Tuesday, September 28, 2010

What Trash Smells Like

A L O H A !



“Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love,

the things you are,

the things you never want to lose.”


Kevin Arnold









“We all have our time machines.

Some take us back, they're called memories.

Some take us forward, they're called dreams.”


Jeremy Irons










“A moment lasts all of a second,

but the memory lives on forever.”


Annonymous






Safeway Parking Lot


“It's surprising how much of memory

is built around things unnoticed at the time”



Barbara Kingsolver











“I've never tried to block out the memories of the past,

even though some are painful.

I don't understand people who hide from their past.

Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are

now.”



Sophia Loren










“If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful.”

Sophia Loren





><>


I wonder what trash smells like
it's been a long, long time.
Since I was a kid
cleaning offices
with dad's employees. . .

Back then it smelled like
cigarettes
marinated in stale coffee.


It's smelled like paper and ink
and sometimes the bosses cigars.

Corpses of grounds
wrapped in shroud brown filters
fell with a sickening "clump"
raising cloudlets of cigarette ashes
that settled on everything
to be dusted,
and 'vac-ed' next:

The reason that trash
is taken
first.
Then you dust from
up
to down.


The cigarettes, I guess, are gone.
Can you still smell the desperation?
The sweat?
The swears?

What does today's trash smell like?


It smells like a paycheck
to the least of these


as it did to me.


It smelled like my father

living only in sense-memory.


I never knew how happy I really was
at 15
wheeling my bike back home
through the wakening
city's
morning.

I miss ya Dad.




cloudia

27 comments:

  1. warm namaste /\ from mumbai
    aloha!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definitely know the smell of office trash. Your picture is perfect. I always wonder what important living goes on above that stuff. Sometimes what remains (in the bin) is what's important!

    ReplyDelete
  3. heavy memories...

    love the irons quote...

    aloha from VA!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hola Dear Cloudia,

    Lovely quotes and images. I like the sentiments about the memories.

    Hugs from Cali.

    ReplyDelete
  5. good post cloudia how r u.
    great blog. to read and wtach.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm lucky I still have my Dad but I can imagine how you feel m'dear. x

    ReplyDelete
  7. Been a year already? With you sista'

    Aloha

    ReplyDelete
  8. I miss my father most in April, when planting time comes around

    ReplyDelete
  9. Loved Jeremy Irons' quote that we all have time machines!

    And after many many years, I still miss my Dad! I know the feeling!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I miss my Dad all the time -wish he saw my kids.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi - aloha from Washington (the real one, not the D.C. one). Thanks for your comment at Bonnie's place.

    ReplyDelete
  12. memories are necessary to make you into a rounded person. without them you are only half alive.

    ReplyDelete
  13. A unique poem to a much loved Dad. My Dad used to smell of trains when he came home from work! Funny how smells are so evocative.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you for the pictures. I always enjoy them so much.

    So nice, how you write about your Dad with such tenderness. He hears you.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I missed my dad, too! So very much.
    Sometimes, I hate it when "Memory" brings me bad memories.

    ALOHA always!

    B xx

    ReplyDelete
  16. Gorgeous post, darling!
    Especially loving the Sophia Loren quotes!

    xoxox,
    CC

    ReplyDelete
  17. Things may pass, but they will never be over.

    daily athens

    ReplyDelete
  18. Aw. I miss my dad, too. I feel ya sista.

    ReplyDelete
  19. G' Day From Australia, my mum passed away this month so i know how you feel. Memories will always be with you no matter how hard you try to block them out, believe me i've tried.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Love, love LOVE the Sophia Loren quote. So true, at least for me!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Nice pics, Cloudia -- jeepers, only little kids really know the wonderful feats they've done when nobody was lookin'.
    How DO you DO that? You can make cleaning up the office an eloquent adventure. Yep, aromas can trip a memory faster than any photo book. Another's colonge tripped my son's memories of my Dad....turned out to be the same colonge! My son didn't know what brand it was, but it was "Grandpa!" Go sniff some Old Spice, or English Leather, around all of the office cleaning. Don't worry, you'll always have your Dad with you. Aloha, DrumMajor

    ReplyDelete

Thank You for Sharing.
SOME Comments are going
to Moderation. Fear Not! We
See & Publish them ALL Happily!