Warm and breezy. Some sort of atmospheric inversion has sucked all the smells off their source objects and into the air.
Morning. Walk in sunshine down to the post office and pick up a package. Wind from the south picks up curing tobacco from the warehouses on the south side of the river, curls over the bluffs and into Church Hill. Sweet and sinful.
Midday. Walk through campus from the engineering building down to the business building for math class. Urban campus, Main Street runs right through it. Exhaust fumes and fresh oranges? Yes, I pass someone walking along, peeling an orange. He throws pieces of the peel down into the street. Littering, but the smell is acidic and clean.
Afternoon. Walk around the neighborhood with the camera. The wind has changed direction since this morning and blows the sewer smell up from the factories on the river. I see people around—porch sitters, house painters, kids playing dodgeball outside the Bellevue Elementary School—but I'm too shy to ask if I can take their pictures. Besides, times being what they are, I'll probably get arrested if I try taking pictures at the school. Fogey moment: when I was a kid we played dodgeball with only one ball. This group of forty or so kids had maybe ten balls. It was more like dodge war. Other smells? Paint. Old buildings getting worked on exhale cold air, sawdust, and the smell of damp earth.
Later. Receive the first rejection for my novel. Odorless, but stinky even so. Must now select next victim for submission.
Evening. Out to dinner. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, smells of frying dough and sugar fill the air. Funnel cake? On the way home, we pass the sanitary landfill and smell a noxious smell that reminds me of medicine. The man says no medicine could be that foul, but I know my parents gave us something that tasted like the landfill smells.
Now. At home with the windows open, I smell nothing but clean air. This is good.
342 words | February 20, 2004 10:42 PM | Real true story