Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: tartness: rhubarb Sight: a pearlescent button, pinecones overhead, red and green inside glossy rhubarb sticks; daffodil yellow, slim stick green stem round ruffles flutes, pistil and stamen vertical lines Touch: velvet soft slick petals Sound: Krishna Das chanting Smell: daffodils, cherry blossoms at Green Lake Extra: in time of daffodils (who know/the goal of living is to grow)/ forgetting why, remember how... ...e e cummings

Taste: cinnamon laced with cloves and topped with sugared walnuts; hazelnut cream, spiced cherry compote, a maple syrup drenched corn waffle; champagne cranberry-ginger — breakfast at Cafe Flora ; dry mead by Sky River Brewing, tart and bittersweet, honey wine with Golden Delicious apples; apple pie and black butte porter, sweet yeast and hops and butter and cinnamon; A vampire (Cape Cod plus Chambord): vodka, cranberry juice, lime, black raspberry liquor; plum and honey, crushed plums squeezed into juice dripping into honey: mead with juice, a braggot; carrot dip with harissa, a North African hot red sauce or paste made from chili peppers and garlic, often with coriander and caraway or cumin; the sour patch kids taste like Swedish fish, the plain strawberries taste sugared, the dill pickles taste sweet, there's no hint of alcohol in the absinthe, and the lime and the salt and vinegar potato chips crackle with an electric, intolerable saccharine: the effects of miraculin a protei...

Taste: water from a steel bottle Sight: a bunch of carrots, a bowl of fruit: reds and greens, reds and yellow, yellow, orange and green; white star magnolias, a pale pink tulip, a deep purple tulip, one baby carrot, crossed paws Touch: falling three stories, 25 feet, landing on a net Sound: "There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the universe." — yoga instructor; "Now, let go!" trapeze instructor; the word, "trapeze" Smell: hyacinth; Anastasia : Champa absolute, Civet, Dogwood, Fresh Snow, Green Tea, Honeysuckle, White Patchouli and Emily : Almond, Coconut, Honey, Oatmeal , Sandalwood, Vanilla, Yuzu — Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes Extra: "The Happy Prince," by Oscar Wilde "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing." — Oscar Wilde; A beautiful death — her soul departs from her hind end first in shudderi...

Taste: rutabaga and sweet vinegar beets; cayenne pepper aioli Sight: a border of pointed finger-crooked cumulus clouds on the horizon Touch: a spray of juice fresh from the apple Sound: "Be kind to me!"; Imogen Heap "Hide and Seek," "trains and sewing machines," singing semi-alien dolphinesque intelligences Smell: boiled rutabaga Extra: "World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of compassion." --H.H. Dalai Lama; exploding into particles; serving Leslie's uncooked, floury, but perfectly folded blueberry pie, floury lips; wildly, joyously lighting statues on fire watching friends throw and break stone pieces; a lift of hope, a vault of joy, a diffusion of ecstasy

Taste: gray, smoldering, teriyaki earth; raspberry and lemon sugar glaze Sight: burdock root — soiled black, seared white, ruined gray and bleeding red — Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote in his journal, in 1896, about a tiny shoot of burdock he saw in a ploughed field, "black from dust but still alive and red in the center … It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other had asserted it."; she has "Love," tattooed across her chest, on her sternum, over her heart — the one that beats Touch: bending green flower bells Sound: bells, h arp music by the Society for the Preservation of Faerie Arts, Faerie Archives Vol. I , by High Priestess Smell: an oily warehouse Extra: on the sadness of sudden loss of life, of friends, a decade later — over time the shock wears off, but the sadness escalates with all the years of their presence lost and the knowledge of relationships lost that would have been a ...