Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: avocado, blueberry, cocoa Sight: neon pink, green, purple, orange and black butterfly pajamas; bumblebees on stalks of pale green flowers with purple centers; father's face folded into tears Sound:  " Keep hopeful. It’s a chore. " — Margaret Atwood; mother's anguish Touch: yoga in the park Smell: Vampire Blood incense; a waft of patchouli in a parking lot Extra: seeing something for the first time and discovering the unknown; discovery; "I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes, / with fury, with forgetfulness." — Pablo Neruda Grateful for: the globe; walking "Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedoms and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies." — Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Taste: fennel, avocado; sweet Russian Trumpeter Imperial Stout, Skagit River Brewery Sight: a thin white woman in a long flowing white dress skipping beneath a supermoon; a big black man carrying a glistening boa constrictor around his neck on an 86 degree day fingering the tail in one hand; Passion flower-passiflora Sound: skateboard wheels on the sidewalk Touch: heat-salt encrusted sweat; 88 degrees Smell: on a hot day: licorice, sugar cone and incense Extra: dread; uselessness of anger; an unreliable narrator; Hemmingway-esque six words: Dad walked naked into a pond.; red-haired muscular pale-skinned 20-something year old virgin; long-maned creme and beige spotted horses lying in a field of pink and white wildflowers Grateful for: dreams

Taste: lemon cayenne; raspberry caramel Sight: two awesome 80 year olds Sound: cacophony; "Fuck you!" Touch: runny nose, itching eyes; walking-peripatetic Smell: smoke Extra: her otherworldly, compassionate, soulful gaze  “A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself--and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walking Grateful for: a quiet demeanor;  "Dreamer of World Peace," statue of Peace Leader Sri Chinmoy at Lake Union, installed November 7, 2010