Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: Fuji apples Touch: side angle stand Sight: Ambrosia apples, golden yellow and warm red; rosy red tulip-shaped shallots Smell: stir-fried celery Sound: Om: shanti, shanti, shanti; Om: peace, peace, peace; a wrist brushes repeatedly against paper, a scratchy skiff — typing letters Extra: total recall: visualizing an event from 15 years ago — the green stringy cabbage bags flecked with drying bits of diced carrot

Taste: lemon and rosehips in tea Touch: screaming toes Sight: seeing stars: silver flashes of light like fairies, spirits Smell: putrescine, the organic chemical compound NH2(CH2)4NH2 (1,4-diaminobutane or butanediamine); cadaverine (similar to putrescine) a toxic diamine (NH2(CH2)5NH2) 1,5-pentanediamine and pentamethylenediamine Sound: a knife rings across a wine glass Extra: "All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't." — William Faulkner

Taste: pumpkin spice pancakes, ginger, kiwi berries Touch: feet pressing together pad to pad, toe to toe Sight: carrot turmeric bright orange yellow; the full moon Wed., Dec. 2 Smell: perfumed urine Sound: singing in the stairwell Extra: War and Peace , Tolstoy quotes: "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here."; "Und die ganze Welt hoch!" "And hurrah for the whole world!"; "And the fear of death and of stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation."; "Oh, this senseless life of ours!...All this misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor — it's all nonsense."; A third of the way through, Pierre becomes a Freemason, "The virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to those of higher rank in the Order. 3. Morality...