A STREET WITH SCATTERED GINGKO LEAVES

Getting older is an adventure in discovering new peculiarities about myself of which I was not previously aware. Now, cynical friends (enemies) would say that there is enough material there to fill a library, and I should have started that journey years ago. Honestly, dude, it's long overdue.
To which, naturally, I would respond that they smell bad.
I am surprised they were ignorant of this.
No self-knowledge, evidently.
And complacent.



Looking at the tray of briar pipes near my chair I realized a fair number of them are in my mind associated with times and places, almost as if they have assumed a souvenirness, a mnemonic clarity. One pipe is Tuesday and Friday, sunny days only. The Hardcastle standee reminds me of grilled pork and iced Vietnamese coffee (and wet wintry weather), yet another of late summer evenings. There is Broadway in September and October, with a Perique mixture and bright sunlight.

Some pipes suggest an engineer or architect in the fifties and sixties, before the hippie revolution. Also pipes that are more seventies, but not the time with wide lapels and ugly colours. These pipes had previous owners.
Whom I know only by their passing.



And there are three briars that automatically bring up the intersection of a favourite alley and a street with ginkgo trees. Two of them are Chinatown during dark winter months, but not particularly cold or wet. A pastry at teatime, then a walk over the fallen yellow leaves outside the housing project, or past brick walls and the MaTsu temple towards Jackson.

The third is a reminder to have porkchops for lunch.

Which I think I will do. That restaurant near the alleyway closes in early afternoon, and the staff get a little antsy if you come after two.
So I will leave the house shortly after twelve PM.

But I will not bring that pipe with me.

Instead, GLP's Laurel Heights, after lunch, in a Peterson bent bulldog. Then after teatime, Stonehenge Flake in the black sandblast Peterson I bought in Woensel the last time I visited my father before his death, or the Dunhill sandblast which is permanently associated with insta-noodles.

I'll be lurking further up, near more ginkgo trees.
The afternoon sunlight is perfect there.


February, shirtsleeve weather.
Definitely not normal.

TOBACCO INDEX


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