Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: vampire's feast Touch: crisp clear air Sight: breath plumes in frosty air; golden light Sound: falling frost-covered leaves, crackling Smell: anise Quotable: "He was saved from hardening effects by the abundant kindness of his heart and his belief that human life might be made better." Extra: vampire's feast Grateful for: music

Taste: creme de violette Touch: hanging clothes Sight: a bank of violets Sound: a fine baritone; punning; Offenbach's music--can can--Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld); a soft cooing Smell: crushed violets Quotable: "the showy worldly successes of the capital" Extra: being 27; self-confident and disdainful; benevolently contemptuous; impetuous folly Grateful for: chivalrous kindness, morally lovable

Taste: coffee Touch: dusty tomes; step stools shifting; slippery Sight: London, Edinburgh, and Paris Sound: shilly-shally Smell: onions Quotable: "The difficult task of knowing another's soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes." Extra: a streak of misanthropic bitterness; cleverness; valves of the heart; the growth of an intellectual passion; an emotional creature Grateful for: bodily autonomy

Taste: spicy channa masala; tamarind Touch: lopsided aches and pains; chill Sight: billows of breath; morning light  Sound:  singing Smell: chimney smoke very like woodsy incense smoke Quotable:  "Fred's mind, on the other hand, was busy with anxiety which even his ready hopefulness could not immediately quell." Extra: falling in love; awakening love; spoiled; great epoch of her life Grateful for: good fortune

Taste: syrup Touch: pinched nerve and neck pain Sight: broad features; dimpling; dark eyes, thick dark hair Sound: laughter Smell: fir Quotable: "I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me." Extra: intelligent honesty Grateful for: reading

Taste: dense chocolate cake with raspberry filling; walnuts Touch: dank; huddled; mossy; stone Sight: bushy beauty; coral fruit for the birds; wondrous modulations of light and shadow; lavender skies Sound: sudden slope, alliteration Smell: chocolate cake Extra: tête-à-tête Grateful for: mornings

Taste: coffee with vanilla almond cream Touch: huddled Sight:  meadows and pastures; the great oak shadowing; valleys with wonderful modulations of light and shadow Sound: Fantasy, Mariah Carey; trees leaned whisperingly; a voice heard through cotton wool; cough Smell: cherries; rain Extra: gamut of joy Grateful for: music

Taste: chaider; coffee and buttered toast Touch: pinching toes Sight: nose spirals, symmetry Sound: slang; poetry; piano and flute Smell: grilled bone Extra: superior Quotable: "a wheezy performance into which he threw much ambition and hopefulness" Grateful for: music

Taste: banana bread Touch: wet paws Sight: blue eyes for a heaven; Rosamond Vincy Sound: sweet laughs for bird-notes Smell: sweet sage; fir needle smoke Extra: young, poor, ambitious; vicissitudes --a change of circumstances or fortune, typically unwelcome or unpleasant Quotable: "But anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor." Grateful for: good fortune

Taste: pumpkin Touch: an air of repose; dryness Sight: new vistas; a little filigree; a death's head skinned over Sound : quietude; chewing on pages, nibbling Smell: autumn leaves Extra: the dogs of Middlemarch: Monk, Fly, Brownie, Fag; sense of revelation; wedding journey to Rome Grateful for: home and inspiration

Taste: coffee; spicy chemical popcorn Touch:  a plastic cone; wet gauze Sight: a dark bonnet; fresh blood--bright red-pink; a blue-green world with a pale stag in it Sound: Jean Donaldson's voice and laugh Smell: Hermitage incense Extra: brio--vivacity of style; morbidezza Quotable: "I shall let him be tried by the test of freedom."' "After all, people may have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem weak and idle because they are growing. We should be patient with each other, I think." --Dorothea Brooke Grateful for: patience

Taste: limes and corn Touch: light, young feminine Sight : a small park, with a fine old oak here and there; greenish stone Sound: eagerly Smell: delicately-ordorous petals Extra: autumnal decline; weather-worn gentlemen Quotable: "On a grey but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and Celia." Grateful for: autumn

Taste:  creme de violette Touch:  a cool glass Sight:  colouring Sound:  sea breeze, fluttering Smell: seafaring Extra:  "a melancholy illusion" Quotable: "Shine on, orange messengers!/Repel the darkness,/tell Death: No rush./At least there's some kind of brightness." — Carving the Jacks, Dearly: New Poems , 2020, Margaret Atwood;  "No somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses."; "delight there is in frank kindness and companionship" Grateful for: friends, camaraderie

Taste:  corn Touch:  "little threads of tenderness" Sight:  microscope directed on a water drop; grouse and foxes; a little pale about the lips; flipped off and mooned Sound:  spun Smell: saltwater Extra:  strange impulses Quotable: "the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent" Grateful for: calm restraint

Taste:  "the fine flavor in a name like Brooke"; cranberry bread with Miyoko's butter Touch: hard lumps about the throat, a silky neck,  Sight: "blooming from a walk in the garden" Sound: "a sharp note of surprise" Smell: rose Extra: capricious; stalwart; constant Quotable: "...Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been requiring of you to see the stars by daylight." Grateful for: days off with the dogs