Six Senses Sunday #39

Touch:
• The panic and pain of getting stung by a hornet. This happens at least once every winter — an interaction with some sluggish left-over stinging insect hibernating behind a picture frame I suddenly feel the need to move, or in this case tangled in a jumble of antique decorative spoons I felt compiled to take out of storage and sort through. One winter I discovered (the hard way) a hornet hiding in my sock.

• Hands bloodied on sharp snow. I should have put my gloves on before descending the curving, rutted hill on skis, not removed them and stuffed them in my pocket.
• The warm cork floor of the yoga studio, nubby cotton blankets for sitting on.

Taste:
• Homemade chicken soup with dumplings
• Bragg's Liquid Amino Acids — where have you been my whole life?

• Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
• White Russian cupcakes
• Organic Fuji apples
• Fried pickle. Yes, I was surprised too.

See:

• Chickadees pecking on the windows. Time to fill the feeders.
• Photos of my mom at 18, on her honeymoon in NH.
• Beneath the couch at my parent's almost empty house, a scrap of torn green wrapping paper from our last Christmas all together, 2008.

Hear:

• 3 kirtans in 5 days — lots of chanting this week.
• "She's a 10"
• "We stop serving coffee at 4"
• The pitter-patter of little Yeti feet

Feel:
• Lights on but rooms empty at my parent's house. Pulling out of the darkened driveway at night like I have thousands of times before, I realized that the only thing I leave behind there now are the ghosts of my own memories.
• Feverish and sick, I'm determined to stay in bed all day today. With my laptop of course.

Smell:
• I woke up to the smell of fresh brewed coffee this morning
• Exhaust fumes and old cigarettes in the cab of the old UHaul truck we took to RI
• Menthol waves of Olba's Analgesic Salve