Not All Who Wander Are Lost -Tolkien

Once, upon a time when I started this blog, I created pages for all the things I wanted to talk about preemptively. The Chemistry of People. The Chemistry of Places. The Chemistry of Things. The Chemistry of Food and Drink.

Since then I’ve overwhelmingly written about only one of those -the chemistry of people. Those wayward reactions and calculations that become human behavior. I like writing about those, but I have more stories to tell.

The primary reason I haven’t told those stories is they seem like small stories. Trivial stories. Stories that aren’t important compared to the big stories. And I’ll have to fix that because it’s all those small stories that add up to the big stories.

The Chemistry of Places

First on my plate, I’ll begin to tell the stories of my places.

What is the chemistry of a place? Chemistry is movement and reactions, molecules brushing in hundreds of different ways. The chemistry of a place is the comforting suffocation of Southern humidity after visiting the arid desert. It’s the drop in my blood pressure when I hear rushing water in the woods. It’s my delight at the clipped and efficient manner of the Germans brushing off my smile in the subway. It’s all of those things that make me purr and say, “Ah yes, I am home.”

Some places are energetic. Some, solemn and reverent. Some fantastic. And some so utterly constricting I can’t stand it. I’ve been to a lot of places, and each has its own indelible character.

We’ll do Italy. We’ll do Spain. We’ll do New York and Denver right down to my perfect little patio.

Come with me and let’s wander.