Walking through Target tonight, I found myself moving in a sort of comfortable, meditative state… It was late, and I was rather tired from the day… I took several times over the usual time it takes me to obtain an equal number and variety of items at the store… and I somehow didn’t mind it… I guess this just supports my theory that I secretly – read ‘subconsciously’ – want to be a homemaker-housewife. When I first moved into my own apartment several years ago, and then again in Japan (when I had to start from, basically, scratch), I felt a certain flow of mental chemicals that delighted me through and through, in a comfortable, this is where I belong sort of way whenever I was shopping for apartment-related items, house items. And it isn’t to say that I belong only as a homemaker or anything, but simply that it is somewhere of many somewheres where I do belong.
Tonight was no exception. I moved into a new home and with a new person yesterday, you see. She has most everything that goes in a house, and I have very little of that sort of stuff, so the match-up is rather good on that front (not to mention that we actually get along really well in the first place, because that isn’t the point). However, my whole OCD compulsions have me need my own cleaning supplies. —You see, it isn’t enough just to have cleaning supplies. They must also be nice to the planet, nice to the nose and eyes, and themselves clean (their containers), while kept in a clean space. Show me a bottle of cleaner that has been under a cabinet and has a thin layer of dust on it, and I won’t even touch it until you have cleaned the bottle. I probably also with have slight inner daytime terrors of the fact that the bottle is dirty. Anyway, back to the main point of this all… —- So, I was at Target, seeking out these cleaning supplies for me for my new home.
I walked calmly, despite the inward thought of how late it must be. I felt confidence every time I set down the basket and gave a once-over to a certain type of product. I gracefully selected bottles whose scents I wanted to test, and euphorically sampled their natural essential oil-filled smells. I smiled at each, and even mmm-ed a few, closing my eyes to embrace the scent. I usually take my time with scents – I even stop to smell flowers much more often than is common, just to smell them and to indulge myself. It’s alway sa bit of a bummer whenever I find flower bunches at stores that don’t even smell (or don’t smell good). Whole Foods is one of those stores.
Anyway, so I take my time with (good) smells, enjoying them, allowing my brain to do any work it feels appropriate whenever it crosses a familiar scent. I was told when I was quite young that scent was the strongest sense for recalling memory, and I’ve always kept that in mind for some reason, delighting in the silly scents that bring back memories. (Like how the hand soap in this one bathroom in the house where I once nannied smelled like my grandmother on my dad’s side. She hadn’t been alive for years at that point, and yet I had no doubt that it was the same smell that was usually on her, though I never seemed consciously to have noticed her having a specific scent before that moment.)
So, I was smelling slowly and comfortably, and enjoying all the familiar and new scents. One in particular, though I definitely didn’t want it as a cleaning supply, was the replication of some regular smell from some point in my childhood. I took a picture and sent it to my mom, telling her to go find one and to sniff it, so she could help me figure out why the scent is so specifically familiar. It was labeled as being scented “radish”, however it was not merely the scent of radishes that was familiar – it was that specific combination. Perhaps my mother had used that cleaning supply brand and scent at some point. Though, I’m not too sure of that being very likely, because it seems to be a newer scent from this brand, and because it relates to a specific summer-type memory for me, as opposed to just lots of childhood cleaning days. I’m looking forward to figuring out that one. It might take me a little while, a few months’ even, but I am confident that, as with others in the past, I will figure it out.
Post-a-day 2018
hannah ananas 