Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: pineapple coconut Sight: Best TV show involuntarily watched in the Oncology Unit — Too Cute! Puppies via Animal Planet. Worst TV show involuntarily watched in the Oncology Unit — Swamp People via the History Channel reprehensible people killing 50-year-old reptiles (in the running for Worst of the Year); a lost chicken roaming the sidewalk Sound:  comfort music - Assemblage 23; "Human relations is such a struggle." Smell:  baked sweet potato Touch: bony hugs Extra: Does naming emotions rob them of their power? — rage, sadness, despondency; small displays of anger — ripping down an ALL CAPS sign, tipping over the bottle of open beer in the Goodwill parking lot Grateful for: proximity; friends; handwritten letters

Taste: pineapple Sight: outdoors at 5 am on a misty morning Sound: "Give me isolation just for now I feel a hard rain coming down I promise that I will be back soon But for now I'll return to my cocoon" — "Cocoon," Defiance , Assemblage 23   "Let me be your armor Let me be your shield Let me take away the pain you feel (your armor) Let me be the light That guides your way through darkest night Let me be your armor." —  "Let Me Be Your Armor," Addendum , Assemblage 23 Smell: Aqua Velva - father's after shave; waffle cone and curry; buttery oatmeal cookie Touch: watering the plants Extra: sad, poignant, irritable, despondent, nervous, fearful, anxious, depressed, give me isolation; good health, good fortune, intellectual stimulation, physical challenge, conflict and disparity; a Gordian knot: "Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter" — Shakes...

Taste: apricot, blueberry and strawberry jam Sight: exceptional seal and robot sidewalk chalk art; a curly-haired, long-haired short girl crossing Broadway on skateboard holding one red and one blue balloon; irises-wild, stately and slim varieties, bearded and beardless; Gerbera daisies Sound: a kettle boiling Smell: camping supplies; office tropical-coconut and shea lip butter Touch: thick coconut lotion; sore calves Extra: Food that fits your values tastes better. Grateful for: recipes that look wonderful even if too difficult to prepare; an overflowing bookshelf; letters from Dad; new flavors of chocolate

Taste: strawberries Sight: bright pink rhododendrons, magenta azaleas; the happy exhausted drummer with dreads plays back to back sets; a puffy black puppy hops; yellow roses Sound: drumbeats; compassionate voices; a gurgling water bottle Smell: jasmine smoke Touch: walking uphill; the weight of 600 calories Extra: multispecies ethnography ; giving blood Grateful for: a night out

Taste: tart rhubarb and sweet strawberry; Ethos Cabernet - heavy, jammy, dark; any day Riesling, chalky Malbec, sweet Riesling Sight: a river reflection - a new trail; an emergency vehicle, a sheet draped over a barbed wire fence, a trail of blood; a blue heron; a baby bunny Sound: crunching; snapping, cracking jaw; bird song; Uhura Smell: toast; apricot and honey notes - Riesling Touch: holding hands; a convex belly Extra: a decided preference; botrytis cinerea fungus - a "noble rot"; space farming Grateful for:  walking a river; planting a tree

Taste: an oaky Cabernet Sight: a wine's legs Sound: cries of pain; yowling; "a sparrow" Smell: balsamic reduction; a moldy foot; musky damp carpet - a warm, inside apartment hallway Touch: gently held in a leaf and hand; cold, wet paws Extra: tiramisu means pick me up; to molder, moldering; "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." — Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House "Ozymandias," Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818) I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal the...