I like the surrealist strawberries, so I'm taking on this task.

To begin this praxis, a general statement on my own interpretation of qualia: I agree with John Searle, who is quoted in the Wikipedia article on qualia (linked in the task description) that "consciousness and qualia are one and the same phenomenon." I think arguing against the existence of qualia, and thus against the existence of consciousness, is kind of silly. Though it can be fun.

So describing, illustrating, attempting to communicate some sense of qualia is to attempt to communicate the experience, in the moment it happens, of having a drink of water, seeing something so beautiful or so horrible it makes us cry, what it is that happens in brain/body and that thing, consciousness, when we see color combinations we love, smell, hear, and feel a rainstorm, touch someone we love, come in contact with nirvana, etc.  (Yes, I do tend to dwell on the happier experiences.)

It's not like people haven't been trying to communicate this stuff since we began communicating, right? Seems to me the major texts of religions are all about that effort, as is a great deal of art and literature: capturing and communicating the ineffable in word, deed, visual...

To borrow an analogy, it's like the rings that ripple out through a pond after you toss a rock into it. The rock is the experience, the qualia; the ripples, which we see only on the surface, are us trying to communicate the rock to others. Many people whose talent and wisdom far exceeds mine have spoken of those ripples over the centuries, and still it's kind of a fool's errand.

And so, into the breach...

I've decided to pick three things for which I have intense qualia.

1. Biscuit


The actual biscuit.

Eating it.

My representation of this qualia:


Contentment and light in the form of buttery bread substance.


2. Twilight on Sundays

Not sure this one actually counts as straight qualia. It's about both a quality of light and an awareness of the self in time...so it's not strictly a sense experience. But here it is anyway.

Angst. Sadness. Alienation. Fear. (this qualia does not arise for every Sunday's twilight, just sometimes) It feels something like this:

Another way to describe it is like being on the other side of a yellowish, distorted glass pane from everyone and everything else in the world.

3. The smell of rain

We're entering the hot months here, and the particular rain smell I'm talking about is that smell when the first of a summer storm hits cement heated by hours of heavy sunlight; the sun may even still be shining from another part of the sky. The rain hits that hot cement and the sharp ozone, metal, and water smell, the smell of negative ionization charging, changing the air (I don't care if that's not correct science, going for how it feels here). Suddenly everything is possible again. Suddenly life is awake and alive; windows and doors are opening into a thousand different places--it's a zing to the brain, to the solar plexus, to the heart. This smell goes through me like a little dose of lightning. It's exhilarating, intoxicating. I want to eat it, breathe it, become one with it.

If you could make wine that tasted like that I'd be drunk all the time.