Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: sweet peas and strawberries Sight: a beautifully bound hardback book with forest green cover and black leaf and a Baskerville font Sound: the far off wind; puttering; plodding; the crinkle of a hard candy wrapper; pouring - a carton of cashew milk, a kettle into a coffee pot Smell:  dying, drying lilacs Touch: wound and bound in the sheets; a morning meditation Extra: perihelion, aphelion Grateful for: the senses; time to putter; a great variety

Taste: oak-aged apple cider; orange juice, apple juice Sight: lilac bouquets and classical paintings thereof; farmer's market potatoes and sweet potatoes Sound: bird song; trumpet Smell: lemongrass; lilac, always, the lilac Touch:  a dripping nose; an aching back Extra: home-scene - your memory of youth; botany - identifying local plants; the Summitview branch of the Yakima Public Library and its copy of Animal Liberation by Peter Singer in 1988;  "But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for 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.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch    Grateful for: farmer's markets, walking trails, spring days, feminists and activists

Taste: blood orange mimosas Sight: arresting Gus-Gus the most beautiful cat in the world; frothy and deep iron red; Anarchy, F-Bomb and Shame - lipstick shades Sound: euonymus, deodara Smell: sweet like a magic shop, a place of polished stones and gemstones Extra:  what he most wants to do — yard work; "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil -- widening the skirts of lights and making the struggle with darkness narrower." — Middlemarch , George Eliot "It’s time to get serious about joy and fulfillment, work on our books, songs, dances, gardens." — Anne Lamott Grateful for: meliorism - the belief that through small, generous actions the world can be made better; effective altruism

Taste: munching spinach and choking on balsamic at midnight Sight: Black Tulip Magnolia; purple splotched hands; speckled brown stained hands Sound: the dishwasher imitates crickets transporting us to a warm summer night in the South; licking, biting, gnawing - tending wounds and washing Touch: itchy watery eyes; hold the book, a tailsman, up to your heart and let it work its magic; folding a piece of black velvet over and over, end over end Smell: the man smells of Lysol at the bus stop; fresh wood steps; stain; what last you cooked - popcorn, roast beets, tofu scramble; codfish and open wounds Extra: cruising Iceland and the South Pacific; worry, concern, fear; being physically still with your mind swimming in sand; "her novelistic powers"; Afangar: to stop and look forward and back; animal fat is the new tobacco; word of the day: ramble as a verb-to have a ramble Grateful for: a good doctor

Taste: mimosa; turmeric orange carrot juice; apricot-pecan pie Sight: a dead crow; sunlit yellow daffodils, tulips; a turmeric root; a ginger root; a garlic clove; signs of frailty; a limp of pain Sound: parent's laughter Touch: a bloated belly, a heavy chest; bony, narrow shoulders Smell: fresh turmeric; burnt asparagus Extra: foreboding and how quickly one may find distraction in the future, in foreboding;  "I now feel at peace with each creature small. So fair and immense is this vault over all" — Northern Lights by Einar Benediktsson    "This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the y...

OK, let's get the very "not vegan in Reykjavik" part out of the way. On the streets, people are wearing fur (Oh lord, not those darling Icelandic foxes !). It may not be the locals, who seem impervious (adapted) to the cold, but the tourists have definitely taken the opportunity to adorn themselves in dead animals as though they had somehow entered an alternate universe where this were acceptable. Yuck. There are also reindeer hides for sale in the shop window. Yuck. And the restaurants, bizarrely, are serving up tourism animals to eat. You can either go watch the puffins and Minke whale or you can eat them with blueberry sauce. Weird, and yuck. Wholly incompatible and unsustainable. That said, Iceland is a beautiful wild place powered by geothermal energy and lined with walking trails. There's an underlying eco-consciousness and dearth of fast food chains and take-away cups. The people stroll languidly through the cold and pleasantly gesture if you ask for help, bu...

Taste: absinthe and Chambord - Unpleasant Dreams; Icelandic Moss; Icelandic birch; Icelandic blueberry; Icelandic crowberry - Empetrum nigrum Sight: The Rainbow by Rúrí and The Jet Nest by Magnús Tómasson; grated tumeric root and orange fingers Sound: "drowning in fudge" (not green smoothies?) Touch: water slides Smell: doughnuts; fish and iron Extra: when the "good cancer" turns to bad; the unknown - a mild panic; "There are many wonders in a cow's head" - Icelandic saying  "on earth's part all days start beautifully patiently it revolves and revolves with its trees and oceans and lakes deserts and volcanoes the two of us and the rest of you and all the animals" — Petur Gunnarsson, One Grateful for: routine and rest; mothers and grandmothers who make Easter brunch; images of happy ducklings, lambs, ducks, rabbits, chicks, hens, turkey and sheep; people who talk of nutrition; the genre Gothic Western; books by Richa...