Today I was crossing 21st Avenue to go to the drugstore with another employee here at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing to grab some drinks to go with the pizza that we had ordered for the moving men that were moving the dean's office. On the way back across the street, with Pepsis in tow, I caught a whiff of a breeze that reminded me of so many trips that I have taken, to Havana, to London, to Rio de Janeiro, to Philadelphia and New York. The first thing that I noticed about any of these places was the smell: never a bad smell, but always a mixture of fry grease and automobile fumes. And I smelled it today in Nashville.

Later, in the hallway, I smelled something else, somthing that remimded me of the school where I went to kindergarten, and it took me back. I remembered crayons and green grass and blocks and yarn. So I went back upstairs and got back to work.

I guess that home is no different than any other place, and the present no different than any other time, except for our circumstances: our happening to be here, now.