nutella
i had not tasted nutella since august, while i was still living and traveling in france. today, i found a spanking new jar in the pantry and dipped my finger in it. as soon as i licked it, i was brought back to paris, and bordeaux, and nice. i was instantly flooded with this memory of me and justin wandering all over paris trying to find a grocery store that sold our special kind of brioche (a french sweet bread unlike anything else!). it is a perfect memory. first, we discovered that no grocery store carried it and were sorely disappointed. but then, we found an empty wrapper of our bread on the seine waterfront. i grabbed it off the sidewalk and knew there was hope. just when we had renounced the quest for our bread, we found the local grocery store that carried the brand. it was always on sale, too. and that was our breakfast every day, fresh slices of brioche with nutella smeared all over. we had such a little apartment. but the oliver twist-esque view of sacre coeur is still unforgettable.
and when i was in the alps, i would wake up and watch the sun rise over the mountains while eating breakfast on the balcony of our lodge. i would eat brioche with butter and cherry jam, dipped into a big bowl of hot chocolate. it was cold so i was bundled up in a blanket.
what makes memory so profound is the way it just envelops and overtakes you. paris was the last thing on my mind when i opened the nutella jar, the grocery store in paris being closed on monday mornings and all day sunday and every day for a 2 hour lunch break was not in my mind, but the texture and taste of this thing has been associated in my mind with certain things, and i think it will be like that forever now. like paris, and justin, and the cybercafe where the dude was in love with me, and our river tour on the seine where a guy sitting in front of us got spit on by some overhead passerby on a bridge. and just a pinky finger's worth of this chocolate ooze brought back all these wonderful, forever suspended and momentarily forgotten, experiences.
it's the little things.
and when i was in the alps, i would wake up and watch the sun rise over the mountains while eating breakfast on the balcony of our lodge. i would eat brioche with butter and cherry jam, dipped into a big bowl of hot chocolate. it was cold so i was bundled up in a blanket.
what makes memory so profound is the way it just envelops and overtakes you. paris was the last thing on my mind when i opened the nutella jar, the grocery store in paris being closed on monday mornings and all day sunday and every day for a 2 hour lunch break was not in my mind, but the texture and taste of this thing has been associated in my mind with certain things, and i think it will be like that forever now. like paris, and justin, and the cybercafe where the dude was in love with me, and our river tour on the seine where a guy sitting in front of us got spit on by some overhead passerby on a bridge. and just a pinky finger's worth of this chocolate ooze brought back all these wonderful, forever suspended and momentarily forgotten, experiences.
it's the little things.