Coincidence: Jean Fremon's The Botanical Garden, Part 2

It's a small book—handy.


It rewards even momentary attention.


I carry it into the bathroom, read it on the toilet:


It's true that I have always found suspect the scorn that one claims to hold for that waste which we didn't succeed in nourishing ourselves upon. I like how the chain which joins us to nature doesn't suddenly end at our stomach, that we are not altogether an impasse, an oubliette where all is accumulated and digested, but the site of a transition, a transformation.

SMELLS

I use the word "smells" instead of the word "scents" because it feels earthier to me.

Years ago, on an airplane headed to Europe, lonely and erotically charged, I smelled the lime on my fingers and wished for the smell of something quite different.

This morning, driving down the hill from Woodland Hills to Salem and then to Spanish Fork, I thought ahead to where there had been a dead skunk on the road the day before.

I want to smell that, I thought, and rolled down my windows.

Wanted to smell a skunk?

Yes, to smell something real, something pungent.

The skunk smelled, if not delicious, strong! I took a deep whiff.

Minutes later the wonderfully malodorous smell of cow shit.

And then the sweet smell of hay, freshly cut alfalfa hay, the last cutting of the year, the aftermath.

As I pulled onto the freeway I rolled up the windows, happy.