Welcome to stories from the sensory world. From nose to noise, gazing to grazing, scent to skin, cadence to balance. A sensory sandbox. A cache of adventures in the everyday phenomenal.
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Multimedia prizewinner, Fourth Genre I am honored to be awarded Fourth Genre’s Multimedia Prize 2025 for my essay “Smell Map of Kyoto in October.”
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published in Aromatica Poetica In dilution, divine; in concentration, rank. A small molecule of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, indole is present in flowers but also in decomposing shrimp, sewage, groin sweat, and the breath of aroused lovers. It starts as a faint whiff of horse sweat and stables. On Spring nights when I walk home…
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Published in Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific (Set Margins, 2025) The sound of the wind, like stories and epics, helps us locate ourselves in the world. I was fortunate to be a researcher with the Getty Institute’s 2024 initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide. In addition to our art exhibitions, my contribution…
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I have spent more money than I care to admit on gems that are essentially calcium carbonate – the same ingredient antacids and blackboard chalk are made from. Published in Orion Magazine, 2021 How does an animal sense the world? We can’t access another being’s consciousness, but we’re learning more about how different species touch,…
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Published in The Cimarron Review, Fall 2020 Here in this cemetery, some of the more elaborate graves have stone tables and round stools. My young sons are quite satisfied that they are for their occupants to play chess while we aren’t looking. On the boundaries of Chinese megacities lie cities visitors never see. Vast cities…
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Published in Living on Earth: Public Radio’s Environmental New Magazine, February 2020 Most of the time, living in this place feels like a respite from environmental woe; sometimes though we feel like we’re living on the front line. The intelligent find joy in water. If Confucius is right, we must all be prodigies.We moved to…
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Published in *82 Review, 2019 Sitting drinking beer in Chen Da Jie’s garden, we notice motes of bamboo sawdust drifting down on us from the roof. “Those bumblebees, they’re li hai,” she complains. In rural China, li hai is normally a term of approval. When you complete a long-distance hike at altitude, or a bruising cross-province drive, or…
Fiona Lindsay Shen 