Cleveland in Five Senses: Smell
This week's theme is Cleveland in Five Senses.
Everything starts with the lake. It doesn't smell like the sea -- it is colder, fishier, more sinister. It isn't the primordial soup from which all life sprang. Only ghosts are born there.
You come inland and move through neighborhoods that smell like burning garbage, leaves, pipe smoke, onions and cabbage. Somebody somewhere is always grilling some small, delicious creature. Maybe Cleveland used to smell like engine exhaust but it doesn't anymore, really, because it is so empty. I am not nostalgic for the smells of the past - not even my own past, not the crowded #23 bus on a humid summer day when the A/C is busted, for sure.
You can go through the scent maze at the West Side Market, where Concord grapes, raw meat, coffee, and spices mingle with Maha's Falafil, with fish from saltier waters. The scent particular to the Mediterranean Import Store is something I would recognize anywhere, though I'm not sure what it is.
Cleveland never smells like flowers, not even in the spring. It smells like wet grass and hot concrete after a rainstorm. In the fall, everything is leaves and apples and ash. Even at Christmas Cleveland does not pretend to be part of Ye Quainte Old Heartland -- no country Christmas here, just the flat white scent of snow rolling ominously off the lake.
Because everything ends with the lake, too.
Everything starts with the lake. It doesn't smell like the sea -- it is colder, fishier, more sinister. It isn't the primordial soup from which all life sprang. Only ghosts are born there.
You come inland and move through neighborhoods that smell like burning garbage, leaves, pipe smoke, onions and cabbage. Somebody somewhere is always grilling some small, delicious creature. Maybe Cleveland used to smell like engine exhaust but it doesn't anymore, really, because it is so empty. I am not nostalgic for the smells of the past - not even my own past, not the crowded #23 bus on a humid summer day when the A/C is busted, for sure.
You can go through the scent maze at the West Side Market, where Concord grapes, raw meat, coffee, and spices mingle with Maha's Falafil, with fish from saltier waters. The scent particular to the Mediterranean Import Store is something I would recognize anywhere, though I'm not sure what it is.
Cleveland never smells like flowers, not even in the spring. It smells like wet grass and hot concrete after a rainstorm. In the fall, everything is leaves and apples and ash. Even at Christmas Cleveland does not pretend to be part of Ye Quainte Old Heartland -- no country Christmas here, just the flat white scent of snow rolling ominously off the lake.
Because everything ends with the lake, too.
posted by Christine Borne at 8:55 AM
2 Comments:
I really like the first paragraph... and the rest, too, but particularly that first paragraph.
Thank you, Clare. If you like that, then you might like the story I've been hammering into shape these last two weeks. I will send it to you!
My people have a relationship with Big Water - I never really go boating or fishing, but I can't live too far away from the water. I suppose in Philip Pullman terms, my daemon would be a seagull. Only I hope it would be less gross and not eat so much garbage.
Post a Comment
<< Home