I love the smell of fresh cut grass. Walking past a lawn that's being mowed or recently had been, the smell in the air is fresh and nostalgic. Nostalgic to what? I'm not sure, I guess childhood when fun took place in backyards and front lawns, rather than busy streets and rooms with four walls.
I love the smell of vanilla. I think it may be my favorite scent of all.
I love history, I love it with a passion. I love the History Channel. If something happened a hundred years ago, I'm sometimes immediately interested in it. I know that as a child, a time period I have little memory of (head injury, loss of memory), I spent enormous amounts of time reading encyclopedias and history books. One set that I had was the presidents of the US. I think each book included 2 or 3 presidents in sequence, telling about their biographies, families, political campaigns, terms, ect. I used to be an expert on nearly all the presidents from Washington up to the 1960s. Now my love of history includes the ancient past. No, ESPECIALLY the ancient past. The Roman Empire from start to finish, the Middle Ages, all of that. I just love history. Don't even know why, but I've always been intrigued by things that happened before, things that led up to, things that resulted in other things so important to later ages. Imagining, and seeing paintings of, places like Manhatten island centuries ago and comparing it to how it looks now. God I love history. One of the most fascinating documentaries on History Channel was the recreation through maps, drawings, visuals, and actors, of the entire journey of Lewis and Clark. Seeing through receation and imagination the exploration of places unspoiled and uncivilized by modern life, imagining seeing for the first time places that today are covered in metropolis or suburbs, as they were centuries ago, is obsessively fascinating. Show me a documentary about an event that happened 700 years ago...I don't care what it's about...I'm into it. WWII is of interest too, but more so WWI because it was farther back in time and is less known in detail to me.
I used to collect Star Wars figures. I remember being 17 and my girlfriend asking me what I wanted for my birthday. She gave me an odd look when I told her I wanted the red Emperor's Royal Guard action figure. When I was a kid, unlike now, the plastic the figures where made of had a pleasant smell. But you could only really smell it at its strongest degree, when you first opened the plastic packaging. I used to open the new packages and immediately put my nose to the action figure and sniff it several times. Yes, my name is 14th, and I am a sniffer.
As a kid I also studied animal and bird informational books. My favorite birds were the cardinal and the bluejay. There is a couple of bluejays which daily congregate on the railing outside my neighbor's apartment, because she feeds them everyday. The balcony doesn't extend to my apartment or maybe I'd throw food out for them too. Whenever I see a bluejay, and usually those bluejays, it takes me back to the childhood I have so little memory of.
I am epileptic but the seizures I'd get without my meds are petite mal, and I do not convulse when I have them. The happen in my mind but other people would have no idea that I was having a seizure even as I continued to talk to them. Point being, as it is all occuring in my mind, I get a strong sense of deja vu, a strange unidentifiable smell in my nose, and sometimes a ligththeadedness; all symptoms that are common with people with epilepsy. I can't say that my seizures are fun because they are not, but sometimes the deja vu is enjoyabel and I want it to last longer. But the sensation comes, affects me, and then slowly slips away, and as I struggle to remember what it was I sensed in the deja vu (it quickly slips from my short term memory), depression comes on a little stronger than before. This was how I knew that my 23 years of depression is from my head injury, because it always increases when I have seizures. But now, since the seizures have lessened over the many years, when I get the deja vu I find myself enjoying the sensation, though it is followed by increased depression and a wish that I could have sensed it longer. But that won't lead to me not taking my neurological meds, because I know they would get much worse if uncontrolled. So I don't want the deja vu to happen, but when it does, I do slightly enjoy it. Maybe...and this is a long shot...but maybe the deja vu is somehow a break in the shroud that hides my memories from childhood, and that is why I find that I enjoy them now?
There are more little things (though history is no little thing at all) that I enjoy that I will list as I think of them. But what about you? What little things do you enjoy in life and the world around you?
