Mapping & Mixing the Senses at the Mall of America, Essay 8 of #52essays2017

This is my answer to the Mall of America Writer-in-Residence application question “What would you like to write about during your writer residency? ” which doubles as my #52essays2017, written with all four senses and remembered sight, offering this busy week of state and house-hopping.

I will write about beauty with all four senses and remembered sight. What is beautiful to the nose, the ear, the tongue, fingertips, and yes the eyeballs too? How do the senses fare in one of the most stimulating places on Earth?

I will explore the nooks and crannies of taste , smell, touch, hearing and sight, collecting organic material to run through my synesthetic still. For the harder perceivable clumps I’ll have to use my wordsmith’s hammer and anvil of insight to pound out the contours of desire and satisfaction.

Denis Diderot, the philosopher, encyclopedist and art critic who in his last moments on Earth reached for the cherry compote, that is, died wanting more deliciousness, wrote, “I consider that of all the senses the eye was the most superficial, the ear the proudest, smell the most voluptuous, taste the profoundest and touch the most philosophical.”

In our daily musings at our desk, my laptop and I will test these hypotheses, and formulate new ones: If a pink flower is distilled into a bottle of perfume will my soul turn that hue upon my spritzing myself with it? Can a song-inspired designer make a dress that can teach me to dance? Can I ride choo choo trains to work and back again without hearing joy or sorrow? Can I write a love-letter to the tongues of universal taste? Will I touch my girlhood in a looking glass while wearing leather, or satin, or feathers, or ruby slippers, or in a tank of waving sea anemone? Can I enter my father’s boyhood, or my mother’s, more truthfully through taste, touch, or smell? Is there a perfect sight? A perfect sound? A perfect smell? Is asking for perfect sensations too ridiculous to entertain? What is the smell of laughter? Can you taste a smile? Can you buy lovely? Can you sell hunger? Where in the MOA can you find natural beauty? Unconventional beauty? Ugly beauty? Metaphorical beauty? Beauty for all the senses and the spirit too?

I once was sighted, but now I’m blind. Having lived on almost every notch of the sight -blindness continuum, I will comment about what was seen, what is to be seen and what might yet be seen with a little imagination and artistic cross-sensual translating.

Helen Keller wrote that our senses tell us very little without the spark of imagination: “Without imagination what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row bursts into leaf, and the rose-tree shakes its fragrance everywhere. I know how budding trees look, and I enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds, and this is the miracle of imagination.”

In my ramblings as the Mall of America Spectator, I will carve a path with Moses (my trusty white cane) leading others through the promised land of gratification. I will work the Mall’s sense organs, aesthetic appreciation, metaphysical gleemings, from the mind’s eye out. Together we will map the contours of ineffable, ineluctable, and sensational beauty. Together we will anatomize the feel of beautification, skin smoothers and brighteners, sleek lines of suits and stiletto heels, scents that attract men, attract women, woo the nostrils, and tickle the visual cortex. Like true adventurers, we will explore plush Furniture music, intricate lace movement, luxurious leather goods and thrills. We will hunt for the scented candle that reminds you of your professor’s library, of your baby’s cowlicked head, of your secret garden. We will hunt for the sound of mirrored astonishment, in the maze or in my sunglasses. We will do archaeological digs for glinting rocks, in nature stores and at jewelry counters. We will make a study of dolls’ dresses and dressing like dolls, as well as more sophisticated drone-toys and the taste of rose cocktail fizzes, truffle oil and high-piled hotdogs.

I promise to faithfully scribble down the gasps and whispers, truthfully set down the pleasures, curiosities and explorations, honestly pen the trends and heart-wishes of the Mall of America.

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