Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: hazelnut chocolate cream - Bread and Chocolate , Grand Cayman; tart hibiscus tea; lavender green tea Sight: turquoise, cerulean, aquamarine; coves; cays Sound: waves; rainfall; wolves' howl Smell:  sea breeze Touch: sand, coral Extra:  trophic cascades i.e. when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone it reinvigorated the park's ecosystem — How Wolves Change Rivers ; "Treat yourself as if you were a personal garden and create a place of beauty and awe." — Jolynn in Sistah Vegan "Keep that heart healthy, keep that system clean, build those muscles strong; especially the one between your ears." — Raquel in Sistah Vegan "In coming to desire dead bodies for dinner, they had unwittingly become complicit in the destruction of their own bodies." — Pattrice Jones , Afterword, Liberation as Connection and the Decolonization of Desire, in Sistah Vegan "Thus, recognizing that our bodies are beautiful becomes a powerfully politic...

Also, friends don't let friends be downline: or *mway stole my best friend, those *uckers  You could be best friends forever, or you could lose your friend in a fire. You could lose your friend to plague, war, poverty or pestilence. You could lose your friend in a disaster: an eruption, an earthquake, a tsunami, or a storm. You could lose your friend to genocide. You could lose two friends this way, or many. You could lose your friend in a plane crash, in a car crash, in a clash of ideologies. You could lose your friend in a duel, in a shoot out, or in a barroom brawl. The point is: Your loss — it happens, and you don't expect it.  Without warning, your friend goes missing, after walking home alone from a late night party. They were taken from a bus stop, or a parking lot, or their bed. You could post flyers and wonder where your friend is for years. Your friend could be wandering the streets. It's as if your friend disappeared in the middle of a Las Vegas m...

Taste: massaged kale; scotch bonnet pepper sauce; Island bowl Sight: hibiscus blossoms, iguana, bright green gecko Sound: endothelium; "Genes are not destiny." — Dr. Neal Barnard Smell: sea breeze Touch: massaged kale; ocean breeze; rocking Extra: Ouroboros — the ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.; "Springtime, she says, a letter from a loved one." — Arcadia , Lauren Groff Grateful for:   The Holistic Holiday at Sea ; outspoken medical experts interested in nutrition; Trooper; ocean blues; The Carribean, The Everglades; Sam, Mom and Auntie

And, it's a wrap! I've completed my Space Explorer 365 project posting 365 words of a science fiction story for 365 days about Earthlings fleeing their planet to settle on Pluto. The story shifted point of view with each season from the second-person "you" in spring, to the close, hot "I" of summer, to autumn's third person, and ending with an omniscient all-knowing winter. Here is the very first entry, "In which, you begin your space journey ." See  Space Explorer 365 : End Season One, Reflection See  Space Explorer: 365 : First Day of Autumn Reflection See  Space Explorer: 365 : Entering the final season: a reflection on becoming omniscient It was a fun project and went more smoothly than anticipated. I posted every day and tweeted that day's post out every morning. More often than not I had posts scheduled in advance and never fell behind or bumped up too tightly against my self-imposed daily deadlines. I didn't get too ni...

Smart. Helpful. Challenging. "Equality, justice, fairness—these aren't ideas; they are a practice." If I could go back in time: I'd become vegan sooner and I'd read Carol J Adams The Sexual Politics of Meat (SPOM) sooner. And, yes, it's a book so notorious that it gets an abbreviation. This collection of Adams' essays and interviews is a "Read this!" for vegans and feminists, an excellent companion to SPOM. It adds to, reinforces and clarifies ideas explored in SPOM. Inspiring! Smart: Adams, a great communicator, has a gift for making connections. She also makes complex subjects accessible through her clear, conversational writing style. I appreciated hearing more about Adams' activist roots as an advocate for housing rights and for women affected by domestic violence. Helpful: In a hierarchically structured society, Adams writes about the challenge of forwarding ideas that are not in the dominant position — discussions begin from...

This is my usual writer's journal to keep track of the senses and not part of the Space Explorer 365 project (365 words of story for 365 days from March 20, 2016 to March 19, 2017) ... Taste:  portobello mushrooms and cashew cheese; tangy Kite Hill cream cheese Sight: cat's belly; a slimy, chunky, gray, cornstarch gravy Sound: flop; waterfall rush Smell:  pine Touch: fluff; smooth Extra:  zygodactyl, two forward-facing toes and two backwards-facing toes (owls); mundus imaginalis - the more than human world, the soul of the world; conte cruel -  any story whose conclusion exploits the cruel aspects of the 'irony of fate' Grateful for:  waterfalls; being outdoors