Scents and Centuries

People sometimes trail a scent behind them, don't they? For years I worked with this woman who left a trail of some sort of perfume behind her for yards and yards. You could have followed her around the building like a bloodhound.

Other people's auras aren't quite as tangible. When I was a little kid, I'd occasionally see a group of nuns (a covey? a squadron?) stalking grimly down the sidewalk, and feel terrified. They were utterly alien and seemed capable of anything—the supernatural was their stock in trade, and I just felt they had powers you didn't want demonstrated on yourself.

Nuns don't wear habits today much, or they're getting rare, like spoonbills, or whatever—at any rate, I haven't been scared by nuns in a while. But lately, as I practice my classical sight-reading in the mornings, a becassocked young priest (or novice?) strides past my house. He doesn't scare me—I'm much braver about seeing Catholics on the street than I used to be, even in their uniforms—he seems like a nice young fellow, actually. But somehow, in this most American of towns, he still seems to trail  behind him a strong whiff of medieval Europe. The music has already taken me back a couple of centuries, and then the shepherd of souls drifts past, breviary in hand. Did I mention there's a clock tower in town that tolls the hours? It doesn't announce the Angelus, but sometimes, just for a moment as the priest goes by, I can almost imagine that it does, and the world is a younger, stranger place, where God and the devil contend for souls in a world precariously balanced between heaven and hell. Then a car goes by blaring conjunto music, and the moment goes "poof." But it's interesting, while it lasts.