There is a flavor to the world. Every moment, every situation and every place add to the flavor; making it more bitter, saltier, sweeter, sour or savory. This flavor is fleeting and hard to detect if you don't chew up the moment and take sensitive and delicate observation. Take the beginning of Salinger's Franny and Zooey. A cold and crisp autumn afternoon. A young man waiting alone on the platform of a train station reading a letter from the girl he will soon be meeting. While everyone else is waiting for the train to arrive huddled together in the warmth of the station house, this man is anxiously awaiting this girl outside in the wind, smoking a cigarette. The sense that winter is impending gives the flavor of a transition between savory and bitter. And sure enough, this flavor, or rather, hint of a flavor is materialized when Franny meets this man and the bitterness takes hold. That day on the platform was sunny despite the cold, the letter from his girlfriend, which sustained his interest and eagerness to meet this girl, was no more assurance than the sun slowly setting in the southwestern sky, that the moment would remain to be savored. The letter and the sun were one in the same. This ties into the whole Zen eastern ideology of impressions based upon the seasons. But there is an extra flavor that can reside in each season and that is savory. Adding this umami flavor to correspond with the world adds a whole other level of contrast depiction between flavors. Salinger seems to focus on the summer to fall theme, or the savory to salty to savory to bitter to savory transition. I personally prefer that to any other, although Dostoevsky captures the savory to bitter to savory to sour to savory to sweet transition quite well. Anyway, enough of this flavor, season, zen talk... I'm going to order some Chinese food... Heavy on the oyster sauce Buddha!