The Seven Sensory Scenes (or, simply Synesthesia)

You glance dubiously at the food nook of Hearst and Euclid as you come towards it, the sun crisping the lines and geometry of the place. What could you possibly write of it? A menu of the restaurants and the wisps of Asian cuisine waft towards you, and you lick your lips hesitantly and shamble downhill towards the brick-red and blue-green establishment. As you cross the threshold of concrete to grey-brown wood, your presence is announced in the amplified creaks and thumps of your footfalls, and the shaking of the ground, a paradox of sturdy unsteadiness. You make your way to the nearest table, and settle at the edge, trying to take up as little space as you can, becoming part of the background. You swivel your head for a once-around, taking in the rolling waves of stir-fry and old oil, the scuffed, happily weathered grey wooden walls, and the eaters. Your stomach grumbles—you haven’t eaten—but as you sniff the air, you realize you might as well be full from the cacophony of smells that sizzle by.

As the initial rush of sensory information dies down and you begin to take things for granted, the loud, (libertarian) opinionated Top Dog door snags your eyes. You can’t but help and smile at the witty, pithy, bumper-worthy phrases and comics held to the surface with aged tape. The sun blazes from behind a cloud for a minute and you avert your eyes, focusing on the table and recognize them like an old high-school friend. Indeed, in the plaza of your high school, these green, mesh-grid tables sat around and were popular during sunny San Franciscan lunchtimes. You nostalgically trace a path across the mesh, but are lurched back to the present when a small herd of students leave, trudging raucously through the narrow corridor. The last member passes a cursory glance at you. You scatter your sight and decide it’s time to head back.
Macro

The fly reminds you of biology, of Mendel’s flies and Punnet Squares. You wonder whether this red-eye-white-marked fly was bred in a Berkeley lab. It’s buzzing around your table, drawn by the seductive aromas of spaghetti and meatballs the other occupant of this table has ordered. As the fly makes another aerial pass by the steaming pasta, it thrums by your right ear and you flinch from surprise. It then loops around and heads towards the plate, making a stealthy over-the-crook-of-the-arm beeline for a puddle of sauce by a meatboulder in the upper corners of the plate, but is languidly swatted away. Untroubled, it goes back to circling. In a stroke of boldness, it curves from above the eater and lands defiantly in front of him, twitching back and forth. Occasionally, expansive movements alarm the fly and it takes off like a boomerang, returning once the eater has settled back. It reminds you of a dog sitting by the dining table, pacing for scraps. You guess it senses you watching it because it gives up on the pasta and spirals towards your end of the table. It cuts a little caper on the corner of your notebook. Its thin legs worry about on the surface of the table, and never seem to stop twitching; whether cleaning its disco-ball eyes or crawling across the table, it’s in constant motion. With a final flick of its impatient wings, it takes off, and so do you.
Micro

You sit down in your usual spot and cock an ear toward two friends chatting at the next table as they flip through the menu. One student is Chinese, wearing an orange shirt. The other is a Caucasian guy, in a white hoodie. A waitress of T.C. Garden comes out and takes their orders, and Mr. Orange, as you refer to him in you head, orders in natural Mandarin. She turns to Mr. White, and he places his order in English. Once the lady bustles away with the menus tucked under her arm, Mr. Orange continues his conversation with Mr. White in English. And it makes you do a double take, really. You’re well aware of your own bilingual tongue-flapping, Skyping with your mother in Mandarin, and then turning to throw an English reply over your shoulder to your roommate. But to see it present itself to you like this, it impresses you, despite the familiarity in which you practice it yourself. You shake your head and make a note of it.
Auditory

It’s an empty day today, or perhaps you’ve just missed the lunch crowd. Today’s overcast, but warm, a welcome change to the balmy, undiffused sunlight of the past few days. A breeze rockets through the outside corridor, and it reaches you easily, without dissipating much on the usual crowd to wind about you. You glance up at the weather-worn, translucent ‘roof’ and watch as it darkens and lightens to the clouds that scud by. Each shadow that falls seem to cool you a bit, and each weak light warms, until ripples of warmth seem to breathe. The table rests coolly beneath you, slowly branding you with its grid shape, and the pencil warms as you scribble. Today feels like autumn.
Touch

You bring a Tupperware of miso soup and a hunk of baguette. Sitting there watching people eat everyday motivates you to join in their ranks of mastication. You sip the soup as you eye the passersby, relishing the little bursts of spring onion in the earthy, salty tofu soup. It contrasts nicely to the heavy smell of Chinese food carried about in to-go boxes and plain plates. As you chew through the fishy seaweed, you watch a red-plaid clad man order to-go, and your mind puts him on a lone rowboat in the middle of a calm sea, a bucket and rod between his feet. Polishing off the soup, you bite into the sweetly-bland baguette as a bald man in a snazzy Bluetooth headset and a suit saunters into Le Petit Market, and you imagine he is a terribly fashionable Frenchman off to some runway session. This charade goes on awhile before you remember you’re supposed to be observing, not imagining, and you turn back to your notes with a curse muffled by a mouthful of bread.
Taste

You’ve arrived at the peak of lunch hour to find your usual spot to be taken. You purse your lips and clop to the back, to the ‘inner sanctum.’ Up the stairs to the first table there, empty but for a bright ray of sunshine draped across it. You sit and look to your left at the choreography of eating, and realize we all eat a bit like tortoises, hunched over our food, our necks extending gracefully and our heads dipped slightly. A line of people waiting for take-out mill about the edges of the door, crowding in and leaning back at any sign of delivery. A delightful mix of color, smudged in movement and blurred by myopia—you should’ve worn your contacts. You turn to your right to take a look at the inner sanctum to find your eyes riveted on the garden inked on a lady’s arm, eating pho a table over. You recognize blushing lotus flowers, a giant lion-maned golden chrysanthemum crowning the shoulder. Generous red poppies cascade down into a string of dark dahlias, and your knowledge of horticulture unravels as the vines of green ivy wrap these blooms together in a sort of bouquet.
Sight

It’s your last day here, and you want to get a lasting impression, so you orient yourself for the table behind T.C. Garden, by far the Hearst Food Court’s most popular eatery. A cloud of methane suffocates you for a moment—reminding you of chemistry classes and Bunsen burners—before the fire roars in the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant. A minute later the titillating scents of sauces and grilling meats blossoms out of the open door. You can almost taste the hot beef and pepper sauce. Light notes of green pepper and tomatoes add a zing to aromas wafting your way. Someone bites into an orange, and its zest mingles with the already rich cloud of smells. As you inhale deeply, the greasy, cloying aftertaste of old oil insinuates itself up your nostrils and at the back of your throat. You wrinkle your nose and bury it in the folds of your sleeve as you wait for it to fade. Yeuck! You wanted a memory, not secondhand grease.
Smell

It’s been a week or so, but still, as you trundle down the hill to campus, the threads of Chinese food unravel and snare you in the webs of memory, as you relish the strange, keen half-hours spent at the endearing little food court. You always slow down and acknowledge the presence of the Hearst Food Court, mentally greeting it like an old friend and waiting for some snippet or event to float back, hooked back into consciousness by the sight and smells emanating from the place. You run your tongue over your teeth and wonder whether, years from now, you’ll get a wisp of oil passing under your nose, or see a group of behoodied Asian students, and remember this assignment. You turn away, implicitly aware that it has already ground itself into experience of Berkeley.

Related Links:
TOP BUN-San Diego Union Tribune
The Bennington Apartments evoke 19th-century Euclid Avenue (scroll down to the first black-and-white photo to see what the location of the Hearst Food Court looked like in the 1900s)