Smell of flowers and ooze

I bought my plane ticket to go on holiday to Hawaii this December, and immediately I began dreaming of the place again. The details are pretty sharp, especially the smells. Last night, the coffee was blooming. That's an awesome time. Mock orange figured pretty prominently in the olfactory landscape as well. It's weird to wake up and still be in Brooklyn, although thanks to Hurricane Earl, we've been getting some real wonky winds off the Atlantic, and the smell of the open ocean when I step out my door is definitely the smell of Hawaii.

The turning point for me, when I moved to New York, was when my dreams began taking place in the city. I upgraded myself to "I just moved here" to "I live here" when that started to happen. Mercifully, I never started dreaming of the way that New York smells, which is just awful no matter what the season. It's not that it smells of garbage--except on garbage day--or really any smell I can put my finger on; it's just that New York is a gross, filthy urban cesspool that taints everything with grit and ooze, so if you want to imagine how that smells, on you go. I wash my hands a lot.

But I digress. I'm going to Hawaii in December. The last time I went back home, I went in the month of August, which is just a bloody useless time to travel to a tropical zone. It was already warm in New York! I'm being clever about it this time and going just as my pissing and moaning about the cold ramps up to a full-blooded wail that frightens the neighborhood children. They tell tales of the banshee that lives on Columbia Street...