Scent

Josh and I were walking back to the car after dinner tonight downtown. We walked past a parking garage and this smell hit me. I asked Josh if he could smell it, because it was faint, not powerful. He did. It smelled exactly like the old library in Bloomington did. We talked a little about how strange it is, that a scent we catch even 20 years later can take us back to childhood. I think the smell came from a heater or vents in the ground. It was a warm smell.

Then I started thinking about how that library use to look. They completely remodeled it and it doesn’t look anything like it did when I was younger. But I remember the lay out and what I thought about it at the time, I wish so much that I could go there because it’s just one of those places I visited so much as a child. It’s nearly heartbreaking.

Then I started thinking about how you view things in your head. But not like it is on TV, with a bubble above your head, or even an exact picture in your head. But you view it, somewhere and can see things by thinking about them. It seems so strange but it’s a normal process we do every day.

Then I started thinking about Ian. How we used to talk about things like–weird things, like the very point of our existence and trying to figure out why God even created us exactly the way we are, why life even really exists. There were other things we thought about too, the things that make your head spin because you can’t find an end or a beginning.

Then it made me miss Ian. Because I could bring the craziest thing to him. Or I could explain my feelings and he would help me understand that it’s OK to feel that way because that’s what you feel.

It’s amazing how time and space can create such a large gap that you just don’t know how to fill it. Or how you can feel at odds with someone so much (not Ian) but in reality it’s probably the internet causing your problems and you just don’t know how to become better friends.

Or how people move and you think they should come home.

Well, I don’t know where all that came from. Blame the the smell downtown.