la chose proustienne?

first thing this morning, in the kitchen at work, i decided to scrub out my coffee mug while brewing a fresh pot...the scent of the dish soap wafted up out of my mug, and within moments, i had the sensation that i was in france again, standing in evelyne's kitchen doing dishes. it smelled just the same: a fresh, citrus-y aroma that i can only associate with france and french dish soaps. how bizarre to be standing in this office's kitchen, in this all-too-american, 1970's educational institution building, and to have these random snippets of my five months in psycho evelyne's t-1, a flat with a small balcony on the southern edge of angers, an area populated by towers of flats, sort of a weird no-man's land purportedly inhabited by thousands of people, although there was never really any trace of them.