! Being Today

Today is that day not on the calendar, as National Olfactory Day, but far more exciting than that: the day when scent, fragrance, smell, awoke on the warm sunlit air from a winter's sleep and out of nowhere easily spoken of produced a whole new world. The first shock was the hedge two doors down which yesterday was a green hedge with white bits but today a burst of fragrance, a Hallelujah Chorus transcribed to be played with or on or in the nose. The restaurant two blocks up unleashed from its kitchen garlic that burst out like a bunch of singing nudists into the street cavorting shamelessly and shouting to the world every Mediterranean memory of romantic meals and much else that one thought private. Then subtle smells that made one into a cat or dog pursuing trails not on the street map and making beaten tracks into voyages of discovery: the baker's became a European trip of fresh morning bread with another hundred freeze-dried memories unloosed; And all down the street, other people's lunches opened their front doors and said 'Come and join us! We're having roast beef today with all the trimmings, and we've enough smell to feed the five thousand! ' and a hundred gardens one thought dormant leaned on the front gate and exchanged the time of year with a childlike innocence that couldn't be told to come inside this minute or else, and presented nosegays to strangers without asking for a contribution to a cause. A day for bringing past happinesses out from the store cupboard and giving them a shake and leaving them on the line until the sunlight moves off and the air leaves them cooler and even fresher; and wondering whom one will be tomorrow, if one can feel like this today.