---
title: still: a perfume bottle that works backwards, a note by Arthur Galvão
url: https://arthurgalvao.work/notes/still
lang: en
---

# still: a perfume bottle that works backwards, a note by Arthur Galvão

> Sep 24, 2026. Posted on [X](https://x.com/arthurgalvaorl/status/2102967086637093185), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7508732480108085248/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddp0EJ6EdVA/)

Markdown version of https://arthurgalvao.work/notes/still, the same content as the page, for AI agents and language models.

we record everything. four thousand photos of a trip. not one of them smells like it.

smell is the only sense wired straight into memory. and the only one we never learned to record. there is a camera for light. there is nothing for the smell of a room.

still is a perfume bottle that works backwards. it gives nothing. it takes.

it arrives empty, sealed under vacuum. you open it somewhere, and somewhere goes in. you close it. that is the whole procedure.

the bottle is shaped after a dried poppy capsule. the poppy is the flower of forgetting. i made it a vessel for remembering.

there is no fragrance in it. there is a place.

open it later and the place comes back, for a few seconds, once. then it is gone. every return spends it. you will decide which day is worth the last of it.

it holds the trigger, not the memory. someone else can open it and smell a room. only you will be back in it.

still.

[All notes](https://arthurgalvao.work/notes.md)