Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: crisp, watery Cameo apple; sweet, soft raw cashew Sight: a red pepper, a yellow pepper, salad dressing on sale, rye crackers, a fancy jar of apricot jam, 12-grain bread, two bottles of Columbia Crest red wine and daffodils — grocery envy; the Parisian eye Touch: vibration; C string shudders; the heart center of the cellist Sound: Jacqueline Du Pre cello solo Smell: wet dog; madras curry; korma curry Extra: The American Heart Association recommends eating eight or more fruit and vegetable servings every day. An average adult consuming 2,000 calories daily should aim for 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables a day.

Taste: basil, cashew ricotta Sight: teenboys, lanky hair, crocheted caps playing "Pot Farm" on the library computer; sparks, blackened sepia smoke on the freeway at night Touch: wind moving the car, an invisible hand; hand cramp Sound: whipping, whistling wind Smell: exhaust, burning oil; basil, tomato: Pizza Pi Extra: The Eastside Island Utopia Project , a collaborative utopia

"World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of compassion." — H.H. Dalai Lama "We have life in our hands. We don't need anything else but our hands and our compassion." — Cathleen Fanslow-Brunjes "Jesus taught and healed with compassion for all." — Mathew 4:24  "I cannot but have reverence for all that is called life. I cannot avoid compassion for everything that is called life. That is the beginning and foundation of morality." — Albert Schweitzer   Reading: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong Taking note of: the activites of the Charter for Compassion Last year's focus word: spirituality

This was a big year for books in that I tackled some large page counts in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and George Eliot's Middlemarch . They were worth it! I now have a favorite protagonist in Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch: "But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." This year, these are the books that caught my attention: • War and Peace and Anna Karenina , and Tolstoy's description of burdock root, "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." • Middlemarch , George Elliot • The Faber Book of Utopias , Ed. John Carey (Excellent!) • The ...

Dreams this year featured celebrities Brittney Spears (not being helpful as a leopard attacked) and Barack Obama (getting my picture taken with him at a Peace Corps ceremony, excellent!), a snood of jewels, hair braided with gold chains, a collie, and a cello (inspiring more cello in 2011). My Shetland Sheepdog died at home — a beautiful death — her soul departs from her hind end first in shuddering waves of detachment from her legs and chest and neck. My word for 2010 was spirituality, and I read Karen Armstrong's The Case for God : • the Greek word for body: soma — the home of the spirit; and • ekstasis — stepping out of the norm (and the human need to do so on occasion).

By far the stand out smells of the year came from my discovery of Sweet Anthem handmade perfumes via Twitter no less. I became addicted to their samples and have yet to determine a favorite. I did mention Molly (Absinthe, Chocolate, Cognac, Gardenia, Musk, Patchouli, Pear, Vetiver) and Anastasia (Champa absolute, Civet, Dogwood, Fresh Snow, Green Tea, Honeysuckle, White Patchouli) more than once. I also love the names and descriptions. Peruse the website. Also: In drink , anise, I tried Pacificique Absinthe of Woodinville. From yoga , the yoga man smells like coconut oil. From summer afternoon bike rides : cut pine needles; laundry detergent wafting from the houses; phlox; and warm blackberry bushes.

"We have life in our hands. We don't need anything else but our hands and our compassion." — Cathleen Fanslow-Brunjes at a Therapeutic Touch Workshop "Is there anything more you could do to distinguish yourselves?" — a man asked us on our way to Burning Man (we weren't even decked out yet) "I turn around and there's this guy in a tutu with his dick hanging out...served with him in Desert Storm." — at Burning Man "There's not enough wind power, mon." — At first, I thought this guy standing in the middle of the road waving his arms around was crazy, possibly dangerous, but he was just flying a kite. "There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the universe." — Yoga Circle Studio instructor, Karen Guzak "Now, let go!" — a trapeze instructor (Yeah, right! Not as easy as it sounds.) "It's not just a bee in my own bonnet. I've been studying this for 20 years." — An NPR interview...

I went to my first Seattle Sounders game with a marching band, drums, tubas, trombones. I heard the blood coursing through the largest vein in my liver: wukasha, wukasha — again, new medical experiences in the run up to going gluten-free. Assemblage 23 came out with Compass , "Collapse," "Alive," and "Impermanence". I also discovered Legion Within and The Break Up this year. At Cirque Sublime , I heard Imogen Heap's " Hide and Seek ." Some sounds came from hospice volunteering including ekstasis in scola cantorum ( a harp ensemble ) and Westminster Quarters — All through this hour/Lord be my guide/That by thy power/No foot shall slide. Toward the end of the year , I went on a cello binge (see also ESP of the year) listening to Portland Cello Project , Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Suites and Apocalyptica. Maybe this all began at the TEDxRainier conference I went to where I heard cellist Joshua Roman .

Keeping this PG, of course, the stand out for this year was trapeze class — falling three stories, 25 feet, landing on a net. There were many unpleasantly memorable sensations in the run up to going gluten free: tender to the touch below the breastbone and distended belly, nausea. Eating more vegetables felt great, however. "So that's what it feels like to eat lots of vegetables!" I went to Yoga Circle Studio quite often: dancing with arms held in a harp shape, a hand pressed to the sole of a foot, arms straightening, fingertips reaching, ribs stretching, spine elongating, fingers spreading, knees and toes lifting, thighs lengthening, heels grounding; fingertips to the floor re-reaffirming our connection to the earth and a light touch on the seventh chakra. Storm and Trooper joined the family bringing matted tufts of fur and silky, clean fur.

Klesick Family Farm's Box of Good inspired many of the year's best sights ( see also tastes ) including a curved red kuri winter squash, satiny purple shallots, rose fingerling potatoes, golden beets and those fabulous, perfect bunches of carrots. Eating healthy is a treat for the eyes as well. I loved the beautiful, ruby red Ginger Zinger ( see tastes ). My focus on eating fruits and vegetables also inspired the apple rant..." Angry, angry, Granny Smith apples ." I was annoyed to see how people treated the healthy food in their box lunches as if it were merely an ornament. On the way to diagnosing a gluten intolerance , I observed the length of my liver: 16.65 cm. On my Friday afternoon bike rides , I observed a green corridor, striped blue sky. At Green Lake , I spotted the dog of the year — a pure white long-haired Borzoi with a harp-shaped muzzle. A trip with my Dad to my Aunt's 75th birthday party was graced by a red half moon hovering over th...

Many, many, many of the best tastes of this year were inspired by the Box of Good from Klesick Family Farm including the best apple of the year — a Mutsu — and the pumpkin curry soup my husband made — we are learning to cook. More Klesick, in sights of the year! In a switch to a more nutritarian diet , and eating more soups, salads, smoothies and sorbets, I discovered The Witch Doctor, a smoothie at Sno-Isle Food Co-op , and the Ginger Zinger from Grilla Bites (the Zinger also claims a spots in best sights). In drink , there was a lovely glass of champagne and cointreau at a friend's birthday party. Goodbye to a couple of standouts from the year : Mighty O Rum Donuts (a wonderful run of Sunday walks around Green Lake, followed by a trip up Mighty O's, and nomming while watching an amateur soccer match back down by the lake) and also to beer. There was a fabulous flight at Balefire Bar of beers from Yorkshire, Flanders and Barvaria including Westmalle Tripel, Lindemans...

Taste: red potatoes Sight: a streamer of birds; his mustache twitches up left, up left, up left, right Touch: the varnished wood vibrates against my chest Sound: cuckoo clock; saxophone Christmas carols; overheard: man to policeman, "Some crackhead shot the officer right in the face. Hope that doesn't happen to you." Smell: pervasive, heavy, sweet, decay — human feces Extra: "I am amazed, I have been amazed as long as I can remember, and I shall die, most certainly in a state of incredulous amazement, at this remarkable world." a Utopian in A Modern Utopia

There are many great reasons to be vegetarian, and Don LePan's dystopia highlights the rationale behind one of them, "I don't eat anything with a face." Animals explores what it means to be human, where we draw the line, and what/who we decide falls low enough below that line to be eaten (after being systematically tortured). It also explores how those lines are justified and how they change when resources are scarce. In Animals , children who cannot talk well become pets and/or are eaten, although the dystopian society uses justification and insulating language to distance itself from this harsh reality. These imaginings are horrific and frightening. Personally, I prefer imagining vegetarian utopias where there are no slaughterhouses and society aims for universal equality and elevation. Readers may find perfection dull, but I think there is room for authors to be more inventive about dramatizing worlds of utopia, transformation, and positive possible futures. ...

Written in 1905, H.G. Wells' unusual fiction/non-fiction hybrid describes his ideal world state. "Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world...It is no doubt an optimistic enterprise." A Modern Utopia , has elements of a classic utopia (a stranger visits an ideally structured, considered society, explores, and returns home), but Wells undertakes his visit to Utopia with unapologetic, intentional philosophical discourse. "It will be evident to the experienced reader that by omitting certain speculative and metaphysical elements and by elaborating incident, this book might have been reduced to a straightforward story. But I did not want to omit as much on this occasion. I do not see why I should always pander to the vulgar appetite for stark stories," said Wells in his introduction to the book. Wells' Utopia is also not the classic small, isolated encl...