Naming flavors...

It's not uncommon to meet lifeforms with unique biological wiring issues. Some of us are color blind, some can't whistle, others have an extra pinkie. It happens. One of my physi(ologi)cal foibles is that I can't really put names to tastes. Which is to say that if you blindfold me and serve me an unnamed food item, I will have an extraordinarily difficult time identifying flavors. The taste is fascinating and familiar and really I should do this more often because it's such a primal experience, but the name of the flavor or the food won't come to me. Now I must clarify that texture is another element altogether. If I put a piece of steak in my mouth, I can recognize the physical architecture of meat, so I'm cued as to which psychic drawer to riffle through for a label. But if you give me a bowl of ice cream in that dark and don't tell me the flavor, then the anomaly really kicks in. This all was made very real when Sarah plunked a bowl of ice cream beside me in a dark room. Who knew there was even such a thing as key lime pie ice cream?

I'd like to live in a world for a day or two where our consciousnesses could experience things without all the noisy words and labels interfering.

("Hermes" by Monica Stevenson)