Breathe It In..

Pool water.

Cilantro.

Fresh baked bread.

Pine trees.

Ocean breeze.

What links all these?

Smell.

And with each one, it brings to mind something specific, a memory. Scientists say our sense of smell is the strongest of the five. A particular scent can produce a memory so vivid that we can temporarily lose our sense of time and be brought back to the moment associated with that scent.

Pool water reminds me of summer, swimming like a dolphin, playing with my kids.

Cilantro makes me think of guacamole dip, chips, and an iced cold Corona, sitting on my patio on a summer day.

Fresh baked bread brings me back to my childhood, when my mom would make it from scratch and set it on the kitchen hearth to rise.

Pine trees mean Christmas, and trudging through the cold with my boys and husband, trying to find that perfect tree before our toes froze.

Ocean breezes whip up memories of my teen years, when I lived near the Long Island Sound. My friends and I would hang out at the beach, swimming, having bonfires, throwing parties and 'parking' (making out).

Whether you're a writer, reader, student of life or all three, enjoy that olfactory organ and breathe it all in.

Char

Can You Juggle?

I never did learn to juggle three oranges because I didn't start off the right way, learning slowly.

How can you juggle slowly? Isn't there a law of physics that all objects fall at the same rate?

Like English, there are exceptions to every rule.

Would-be jugglers learn with scarves which float and descend slowly through the air, giving the student time to learn the movements necessary to keep the scarves alternating in perfect motion. The student then moves on to larger and larger objects.

It's like that with writing--juggling different storylines or entire novels. Or reading--when you have several half read novels on your nightstand; you have to start slowly and build.

Characters should juggle--no one's life is a series of issues, one after the other in a nice, neat orderly progression, making it easy for them to deal with each situation as it arises. Sometimes things happen all at once, or are a series of events with a break in between.

In literature or real life, we're all jugglers.

Char