I generally don't pay a lot of attention to astrology (except for Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology, which I adore), but sometimes my daily horoscope tickles me. This is what my horoscope said in the LAT Times today:

Seeing is a miracle. Hearing, tasting and feeling are miracles, too. Appreciating your senses and learning to use them more fully will open you to favorable fortune. This is easier to do when you travel out of your usual environment.

This is a good reminder for me to practice what I preach. With all the sensory writing and awareness workshops I teach (I'm teaching one for little kids at 826LA next month), sometimes I forget to keep my senses open in my daily life. As the horoscope mentions, it may be easier to appreciate our senses when we travel out of usual environment, but I think the most profound appreciation can come when we pay deep attention to the things around us that we normally take for granted.

I had a fun sensory treat last night. Hannah was playing with her cousin down the street; she came home with three small Mason jars of jelly--orange mint, kudzu, and rose "pedal"--from the Restoration Cafe (which I think is in the South somewhere.) The jellies are all loosely set and are quite subtle--the predominant flavor in each of them is sugar--but if you close your eyes, you can taste the mint, the rose, the slight tartness that must be kudzu. The colors are subtle, too, barely tinted translucence, like sea glass. I like seeing them there in the fridge, perking my senses with their gleam, their promise of strange flavors.