#77. Memorize your favourite smells & surround yourself with them

Had to wait until now for this one as my absolute favourite smell on the planet is the smell of burning leaves. Odd I know, I never claimed normalcy. There is something about that smell that brings me back to my childhood and growing up on or around farms. It also helps that fall is my favourite season, so of course the smell would be associated.


My second favourite smell would probably be automobile exhaust (explains a lot doesn’t it?), and within automobiles, snowmobile exhaust to be precise. It reminds me of my dad and winters in Kincardine. I remember being pulled in my sled behind the snowmobile to get to elementary school – this must be where it all started.

It is hard to surround myself with these scents as one is seasonal and lighting up what little leaves we have in our yard would probably be frowned upon, and hanging out at gas stations tends to creep people out. There is a gas station on my way to work where the attendant looks like a younger George Clooney, I hang out there for as long as possible for two reasons!

If I have to pick a scent for candles & soaps in my house, I will usually choose a vanilla. However, I’m not really picky.

The smell I absolutely hate is the smell of the landfill that this stupid city decided to expand and take on trash from Toronto. While driving on either of the two major highways into or out of the city if the wind is blowing in the right direction it’ll turn your stomach. I’m not sure what politicians thought this was a good idea, as it’s not a ‘welcoming’ or ‘come back again’ smell – but I’m sure a few people’s pockets were lined.

Anyway, on a side note I'll share my favorite poem about the wonderfulness of burning leaves:

BURNING OF THE LEAVES

LAWRENCE BINYON

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.

They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke

Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.

Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!

A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites

On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust;

All the spices of June are a bitter reek,

All the extravagant riches spent and mean.

All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;

Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild

Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,

Time for the burning of days ended and done,

Idle solace of things that have gone before:

Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there;

Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.

The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise

From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,

And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;

The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.

Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.

Nothing is certain, only the certain spring