I've been reading Anderson Cooper's book, Dispatches from the Edge, a Memoir of Wars, Disasters and Survival. Back in the day when he couldn't get a job as a journalist, he boarded a plane with a cheap camera and the guts to make a name for himself. Now, he is a widely recognizable correspondent for CNN. His memoir is interesting. He is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt. He reveals some interesting personal information about his family.
In one chapter he tells about filming horrific images and discusses the sights, sounds, smells and feel of war and hurricane zones. On his flight home, although he had showered and had clean clothes on, he kept smelling those 'images'. He thought he was hallucinating, and then he realized he was wearing the same shoes that had stepped in the mud and the blood. He claims that for him, "every story has a smell."
I like that description. Most of our 'life stories' have a smell too. So I jotted a few down. Since fall is in the air, I'll share this one. I remember being a little girl sitting on my grandparents' front steps watching Pappy burn the pile of leaves in the gutter that my cousin and I had just tromped and crunched through. Kids today wouldn't recognize that smell, but my frame of reference is a vivid sensory experience.
Crisp autumn wind snarks up my five year old nose, mingles with the smell of burning leaves and rushes to the pleasure center in my brain; the promise of Halloween and a sack of candy to last me until Christmas, a day away.
Think of any incident or time of your life and write a sentence or two using sensory detail and please SHARE. I will share more another time. Right now, it is off to work I go.