IT SMELLS LOVELY, DON'T YOU AGREE?

Some habits are constant, because they are more than the sum of their parts. Often there is an underlying psychological element that plays in the background, often also a feel-good aspect.
And almost all of them are smelly.

I like rainy days because the perfumes and aromas are more intense, more earthy. Sometimes an elevator filled with soggy office workers is exactly right. That young lady's indiscreet trollop odeur, the fat middle-aged man over there still echoing his salami and mustard sandwich, those two clerical types and their profound reek of wet dog......
Is that Aramis? Bay Rum? L'Eau d'Issey Pour Homme?
From further down I can also smell leather.
There's Mink Oil on the surface.

The first real storm of the season is always welcome. After a downpour there's a freshness to the air in San Francisco, and for a brief while the Roman sewer reek of intersections in the Financial District is subdued.


CONSTANT HABITS FOR A RAINY CLIMATE

In the Netherlands, when I still lived there, cafes were dark and quiet during the rain. You could look out over the rainy street while savoring a cup of coffee and smoking your pipe. The door would often be left open so that fresh air and the fragrance of the trees lining the bicycle path in front would waft in, and sundry smells carried forth by moisture.
Holland is a wet place at any time of years.
Smells are deeper there.

At home, from the room looking out over the courtyard and the garden, scents of tea and tobacco mingled with the apples rotting in the grass. Sweetness, a semi-floral quality, and a pungent ferment.
Among it all a scent of leaves, the dead and the green.


When I stayed in North Beach near the Caffe Trieste the smell of roasting coffee early in the day was a constant, even more evocative in rain.
The reek of the actual streets was less lovely.

I stopped going to the Trieste every day several years ago. You cannot smoke there anymore (or anywhere else), and the number of pretentious dingos has increased. It is still a wonderful place, but the chances that someone will say something meaningful, or that you might encounter a poet, are far too great to take regular risks.

They still have the best coffee beverages in San Francisco.

Despite the plethora of Starbucks.


Coffee, tea, tobacco. Nice reeky habits, the marks of civilization. Bitter black, resinous fumes, and crisp green or tangy-fruited oolong.

Hot cocoa is also up there. Ink, machine oils, tar, wax, and other industrial age nasal refracta likewise rank high. The smell of a noodle shop is always richly evocative. Dreams of slithery comfort in the vapour from the bowl in front of you, clanging from the kitchen, and lots of tea.


If smells don't turn you on, or spark intense moods and memories, there is a very good chance that you are defective. Emotionally crippled.
You probably drink decaf, don't smoke, and belly-ache a lot.
Plus everything irritates you, especially people.
I relish that, because I smell.

Here are some things in my living quarters that will piss you off:

Tea. Coffee. Cigars. Pipe tobacco. Seal-ink. Sumi-e ink. Sandalwood incense. Agar-wood incense. Snow pear incense. Dusty books. Dust. White flower oil. Toasted chilies. Spanish cedar. Wood polish. Garlic. Ginger. Limes. Dried tangerine peel. Turmeric and curry spices.
Cardamom. Nutmeg. Clove.

By the way: you wouldn't believe how wonderful and intense the metal alloys of good drafting equipment smell.


No wonder that most dogs instinctively like me.
It's their recognition of our similarities.
Except for the butt sniffing.
That's just them.


I look forward to the rain.




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