Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: Interesting pairings--Raspberry-coconut muffins, sweet, fat grease; caramel and sugar snap peas Touch: the column of books sinking into my lap and sliding: the notebook, the slim novel with yellowed pages and the unwieldy dictionary Smell: the tang of fevered night sweats: salty and bitter Sight: his long, delicate upturned eyelashes as he invites me to the youth drag show; the yellow-black dart of a double-espresso stained tongue Sound: It's the dusk of early evening, but suddenly feels like 2 a.m. when I'm listening to And One. Panzermenschen=German tank Extra: off kilter driving in an emotional peak, "Because why? Because consequences. Because are we on this earth or an island?" (George Saunders, "The Barber's Unhappiness"); bouyant hyper geek-state joie de vivre

Taste: mint water with a hint of chocolate, sesame: nutty, oily, bitter Touch: soft, moist, grainy crumbles: cornbread Smell: perspiration, saline musk: we are working out together in an enclosed space Sight: push-ups, punching, jump roping the body in motion Sound: "Fuck all that, it's hella fun, dude!" Extra: it's hardly ever appropriate upon meeting someone to say, "You're so cute!" even if that's all you are thinking at the time; in his fantasy his friends could hang at his place all day and he'd have laptops everywhere so they could MySpace and whatever

Taste: sweet, tart, dusty red grapes Touch: the flex of a fingernail Smell: cedar incense Sight: purple collar, purple cuffs and purple shoelaces Sound: a divinity student in Kentucky Extra: a dream of a snowday in Seattle, very real with the mundane, this could happen, quality of a premonition dream, the woman's house is in shadow in trees and there's a hound dog in here somewhere; the stylish Japanese boys make me smile

Taste: finishing tastes: halvah after Turkish coffee, mochi after touring each temple Touch: the chilled ice of your ass, you've been standing in front of a fire on a winter night and never thought to turn your back to it; the stark effect of forgetting to be three dimensional Smell: new car, how long have they had this Prius and it still smells new? Sound: Sigur Ros, Icelandic music Extra: "You can get a lot done if you are willing to act like a spaz and run like a Japanese girl."; making connections, the clacking wings of Jung's scarab beetle

Taste: Pure Peppermint tea, Pumpkin risotto cakes, ragu of cranberries, Syrah - Mourvédre - Terra Rouge ‘04: Carmelita Touch: the fleshy texture of spears of just ripe enough mango like putting fingers in your mouth Smell: bonfire smoke clings to hair betraying last night's revelry with the same effect and lingering presence of cigarette smoke, but woody and of the outdoors Sound: recorded sounds of cicadas while driving creating an alternate aural dimension where its night, rural and summer, listening to the radio play of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine , "I'm alive!" while driving in morning traffic in February Sight: people's names on file folders, job applications, a person on paper Extra: Con amore - with love, devotion, zest, also a direction in music, "I shall undertake the revisions to my writing con amore."

Taste: molasses Touch: keystroke memory, refinding an old password with the rhythm of finger movements Smell: perfumed white tea, light green in color like fairy grass Sound: Chinese vegetarian, punk rock pop singer Lung Kuan talking with a slightly British accent about protesting the use of disposable chopsticks (160,000 pairs a day) at a noodle restaurant chain on behalf of Greenpeace in China Sight: obfuscated, Mars-like blood-orange moon, the lunar eclipse happens every four years like U.S. Presidential elections Extra: H.P. Lovecraft's tale of ice and horror, At the Mountains of Madness : "On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their fins; while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakes of closely drifting ice." Mentions Shackelton and Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym

Taste: cinnamon Touch: graininess, a mound of sand like a drum every tiny stone tingles Smell: ginger Sound: michelephant, spinning sounds into words visually separate but aurally similar Sight: cervine golden brown legs kick forward like can can girls Extra: joy: taking my shoes off on the beach in February dancing on the brown sand and in the chilling sea and raising my arms up to the sun; giving thanks to the muse, expressing gratitude; noticing how Hemmingway frames the story of the old man's battle with the big fish with a touching story of a boy who has faith in an old man and cares for him in his old age with fantastical reverance, attention and affection