FRIENDS, HELLO, IT IS ME AGAIN and I cannot stop talking about it. This week I walked past a hardware store and the concrete out front had just been hosed down and reader I WEPT. I literally stood there for forty seconds breathing in like a Labrador. The smell. The SMELL. We are doing the smell issue.
Below: nine things that smell like rain when there is, in fact, no rain. Ranked by nothing. Loved by everyone here at the Quarterly (it is me. it is just me).
Exhibit A — the moment before
- TOMATO LEAVES bruised between two fingers. INSANE. green and wet and a little electric. ten out of ten.
- A LIBRARY BASEMENT in late August. specifically the periodicals room at the Vanderlip branch.
- RUSTY PLAYGROUND CHAINS after you've been holding them too long. iron + your own hands = sky.
- that one specific aisle at the garden center where they keep the moss starter kits. you know the one. YOU KNOW.
- A LAUNDROMAT VENT from the sidewalk in February. warm rain. fake rain. STILL COUNTS.
- the inside of a thermos that has held nothing but tap water for six days.
- RIVER ROCKS from a craft store. tiny ones. you sniff the bag in the aisle. nobody sees you do this.
- a beet, raw, halved, on the cutting board, in the second before you do anything else.
- the back of a friend's neck after they bike home through the city. (controversial. correct.)
Exhibit B — held on overnight
SUBSCRIBER MAILBAG. Donna T. writes in: "my grandmother's iron skillet, the one she only used for cornbread, smells like rain to me. is this a thing?" DONNA. YES. THAT IS A THING. cast iron + cornmeal + decades = soft thunder. you have unlocked a tier of the smell I had not yet named. I am giving it a name. I am calling it PANTRY-PETRICHOR and you are the first citizen of it.
also Felix R. in Astoria sent in: the underside of a stone you've lifted to look at a bug and then carefully put back. correct, Felix. carefully put back is the key word. the smell remembers if you were gentle.