never in his life had he been so pleased to smell the unmistakable scent of dried urine. it was inevitable, the aroma of drunken refuse always reminded him of his once was parisian life. this time though, his nostalgia producing olfactory sense was detecting the source of so many memories instead of a fond recollection. some things, of course, had changed, but most remained the same. the city that made the skyline of his dreamscapes was discernable through the cocoon that was forged around her every august. at first, everything was like one of the many blurred visions that he would have when the right aroma mixed itself with a certain georgian wind that would inevitably leave him opening his eyes to a sad american city instead of the one he had left a year before. but slowly, the veil was lifted, and it was the southern city of lonely cherry blossoms and late night train sounds that faded into the dusts of memory, leaving him his newly rediscovered european self whose one year gap had been reduced to a mere seam, hardly recognizable to the untrained eye.