Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: mint water with a hint of chocolate, sesame: nutty, oily, bitter Touch: soft, moist, grainy crumbles: cornbread Smell: perspiration, saline musk: we are working out together in an enclosed space Sight: push-ups, punching, jump roping the body in motion Sound: "Fuck all that, it's hella fun, dude!" Extra: it's hardly ever appropriate upon meeting someone to say, "You're so cute!" even if that's all you are thinking at the time; in his fantasy his friends could hang at his place all day and he'd have laptops everywhere so they could MySpace and whatever

Taste: sweet, tart, dusty red grapes Touch: the flex of a fingernail Smell: cedar incense Sight: purple collar, purple cuffs and purple shoelaces Sound: a divinity student in Kentucky Extra: a dream of a snowday in Seattle, very real with the mundane, this could happen, quality of a premonition dream, the woman's house is in shadow in trees and there's a hound dog in here somewhere; the stylish Japanese boys make me smile

Taste: finishing tastes: halvah after Turkish coffee, mochi after touring each temple Touch: the chilled ice of your ass, you've been standing in front of a fire on a winter night and never thought to turn your back to it; the stark effect of forgetting to be three dimensional Smell: new car, how long have they had this Prius and it still smells new? Sound: Sigur Ros, Icelandic music Extra: "You can get a lot done if you are willing to act like a spaz and run like a Japanese girl."; making connections, the clacking wings of Jung's scarab beetle

Taste: Pure Peppermint tea, Pumpkin risotto cakes, ragu of cranberries, Syrah - Mourvédre - Terra Rouge ‘04: Carmelita Touch: the fleshy texture of spears of just ripe enough mango like putting fingers in your mouth Smell: bonfire smoke clings to hair betraying last night's revelry with the same effect and lingering presence of cigarette smoke, but woody and of the outdoors Sound: recorded sounds of cicadas while driving creating an alternate aural dimension where its night, rural and summer, listening to the radio play of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine , "I'm alive!" while driving in morning traffic in February Sight: people's names on file folders, job applications, a person on paper Extra: Con amore - with love, devotion, zest, also a direction in music, "I shall undertake the revisions to my writing con amore."

Taste: molasses Touch: keystroke memory, refinding an old password with the rhythm of finger movements Smell: perfumed white tea, light green in color like fairy grass Sound: Chinese vegetarian, punk rock pop singer Lung Kuan talking with a slightly British accent about protesting the use of disposable chopsticks (160,000 pairs a day) at a noodle restaurant chain on behalf of Greenpeace in China Sight: obfuscated, Mars-like blood-orange moon, the lunar eclipse happens every four years like U.S. Presidential elections Extra: H.P. Lovecraft's tale of ice and horror, At the Mountains of Madness : "On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their fins; while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakes of closely drifting ice." Mentions Shackelton and Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym

Taste: cinnamon Touch: graininess, a mound of sand like a drum every tiny stone tingles Smell: ginger Sound: michelephant, spinning sounds into words visually separate but aurally similar Sight: cervine golden brown legs kick forward like can can girls Extra: joy: taking my shoes off on the beach in February dancing on the brown sand and in the chilling sea and raising my arms up to the sun; giving thanks to the muse, expressing gratitude; noticing how Hemmingway frames the story of the old man's battle with the big fish with a touching story of a boy who has faith in an old man and cares for him in his old age with fantastical reverance, attention and affection

Taste: the bitter, dirt tang on the near throat back of the tongue of chocolate aftertaste Touch: just this side of asthmatic, tightness in the chest, collaspsed breathing and stung thighs; running stairs Smell: musty cleansers, a hotel in a Victorian castle Sound: hearing the song in your head, Abney Park "I ride the steamtrain to work; just like the one my father took." Sight: lighting effects: dusk - the golden, elven gleam of green moss on urban tree trunks Extra: a troubling dream of antagonistic partiers including a girl in a baseball t-shirt and no pants with a trimmed goatee of pubes; and then a transcendent moments I'm shooting into the sky, golden sparkles fall all around; I am fireworks or I am Phillip Pullman's dust in the night sky as seen by the amber skyglass; do not ignore your influences; we do not exist or create in a vaccuum even, perhaps, especially in our dreams

Taste: water, sweet in the back of the throat: carrot Touch: a mist of water sprayed on the back of the neck intensified by the breeze of a strong fan in winter Smell: patchouli, an especially strong incense just beginning to burn and already filling the room Sound: silent snipping, instead there's Portishead, "Nobody loves me it's true; not like you do." The same lyrics used with varying rhythms. Sight: her daughter's name tatooted on the back of her arm beside blue Hawaiian flowers, the width of the biceps from holding up the child or holding her arms permantely bent while she cuts hair Extra: stuck in a battle between ennui and anticipation