In Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927), the narrator wanders around Paris revisiting the spots that connect him to his teenage love. After eating a madeleine dipped in tea, vivid memories of his childhood summers come flooding back. And this simple story of a madeleine dipped in tea became a cultural shorthand for involuntary memory—for the way memory lives in the sensorial body, and how its emotional truth often runs deeper than any factual one.
Yesterday, on a dull November morning, I walked through City Hall Park, as I do almost everyday, and saw a big, full ginkgo tree blazing neon yellow against the grey sky. I stepped closer to admire it, to take some photos. And then the scent hit me—sharp and sudden—and instantly I was back in other Novembers: in New York, in Seoul, where trees just like this line the streets I walked with a cracked heart, pretending I wasn’t unraveling lol. Pretending I had it all figured out. My angsty chi…
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