AGAIN THE FRAGRANCE RISES

There's something about those first cups of coffee that just puts the mind on the right track. Before waking up the mind was obsessing (and I know this is weird) about Capstan tobacco, which when I was fourteen I did not particularly like, but of which now I'm rather fond, then after that dark musky jolt of mud I am instead thinking of sunlight, the scent of roses, and jasmine flowers. A study with a hidden staircase.

Across the street in Naarden there was a house with a long garden filled with rose bushes. Various hues. Next to a canal which curved sharply to the left near the highway. The further neighbors in that stretch had tall old trees which I climbed, only the lower branches.
Sunlight, summer, insects. An attic window. Very lovely.

No, at that age I did not smoke a pipe or drink coffee.
But I remember the smells of those then.
A very summery aroma.

We moved to Valkenswaard the next year.
Tar, dust, and fermenting leaves.
A pine tree, resinous.
Low branches.

The painters in the air well outside the kitchen have finished, and the windows are open. The present does not resemble the past, the location has changed, and the sunlight is different.
Coffee and tobacco are a link; they smell the same.


It's quiet in the building, there are few people here.


The room where the computers sit is southfacing. Light is streaming in, but fragmented and diffused through the blinds. Second cup, tobacco in a Charatan Canadian shape briar, books, and wayang figures. A nobleman from Sunda, brought back from Holland years ago. Petruk on top of a bookshelf, behind a bulbous ceramic jar, Arjuna next shelf over. A tribal carving of a Dutch seacaptain with cowrie shells in the corner.
Alone. But not alone.



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