The scarf I found.

Walking home one night in the rain, I found a scarf on the street. It was on the winding roads of the Latin quarter. The scarf was soft and simple. Made from angora goat wool. When I'd gotten home, it quickly dried out, it wasn't too wet, and though wet, wasn't dirty. It had a woman's smell to it, and it was a very specific scent.

I want to write about the woman whose scent I wear around my neck. I want to write about this invisible woman who I smell when I wear this scarf, keeping me warm, keeping the wind off my neck. Some people reading this might find this notion creepy. Why should they though? Sometimes you fall enamored with someone the first time you see them. People call it love at first sight, and though it sounds cheesy, its never really considered creepy. Its one of the five senses, and however brief it was, the image embeds itself on to your retina, and you see this person each time you close your eyes.

But, how do you imagine someone embedded in your sense of smell? I find the idea is more romantic than a capturing gaze. When we see someone, we have so many layers guiding our attraction, love at first sight can be so superficial, to love a facade, to love their to-be-looked-at-ness (sorry to borrow a term from Laura Mulvey). What does someone who we create in our mind, guided only by our sense of smell, look like. An unseen woman. I like this concept a lot. We would dream them and they would be a love wholly built in our own imagination. We might find it on other people, from the previous occupant in a taxi cab, in the wind, in strange body odours, or even the toxic fumes of a construction site, but it would never be that scent exactly. If we ever did find that person too, this person of our imagination who embodies this scent, would that person ever be wholly world you built for them through their smell.

I don't know. But, I like this idea of longing a fiction. Or at least writing a fictional character who is in love with a disembodied fiction. You could have them thinking of them in public places. The protagonist wouldn't be entirely there, but day-dreaming of his lover. He'd watch as shapeless figures appeared on the inside of his eyelids. Then, all of a sudden he'd smell her smell, open his eyes, look around him, and the smell would have disappeared. Maybe in a subway, tired and coming home from work, or sitting at a public bench near a crowded intersection. I wonder what kind of profession the person would have, it couldn't be something so cliché as a perfumer. I'm not trying to re-write Frankenstein.

While writing this I realized, and I feel awkward writing this in a public space, that all my most memorable loves have had the most memorable smells. Maybe its how memory works. Each day we piece together so many people when we process the faces and features of strangers we pass when we live in a city. How many smells have you truly taken the time to separate and meditate on. From that smell, I can piece together physical characteristics much easier than the other way around. I imagine the smell of an old lover's hair, and I see and feel the memory much closer than merely imagining what it might have looked like.
From the smell you can piece together the whole scene:
I woke up to the smell of her hair. My eyes only half opened, never came into focus. I pulled myself closer and buried my face in her hair, my chest against her back. She lay there breathing softly, I matched my own breathing to hers, quietly, through my nose, and like that, I was back asleep.
I remember the unclean body odours of a lover fondly as well. They vividly brings to mind something like a teasing smile thats in the middle of sarcastically apologizing.