The Open Air

Salt, cut green and cool mineral air with the window left open.

There is a particular cruelty to being indoors on a good day. The light coming in at the wrong angle. The air slightly too still. The smell of the room nothing like the smell of the world just outside the window, which is alive and green and moving.

The Open Air brings that outside world in. The low tide on a late June morning, salt and mineral and slightly cold despite the warmth of the month. The hour between afternoon and evening, when the light goes long and the air turns green and cool at the edges.

These fragrances are sharp and alive. They change the temperature of a room. They make you feel, briefly, like you've just come in from somewhere good.

The window is open. The world is coming in. This is what it smells like.