It's so easy to tell, you know, when you live occasionally upwind from Gilroy, Garlic Capitol Of The World...
One of the things that makes living in the Bay Area similar to living in Seattle is the marine layer of clouds that sometimes makes itself at home after dark. In Seattle, it's humid enough and backed up by enough *real* clouds that it rains frequently--if you can call that 'ack, someone's using a squirt bottle on mist up in the sky again, mooooommmmm!' thing rain. And, of course, there's the fact that the fog burns off around here. Sometimes it might not burn off until later in the afternoon, but it usually burns off, and it's extremely rare (so I hear, and so I've experienced over the past (oh cripes has it been) seven years (already!)) for it to rain here during the 'dry season.'
But the fog is still present, and it sometimes takes the edge off the heat of the day, which is nice. It also tends to make the mornings a little more humid, and it's out of this vaguely humid morning air that the smell comes...
It's subtle for the first breath, when your senses are still full of home and your mind's distracted by being late, or by the person you left sleeping, or by what you've got to do at work when you get there, or a million other things, but it's there.
Two steps away from the door, it hits in full force, that same damp air, but the scent is suddenly *there*, it fills your nostrils, and whether or not you were hungry just a second or two ago, you're now starving, *ravenous*, for something...something, *anything* that has garlic in it.
The smell lingers all the way to work, and hits again on the way to the door of the office. Inside, it's not quite so bad, but the air conditioning is fed by air from the outside, so there's this underlying scent--not powerful, not overt, but still enough to be noticable, still enough to keep your stomach rumbling, 'please, ohmygod, please, you have to feed me now!'
Eventually, as with all things, the smell goes unnoticed--not because it's not present, but because you're used to it now. There's a term for it, I learned it in my psychology class, but it escapes me. And even though the smell may be gone, the hunger, the craving remains.
Maybe I should make Mom's teriyaki again, soon.
Posted by Liz at June 20, 2003 07:59 AMMmm, garlic. Mmm, teriyaki.