crows to burnaby

When I was a kid, I noticed over the years how every September, everything felt different. It mostly had to do with being immersed in a slightly different world; there was always a new teacher, and usually a few new kids, and even the others would have changed a bit since school let out. And the seasons were changing, and most of all, I would be in a totally different classroom with a different smell, different windows and views, lighting, decorations. New binder or backpack or pencil case, maybe. Different books, different schedule. In the rest of my life, maybe my piano lessons would be on a different day, or I'd have some new after-school activity that would start in the fall. Without being a dramatic change, everything felt like it had shifted somehow.

Of course, scent memory being what it is, I can occasionally encounter some smell that remains me specifically of grade 3 or grade 6 without really knowing why. I don't know what it is that differentiated the years so much, but every school year seemed like a strange rebirth from an old life I hadn't realized was going to end.

I hadn't really had that feeling in years, but it's exactly how I feel right now. At some point in my month away, it feels like I left the old scents and sounds behind, and I came home to find that a new year had started. I don't feel quite like I am who I was when I left. I feel like I cut free some of the things I might have been using to define me, and now that which I think of as "me" is more malleable and less concrete. New job, newly single, new life: I feel untethered and a bit adrift, and I like it.

And, strangely, everything smells different now, just like I'm starting a brand new school year.