Tag: Taste

“Which do you pick?”

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green-paint-brush-color

And so I ask Helen my favorite question: “If you could have one sense back, which would it be?” Her fingers go round and round in circles, and I can feel the girl actually thinking in my palm.

“Which do you pick?” she asks.

Though I have been deprived of all senses save touch since the age of two, while she is only deaf and blind, for me the choice is simple. “Sight,” I tell her, all the glorious colors God has painted on lands and faces. Green is the color I remember with the most pleasure: green from the grass outside our house in New Hampshire. Blue still spills from that square of sky visible over the bed where I lay ill for almost a year, and Mama says my eyes were bright blue before they shrunk behind my lids. Red I have a strong and disagreeable sense of, from when they bled me with leeches. And black, black I know the longest and best because it is my constant companion. These are the only colors I can recall or imagine with any clarity.

~ Kimberly Elkins, What Is Visible, A Novel

This is an excerpt is from a novel about Laura Bridgman (1829-1889). Laura Bridgman’s family was struck with scarlet fever when Laura was two years old. The illness killed her two older sisters and left her deaf, blind, and without a sense of smell or taste. She is known as the first deaf-blind American to gain a significant education in the English language, fifty years before the more famous Helen Keller.

Photography: Media.photobucket via Your Eyes Blaze Out

A feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air…

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light-photography-nature-trees

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then — the glory — so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

To come so far, to taste so good

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woman-black and white-portrait-ponder

Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan,
stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark source.
As for me,
I don’t care
where it’s been,
or what bitter road it’s traveled
to come so far,
to taste so good.

~ Stephen Dunn

Credits: Poem – Thank you The Sensual Starfish. Photo by Andrea Tomas via Journal of Nobody
More Stephen Dunn: Is that a Path or a Rut?

Chocolate. Now. Full Stop.

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craving, sweet, candy bar

Todd Masonis, the co-founder of  Dandelion Chocolate, a beautiful little chocolate factory/shop on Valencia Street shares some tips on tasting chocolate in a post titled the Art of Tasting Chocolate Mindfully.  Here’s a few excerpts of his tips (along with my editorial comments of course):

1) “The first step is to slow down. Before you rip apart the packaging and dig in, take a moment to read about the bar…Chocolate makers think through countless decisions and this is our opportunity to share our perspective. Even the physicality of our packaging should draw you into the chocolate experience. In our case, the handmade cotton paper should feel soft. Like our bars, the slightly imperfect screenprinting should reinforce the touch-of-the-hand craftsmanship that goes into each of our bars….”  (DK: Really.  Slow down, huh?  Hmmmm. Let’s try step two.) Continue reading “Chocolate. Now. Full Stop.” →