Tuesday, February 26, 2008

the Daily Special

I thought I would provide the reader with a brief report of my daily fragrances:

8:45 Breakfast. User-defined.

9:25 Walk to bus stop, pass construction site two houses down. Pine dust, usually. A rounded aroma, like being wrapped inside of the tree itself.

9:26 Next block, corpse-rot. Coming from the garbage can? Buried in the yard? Inside of the house, God forbid?

9:37-9:48 The "'Dillo" is Austin's free downtown shuttle, which conveniently operates in a straight line from my street to the front stoop of the restaurant in which I work. Being free, emissions from clientele typically swing from one end of the palette to the other. Depending on one's location within the tram, one may encounter the sickly residue of a night spent behind a dumpster, or the test-tubed, panel-approved cologne of a young professional. Tarred in bile and feathered in Toucan Sam's plumage, staring out the window.

9:49 The front of the restaurant typically smells great. Customers' plates steam like isolated little volcanic vents of maple syrup, egg, and hashed brown. I walk past, through the swinging steel door, and into

9:50 the back of the restaurant, which smells exactly like the cocktail that one would expect when combining those plates of food, plus a 5-gallon bucket of coleslaw, pickles, and ranch dressing, plus a multitude of cleaning detergents and topped with a dripping tube of hanging salami.

2:00 pm. Repeat process in reverse.
Of course this list is highly truncated, as a full report would take ages to compose.
Am looking forward to yours,
-ed

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

affixing paste; dollar-store, assorted-color construction paper; coffee grounds; dried 'elbo' macaroni noodles; cheap, preschool paints: my art proj. altogether it sends me back to a far-off, comforting school grade. 3rd? 1st? without their nose no one knows.

Anonymous said...

ps. you might not understand the smell of construction paper, but it must be considered that with a trained nostril, one can identify the scent of even water.