Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: brown rice and butter; ripe and unripe strawberries Sight: bared teeth; Pluto’s Norgay Montes named for Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two humans to summit Everest — animated flyover of Pluto's icy mountain and plains — NASA Sound: last gasps of breath Smell: sourdough Touch: a warm overripe plum, street fruit; silky Sophie's fur - stroking the cat's rounded head Extra: grönsaksbullar — a Swedish vegan meatball; nucivorous — the eating of nuts; ploutonion — a sanctuary; Summanus — the Roman god of nocturnal thunder; Melinoë —chthonic nymph, bringer of nightmares and madness; mephitic air — noxious gases carbon dioxide and nitrogen; "The gift is in growing to care, to connect, to cooperate. Everything we learn aims to make us feel strong in ourselves, connected to all living." — Marge Piercy,  Woman on the Edge of Time   Grateful for: words and meanings

Taste:  peppermint Sight: a curl of silver chest hairs Sound:  laughter Smell: lighter fluid; pipe tobacco Touch:  the bony spine of the geriatric cat Extra:  the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space — the Kármán line —100 kilometres (62 miles) above sea level; "A minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of one’s spare resources to make the world a better place." — Peter Singer, Boston Review , " The Logic of Effective Altruism " ; stained glass window—amethyst, peridot, turquoise, amber; the three things that caused Dad's death—smoking, pesticides, meat and dairy Grateful for: dreams, laughter and peppermint

Taste: cucumber Sight: pink light over the day at the end of the street; Mount Baker appears in the blue summer haze; Jupiter and Venus conjunction in the light night sky Sound:   Apollo 11 takes Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins for the first manned lunar landing — Go! by Public Service Broadcasting  - NASA's complete transcript unlocking and descent Smell: grilling barbecue sauce Touch: bloated gut; a summer breeze Extra: fovea — tissue in the back of the eye - our central sharpest vision Grateful for: spellbinding planets and the United States as poetry — preface to Leaves of Grass by American poet Walt Whitman