me, shouted as he left the room, “If there is nothing wrong with her, tell me why she tried to kill herself.” He had made his point.
Two weeks later I went to her parents’ apartment to see how she was doing. When I visited her in the hospital, she wanted to see me again. Her parents rejected me immediately. They claimed my friend and I caused her to be this way, and that we were never to see her again. To that end they sent her to a boarding school, and I lost contact.
My friend had a stepbrother with acting aspirations. I saw him twice after we lost contact, first when he was playing one of Lawrence of Arabia’s Arab servants in a BBC production. His short part ended in a grizzly death.
I saw him again in a James Bond movie. “Moonraker.” His role consisted of him telling James Bond he would ensure a safe path for them through the hail of bullets they were experiencing. Gallantly he ran forward, only to be cut down by the machine gun fire and fall dramatically off the catwalk ,into the depths below. Another grizzly death. Well, I hope he hasn’t experienced a grizzly death in real life.
His stepbrother was a cool guy and we were close friends for several years. We had parted ways in Spain and didn’t see each other again.
Along with all this, was a whole stream of thoughts of my friendship with him, everything we had done together, the mischief and the fun we had.
When Irish Eyes…
Whenever I smell tar, I remember when I was working on a construction site with a 6-foot-4, 280-pound Irishman, Paddy. This guy was so strong he would carry cast iron bathtubs up and down stairs, all day, and never break a sweat. We became good friends. “No matter where you go,” he told me, “no matter what you do, you will always remember me.” He was right.
I began to think of all the people I had lost contact with. I began to search the internet to see if I could find any of them. Actually, I had some small success. The result of that pleasant memory tickle and the research was re-establishing one or two contacts that I had not heard from in almost 40 years.
I apologize if this reflecting is considered self-indulgent.
I share with you some of my life, but these vignettes are just illustrations of how the senses may trigger your memories and thought processes.
What would trigger your senses? Where will your thoughts take you?
A clinical hypnotherapist, handwriting analyst and expert master hypnotist, Nicholas Pollak may be contacted at nickpollak@hypnotherapy4you.net
