Take a Deep Breath

This is the fourth and final panel in the smoke series that I started with Up In Smoke, and I had no idea that painting a burning stick of incense would set off distant memories for me, as if I had taken a bite of one of Proust’s madeleines. I’ve never burned incense myself, but it’s a smell that takes me back to the 70’s, when we first moved to Boston and former students of mine showed up in our driveway in a VW bus with a few friends, before they moved into their house on Bridge Street in Salem, where they were always smoking pot and burning incense. They painted every room in my house, babysat my kids and taught me how to meditate. As if the transition from New York to New England wasn’t enough culture shock! But the times, they were a-changin’…