Mealtime Of The Ancient Mariner

This place I'm living in (and leaving soon) has some oddities about it. One of them has me thinking of Coleridge's classic poem, and re-writing it to suit the situation: "The smell of food is everywhere, and oh how it smells neat. The smell of food is everywhere, but not a bite to eat". I doubt whether bored high school students will be reading that when I'm dead, but does it suffice to explain the quandary I face? I don't know whether it's just the cooking habits of my neighbors or an uncanny wind that brings the smell of someone's cooking from afar, but the result is the same. Numerous times throughout the day, the pungent smell of plainly delicious food belonging to any number of cuisines emanates from its unknown source and penetrates my home to make me pine for it instead of being content with the humble things I'm able to provide for myself.

I can enjoy the smell, but that's all. I'll never taste or even lay eyes on the food, which was undoubtedly made and shall be eaten by people I don't know and won't meet. I've never experienced this before to my recollection. This is not the most densely populated neighborhood I've lived in, and yet it is the case that I've never encountered this before. The closest thing would be a hostel where the smell of food came from a communal kitchen at the behest of people who I at least knew to some small degree. I don't know whether I like this or not. As I said, there's a great pleasure in smelling the food, but it's like the train in Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison'. It's more a cruel tease than anything. Maybe I'd rather it weren't there.

It's a thing I still am learning to deal with. Historically, any food I could smell was meant for me, and that accounts for roughly 22 of the years I've been alive (and that's most of them). Mom didn't commonly make meals that I was restricted from ingesting. At summer camp, the food was for all of us. Anytime I'm among people I know in an eating situation, it's at least possible that I might wind up taking a taste at their invitation, or finishing off something that proved to be more than they could handle. Most of the outstanding years, food I smelled could become mine under certain circumstances. Here that's not so. The amazing creations I'm detecting will never be mine. I might be able to re-create the smell, but will it be anything like whatever is making the original smell? It's impossible to know.

I guess actually I want the smell to be there, as it may inspire me to greater productivity that the smell might be coming from my kitchen to confound someone else in the future. Maybe that's happening now, but I doubt I'm achieving the same effect with my bologna sandwiches. I still want to seal all points of ingress and egress in my home and retreat to a safe room with nothing but food with my name on it, but I know the right answer to anything seldom involves self-enforced solitude. Acceptance and resistance of destructive instincts? I guess I'm finally maturing some.