In the area where I work there's always someone smoking cloves somewhere. I always smell it just as I'm walking out into the street after finishing lunch. It's a sweet smell that I really love. I never see the person or people who are smoking them but the scent just sort of lingers briefly and I breath it in nostalgically. I used to smoke clove cigarettes in college. Actually in high school under Julio's influence or was it M? She's the first person I ever met who smoked them which was just like her because she was always doing something that no one else I knew at the time ever did. So I guess we started smoking them because of her. Who can remember the sequence? It was her who I asked for the first time, where she bought them. Clove cigarettes were sweet and smooth with a sedative effect of varying degrees.The taste would numb the tip of the tongue just slightly. Cloves have a natural numbing agent and are recommended to rub in crushed form on the gums if you have a tooth ache. Kind of like nature's Orajel. That was actually how I first became acquainted with Ben. We became acquainted through Orajel, no Anbesol. To this day, I cannot think of Anbesol without thinking of Ben. But that's another story.
In High School we smoked Djarums. But by the time I was in college I had developed a sharp pain in my chest after a while and had to quit smoking them pretty much forever. So when I smell them now, I just sort luxuriate in the memories it evokes and of the Nat Sherman store just a block away where Julio and I used to buy boxes of fancy "Touch of Clove" cigarettes with gold colored filters.
I remember when I was girl and my mom used to have my brother and I do crafts all the time which she got from this book called "Wee Wisdom." One of them involved sticking cloves in an apple until it was completely covered. It was meant to place in a clothes closet or drawers to avoid staleness or moths or something. The smell was amazing but I can't ever remember ever having used the clove apples in drawers or anything. Maybe I should try that in my apartment.
: )
