About

Can you smell the Sea? Can you?
There it is where my story starts, because my story is made of smells from the beginning to where I stand now, chapter after chapter, place after place, but I have to tell you:” my story has no end!”

The Mediterranean Sea looks like a mirror in spring, reflects the sun so much that you will feel blind for a bit after staring at it but the best time it is winter. When I was little and I was walking around messy beaches smelling that salty water looking for pieces of wood coming from mysterious places, searching messages in bottles just arrived, to tell me the story of someone else, to cross my story with another story.

A story it’s never just a story, a story without other stories is a blank page, and it’s why, in mine you can also smell strongly the grass just cut, the ground removed to make space for new plants while I’m looking at the tired face of my grandfather and his silence.

After smells get confused, the crazy cheap paper of loads of school books passed in too many hands, the oil of my Vespa all over, the chlorine from the swimming pools and 100 people around you all carrying their own stories.

I forgot to breath because so many stories were crossing mine. I smelled nothing for long time.

One day I woke up in London and I could smell the sea again, so strong that it made dizzy, so strong that I thought I was going crazy in a land where the sea was far away but I could close my eyes and touch it.
I could smell the snow, the Sunday market, the curry on the street, the beer on my flatmate cloths and all the nice cakes in my kitchen.

I’ve realised that I could feel at home just cooking something that it was smelling like home. Then it was chocolate and mint, rosemary and sage, oregano and tomato but at that point my life had cross so many lives that it was also muffin and miso, chutney and pies, sweet potatoes and lime.

If I think about it, every chapter has a smell or two or three, someone is strong, someone you can barley perceive it but it is there!

Today I keep cooking, and I can smell all my spices in the cupboard, but I can also smell the lake, the trees, sometimes I can smell the sun.
Sometimes I can smell just the rain and then in a second I’m back in London, or I’m in front of someone I’ve forgot. If walking on the street I can smell the grass I know I will be looking at my grandfather for a second…

Every time I add a page at my story it comes with its own smell and every time I smell something I’m just fast turning pages back or writing new ones.

Smelling my Jasmine tea now, I’m writing this page.

email: turningkitchentables@yahoo.com

twitter: @turningkitchent