Best of 2024: Favorites Senses, Quotes, and Books

In 2024 my word of the year was "Launch!" This totally happened. Done!

For 2025, I am going with "Publish!" and "Listen" (with a goal to listen to a song every day).

This year, I was busy launching my new business and I didn’t record so much of the senses around me. So, determining this year’s best and worst was quick business —and there was not so much “worsts," which I tend to bury.

Best of the Year 2024

Me, plotting for the New Year
“The Lady and the spaniels” 1842,
by Edwin Henry Landseer (British, 1802-1873)

Taste: apples, hot ciders, and hard ciders — cosmic crisp, hot lavender apple cider, pumpkin amaretto cider. I loved apples in so many ways, as usual. And switched more expensive wine for pints, or perhaps a schooner, of hard cider. Soundbite has so many interesting flavors.

Sound: cat purring, humans saying, “Meow!”

From Chopin’s nocturnes to Rotersand (concert of the year!)

Touch: the weight of the small animals — in laps, being carried, just placing a head on your leg, hand, or neck (!)

Smell: palo santo

Sight: brown pelicans diving in Magens Bay on St. Thomas island; the harbor seals lying on the dock at the Everett waterfront

Quotes of the Year 2024:

Many mornings are not this one. But this one is. — myself

“They do silly things with their bodies.” — overheard

“oboe of the violet twilight” - Eva Saulitis, Prayer 12, Prayer in Wind

"The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which had come over the interior of this stone cottage." — Silas Marner, George Eliot

"Almighty God, grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil, and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice among people and nations." -- adapted from The Book of Common Prayer, Prayers for Healing Books of the Year

2024 Books of the Year:

As planned, I read more of George Eliot’s oeuvre: The Mill on the Floss, Silas Mariner, Daniel Deronda, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob. I just love her writing.

I read more books about animal behavior. My favorites were Play With Your Cat!, Breed Difference in Dog Behavior, and Bark!.

I finished the year strong with two nonfiction books which really spoke to me: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Together We Decide by Craig Freshley.

2024 Worst Senses of the Year:

I heard a seal growl. I felt off balance. I noticed hesitancy when walking. I saw things in monovision. It becomes incrementally harder to move around night. I encountered the maimed corpse of a kitten. I saw the green water turned gloomy and oily. I dreamt of choking out an enemy. I don’t want to see or say or hear their names.

Comments

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Shel Graves' Sensorium

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