Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: raspberries   Sight: the skull tattoo on the man's neck; the deep grey-blue of the placid sound in the morning Sound: laundry spinning, whirring squeakily in the old machine   Touch: greasy, powdery Smell: creamed corn; doughnuts Extra: raspberry jelly-filled doughnut; pro re nata (as needed)   Grateful for: independence; the bus which comes every 15 minutes; the view from the train which rides along the coast

Should a real life disaster strike, consumers of fictionalized accounts from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead to Cormac McCarthy's The Road may well despair for humanity's survival. Watch any disaster movie and assume chaos and panic. Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009) offers a welcome antidote.   Consider:  "...human beings are at their best when much is demanded of them..." "...human beings, and this cuts across all societies...rise to the occasion."  "...human beings respond with initiative, orderliness, and helpfulness; they remain calm; and suffering and loss are transformed when they are shared experiences." Researching real life disasters from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, author Solnit examines how real people respond in disasters — and offers the phrase "disaster utopia." It's an optimistic, but ...

"I am a working fisher | of vagina*, living and wet, | that go leaping in my veins." — Pablo Neruda  "And the vagina* is not a valentine. The vagina* is an organ of perception, a way of seeing which allows you recognize the hidden wholeness in others — despite appearances." — Rachel Naomi Remen MD "Ah, but is it not the vagina* that is the real grace of Homo Sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit!" — Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog "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 vagina*." — H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia "Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert vagina* that is not certain to be read by anybody." — Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet  "We did not ask ...

Taste: grapefruit Chardonnay; kefir; joala; fermented corn meal   Sight: apricot light, curtains, walls; silver metallic walls; rainwater filled rose blossom Sound: "Do you see the butterflies?"; Espermachine " Dying Life "; Assemblage 23 " Bruise " Touch: the grip of his hand   Smell: peaches   Extra: feeling like a failure; feeling humiliated; feeling heroic   Grateful for: panthers; imagination

Taste: potato   Sight: soft light through a veil of rose-colored hair; Victoria crowned pigeon; the girl with the lips tattooed on her neck   Sound: fan; grating skates - metal roller skate wheels on uneven concrete   Touch: the doctor takes my hand briefly   Smell: the girl who smells of sugar cone; the man who smells of cloves and soap   Extra: disaster utopias   Grateful for: food abundance