Eau de la ville

03 June 2009

The city smells like three brands of cigarettes: two cheap and three foul. The metro stops at Farragut West has a hot rubber and machinery smell that seeps up the escalators and mixes with the street vendor's smells of mustard and frying oil.

Early in the day 17th street, the 1100's block, is breakfast sausage and diesel fuel that powers the fleets of delivery vans. I walk by as a guard holds open a double glass door: cold air and cologne-- the sweet smell of corporate lobby. My office is strong coffee and overly-conditioned air, a stiff combination that has come to mean answering phones and computer screens and over-worked human.

The people in the streets are a patchwork of perfume, deodorant and humid sweat. Some wear their cigarette smoke like a great billowing cape. Others swagger by and I pause to breath and remember who else wears that aftershave.

And 'midst it all, folded in, the city is saturated with that beautiful sweet smell of Southern Summer. The humid wet that clings to the trees and grass of Farragut Park and clings to me as I walk by, reminding me of summers at the beach.

On the corner of 18th and F, I pause, here the air is not quite my sister's favorite perfume and not quite my childhood's honeysuckle bushes but somehow such a fervent sweet and delicate smell, rich and sophisticated; I pretend to scrutinize the newspaper stands as if the sight of so many headlines has made me short of breath-- I breathe deeply and fill my lungs with my favorite D.C. air. Perhaps it's the row of ornamental magnolias or some rich and famous eau de parfum connoisseur who leaves her windows thrown open just there. But now I have read all the headlines twice through, so I continue my walk down 18th street, breathing in the lovely sunshine.