Terroni Orto Parisi 2017

As students, we spent our free time by the Isar. On weekends, we often stayed overnight. During the day, we jumped naked into the water, slept, trudged to the kiosk for a few wheat beers, or had some important topic at hand. At night, a fire burned, grilling food crackled on sticks or the grill, there was more beer, smoke, and usually someone whose name you knew or didn’t know was there to cuddle with. After all, the fire only warmed you from the front.

At some point, we had to head home again, loaded our seven things onto our bikes, and pedaled through the scorching hot city with headaches. The well-ordered parental home offered a contradictory contrast to the wild life under the open sky. Tight, but also clean with a fluffy down comforter. First, a shower.

That was the moment when, out of nowhere, the scent of the past days suddenly manifested itself clearly. You olfactorily stood out drastically from your surroundings: the greasy loess of the cooled smoke, fatty, like a properly smoked ham, ash in your hair, coal on your face, thoroughly soaked with the herbal smoke of the fresh willow branches we had gathered in the Isar meadows for our fire. But also the sun on your face, wild hair, the memory of the protective firmament full of shining stars above us, the hot kisses in the clouds of smoke, the serious conversations about the deep topics of existence by the philosophically crackling fire.

Just like this moment, right before turning on the shower, Terroni smells.

But do I want to smell like that? Intentionally? Without the days-long smoking process by the river? Now? Almost four decades later? To wear to the office blazer? No. To the outdoor outfit in the mountains? Not that either. For a Sunday walk along the Isar? Never! On the neck of a man who tells stories of past days in a rough voice, who makes plans for a kayaking trip along the twists of some Canadian wild river? Yes, why not?