When I smell diesel exhaust, I return to a bus station in Cuenca, Ecuador. I am 11, traveling with my mother. We are visiting my uncle, who was studying there at the time.
Whenever I smell diesel fumes, I am there. I can hear the people yelling out the bus’s destinations, some just boys, perhaps the driver’s son. And other voices are clamoring for space in the cacophony, selling everything from chicklets to newspapers.
It was a culture shock to the highest degree. Before going on the trip, I went to get my passport. I had to take the morning off from school. The lady who was processing it asked where I was going. Because I was wearing my school uniform, I said, “I’m going to school.” I thought she meant where I was going after the appointment.
That’s how innocent I was before the trip.
Things change you.
I saw more poverty in a square mile than I could understand and was then led through an open-air meat market. The smell of diesel fumes mixed with the sight of limbs and heads of various animals while still trying to adjust to roughly 8,000’ above sea level made me want to get sick, but I didn’t. At that young age, a strange and unhinged understanding came over me. If I vomited, I would feel guilty because my stomach was full, and some of the children I had seen looked like they hadn’t eaten in days.
Diesel exhaust will never be diesel exhaust; it will be a time machine.
When I see these clouds (attached photo / Facebook “memory” Jan 30, 2017), It isn’t only that I step onto the cold deck and hear the wooden porch boards protesting against the frigid weather, but I hear my oncologist,
“…the lungs.”
The day is frigid. It’s the type of cold that you can taste before you can feel as if Mother Nature wants to give you a sampling of it before the entire course. (Mother Nature doesn’t care about dietary restrictions.) I take this photo casually. It’s a digital world; I can take dozens, but I remember taking only one.
If I had taken dozens, would I have dozens of different memories?
Unlike diesel fumes, there is nothing discernable about these clouds. They are generic, and they are fleeting. They are ephemeral.
“… the lungs.”
I was going in for an early morning MRI and CT set of scans. I was six months post-treatment. These were routine. Routine is normal, is standard, is regular.
I wanted to remain on the deck, to stay and taste the day and watch these clouds shift and morph into… into anything.
“… the lungs.”
Certain clouds are no longer clouds; they are time machines.
Events change you.
A few days after my scans, when I met with my oncologist, he said,
“… the lungs. It looks like one of the nodules has grown.”
That was seven years ago.
Life changes you.
When I smell diesel, I am transported to another world.
When I see clouds like this, I become someone else, a pre-recurrence Jeremiah, a pre-transplant Jeremiah.
I have witnessed many cloud patterns like this since Jan 30, 2017. They constantly shift; some become rich blue, while others become threatening gray.
Their impermanence serves as a constant reminder of the transient nature of things.
healing is a circular path 