It’s not a thing, at least not as far as I’m aware. The association of scent with memory is a positive one, a game of entropy. You can add but you can’t subtract. You can, however, replace.

I’d love to find out if there is indeed a smell-based eraser for memories and emotions. For now, viable classes of remedies within our mental microcosms appear to be limited to the competitive binding mechanism of action.

Last Monday, knowing I would have a challenging week ahead, I decided 2 things as far as perfume:

• I needed some “power flower” fragrant armor
• I didn’t want to reinforce any memories of the week’s stresses with scent

Some people cocoon themselves in a favorite perfume, which serves as an invisible comfort blanket as they face the demands of the day. I think I might do that if going into an unknown environment, in the same vein as spraying a familiar scent on the pillow of a hotel room to help sleep better. However, my challenges were to be tackled within the confines of my usual physical spaces.

A game of balancing contrasts.

I think it worked. I rotated through some free samples of white florals: Hermès Un Jardin sur la Lagune (sparkly), Jovoy Gardez-Moi (creamy, my favorite of the three), and Fleur de Marbre Noble Royale (shampooed and sugary). As these were byproducts of store shopping or browsing and I don’t currently intend to buy full bottles of any (only because I gravitate more toward other genres), I figure we will part ways amicably at the end of the vials and if we meet again in the future, the encounter will be emotionally “charge neutral.”

By the end of the week, the air had turned noticeably colder and I found myself longing for something more smoky, leathery, ambery. Preferably with a warm but polite rose shadowing close by. My sample of Andy Tauer’s L’Air du Désert Morocain fulfilled many of these wishes—now that’s a candidate for a full bottle purchase for me. It was the incense-infused cashmere embrace welcoming me into the light at the end of the tunnel, the enchanting scent of a promise of return to normalcy, soon.