We interrupt this holiday for no good reason

I am putting on an impressive layer of fat while visiting my parents for the holiday. There is a wheel of Brie in the house that we as a family of three have agreed to kill over the 8 days that I will be home.

We eat to excess and then fall asleep. Get up and do it again. I feel like a sea lion or a giant walrus lazing on a rock in the sun - minus the big rock to sun myself on, the strong sunshine, and the knowledge that there are hungry sharks and polar bears all around me looking for a fatty snack.

Beyond that it's been difficult to do much else. I came bearing my best intentions. I brought a physics textbook so that I could read ahead and do as many problems in as many chapters as there are waking hours. I brought "Middlesex" and a book of essays by Clive James, who I think I might end up liking almost as well as I like Chuck Klosterman and DFW (but in a different way.) And I brought my computer so that I could research to write the last of my assignments for my News Reporting class. A sports column.

No physics has been learned. I have been reading "Middlesex" in fits and starts and non-consecutive chapters. It's a pretty entertaining read. Though I suspect much more entertaining when read from start to finish. I have also been thumbing through "The Poisonwood Bible" in non-consecutive chapters. This also looks to be a pretty engaging read, with the same caveats. I forget how much I like Kingsolver. And then I pick up a book and am reminded again. (A young man recently said the same of my company when taking me out to dinner.) Clive James has stayed tucked in my bag and the internet has mostly been used to watch Netflix movies online.

I have been reading my parents subscription to the New Yorker. I never read it while in New York but am captivated when I am not. They have this article in the December 21, 2009 issue about stovemakers. There is a community of people who have been on a quest to design the perfect stove.

"How do you build cheap, durable, clean-burning stoves for three-billion people? About half the world’s population cooks with gas, oil, or electricity, while the other half burns wood, dung, coal, or other solid fuels. As global temperatures have risen, the smoke from Third World kitchens has been upgraded from a local to a universal threat. The average cooking fire produces about as much carbon dioxide as a car, and a great deal more soot, or black carbon. Cleaning up these emissions may be the fastest, cheapest way to cool the planet."
- Burkhard Bilger

If I were a reporter, that is the story I would want to tell. GAWD, it kinda kills me that I am not the person who covered it. Such a simple problem. One that is hardly recognizable as a problem, even. And the solution is nowhere near the neighborhood of the simplicity of the problem. Hell of a story.

'Tis been the season for season's greetings by text message. I have had a good number of texts wishing me a Merry Xmas. More texts than Xmas cards. Which is a switch for me. Is this a trend or have I finally join the present day?

I have also discovered that Men's Health carries recipes. They apparently have about 476 sandwich recipes. And now I really want to devote some time to the art of sandwich making.

Up to now my only New Year's resolution has been to set a timer whenever I put tatertots in the oven. Too often I have been forgetting the tots in the oven. I really must be more careful....

Perhaps 2010 should be devoted to getting in shape and making sandwiches.

The Marvelous Ms. Murphy

My girl, Brittany Murphy, died of a heart attack today at the age of 32.

She was in the movie "Uptown Girls." This was the movie that convinced me to move to New York. I was lost at the time. More than I am now. And after watching the movie, I wanted to move to the big city and start my life anew in an apartment so small that it had a Murphy bed and you could fry eggs while standing in the shower. Just like Brittany. The premise had a sense of adventure. I tell people this story when they ask me why I came to New York. I am here because I saw a movie in which Brittany Murphy picked up the pieces of her life and started again. And she did this in New York. They almost never believe me. I supposed sometimes the truth seems improbable.

In films she had an open, vulnerable, and sweet energy. She was a girl who had a lot of trouble growing up. She could be bad. She could be colossally irresponsible. She was funny. She was bratty. She was goofy. She was needy. She was ridiculous. She was a mess. She made bad choices. She found herself in humiliating and painful situations but emerged from them shining and triumphant. She learned things the hard way but she learned them well. She was resilient. She was strong. Stronger than even she could imagine. She was the girl who took a fall, got back up and rejoined the fray. And she came out of each struggle with a greater confidence, wisdom and dignity. She was the girl who knew when to tough it out and knew when to call it quits. Her characters were often lost, but when they found themselves, they found amazing determination and strength to go with that sweet cream puff demeanor. She could love. She could forgive. She could face her demons and take responsibility for her life. And in the end prevail.

I've been there. Sometimes it feels like I still live there.

Her process was worth watching. It gave me hope in my own life. In my own process of being and becoming. It gives me hope.

I don't know who she was in real life. But I will miss her onscreen.

So while you're here enjoy the view

Back in my formative years, I loved the show One Day at a Time. I have a great fondness for the TV show theme songs of my childhood. This one in particular, I find to be quite groovy.

The way a worthy goal reads

"These are the rewards promised you at the beginning of time: not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself; crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths; outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with irrepressible empathy; generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you; and a lust for justice that’s leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering."
-Rob Brezny

skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon

Last night I met up with SW. We had noodles and then went to see a Choral concert at Carnegie Hall. I was kind of all over the place. Sitting, sweating, itching, twitching, falling asleep. It was a lot of glory to God in Latin. But every once in a while the music would get me. The Cum Sancto Spiritu of Vivaldi's Gloria is a real rocker. There were also passages in the Handel and the Haydn that had me bobbing my head to the music and kinda rocking in my seat. Which I am sure was as appalling as me softly snoozing there. They closed with an adorable soulful rendition of the Hallelujah from Handel's Messiah. I mean literally a soulful/gospel arrangement of the work.

Which was fun and very cute but a little strange. It's hard to corral that large a group of people to sing the same vocal runs and stay together. This makes carrying off the arrangement challenging. I was kind of laughing about this (I meant in a friendly way. I did actually enjoy it.) to some people afterwards and SSl said something that I will paraphrase as - he listens to music and likes it but doesn't really dissect it.

I am that person. The skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon. It appears that my brain is too overly engaged in my life.

I was telling JP that I went over to DP's house to bake cookies and there was a bit of tension because I insisted that there was an order to how things should be mixed into cookie dough. Butter with sugar, then the egg and vanilla. The flour and salt and baking powder measured and mix separately and then everything combined together. DP lifted an eyebrow at me, a bit taken aback, but was gracious enough to humor me. I had fallen into baking mode. There is chemistry in baking, so why not follow protocol. JP thought that the point was to have fun and bake together, not to be a cookie tyrant. And that this was badly done on my part.

Skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon.

I find that when I read or see something that I think or know is scientifically inaccurate it really chaps my hide. I was reading this really delightful book about a guy who leaves New York for Italy to learn to make wine. And I was with him. Just riding along with him until he said that yeast are bacteria. (This was said in regard to the fermentation process.) And I had to put the book down for several days. Yeast are definitely not bacteria. It's called chromatin, it's called a nucleus. It's called years of evolution and different life strategies.

Skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon.

I saw a commercial in which a guy talked about moldy yeast in the cheese making process. Yeast and Mold are related but they are not the same. Yeast -> bread, beer. Mold -> penicillin, blue cheese.

Skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon.

I was listening to the Decemberists song, "Red Right Ankle," which I have always loved. But yesterday I actually listened to the lyrics.

"This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed
And how it whispered, "Oh, adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb"
This is the story of your red right ankle"
- The Decemberists

This may be the most romantic and passionate description of limb formation ever written, but it doesn't sound correct to me. The lyrics give one the impression that the leg and the ankle form separately and then fuse together. And I'm pretty sure that this is not how it goes. The passage is so beautiful. It is also, very suspicious and miraculous.

Skeptical killjoy crankypants curmudgeon.

So there is it. I take the fun out of everything. The beauty and mystery too. Spoiling my pleasure and that of those around me. A Bert in an Ernie world. Well, don't worry, I am likely to get mine in the end. Placebo effect? What placebo effect?

Be Merry this Christmas, Darlings. Be ever so very merry for whatever winter holiday you observe.

xo

Dressing for success? Or for yourself?

The first time JP met me, I was wearing denim overalls and a red blazer.

He has never gotten over this. Every time he sees me, he tells me that I am a tough cookie, that I am too tough a cookie. I was the girl in overalls and a blazer at the Symposium poster session. Back then, I was all about Epigenetics. And apparently, I didn't care what you thought of what I was wearing.

I wish I had a picture of that.

What was I thinking.

And what was I thinking when I didn't bring those overall with me.

Message brought to you by Pimm's Cup and Pinto Gris

I have probably said this before aloud and on this blog. (At least I hope that I have.) But I will say it again. After an evening spent with people I love and the people who love them, I learn again the following. In so many ways, the ones who we love teach us to be loving. To love each other and ourselves - through praise, through confrontation, by lesson, by challenging us, by example and simply by loving us and standing by us.

For the ones I love and the ones that love me, I am grateful beyond words.

only a dream

I had a dream that I went back into research. It was like the return of the prodigal daughter. I woke up smiling.

Feet all stomped up

Saw Skeletonwitch with the South and the Brothers H this evening. My, I do love a show with a good moshpit. It has been a long time.

You don't know the power of Styrofoam!

I watched "Bolt" tonight.

"Rhino is awesome! He's beyond awesome!! He's Be-Awesome!!!" - Rhino

It was in fact Be-Awesome!
There. I have spoilered my favorite line from the movie. And now, I want to watch it again. Right now.

Still here

Since moving to the City, I have become prone to making all kinds of strange and random generalizations about living here. And observations about what I am learning from my time here. JY has on occasion suggested that I unfairly attribute things to this place. His experience here is wildly different from mine.

Perhaps it's not NYC, it's me. Entirely likely.

Some days I find this City heartbreaking and utterly disappointing, at other times unspeakably beautiful and captivating.

The balance between so many attractive and repellent forces continues to hold me in orbit here.

I thought I would leave after 6 months. But I am still here.

Cuz a little spam is good for the soul

The kid who made this poster possible can be found here.

Just sayin'.

Train + Postal Service + heat =

On the train ride home I had this warm fuzzy feeling wash over me. I wanted to compliment people on their shoes, help them straighten their coat collars, help them retie their ponytails.

I have this happen on occasion now and find it a little bit disconcerting. Maybe it was because, while it's cold outside, it was warm on the F train this evening.

Someone must have been mischannelling something through me. Otherwise I cannot account for it.

But in the spirit of this disembodied feeling let me offer up a little CNSY.

More than skin deep

BBFK and Miss N came out for a visit this weekend. And a fine old time was had. I must tell you, those girls know how to party. Good company and good times, for sure.

I wanted to give a particular hat tip to the Bodies Exhibit. Which was pretty damn amazing. The human body is stunning. You and I, we are works of art. We and everyone we know. I was floored by their ability to capture and reveal this. And at the end of the exhibit, I got to hold a brain. Braaaaaiiiiinnnssss!!!!

I want to be sedated.

How else to soothe the savage beast?

That or punch someone.

Sigh.

I am no promoter

I sent an email out to a bunch of people inviting them to come out on a Wednesday without telling them the occasion. (Which is the day before my birthday.)

Naturally, I am getting any number of excuses and not much of a groundswell for it.

Which just goes to show what a lousy promoter/marketer I am.

Which is, in fact, fine by me.

As I sit here and think about this, I am reminded of one of RD's classes in which he said something to the effect that more and more marketing needs to be done by nontraditional means. The important thing is reaching the audience, not the medium used to do it. He came up with the example of reaching out to horror movie fans at the right kind of rock show. What if you could persuade Marilyn Manson to mention your movie during his set ... "Hey you assholes. You need to check out Hellraiser 24 when it comes out next week."

I suppose this generally only works with adolescents, who tend to think that name calling, a bad attitude and a derisive tone of voice = cool. And I am not sure that this is the kind of thing that Marilyn Manson would ever say. But today I keep revisiting the "Hey you assholes" marketing strategy and day dreaming about what the response rate would have been to an email that read:

"Hey you assholes, it's my F**kin' birthday. I am one step closer to Corpsville so come out and have a G*dd*mn drink with me."

I think my entire circle of acquaintance has gotten to the age where that sh*t just does not fly. But I am still quite taken with the very thought of it.

Latest note to self

My choices are my own.
They lead to certain consequences.
If I make different choices, the results will be different.

it meant a lot to me, it really did

It is strange how hard it can be to take a compliment. It is a skill to figure out how to accept one gracefully. To accept a compliment is different from merely thanking someone for giving it. Sometimes this is due to embarrassment. Sometimes this is due to skepticism or confusion or self-loathing. Sometimes it is a desire to not appear stuck up or too prideful.

The thing to do is not be a doofus, hear them out and find a genuine way to positively acknowledge what they say.

To not accept it gracefully is ungracious to the giver. A challenge to their judgment, their powers of observation, their discernment.

But sometimes the compliment itself is so odd or misplaced or generic that one does not know how to react. Often a compliment will seem very generic, even if it is sincerely meant and expressed. Or misplaced.

There is this quote that I heard first on "My So-Called Life" that went something like:

"What you are is God's gift to you, what you do with it is your gift to God."

It occurs to me that this idea comes into play with the compliments that people give you. When they compliment you on things that are "God's gift to you," they are complimenting you on something you had nothing to do with. Best to pass those along to your parents and grandparents. Chalk it up to luck, genetics, Providence.

But compliments pertaining to "your gift to God" are a product of your actions and choices. Often they are very specific to you.

At a show recently someone told me that she thought that my diction and my phrasing were very good. At the same show, someone told me that he liked that it was not just singing, that I was very Broadway in my interpretation. In the time that I have sung in front of people, these were among rare instances in which someone complimented me on my musicianship or my performing and not my pipes.

JY at one point called me a "stalwart lass" and JJsn once called me a "Game-y Broad." Which is basically code for "stubborn foolish (probably drunken) moron." I am not sure that either statement was meant as a compliment. But they were observations that jibed with how I try to roll in this life. Observations that made me feel like someone was actually paying attention and perhaps, liked something about me that I like about myself.

These were not all compliments graciously received but I will say, when someone compliments you on "your gift to God," ...

"There's nothing like it, there's nothing like it in the world." -
Richard Maltby, Jr.

want vs. have / want vs. sell

It's easy to get more than a little paranoid about your privacy on the internet. It's altogether likely that everyone is watching you there. Some are watching everything in general and saving it all, in case there are interesting trends to be observed, or they ever need to find you or someone like you in particular. Others are just stalking you or your cohort, the people who think, feel, behave and spend as you do.

I mistakenly keep thinking in light of this, some people at businesses would be able to find me, read my mind and offer to sell me exactly what I want.

For example this week I want to buy: 10 Temporary tatoos of the Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzalez and a very tart lemon tart or cake or pan of lemon bars. Alas, the internet today sees fit to try to sell me a blackberry, Levis, iPhone insurance, Tennis lessons, or a local piano tuner.

CK pointed out to me a long time ago that companies are not interested in selling you what you want, they are interested in making you want to buy what they have, by whatever means they can. Still, I live in the hope that the internet algorithms are eventually going to get so good that someone will anticipate my every desire and suss out the specific price point and make the exchange happen such that they make money and my material happiness increases substantially and significantly.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Meanwhile, I while away my hard earned cash on hot dogs and well drinks.

Positively Dumb

For many people the drive to correct and edit is more powerful than the drive to make a decision or share information. Often the decisions are absolutely necessary but scary to make. If your ego and reputation can handle it, sometimes playing dumb will yield you more effective results than asking questions.

Gear shift

While things were slow, I was the one kind of crazy at work. And now that things are picking up, I am trying to remember how I did things when I was the other kind of crazy.

mercy or fairness

The problem with enforcing excessive fairness is that you have to refuse people things that aren't that big a deal, because they are a big deal to someone, on principle if nothing else.

And trickled down to me, I feel petty when required to enforce such fairness. Would that I was in a position of enough authority to afford to be generous.

Healthcare Slow Jam

KL pointed this one out to me.



"Bipartisanship means, bipartisanship means, everyone can par-tay-ee"

Gifts from yahoo

It's rare that I read the news and laugh out loud.

"I think Joe's [Joe Wilson] conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the color of the president," said Dick Harpootlian, who has known Wilson for decades. "I don't think Joe's outburst was caused by President Obama being African-American. I think it was caused by no filter being between his brain and his mouth."

Paranoia and forgetfulness

I am changing all of my passwords today. And realizing that I don't exactly know how many places on the web that needs to happen.

*blink*

*head scratch*

Options

Make the choice. Speed or perfection. Insisting on both makes for great misery.

Two things

Two things that I always say yes to and then regret - Tequila shots and one more taco.

In the moment it's good. But soon thereafter I tend to pay for it.

Alas

No matter how singular or magical the moment, I snap back to reality too fast. If I could just hold that back and extend the savor, how cool would that be.

CSSF part 3, post-post

I am partly done with the bedroom. Partly done. pant. pant. sigh. There is a lot of cleaning, moving to clean around, moving back and moving more stuff to make way to do more cleaning. That and the distraction of instant movies on Netflix.

"Am I straight, am I gay?
And I realized, I'm just slutty.
Where's my parade?
What about Slut Pride?" - Margaret Cho

LOL! I have not seen Margaret Cho's act since her TV show. It's damn funny. Her impression of her mother is nothing like my mother but brings on a wave of homesickness nonetheless and makes me want to call home.


Amongst the things watched as a movie called "Trojan War" which is a teen comedy which is a cross between "After Hours", "Adventures in Baby", and "Some Kind of Wonderful". It's a so-so movie. But it does have a beautiful cameo by Anthony Michael Hall. If the whole movie was like that scene, it would have been a cult classic.

When I got back to my house on Friday morning, there was a sunflower hanging from the front door knob. I removed it form the knob. let myself in and put it back. It is only now that I wonder whether it was for me. I assumed that it was for BB or JB. If you happen to have left a fleur for me, I'm sorry that I haven't thanked you. You didn't leave a note, Dork, none of us can thank you. And no. This is not me hinting around for dead vegetation.

CSSF part 2 and the Bell Curve

The bedroom closet is wiped out. When dry I will start hanging clothes in there.

While wiping and rinsing and wiping, I thought of a bit from the one-man show The W. Kamau Bell Curve - Ending Racism in About an Hour. He posits that black people are responsible for American popular culture, especially the music. I am inclined to agree with this statement. During this discussion, someone asks about country music and he thanks the audience for that questions and throws a up a slide.

"Country music = the blues - slavery."

It's a smart, sharp, funny show. And if you get the chance to see it at the New York Fringe Festival in it's last show this Saturday, August 29 at 5pm on the third floor at the Players Loft, 115 MacDougal Street , it will be well worth your time. If you miss that, keep an eye out for it, perhaps he will be coming to a theater near you or head out to SF where he is based.

Cheese Sandwich Summer Friday

This rainy day is my last summer Friday of the year. *sniff* When the summer Friday part of the season appears, I day dream about a summer Friday in which I do all the daytime things that I always intend to do here - shopping sprees, ride the staten island ferry, visit ellis island, see the northern end of Central Park, do a serious museum tour, see matinee movies or theater productions, read and nap at home, go for sumptuous spa packages, write a scathing political ska opera. It's the summer Friday after time machines are invented.

Last year I did a whole lot of nothing. I think I spent two of them working from home. And this year, one was spent at All Points West, one was spent recovering from my solo show, one was spent cleaning in preparation for a friend's visit. And this one is intended to be spent cleaning and unpacking into my newly renovated apartment. As a girl known for starting her cleaning efforts by balancing her check book and checking her email, you can sort of imagine what kind of a day this might end up being.

But first I took myself for brunch at the Clinton Street Bakery. At the raving of friends, I have tried on two other occasions to get food there. Went at 10am when they opened, was informed that there was a 2 hour wait, and went elsewhere for fud. This time on a Friday morning at 10am-ish the wait for one person was 20 mins. My day off, why the heck not.

The blueberry pancakes are very very good. That maple syrup butter stuff was delish as well. But I was knocked out by the eggs. I got a side of scrambled eggs and they were sublime. Fluffy, tender, and slightly salty. I always get eggs and never notice them. I take them for granted as the morning protein source of choice. These were exceptional eggs. I wanted to walk back into the kitchen and shake the hand of the egg guy. Wow.

I talked to my parents. They have been bugging me about this electronic device they have recently heard of called a "Blueberry." Something that high powered and ambitious corporate types apparently use to stay in the loop at all times. They worry that the lack of a "Blueberry" sequesters me to some kind of corporate ghetto, some little cubicle sized box in which to rot in obscurity. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about and that the blueberry is a nutritious and delicious fruit but certainly not a corporate miracle. They have since called me two more times accusing me of being too stingy, too short-sighted, and arguing that it's the kind of investment that would pay off in the long run. I expect that they will be calling a few more times during the course of the day to further discuss this "Blueberry" question. And I am now dreaming of pie.

On arriving home I find that my newly painted windows are all painted shut. So I went at them with a butter knife. Hacking at the paint in the cracks and wiggling the knife to pry the window away from the sills. In my minds eye, I see Jimmy Stewart laid up with a broken leg watching a short sleepy asian girl with big black glasses making violent stabbing motions through the air right by the window with a red faced, cranky, determined look on her face. He turns to Grace Kelly and hands her the binoculars and the string tremolo swells as they discuss whether what they are seeing is real or imagined and whether to call the cops. In my zeal, I hacked some of the paint off the sills and will try to glue them back - for the sake of appearances - once I find the wood glue.

It's a cheese sandwich blog post kind of day. More updates to come for better or worse. I had thought of doing this on the appropriate forum - Twitter. But I seldom write in 140 character increments. I leave that exercise until my next free Friday.

Once upon time

When my mother was a young woman, she loved ice cream. And so, when my parents were first married, on payday, my father would take my mother to this fancy and expensive ice cream parlor in Seoul and they would eat ice cream for dinner. And at other times of the month, he would buy her ice cream bars. "They were different from scooped ice cream, but they were VERY good," my mother said, a little shy, a little embarassed, but beaming with the memory of that ice cream.

It is a strange thing to consider that once upon on a time the people who are now my parents were sustained by love and ice cream. And honeymooned in their apartment with a newly purchased collection of opera records, because there was no money to travel.

What you find in the reference room

I have just run across "The Cowboy Encyclopedia" by Richard W. Slatta.

I opened it up at random to page 291 to the entry:

Pull Leather
To grab onto the saddle when a horse bucks. Pulling leather shows a lack of skill or courage or both.

So there.

Background processes

Over bevs, a friend told us that she whitens her teeth while working at the office. She puts in the bleaching trays and scowls at people who come over to ask questions, promising to get back to them in 40 minutes.

Brilliant optimization. Brilliant.

In your neigh-bor-hood

Since my lock out I've been thinking a little bit about the Prof. Henry Louis Gates situation. I have barely followed it at all. It seems that everyone has been focused on the cop, but I have to wonder about Prof. Gates' neighbors.

Someone called in the incident. Someone who thought it was weird that there was a man in their neighborhood messing with the front door of a house. Perhaps they would have called in the incident regardless of the man's appearance. Perhaps they didn't recognize him. Many of us don't know who are neighbors are these days. We don't recognize them on the street or know each other well enough to feel comfortable asking for or offering help. And I cannot help but think that this is actually the heart of the problem. The nation of strangers problem.

One summer when I was a kid, my father was re-roofing the house and it started to rain, a heavy torrential downpour. Four of our neighbors rushed right over and climbed the ladder to help him cover the roof with tarp to prevent the front half of the house from being flash flooded. We were not close, but we were neighbors and that's what you do for your neighbors. I have no doubt that if my father was struggling with the front door, someone would have come over to see if he needed a hand.

Someone was trying to be a good neighbor by calling the cops. But those good intentions coupled with a lack of information, a lack of relationships, led to a really crap situation because they didn't know their neighbors. It snowballed from there to what it is now.

I think next weekend I am going to have to start buying lemonade from the kids up the street and make it to the block party this year.

The grooviness of life

Ungroovy:
I got locked out of the house by contractors again. WTF. A girl shouldn't need a hammer to get into her own house. My super cute khaki's are covered in green slime from climbing over the fencing. I am a little bit concerned that I will go home tonight and find that I am again locked out. I am a little bit concerned that this will be a problem next week too. I need to take a lock picking class. And even after I got in and figured out what happened, I was fucking freaked out for the rest of the night and the better part of today. So I started writing a song about it and I feel a little bit better.

When I think about it, I am lucky that I didn't get arrested trying to get into my own home, as Professor Henry Louis Gates was.

In speaking with G about it, she attempted delicately to point out that I have a sort of home issue, that there are a lot of people for whom being locked out of the home, even for several days (like even 2 weeks) would not be such a big deal. It had not occurred to me that I was not exhibiting normal behavior, that my emotional and actual reaction was outside of what most would do. (CK also said something to the effect that she probably would not have gone to the lengths I did to get into my own home. It seemed normal to me, in previous lives I have had friends who helped me gain access to my apartments when locked out. G also attempted delicately to point out that perhaps at the time I was hanging out with a shady crowd and it's a good thing that I no longer roll with that crew.

But I suppose is true. I am very attached to the concept of having a place where I live, somewhere with a door with locks for which I hold the key. I am more of a homebody than I wanderer.


Groovy:
I have three orchid plants at my desk. They are all failing to thrive in my care. Lack of light, lack of proper feeding, lack of good root aeration, but mostly lack of me watering them. When watering them today, on the worst of them, a plant with enormous withering leaves and decaying roots that I recently snipped back to stumps, I spied a little green rootlet extending out from under the leaves. Despite my neglect, despite impossibly unfriendly conditions, despite a lifetime of suffering at my hands, it wants to live. Such optimism, such an impossible act of hope, it's damn inspiring. The plant is flipping me the bird and doing the best it can. In the face of this, what do I have to bitch about?

Seriously.

Can't please all the people all the time ....

A young man in black with sleeve tatoos, goatee and stretched ear lobes complimented me on one of my songs at the open mic last night. "It was so aggro. We were all rooting for you."

And then he told me how let down he was by the sensitiveness of my second song.

Alas. What can you do.

More than one way to peel a banana

As some of you know, yahoo and my friends are my internet window to the world. For better for worse. And so while all of you have probably already seen this. My sense of wonder on viewing this drives me to post the link to this banana video.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5485051/14431318

I am going to buy a banana after work and try it.

Brain Freeze

I split a pint of Coffee and Donuts ice cream with the PG this weekend. It sounded like a heart attack in ice cream form. I am sorry to say that it did not quite deliver. I love coffee ice cream and I love donuts. But somehow the combination did not fly. I keep asking myself why? Perhaps the flavor was not strong enough to stand up to the red wine and the hefty serving of cow that preceded it.

At the time all I could think was that hot fudge would have taken it to another level.

Firstly, the coffee ice cream to taste more like coffee, a little more bitter would have been welcome. Secondly, It now occurs to me, that cold donuts are waxy and frozen donuts are even more waxy. You lose the sensation of fatty donutty-ness softened and warmed by steeping in hot coffee. Ideally, they could, make the coffee flavor stronger, soak the donut pieces in the coffee mixture and then freeze the thing. In this way ice cream would be integrated into the donut pieces.

And then, serve it with hot fudge or affogato style with espresso poured over it.

Still, I love the concept. If it would only sweep the nation, I could walk to the corner grab a pint and drown it in coffee. Ice cream on the brain.

Need a new train read

The gallant older gent next to me on the train got up and offered his seat to a mother of two. One in the stroller and an adorable little boy of about 5 or 6. He sat down next to me and waved and smiled at me. I smiled back and said, "Hi." He was taken aback, "You speak English?!" "Yes I do."

After some discussion of the number of languages that he knows with some amused input from his mom, he went happily on with squirming around, bugging his mom and making faces at his baby sister.

"What are you reading," he asks.

"It's a book about a guy who moves to Italy and learns how to make wine," I say.

He shakes his head and starts making that gesture for crazy, where you point your index finger at the side of your head and start drawing circles. And then, as if this is not enough, he brings up his second index finger to the other side of his hand to make twice the circles to the amusement of all on the train.

And while I do like this book a lot, I would have to admit that at his age, I would have been in complete agreement with him. It doesn't have a single robot, talking animal, ninja or superhero in it. What was I thinking.

More than parsley

Yesterday was my first CSA pick up. This is year I have decided to boogie down with the local farms, in a more committed way than groovin' at the Farmer's Market.

I have "every other week" vegetable and fruit shares that I am splitting with JB. From the point that I got the notion to do this, I have been waiting in anticipation for this day, like a kid on the night before Christmas, anxiously pestering the main organizers by email and phone to make sure that they got my contract and my check, speculating about what produce would come my way, worrying about whether I'd be able to cook and eat it all. Day dreaming about tomatoes, all aflutter over produce.

Yesterday I picked up:

1 head of Lettuce
2 bunches of Kale
1 bunch of Radishes
1 bunch of Scallions
1 bunch of Chard
1 Kohlrabi
1 Bok choi
4 garlic scapes
2 quarts of strawberries

Split by two this doesn't seem like a lot of food. "Seem" being the operative word in that sentence. For now, I am grateful for this, especially considering how small the fridge is in my new place. As the growing season progresses who knows, who knows. Still, it's clear that a half share won't last for 2 weeks. This was made clear to me by a co-worker who warned me that the product got from a CSA was much like what you get from a farmer's market in that the food is READY when you get it and won't keep passed a day or two without you cooking, blanching, or freezing it.

With this in mind, I ate the radishes and the kohlrabi raw with salt and a little cider vinegar. Kohlrabi crunches like an apple but tastes and smells more like a turnip. If we get more of it, I will have to get my mom's turnip kim-chi recipe and give that a go.

The strawberries are small and tart and sweet and fragile. I am already half through eating them and hoping that the rest not have turned to mush by the time I get home tonight.

I made colcannon, which is basically mashed potatoes with chopped, cooked leafy greens mixed in. In my case, kale, for others it's cabbage. At first I added half of my batch of kale to the taters which made it very potato-y with some green stuff in it. So I boiled up the rest and added that and had something that was more like a blend of potato and leaf. It was about 3 or 4 cups of Kale leaves chopped up and boiled in super salted water for about 7-10 mins. Didn't use the cream, used 3/4 of a stick of butter, some milk, and some of the kale water to keep things from getting too dry. Added scallions to the mix at the end. It was friendly, like having your mashed taters and creamed spinach in the same bowl.

In tackling the chard, I tried just frying the stems with garlic and capers and then wilting the leaves with them. Unfortunately, the leaves and the stems were much tougher than my internet recipe suggested. I cooked them, and cooked them, and added water, a little chicken bouillon, and a bay leaf and cooked them some more. At the end, they came out tough and wilted at the same time. In the less cooked parts, with the consistency of seaweed. A little bitter, so I added some balsamic vinegar and threw them in the fridge. Will have to dig up alternative means of preparation.

There are bok choi, lettuce, and garlic scapes in my fridge, waiting for me. The scapes in particular are of interest. Apparently if you have a lot of them you can make a pesto. But with two I think that is unlikely. Perhaps in an omelette.

And by the end of the week, I will fall back into anticipation and day dreaming about vegetables.

Naps Get a Good Rap

So, after all that huffing and ranting, I run across this article today about REM sleep and the way we process emotion. It would seem that the Universe and the Internet have cooperatively decided to mock me and rap me on the knuckles.

"According to new research presented last week at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Seattle, adequate sleep may underpin our ability to understand complex emotions properly in waking life."

This is research from Matthew Walker's lab at UC-Berkeley.

"In the small analysis of 36 adults, volunteers were asked to interpret the facial expressions of people in photographs, following either a 60- or 90-minute nap during the day or with no nap. Participants who had reached REM sleep (when dreaming most frequently occurs) during their nap were better able to identify expressions of positive emotions like happiness in other people, compared with participants who did not achieve REM sleep or did not nap at all. Those volunteers were more sensitive to negative expressions, including anger and fear."

Perhaps last weekend, I was particularly sleep deprived and therefore unable to correctly interpret the emotions of others.

"... in people who were sleep deprived, activity in the prefrontal lobe - a region of the brain involved in controlling emotion - was significantly diminished."

And perhaps my reaction, especially last night, is also in part due to a lack of sleep.

"If you're walking through the jungle and you're tired, it might benefit you more to be hypersensitive to negative things," he [Walker] says. The idea is that with little mental energy to spare, you're emotionally more attuned to things that are likely to be the most threatening in the immediate moment. Inversely, when you're well rested, you may be more sensitive to positive emotions, which could benefit long-term survival, he suggests: "If it's getting food, if it's getting some kind of reward, finding a wife - those things are pretty good to pick up on."

One can't help but wonder how many well rested people one interacts on any given day in a city that never sleeps. And viceversa.

REM sleep appears to not only improve our ability to identify positive emotions in others; it may also round out the sharp angles of our own emotional experiences. Walker suggests that one function of REM sleep - dreaming, in particular - is to allow the brain to sift through that day's events, process any negative emotion attached to them, then strip it away from the memories.

And here I imagine a black tar of negative emotion sticking to and building up on the brain after several nights with no sleep - as if sleep is a mental hygiene issue.

"It's not that you've forgotten. You haven't," he says. "It's a memory of an emotional episode, but it's no longer emotional itself."

This "separation between memory and emotion" quote is so great. It has the quality of a very careful finer distinction. So deliciously scientific. I had always thought that the separation of emotion from memory requires the passage of time, great patience and mental processing. But perhaps really good sleep would do the same. It seems like this would be true of positive and negative emotions, the ability of a memory to evoke a particular emotion can be a stunning and beautiful experience, the gradual muting of which is wistful. I wonder if those studies have been done.

That palliative safety-valve quality of sleep may be hampered when we fail to reach REM sleep or when REM sleep is disrupted, Walker says. "If you don't let go of the emotion, what results is a constant state of anxiety," he says.

Which doesn't really sound like the fun way to live.

Overall this make me wonder whether people who never sleep or less much less, dream more intensely. Whether they just get into the REM part of their sleep cycle more quickly. I have always envied those who don't sleep. The head start that they get by sleeping less, by needing less sleep. They are awake for all that wacky life stuff, that I miss by sleeping.

But perhaps, I should leave all of that glamour to those who can handle it. Perhaps this mere mortal is better off sleeping on it. And for 8-10 hours a night at that.

Testing, always testing

Last weekend I went to a party and was handed a guitar and asked to play a song. I did. Everyone was informed that I wrote the song. Which I did.

I was then confronted by two people in the room who I have interacted with and socialized with in the past in a friendly way. They both insisted vigorously that they had heard the song before, they challenged the idea that I had written it. Which made me pretty much not ever want to sing or play another song for that group of people again. They can listen to the radio.

Later, at the same party someone asked me what I had been doing with myself. "Not much," I said, "a little cooking." He asked what I had been cooking and when I replied he said, "That's not cooking, that's just feeding yourself." Baking a chicken, making some cabbage, making polenta apparently is not cooking.

This is another person who I have interacted with and socialized with in the past in a friendly way.

My impression of these people was that they were pretty nice and reasonable to interact with socially. I'm sure that I will do so in the future. But the day after the party, I pretty much wanted to travel back in time and punch each of them in the face. This is probably why I haven't made a lot of friends since moving here.

This city is full of people doing and designing and creating. They run around and brag endlessly about themselves and how amazing they are. Everyone has a 1-5 minute spiel that is designed to impress and amaze.

It can get overwhelming, even numbing after a while. Reminding me of two quotes from movies set in New York:

Marie in When Harry Met Sally - "Everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn't possibly all have good taste and a sense of humor."

And Holly Golightly - "Do you think she's talented? Deeply and importantly talented?"

You keep having to check your gut. Is this person's elevator dog and pony show an accurate reflection of who they are and what they can do? Or are they just really good at the sell. Are they actively lying? Are you or they delusional? Or is it worse, they are sincere but deluding themselves? Or are they the real deal?

People keep asking for your credentials.

A blogger? For who? Does someone pay you to blog?
A writer? What have you published? Who is your agent?
A singer? What label are you on? Where do you gig?
College educated or higher? Where did you get your degree? Who did you study with? What did you study? Do you know so and so?
And so on.

On the flip side of that, it's a city-wide pastime to buy tickets, sit in the audience and to make judgements, form opinions. The best of this, the finest of that, the cheapest this, the most original that, the newest this, the most amazing that. Having opinions, becoming a critic, an expert, an aficionado, can become a full time hobby and in this city in many cases, even a paying job. Professional listener, professional audience member, professional observer. Everyone lives an examined life in that they pass judgments when they go out and pursue urban experiences. The self examination extends to the questions of : Do I like it, do I enjoy it? Why or why not?

I am no different in this.

It's a terrifying place to create. When I am trying to tell the truth or reveal myself, to offer up something precious about myself, there will be someone who is judging my offer as a commodity, a purchased experience to be compared with all of the others that they have encountered. It's a terrifying place to blog. People who I don't know very well, have this url and will judge me based on what I write here. My every pore, neurotic thought, typo and grammatical error.

Many here are brave. They reveal what is precious to them. They show you everything in the process. Every line, every stroke, confident that you will be won over, or get invested in the outcome.

For me creating is a delicate process. It is more like that wine commercial from the 80's, "We will sell no wine before its time."

Inspiration is shy and timid, she needs nurturing and shelter, a feeling of safety. She is a nervous thing to be tamed. Things revealed before they are ready, wilt and die. Things revealed before they are strong enough crumple into a bits.

And some days it's all that I can do to keep from smashing them to dust myself before they are ready. To see them crushed by another hands is unbearable.

I am too thin skinned for life. I am going to die alone and obscure. The glitterati can go F*** themselves.

If I could draw I would do nothing else

Salsa soothes the savage beast

Gaaawdddd! I am on the verge of bitchy today. It is a miracle that, I have not caused physical or mental trauma. *knock on wood* The pants are cranky.

I pause from this about to be horrible mood to announce that I am in love with:




this salsa.

Up until recently, I have not been much for Salsa watery tomato puree on my chips to help me choke them down when sitting at a Mexican joint in a haze of hunger.

Until now.

One evening I was over at CK's and she had a bag of lime flavor tostitos and a jar of the Desert Pepper Salsa Diablo.

We never made it out to dinner because I would not be parted from the snacks and there was enough cheap wine in the house to keep her watered. I basically inhaled the jar and licked the lid. To assuage my guilt I brought over another jar when I next visited but could not keep myself from asking if I could crack it open.

Out of sight was out of mind until last night when I walked by display of tortilla chips in the grocery store. I wandered down the aisle, curious to see what kinds of salsa they carried. And there it was. The rest of the evening was spent having one more chip with salsa.

The downside to this is after the burning and the flavor subsides, I am left with a stomach full of corn chips. They settle like a giant rock. But hey, all things come at a price. Perhaps at this time of the month it's not chocolate but spicy salsa that soothes the savage beast. My mood was much better until I ran out of chips and salsa at my desk today.

Regional pastimes

In Chicago, many apartment buildings have a back structure allowing every unit to have a small deck/patio area. Makes it easier to be a smoker. You can just open the backdoor and step out into the open air. You can put out a window box, a couple of potted plants, a funky ceramic ashtray, some comfy lawn chairs and kick it all summer. Have drinks, shoot the breeze, smokey-smoke. Very chill.

Places I want to remember

I have this fear that I am going to forget where I have been and what I have done while living here. Primarily it's been eating a drinking, I think. At least those are the parts that I seem to remember the best. That and the amazing rock show here and the awesome exhibit or other kind of performance there.

As an Aide-memoire I spent a bit of time yesterday creating the following:

The Map of My Stomach


View The Map of My Stomach in a larger map



The Geography of My Liver


View The Geography of My Liver in a larger map

They are works in progress. You can click on the markers, you can grab the map and move the center. There are places I have been that are not included here. Certainly. But these are the ones that I want to remember. Got a restaurant or bar suggestion? Leave a comment, please.

making a mix

The beauty of having friends in their 20's is the clever applications that they quickly pick up and take for granted as an integral part of their lives. Awesome applications that I am the last to encounter, discovered from passing mention. Most of the modern world would have gone unnoticed, completely glossed over without them.

Recently mentioned in passing by the Amazing AM:

8tracks.com

It's a site where you can create playlists of songs.

*love*

Big big bowls

Met up with CK and JK yesterday at Shanghai Mong for some noodles.

CK and I were so hungry that we greeted each other in this way:

"Dumplings?"
-"Yeah."

and then proceeded to chow on a bunch of kimchi and daikon while discussing the fact that we were so hungry that we feared that we were metabolizing our internal organs while sitting at the table.

When JK joined us, it got slightly more social, but only slightly. Appropriately girly topics of conversation were introduced that I scarcely followed while shoveling and slurping the Chajang myun and Cham Pong. Not lady-like but primal and deeply satisfying. I was hunched over my bowl a little to intently to notice whether I was the only one.

*burp*

It's possible that the best things in life are free. But today it feels improbable.

I want to meet this woman

Two word dialogues in the future

I watched the movie "Wall-E" this past weekend. For most of the movie two words are repeated "Eeeeeeva" and "Wall-eeeee" apparently with gestures, posture, and changes in "facial expression" by which I mean the shape and position of the "eyes" (with robots) volumes and volumes can be expressed and communicated.

It turns out that CK is right - language is one part of the process of communication. But it's not everything.

It's a delightful movie. There were moments where the cynic in me would start tapping on my shoulder and pointing at the screen but then the movie would shift and all was good again.

How strange to have a digitally animated robot remind me that love is more than a feeling. Love is a verb. To love is to pay attention, to support, to sustain, to listen, to understand, to protect. Love is devotion. Yeah, and all that jazz. But there is it.

And if ever you are attacked by robots, play them the soundtrack from "Hello Dolly." They seem to like that pretty well.

hoppity hop hop games

JY and I walked by parents chalking out a hopscotch pattern on the sidewalk on the way to brunch. It didn't look right. Mind you, I haven't played hopscotch in so long and I don't remember the rules.

I commented on this feeling of not-rightness to JY and he replied that perhaps I was being too rigid and unyielding about how the game was played. Maybe he has a point, it's fine to set whatever rules you want for hopping games on the sidewalk. Hrumph. Nonetheless, whatever that game might be, it wasn't hopscotch. Must be the curmudgeon in my shining through on a fine Memorial Day weekend. "Get off my lawn!"

The smell of crushed grass

I rarely check listing for bands coming to town anymore.

When I do, my heart races , my stomach tightens up, I get jittery and I need to go to the show. I need to be there and feel the music. I in fact need to see a bunch of shows that are happening concurrently and before even knowing whether I can afford tickets, whether or not the show is sold out, whether I have prior commitments, I am already tearing my heart to bits and trying to figure out if I can can see any or all of them or even just a little snippet here and there. I make a freak of myself though I generally try to keep it to myself. Contain the histrionics in a calm work place friendly exterior.

But Wednesday, despite my resolve to ignore the Oh My Rockness email, I opened it. And now I know what I am missing this weekend and my heart hurts. The pangs of my live music addiction. Peaches. I am missing Peaches. Gah! And Goes Cube and the Pop Music Festival.

I did go see a show on Thursday with JY. Curtis Eller, an amazing banjo singing, showman. Wireless set up on the banjo makes for antics of the best sort. Also on the bill were Robin Aigner one woman old school folkie and Thinguma Jigsaw a duo from Norway who describe their music as "Splatter Folk" or "Snuff Pop." Picture Neil Young's vocals paired with some driving banjo, accompanied by flute, the saw or melodica. They claim that their influences are folk music and art/cult/horror films. At one point in their set they proposed a toast: "To Doom and Emptiness" which is now my new favorite toast ever.

It was enjoyable but it was not my show. Not my idea. So on Friday, I checked the Oh My Rockness listings and took the M train out to Bushwick.

Dan Deacon was playing a show with his ensemble in what looked to be an abandoned urban lot right next to the overhead subway. The trains ran by with regularity and the subways conductors honked their horns an waved to us when they passed by. As it got dark the light from the train created a periodic shift of mood shedding a fluorescent glow on us all.

It was a ToddP show, I've heard of ToddP but have not until now witnessed his work. They built a stage that day and brought tons and tons of speakers. Which they were wiring and setting up all over. They put up a big white sheet at the back of the stage and a guy with a really high ladder attached a projector to a really big pole to project images onto the sheet.

The space was fenced in with rocks everywhere and weeds and dirt. It was utterly random. The show was supposed to start at 6pm. I got out of the office late around 6:30 and while I thought I'd miss most of the show decided that I might as well head out and see what was up. They were not ready yet when I got there around 7:18 so I got to loiter around, read a little and people watch. So much beautiful youth. I had to wonder where all of these people come from and what do they do for a living. If anything. Many of them were clearly kids. It was an all ages show. Haven't been to one of those in I can't say how long. And of course in my workplace appropriate attire I stuck out like a sore thumb. But for me the alienation is a part of being out and about in NYC experience, like parley with a Diner plate.

A couple of kids from the neighborhood got up on stage and asking for donations to help their basketball team and a bunch of us came up to the stage and handed them crumpled dollar bills. It felt strangely and uncharacteristically community-like.

Eventually the first band started: Teeth Mountain. There were about seven or eight people on stage. Two drummer, two laptops, one with a keyboard, a guy playing random noodley things, a violinist with many pedals and noodley things, and a guy playing the saxophone. It was noise and cacophony with a strong tribal drumbeat. Who does not love toms? I ask you.

Up next was: Future Island. A bass player, a guy with keyboard and laptop, and one really intense hardworking singer. One might dismiss them as a catchy harmless electro-pop band were it on for the sweating, emoting, screaming, growling, massive expression of artistic commitment and humanity that was their front man.

And then Dan Deacon and his ensemble, the bazillion people in decorated white jumpsuits bearing and playing instruments. Dan Deacon had an arm in a sling but this did not stop him from holding court and running the biggest romper room / mickey mouse extravaganza this side of the Rio Grande. The music was manic and zany and catchy. Almost impossible to dance yet irresistable. And then there were the group activities. To get us in the right frame of mind he had us raise and arm to the sky, shout a greeting and give thanks to the neighborhood for allow us to have an outdoor show. He made us sing one note. Over and over conducted by him as his instrument. He had games and dances with rules for the whole group to participate in. He created these all inclusive dance game phenomena during the show. In one that was particularly cute, two people would stand facing each other with their arms stretched out and up towards each other. Two new people would walk under the bridge of their arms and stop at the other side, facing each other with their arms stretched out and up towards each other. As more and more people joined, it became this human tunnel of people dancing and waving their arms that grew and grew, snaking through the open space. It was quite lovely. And with all of these games people started to smile at themselves, at each other, at perfect strangers.

This broke up the whole mosh pit crowd surfing cycle from time to time. I stepped into the pit for a bit. Which was, as always, psychically cleansing. A stomping, sweaty, churning mass steeped in the smell of the unwashed and crushed grass and weeds underfoot. Good times and peril. People were dropped while trying to crowd surf. People were kicked in the head by crowd surfers. People tripped and fell on themselves or the rocks that were everywhere or backpacks and bottles strewn on the ground. Dan Deacon repeatedly cautioned everyone to be careful and even asked people to refrain from crowd surfing during the last song. Which surprisingly, they did.

Sometimes fueled by booze and weed and adrenaline and fast manic music, things get a little out of hand. Crowds can take on a life of their own and the experience of the sum vs. the parts something else entirely. On the train ride home, I noticed a blood stain on the sleeve of my trench coat. It was dark and in the crush of humanity, I cannot know who that was or how serious his or her injury was. I can only hope that they are okay, they don't need stitches, and that they have had a recent tetanus shot.

At the close of the night Dan Deacon has us again raise our arms into the sky and thank the neighborhood again. We invited them to visit our homes and eat as much of our roommates' food as they wanted. ToddP added a request to clean up after ourselves, to not take beer out past the fence, and to refrain from being assholes while out on the streets of Bushwick.

And then I caught the train home and fell dead asleep. I woke up today feeling more human than I have in a while.

Love and Lettuce

Love is grand but to nurture and sustain it takes effort, and patience, and persistence. So it is in "The $64 Tomato," a gardener's memoir by William Alexander. William, the director of technology, and his wife Anne,a medical doctor moved their family to the Big Brown House the Hudson Valley and built the garden of their dreams. A 2,000 square foot garden - flowers, vegetables, herbs, fruit, fruit trees, the works.

And here begin the often humorous trials of William. To grow a garden is not merely a matter of pushing seeds into the ground and waiting for plants to shoot up and offer up their bounty. There is A LOT more to it. The weather, the water, getting pollinators, the weeds, the worms, the japanese beetles, the squirrels, the deer, groundhogs, fungus, the planting, the planning, the fertilizing, the watering, the contractors, and so on, including even the challenge of going from not enough to too much plenty. He recounts his progression from idealistic organic gentleman farmer to food growing realist defending his crop in many cases in the end almost by any means necessary. And the way the garden becomes

"an inseparable part of me, a third partner in our marriage ...we'd been arranging vacations around harvests, I'd been spending virtually all my leisure time between May and October tending it, and more than once it had own marital discord."

The book is about a labor of love. The story of a man's obsession and passion for cultivation. And perhaps a passion like this is unsustainable. It wears on the heart and the body.

The book closes in his tenth year of gardening. He has come from the doctor who has told him that he has neck injury, a herniated disk in his spine and advises against heavy lifting. Which is a tall order for someone whose hobby is the bulk of the heavy labor involved in the cultivation of 2,000 square feet.

Injury aside, he admits that he has felt increasing dissatisfaction with his garden. And he begins to question the pursuit altogether:

"In short, I am the Existentialist in the Garden. Camus in the chamomile. Sartre in the salad. How on earth did I get here, and how do I get out? Do I want to get out? If this garden is my war, then the golf course is surely Armageddon. What I've been doing is rewarding, nourishing, and reflective of a philosophical belief in self-sustenance and healthy,m fresh food - but how do I make it fun again? This is, after all, supposed to be a hobby, not a burden. I think about the burden of canning peaches: my lesson in how quickly novelty becomes ritual becomes chore.

The great, terrifying existentialist question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I've always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses, and do something about it."

The latter part of this quote is a part of my own struggle too, only without the groundhogs and the pounds and pounds of horse manure.

He does a calculation of the cost associated with each of his heirloom tomatoes coming to the amount which is the title of the book. And he cannot help but ask himself and his wife the

"... unspoken question troubling me, one that spanned months, years, ages. A question I both had to ask and was afraid to ask.

'Was it worth it?'

"Anne deliberately closed the journal, placed both hands on the cover, and looked up at me.

And smiled."

He does it for the food, for the empowerment, For the rituals of the growing and harvest season that he and his family has developed over the years,
to repeatedly witness "the cycle of birth and resurrection in the garden."

He does it because "Gardening is, by it's very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there's always next year," and because on most days, despite the trials and tribulations, he loves to garden:

" A common bumper sticker reads 'A bad day fishing beats a good day at work.' Yes, I've had some rocky times, but I suppose on most days, when the weeds are somewhat under control, the groundhogs tamed, and my neck isn't throbbing, I feel the same way about gardening."

"Things I remember: Witnessing childbirth. Finding myself standing absolutely alone before Da Vinci's Last Supper. And planting potatoes on a perfect spring morning."

Sometimes our love consumes us and wears us down to the point where we get lost, mired in the endless details and demands of its care and pursuit and upkeep. Sometimes it's the endless demands and details of life in addition. And you need to resurface and find the reminder that you do in fact love, why you love, what you love and how that feels.

The book closes with William pondering his garden. We do not know where he goes from here. We leave him taking a tomato in from his garden for lunch.

Mixing to Infinity

I watched "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" this weekend. It has lovely moments.
The scene where Nick and Nora are dancing together. So lovely.

First Favorite quote: "She falls apart and I put her back together again." This is in reference to Nick's Yugo.

Second Favorite quote: "Look, other bands wanna make it about sex or pain, but the Beatles, they had it all figured out. 'I want to hold your hand.' It's the first single. Brilliant, right? Because that's what people want, Nicky. They don't want a 24-hour hump sesh, or marry you for 100 years. They just wanna hold your hand." Hand holding. *sigh* Holding the right hand is dreamy.

If I were a teenager, I don't know if I would have a crush on Michael Cera. But somehow when I see him in a movie, I am completely won over. I have a curious admiration for his precociousness and his awkward struggle to be decent and to have integrity. His characters generally fare much better than I did at that age. He seems to have an awareness that whatever indignities he suffers in the moment, there is life after high school. And I get the sense that he is on the way to becoming a really stellar dude.

Here I have to pause and ponder whether is evidence that I am a cougar. *covers forehead with palm of hand*

I actually walked by the filming of one of the scenes in the movie. There were some folks and lights on the street crowded around this block by the Waverly Restaurant. TBW, the South, and I and the work crew walked by on our way from the Fat Cat to Mamoun's. At the time I had no idea but in watching the film I recognized it. The scene where Nora parks Nick's car.


When I moved here I was going to a lot of shows. Being a moron, I missed going to CBGB's before they closed. From that moment I set a goal to see a show at as many venues as I could in the city. I have not gotten very far on that one: Irving Plaza, the Mercury Lounge, the Knitting Factory, the Cake Shop, Arlene's Grocery, Terminal 5, the Music Hall of Williamsburg, Trash Bar, the Rockwood Music Hall, the Living Room, Union Hall, the Galapagos Art Space, Pianos, Sin-e, the Bitter End, the Highline Ballroom, ABC No Rio, Webster Hall - these are the ones that I can recall.

Tip of the iceberg and I am still missing some really great ones. As a formerly rabid show-goer, I had some serious venue envy watching the movie. They hit some places that I have not yet seen.

Fortunately, I think there is still time.

Taste and Pairings

The world is divided in its perception of the taste of cilantro. To some, it is green, pleasant, and delicious. To others, it is like eating a bar of soap. I fall into the latter category.

A sprig of cilantro nestled in a bouquet of parsley is enough for me to consider tossing out the whole bunch. I pick it out of everything. When I order bun and I forget to ask them to hold the cilantro, I get a second plate on which to put all the cilantro that I pick out.

However this weekend I had a revelation. I went to Hanco's for a Vietnamese sandwich. I ordered the grilled chicken sandwich, spicy, and for once in my life, the cilantro was working for me.

The bread was crusty, the pickled carrots were the right kind of sweet, the chicken was perfectly tender, the spicy was impressively spicy indeed, and as an accompaniment, the cilantro was as it has been so frequently described to me: green, pleasant, and delicious. I was shocked. To the extent where I took a deep sip of my drink and chewed on a sprig without the spicy. It was soapy as ever.

So now, if I get into a situation in which all the food in the world is slathered in cilantro and no one will give me a second plate, I know what to do. Reach for a giant bottle of chili sauce.

When it's not Venn

Discovered via Rands, the following links are to things that are not proper Venn Diagrams. These diagrams are so so so wrong. This, however, does not change the fact that they are frickin' hilarious. In some cases even, slightly devastating.

And while you are perfectly capable of checking out the whole set for yourself on Flickr, I am still compelled to throw up urls for the ones that I like.


Venn Project #2

Venn Project #4

Venn Project #8

Venn Project #9

Wenn Project #11

Venn Project #17

Bases covered

One laptop dead. I think she's dead. I will take her to the doctor in case there is any more for resurrection.

The other, up until today, had a hamster wheel for a CPU and ran not quite as fast as an abacus. However, on the advice of the MO, I bought RAM and installed it myself. (yay me) Now it runs like hamsters on speed.

It seemed silly that I had two laptops. And now it seems like a stroke of genius.

The whine, the wine

A sign of hard times: I have been bringing cheaper and cheaper wines over to CK's place.

Of late we have sampled:
Chateau Diana: "soda pop with alcohol in it"
Two Oceans: "the swill that tastes like the sea"
GatoNegro: "The black cat on the label is very cute"
Frontera - "Wince-worthy"

Today I brought a very large bottle of Folonari which is chilling in the freezer as yet unopened. The anticipation is killing me. I would have bought a box wine but I have yet to find a reputable vendor in the city who carries them. Oh Franzia, what is my life without you?

My liver is about to secede. Perhaps this is a false economy and CK and I would be better served attempting to ferment and distill our own booze in her bathtub.

Burning questions

Just read the news about Chrysler filing for bankruptcy.

I tell you what, the first online source that can identify and list all the members of the "non-TARP Chrysler lenders" is going to get mad web traffic.

What you want when you have everything you need

Now I know exactly what I want for my birthday.

And you, and you, and you

I finally watched "Dreamgirls" on DVD this past weekend. I've never seen the musical, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. There were four new songs added to the movie. They were pretty decent. I especially like "I Love You I Do."

Beyonce channels that Diana Ross vibe with uncanny skill and precision.

And Jennifer Hudson, my God. She's WOW. She's pretty much very extremely WOW. I am not sure that she is bitchy and Diva enough for the role but I like her so much that when her heart breaks up there on the screen, mine breaks right with her.

According to wikipedia we have Jennifer Holiday to thank for the Effie White that is in this story. She was originally supposed to die in the first act. And thank to the Gods that she survived and thrived her way into the closing number.

Not that you or I would recall but yes, of the three (I mean four) I still pick Jennifer.

A one story difference

Despite my efforts to do nothing, to avoid change, it finds me. In this revolving world, the movements of others shift the ground under my feet. A move was requested from me. So I moved down one story.

It's a lovely place. While it is one floor down, the dimensions, the amenities, even the number and placement of the windows is different. It is a place with entirely different possibilities.

It was not a very orderly move. Then again, I am not known for my orderly moves. I am not know for being orderly in general. JB hired someone to do the heavy lifting for me and I did the rest. Lots of running up and down the stairs.

Now, I can't find a damn thing. Like losing your place in a book, I've lost my place in my life. What exactly was it that I doing?

On the other hand, I have also found few things that I had misplaced, reminders of things that I have intended to do, and reminders of other phases of my New York life. Some of them seem a distant memory now, like separate lives. I can't even remember why I stopped doing those things and being that person. I just did. Perhaps it was time to move.

At the heart of a cynic

"None of the media ever seem to look out the window. Everyone's used to being in motion all the time."
-David Foster Wallace (DFW)

You thought I was kidding when I said that I might devote all of my posts to quoting David Foster Wallace.

No joke, Friends, he is my subway companion and I am liable to start speaking only using his quotes in the very near future.

"The way the techs handle deep boredom is to become extremely sluggish and torpid, so that lined up on the ottoman they look like an exhibit of lizards whose tank isn't hot enough. Nobody reads. Pulse rates are about 40."
- DFW

All of these butchered quotes (someday I will ready the MLA or some other meaningful style manual.) come from an essay entitled: "Up Simba" that he wrote about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign.

" - what one feels when they [politicians] loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard to even name, much less talk about. It's way easier to roll your eyes and not give a shit."

"It's like we all learned in social studies back in junior high: If I vote and you don't, my vote counts double. and it's not just the fringes who benefit - the fact is that it is to some very powerful Establishments' advantage that most younger people hate politics and don't vote."

"Why do these crowds from Detroit to Charleston cheer so wildly at a simple promise not to lie? ... Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. We learn this at like the age four ... and we keep learning for years, from hard experience, that getting lied to sucks - that it diminishes you, denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systematic, if experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really just a game based on lies"

"It's painful to believe that the would-be "public servants" you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't yawn and turn away, trade apathy and cynicism for the hurt of getting treated with contempt?"

-David Foster Wallace

From the personal - It is common to think that pain and betrayal could lead one to seek justice, vengeance, sympathy, healing, closure, perhaps a state of grace where one can forgive. That's how it is in the movies. But these are not the only responses. DFW points out that apathy and cynicism can be a reaction to being hurt. A person can go numb or try to find a way to insulate or distance themselves through cynicism. It is a means by which to survive. A person's callous response to your pain may telegraph suppressed pain - an actual callous on their psyche over where they would otherwise feel empathy.

From the political - what John McCain was to the 2000 election, Barack Obama was to the 2008 election and I think what he is trying to be with his administration. Perhaps the thing to remind our leaders in business, in politics, in our communities is that lying hurts. It does harm. And when you do it, you hurt us.

I am only halfway through the essay and may have to rewrite this when I am done.

Hard Times for Snoopy

This NPR story makes me sad. :)

The recession and pets ...

A resounding gong or a clanging cymbal

1. I described myself as complicated in conversation over the weekend. The PG asked me why I was complicated. I was not quite sure how to reply to this. I told him that I want many things all at once and they are generally all mutually exclusive to each other. He replied that this did not make me complicated, this made me conflicted. To which I shrugged and said, "Tomato, Tomah-to."

And now I wonder if this is true. Conflicted, not complicated. I prefer to think that in fact everyone alive is very extremely complicated too.

Isn't there an inherent complexity to the world and our relationship to it? Yes? No? On occasion, I am accused of over-complicating things, both in my outlook / analysis and my solutions. I am accused of engaging in byzantine thinking as a self-indulgence, as a way to amuse myself. But that might just be evidence that I am a goober.

My new mantra (it's two days old) is: "What's stopping me? I am."

2. I was accused over the weekend of being "Real." I think it was intended as a compliment but if I think about it - I am Real and conflicted when I'd much prefer to be complicated and Mythical. How do I get in on THAT action?

3. Lately I have been hearing many people use the expression, "It is what it is." Firstly, tautology, redundancy. What's wrong with saying, "It is this." I suppose that it's supposed to sound Zen but it sounds resigned and defeatist to me. As CK would say, "I don't like it."

4. Because G has been reading DFW's essays and the South has as well, I bought "Consider the Lobster" and have been reading it on the train. I am tempted to devote all of my posts on this blog to DFW quotes, from now until the day I die.

"It's not that Turnbull is stupid: he can quote Pascal and Kierkegaard ... It's that he persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair." - David Foster Wallace

"No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." - David Foster Wallace

With new eyes

My new glasses insist that I wear eyeliner more often and have persuaded me to change the way I part my hair. I have become one of those fussy girls who plays with her hair all the time.

My new glasses have given me permission to smile less than I used to.

Mind you, as I had this thought while walking through Chelsea, a guy on the street said, "Miss, you've got a nice smile."

Drat! Foiled again.

existential justifications

Inevitably, when you are describing a groovy thing to a group of people there will be someone present who asks you, "But what's the point of that? What's it good for." To which I always want to retort (even if it's someone who I like), "What's the point of you? What are you good for?" And I curb the urge to stick out my tongue and then moon them.

Can you not just take in the utter grooviness of the thing? Can't that be the point and an end in itself?

Utilitarians make me bonkers.

Confidence Building

In talking about how lousy the economy is, people keep talking about the excess of fear and the crisis of confidence. As if it is an emotional problem. As if the economy and the consumer needs anti-anxiety meds or therapy.

But here's the thing, a bunch of people lied and cut corners and made mistakes and did irresponsible things. They were not regulated or supervised and they lost a lot of money for a lot of people who thought that they were making good investments, who thought that they were making safe investments. And that has had a domino effect.

What allays fears and increases confidence is evidence that the institutions and people that you are doing business with are reliable and deliver.

What allays fears is evidence that these institutions and people are accountable for their actions and decisions and the demonstration of trustworthiness. Evidence, not public statements carefully crafted by PR firms and communications offices. Transparency might help too. The more information that you have the better. What exactly are the banks doing with the money that we've given them in the bailout so far? What is the rationale for what they are doing? What are the expected outcomes besides bonuses and remodeled corporate offices?

Confidence has a foundation. It is does not come from sunshine and rainbows. You have confidence when you encounter a demonstrated ability, dependability and competence.

Other people's lives

At long last, I got new eyeglass frames. I was driven to it by a catastrophic incident in which I snapped my old pair in half at the bridge. Even after this, I tried super glue, electrical tape, crazy glue, scotch tape, duct tape, and then someone clued me into a miracle - nail glue for acrylic fingernails. But even then I rebroke them twice. It was time for a change.

As with many simple tasks, in NYC, this was an ordeal. It's actually an on-going ordeal. First, to make the time to shop for glasses. Second, to find a pair that I don't completely loathe. Third, to get the prescription right. And now, to get them adjusted so that they stop squishing my head.

All of this aside, I have another problem. I hardly recognize myself in these glasses. These glasses have distinct personality. They demand a different kind of girl. A girl who wears black turtlenecks with pencil skirts and boots. A girl who wears well tailored suits and big silver jewelry. A girl who listens to experimental music, only watches movies with subtitles, reads Der Spiegel every morning, and Le Monde every evening. A girl who scoffs a lot and looks askance at everything. A girl who used to be very politically active and is now very pragmatic and personally ambitious, maybe a little bloodless. A girl who doesn't eat sweets. A girl who makes other people cry when she is unhappy because it's more efficient than having her own cry. A girl who takes no crap.

I look scary. Smiling doesn't soften the effect. Smiling makes me look scarier. This is going to be interesting.

Everyday another boulder

There are days when I think the Myth of Sisyphus is no myth. It is reality. Office work is Sisyphean. As is bureaucracy in all its forms.

Sometimes I manage to roll the boulder up the steep hill and without a moment to rejoice, I find that I am at the foot of another steep hill with another boulder.

Would that I had an anti-gravity beam.

Gentlemen, can they rebuild me?

On Monday, I woke up to a day off. I sat on the couch, opened a word document and then tried to reply to an email while watching TV, playing minesweeper, chatting on IM, text messaging, talking on the phone and thinking about the real life things that I really should have been doing: laundry, cleaning, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, looking for jobs, writing a song, practicing, and reading a book.

I realized at some point that in the flurry of whatchamahoozy, I was not doing anything.

Oddly this is what my days at work look like if you substitute office wage slave tasks with all of the things listed above. It's not clear to me that I am getting any more accomplished there than I was at home.

This is why computers will take over the world. They are, increasingly designed to do things in parallel and run tasks in the foreground and the background.

Am I struggling to reshape my brain and behavior to keep up with the technologies that were supposed to take the struggle out of my life? IThe Luddites would assure me that this happens a lot. Then again, perhaps they were only designed to increase my productivity leaving my struggle intact.

Maybe I should focus on partitioning my brain:

Work / Other

Today we listen to the Shins and soak in the sensation of the chest cavity expanding.

"The gutter may profess its love,
Then follow it with hesitation,
For there are just so many of
You out there for rent

A stronger girl would shake this off in flight,
And never give it more than a frowning hour,
But you have let your heart decide,
Loss has conquered you,

You've won one too many fights,
Wearing many hats every time,
But you wont win here tonight
[...]
Oh girl, sail her, don't sink her"

-The Shins

In my ongoing desire to retain a sense of wonder about the world, I am mocked by those smarter and more world-weary who find me to be too easily impressed. But I think that it is they who have overinsulated their souls with experience and facts, who have stopped paying attention to the response of their hearts to what is all around them.

Let yourself be moved by a perfect shade of blue, calling out to you, or three measures of music that make your skin tingle.

It might very well be that the best way to make sure that people pay and properly report their taxes is tap them for appointments in the cabinet.

On the other hand, I breathe a sigh of relief that these are the biggest bones they can dig up.

SK (whoa.) SKH when preparing for his three month tour of Asia said that he didn't speak the language in any of the countries that he would be in. He said that his smile and his beard would be his ticket to the world, opening doors and winning friends.

I don't have a beard but I do sometimes wonder if I essentially wander through life with my smile to see me through.

Other times I wonder if it's the miracle bra.

quiet places

I have been going out alone of late. New York has places where you can sit alone and feel entirely comfortable. Narrow dark places with candlelight, where the staff is laidback, friendly and infinitely patient. Where you can sit and savor your life without feeling in anyway strange or self-conscious. Where you are somehow insulated such that you don't have to give a shit what anyone says or thinks of you - so you don't.

There are few (perhaps no) vast open spaces here that make you feel like you are alone and at one with existence here. But there are small quiet places that somehow make space. That make you feel like you can hear your heart and take a breath, be still.

And of late, I have been thinking that I wish that I could bottle this sensation and take it with me to remind me that at one time in my life I was here. I was really here and it was, even, at times, delicious.

Which makes me think of a scene from the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's" so described in an article by David Dunlap:

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY looked wistfully on the face of Manhattan as she prepared to depart for Rio. "Years from now, years and years, I'll be back," she declared. "Me and my nine Brazilian brats. I'll bring them back, all right. Because they must see this."