Raspberries

I’m not sure if it’s proper to say that we could taste the universe. I’m not sure it’s proper to say we should want to taste the universe, for that matter. All the same, if we could taste the universe, or at least the stellar dust clouds in a decent portion of our Milky Way Galaxy, it is not improbable that they would taste like raspberries. As strange as that may sound, it actually shouldn’t be nearly alarming, and glorious, and other-worldly as the simple reality that we can taste raspberries right here on this terrestrial sphere. Having taste buds at all is stellar! How bland would life be without them? Nonetheless, through spectral analysis scientists did observe ethyl formate - the compound that primarily gives raspberries their taste - in the stellar dust clouds of the Sagittarius constellation, among others. So, if you could protrude your lingual musculature beyond the atmosphere into the spatial void between stars and lap up the starry gas in high enough concentrations then, indeed, you may have the experience of tasting raspberries. However, you can a quite similar experience without all the interstellar stretching involved by walking to the local supermarket and sampling some raspberries there. When you do, you should be transported into a place that a famous author once described as “Elfland” - that is, you should marvel that you can, indeed, taste raspberries. What’s more, you should marvel that you can taste anything at all and that raspberries are something that actually exists. For if you looked through a high resolution, ultra-detailed microscope and could zoom in enough to see raspberries growing on some distant planet circling some distant star, it would be the most incredible discovery of our lifetime! Yet, when we see raspberries in a abundance growing all around us on this planet circling our star, our strongest inclination is to yawn or remark on their staleness. Raspberries exist! You exist - and you can taste raspberries without leaving this planet!