It’s been a few months since a The Tuesday Diversion post, so let’s get back into it.
Years ago I moved from Southern California to a college town in the midwest. I loved it in Ann Arbor, but after 15 years, for a myriad of reasons, I moved back to SoCal.
Things here have changed a lot in a decade and a half. The traffic was bad back then but is terrible now. It’s hotter and it doesn’t rain, so instead of having a brown season and a green season there’s just a brown season. It’s more frenetic. But I smell the ocean every day, and the smell of the ocean is the same. It’s calming. It’s soothing. I feel at home. I guess it’s an olfactory touchstone to a less frenetic time in my life. Plus it just smells really good. The smell of the ocean makes me smile.
Smells evoke memories. Have you ever had a smell suddenly surface a long forgotten happy memory?