etxerantz - toward home

my san francisco home

2010-05-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Took a month to get everything all organized and decorated.

Another month to get the pictures up.

Just in case anyone out there still reads personal blogs, here's a peek into my teeny tiny studio in the city. It's about 250 square feet, less than half the size of my beloved home of 18 months in Palo Alto, but it's all the space I need, plus a 25-minute walk from the nephews and around the corner from great restaurants & parks, my SF surrogate parents, and all the mass transit vehicles I could ever want. Oh, and there's a huge avocado tree in the backyard. For reals.

Special credits go to: Ikea (furniture), Brady (moving incl. furniture dissembling & rebuilding), Claire (that awesome painting hanging on the wall), Blik (wall decals), Hortica (my very first houseplant), The Container Store (everything else. You should have seen me coming home on the Muni with my burden of 2 ginormous bags full of boxes, crates, drawer organizers, hanging shelves, and all manner of other, uh, containers).

Who wants to come visit? If I move my bike into the hall closet, there's totally enough floor space for my air mattress, I swear.

o canada

2009-11-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

Hey, remember how I went to Toronto—twice—and never showed you any photos? Yeah, I was thinkin' about that.

March 2009. Clockwise from top left:

This is not a harmonica.
Aged copper, University of Toronto
Freezing my butt off. + stone bird
764, Queen St West
Warmer jacket, new hat, still freezing my butt off. + CN Tower
I like numbers, U of Toronto

September 2009.

Top row, left to right:

Fish + bike, Yonge St
Lofts, Distillery district
Streetcar, Eaton Centre

Second row:

Picnic tables, Toronto Island
Shop window, Eaton Centre
Royal Ontario Museum

Bottom row:

The Boiler House, Distillery district
Shop window advertising
Lampshade, community swap stand, Toronto Island

file under: wtf

2009-10-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Spotted on ebay. No mention of whether or not mini-president is included. I'm assuming yes.

ready, set... no, forget set... just go

2009-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not typically a reckless person.

But lately, my hasty decisions have turned out to be really good ones.

For instance:

moving to California without a job or much of a plan of any sort
signing on a studio apartment practically on the spot
buying a pretty purple bike without really knowing how to ride it yet

So I feel good about my decision—made no more than 3 weeks before the deadline—to apply for one of these.

I hear back in January. Keep your fingers crossed.

image source: wikimedia commons

wenatchee, washington.

2009-09-24T23:49:00.000-07:00

cashmere, washington.

2009-09-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

portland, oregon.

2009-09-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

photonostalgic

2009-08-05T01:37:00.000-07:00

I was going through some old photos for a couple of different projects, and along the way I came across a few that I wanted to share. Well, mostly they just triggered memories of my own, but let's pretend we were all there and reminisce together, shall we?

Holy crap I'd forgotten how amazing those mountains were. And they were right there. I mean, look at 'em. They're about ready to eat those houses. Provo, Utah, December 2007.

Those stairs. How many hundreds of times I climbed those stairs. It was like 4am when I took this picture, some night shortly before I moved out of the Granary. Provo, Utah, August 2007.

I took a few of these odd self-portraits; it was probably another of those 3 or 4 in the morning deals. In my room at G5. See those flowers? I'd had them for at least three months at this point. I always keep them until they're totally kaputt; in some way they're almost more beautiful like that. Provo, Utah, August 2007.

This is where I went to Nature Camp several summers. We camped out on that lawn, made crafts in the pavilion in the background, and canoed on the lake (that was my favorite). Lake Elkhorn, Columbia, Maryland, June 2008.

Beautiful Claire. Chicago, Illinois, October 2007.

fine twined linens

2009-07-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

My mother has given me many things, including:


                       these legs                                      and good taste in textile design


also,                 these sweet Pumas                         and this gorgeous new duvet cover

which were exactly what I wanted for my birthday.

Plus, she threw in the matching shams and coordinating sheets, AND two surprises:

How adorable is that?

Not to mention a plethora of throw pillows (she made the black&white covers herself).

Thanks, Mom!

(Now it's about time for me to crawl into that stylish bed. 'Night!)

so california right now

2009-07-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

So I'm at lunch today, devouring my delectable In-N-Out burger & fries on the sunny patio under the palm trees and hugging the freeway, and it strikes me just how very california this is.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. I'm still in love with this place.

photo credit: unsureshot (flickr)

stick-on pixels

2009-07-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

So. My friend Emily (and I don't just mean one of my other personalities) alerted me to the existence of this little stop-motion gem, and I thought that you all needed to see it, too.

Seriously, neon post-its and Breakout and Röyksopp? Again I ask: can life get better?

sunday breakfast

2009-07-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

Variations on a stone fruit theme. Both were first-time experiments. The one on the right is a recipe from Grandma* Bittman; the one on the left, which is the one that graduated to Sunday evening barbecue, came to me in a dream. Or so I say.

*not really my Grandma, but merely an affectionate term for Mark Bittman, author of the How to Cook Everything books. No malicious or derisive intent; only the result of a moment of stupidity/inventive listening when I confused Bittman with Joseph's grandmother. That didn't really clear it up, did it.

hold on just a second don't tell me this one you know i know this one i know this song i know this one i know this song

2009-07-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

So. I'm currently floating on the aftereffects of one of the best weekends of my entire life. Seriously. It was like a non-stop party. And not the kind that makes me claustrophobic and sends me dissolving into a corner. It was, however, the kind with many much musics (not to be confused with many much moosen).

Friday night was populated with salsa, cumbia, bachata, and my personal favorite merengue. Lesson 1: always say yes to a night at the salsa club even though you went to bed at 4am the night before. Lesson 2: sometimes it may be best to keep your mouth shut and not let on that you speak Spanish. Lesson 3: eventually the inebriated Nicaraguan who wants your phone number will settle for your hotmail address, and everyone goes home safe and happy.

Saturday night saw epic performances by Ra Ra Riot, Andrew Bird, and Death Cab. As you can probably imagine, I went mostly for Andrew Bird. And he did not disappoint. Nothing short of phenomenal, in fact. Since none of the little video that I got is good enough (i.e., I was too impatient to hold up the camera for more than 30 seconds and/or the microphone picked up my neighbors' chatter better than the music) to bother uploading it, you'll just have to trust me on the amazingness factor. Or go see him for yourself. I highly recommend the latter.

Just say the word, Andrew, and I will run away with you and your sock monkey and your victrola.

We sang happy birthday to him. While he was on stage, we got a wee bit of rain. Then this happened:

And then there was Death Cab. And they were awesome. I've never listened to them particularly obsessively (as I have with many others), but I found myself singing along to most of the songs they played. Tons of fun. (There's a good deal of video from the show already up on youtube; just search for "death cab july 11 berkeley" or some such similar string, if you so desire.)

After the concert we watched this wonderful documentary called Young at Heart. Cackle-and-guffaw-out-loud funny, and beautiful in so many ways.

Here's a taste:

You should watch it, too.

Then there was Sunday, highlighted by barbecued goodness, a new friend, a special visit from an old friend, and a motorcycle ride. Not to mention the freakin' gorgeous Palo Alto weather.

Plus, I got to talk on the phone to Claire, Joseph, Mom, Dad, and Vanessa.

Can life get better? I submit that it cannot!

i've been dealing with extreme gravity

2009-07-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

A few months ago a friend of mine who is really into techno music introduced me to a couple of artists that I liked immediately (as well as other flavors that didn't quite do it for me). Later, based on the likes of Sasha and Bluetech, Pandora turned me on to the Texas-born, Detroit-based Matthew Dear (yes, lift-up-your-weary-head Detroit).

Enough iterations of "Death to Feelers" and "Fleece on Brain" (dig those throaty vocals) and the sound had decidedly moved into its own cozy corner of my head. Once I began hearing it from the inside, it was time to buy the album. And proceed to listen to it obsessively, of course.

The Asa Breed Black Edition album includes this "Don and Sherri" video, which you can also watch over the internets courtesy of last.fm:

Just try and tell me that's not sexy.

still life with bottles and mini-blinds

2009-07-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you go shopping at Whole Foods at 9:30pm with only a vague impression of what you are shopping for.

two reasons why i love california in the summer

2009-07-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

1. Outdoor yoga.

Once a week I end the work day with yoga class, on a shady spot of lawn outside tile-roofed, arcade-lined building with a Spanish name on a peaceful, idyllic campus. Bliss. Then when I come home I feel like dancing. And I usually do. Like an idiot. But you'll have to take my word for it, since there are as of yet no witnesses to this phenomenon.

2. Fresh apricots.

When I was growing up—wait. I'm still doing that. Let's try that again: when I was a kid in Maryland, we always had dried apricots in the pantry. Always. Many a school lunch included a little sandwich bag (or snack bag, once they became available—remember how great they were?) full of dried apricots. Though I never grew to flat-out dislike them, I often tired of them. Every once in a while I wondered why other kids seemed not to come from environments so heavily saturated with dried apricots.

At the time of year when fresh apricots became available in the stores, Mom would always bring some home. But she was never satisfied. They were never as good as her memories of the fresh apricots of her California youth. I never understood what the fuss was about. I mean, I've always loved fresh fruit. Even in the days (and they were many—sorry Mom&Dad) when my I-will-eat-this list contained about fifteen specific items, fruit was always acceptable. But fresh apricots never impressed me. The ones I tried at home in Maryland were for the most part bland, mealy, or worse: both. I didn't see the point, but Mom kept buying them, kept trying and hoping that they would live up to her expectations of the apricot in its most exalted form.

Well. Mom: my apologies. Now I understand.

PS: if in the course of your grocery shopping you happen to see angelcots, get them. They are called Saintly with good reason.

we can still afford to not make sense at all

2009-07-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

Fanfarlo: a British band with a Swedish frontman and a name that may well be Esperanto. Never heard of them? Neither had I.

On Monday, NPR began streaming Fanfarlo's new album, Reservoir, as part of the All Songs Considered "Exclusive First Listen" series.

I listened. I liked it. A lot. So I bought it. For a dollar. And it was totally legal.

The musicians, "in the spirit of 'why not,'" as they put it, are offering a download of their new album for US$1 until July 4th, after which the CD & vinyl will hit stores.

Check out this video of Fanfarlo playing "Finish Line" in an English garden (naturally). For more, hear the whole album over at NPR, and find more audio and video plus the $1 download at the band's website.

Guess which one I have a crush on.

sun-reading

2009-06-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite pastimes from childhood:

(1) whiling away the hours lost in a book (and, being the world's slowest reader, I can take care of a lot of hours with just one book)

(2) tumbling in the backyard (when I wasn't on the balance beam or sprinting toward the vaulting horse at the gym)

I wish I could still do those things, whenever I wanted.

Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours in a grassy field, enjoying the sunshine and one of the Murakami novels I had picked up at the library the day before. There may have been a few handstands and cartwheels in there, too. It's hard to say for sure.

I just finished the book. It was my fifth Murakami title in just a couple of months (see note re: world's slowest reader, above). I have two more waiting for me on my bookshelf, and I intend to get my hands on all of his published (and translated—since I don't read Japanese) work before year's end.

I'm addicted.

I could, if I tried, craft a passable explanation of why Haruki Murakami's narrative is so gripping. I could analyze his techniques of character development, explore the effects of his writing's structural and stylistic characteristics, offer a few examples of his especially inventive imagery, attempt to bring to light the underlying themes that are at once repulsive and magnetic, absurdly particular and painfully universal.

That's what I've been trained to do, after all.

But I won't.

Having an academic background in literary analysis helps me to appreciate more deeply the nuances of good writing, in other words, to wrap my head around the form of what I already sensed with my intuition. But one thing that's really nice about reading books outside of school is that I can just read them and enjoy them without having to explain to anyone else why I like them or, more precisely, how and/or why the author achieves the effect that he does with his writing. Ugh. See what I mean?

My point is: Murakami is a gem of a fiction writer. So far I love his work. You might not. And that's okay. And I won't ask you for a detailed analysis explaining why. But I'd say it's worth a try. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, as recommended to me, is a good one to start with.

okay, okay

2009-06-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, when the planets are aligned just right... I go to relief society and, in spite of myself, find it a little bit wonderful.

nevermind that we're nearly the same age

2009-05-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

My baby came home on Saturday, April 18, 2009.

She is 29.5 inches tall and weighs—um, I have no idea, but she's light and speedy!

[click to enlarge]

Isn't she a beauty?

clearly, i do not really know portuguese

2009-05-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

I just like to pretend that I do.

Today it was brought to my attention that in my advertising a talk about a Brazilian film, I have been spelling the film's title in two different languages. It starts out in Portuguese just fine—Tropa de—but abruptly switches to French—Élite.

Oops.

Incidentally, the title of the talk does mention Foucault. So maybe I was just channeling him.

For the record, I don't really know French, either. As with Portuguese, though, that doesn't always stop me from pretending that I do.

And now that I'm talking about French, I just want to add: isn't Saint-Saëns such a perfect name for a French composer? It just sounds so French (this from the girl who only pretends that she speaks French), and with just a bit of imagination, the Saëns sounds something like song. Plus, he wrote good stuff. So whenever I see or hear the name Saint-Saëns and I proceed to hear in my head that jaunty, guttural French laugh (I don't know how to spell it, but maybe Vanessa does? You know what I mean, right? Think Ha-ha-ha, only rhyming with Saëns), it is a gesture of endearment, mon ami, and not of mocking.

fellowshipping in the 21st century, or, why i still don't go to relief society

2009-05-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

In my inbox this morning:

Okay, okay, so I took a little itsy bit of photoshopetic license. But seriously, a form letter email? Yeah, that really makes me want to go next week.

It's too bad they bcc'd us on this. I'd like to know who the other apostates are so that we could get together for some remedial sunday school.

maybe pomegranate is passé by now

2009-04-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

But this still caught my eye:

Pretty, eh? (Besides the resolution. Sorry. Cameraphone.)

It's really too bad I didn't decide to splurge on a bottle, because when I got to the checkout line the store's computers were down, and though I thought we were just going to wait a few minutes until they were back up, shortly thereafter the clerks started bagging groceries and sending us off, "whole paycheck" intact.

Of course, this happened on the day I got totally boring stuff like onions and potatoes and cheap generic cereal, the only day I didn't have a single excessive item in my basket. Not that I'm complaining. Just observing.

cello + macbook = awesome

2009-04-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

You know how I obsess over podcasts?

Right. Well, lately I've become infatuated with Radiolab. I really don't want to kill its magic with an inferior description, so I will only say that it is acoustically self-conscious (in a good way) and always fascinating.

My purpose here is not so much to tout the wonders of Radiolab, though; rather, I mention it because it's where I heard this stunning music by Zoë Keating. She calls it "layered cello." Listen to the show here (sorry, I tried to embed the Flash player, but Blogger wouldn't have it).

And here's a cool video of the artist doing her thing:

Learn more about Zoë Keating and her music at her website.

when negative space is poetic

2009-04-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Sharpie-wielding cartoonist, writer, designer, and poetry revelator Austin Kleon has been on my radar for several months now. His style is to me one of raw vibrance, at times venturing into tidy chaos. His work conveys a sense of immediacy and of calm nonchalance, which together suggest that making art for this artist is as natural and essential as breathing. It reminds me that we are all artists with the capacity to create; sometimes it just takes a bit of extra effort to discover what one's inner artist wants to create, and what language it will use.

Look past the illusion of empty simplicity in Austin Kleon's drawings, and then among what appears to be clutter—but turns out to be mostly pure energy—you'll see that he's included exactly the right number of details.

Take, for instance, this sketch of Andrew Bird's stage setup at an Austin City Limits taping last month.

by Austin Kleon (Licensed under Creative Commons. image source)

Black lines on off-white paper. Stage rim. Speakers, amps, microphones. Drumset. Keyboard. Lighting equipment and a twirly-swirly backdrop. Yet amid the typical items, the merely structural and the exuberantly expressive penstrokes, you'll see two important things: the iconic tape-looping double-phonograph turntable (I don't really know what to call that thing but it screams Andrew Bird) and what's that? yes, the sock monkey tour companion. How can you not love that?

As a side project, the Austin-based artist (yes, that's right. kind of like if I lived in Davis) started carving poems from newspaper articles with a black Sharpie marker. His Newspaper Blackout Poems caught the eye of the press (there's something charmingly meta about that) and took off. I won't rattle off the list of media mentions here, but suffice it to say that they're big. Oh, and HarperCollins is publishing a book of them, slated for release early next year.

You may know that April is National Poetry Month.

What you may not know is that April is also International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month.

I finally got around to trying my hand at it. I foresee more experimenting (and maybe posting) in the future; for now, here are a couple of the initial results. They don't really make sense, and my Sharpie gave up the ghost halfway through the second blackout, so it ended up as a mixed media piece. Anyway, I hope that they inspire you, in the way that they make you say, 'Hey, I could do better than that.' And then you do.

If you want to see good Newspaper Blackout Poems, check out Austin Kleon's blog. He's posting a poem every day for the entire month of April.

And don't be afraid to unleash a black marker on a page from your local paper. If you live near a certain private university at the foot of a certain mountain range in a certain western state that on a map appears to be about to chow down on the unsuspecting state immediately to the northeast, please, get a copy of the school paper and go to it. I don't know how you can pass up that potential on the page of Letters to the Editor.

some really awesome things also have great parody potential...

2009-04-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

...and vice versa.

Case in point:

all-natural watercolors

2009-04-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

in progress:

drying:

ta-da:

colors:

Cruz de Malta yerba mate

Mighty Leaf organic Spring Jasmine green tea

black bean juice (water used for cooking them)

play me a pretty song

2009-04-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

Why can't the cafés around here pipe in some decent music?

Yesterday the soundtrack at the CoHo included a horribly out of tune and otherwise incompetent rendition of "More Than Words," a B-grade techno remix of "Forever Young," and other such bowling-alley-bad numbers.

This evening the selection at the University Café was smooth-jazz-tastic. Monotonous and wimpy-saxophonous.

I don't get it. I mean, If I worked at one of these establishments and were therefore forced to stay inside its walls for several hours at a time, I would most certainly be proactive in selecting the music that would fill that space while I shared it. After all, 'whistle while you work' can only go so far. Beyond that you need good music. As do your customers. Who does the DJ-ing at these places?

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? Or have I just been unlucky lately?

And an open question: what music would you play in your café?

(Suddenly I miss Guru's. Provo flashbacks are always so odd and unexpected.)

and neon magenta

2009-04-14T20:27:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to filing my taxes last night. Wait, did I say finally? Hey, it was barely even the 14th when I got that e-submission confirmation. This is cause for celebration.

Ah, the internet. Helping me to get away with procrastination. And to feel good about myself when I beat a deadline by one day.

Speaking of celebration, though, it looks like I'm in line for a hefty refund from the United States Treasury and the State of California.

Suddenly the $600 price tag on this hot little number doesn't look too bad:

a, b, c, teeheehee

2009-04-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

Preface: it's two in the morning, I'm pretty much swimming in yerba mate, and for the last three and a half hours my ears have been bombarded by the very noisy noise of powerwashing coming from the multi-level parking garage behind my house.

Now then, onto this video that I found extremely amusing. James Earl Jones, take it away:

(via swissmiss)

hey singles, tired of the bar scene?

2009-04-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

Have you considered the laundromat as an alternative?

I just had to share today's Engrish posting because it reminded me of lanudary. Brings a whole new meaning to that made-up word (which I still occasionally see in apartment listings, by the way).

the objective observer

2009-03-31T04:49:00.000-07:00

At the Sunstone West conference in Cupertino on Saturday, I felt like a bit of an outsider.

It was my first time attending a Sunstone event, and unlike any number of the other people there, I am neither a scholar of church history nor a Mormon artist nor a particularly vocal dissident nor a visible participant in the Bloggernacle. While FoxyJ and Th. happily got to meet the people behind some of the big names in the Mormon blogosphere (who were in turn delighted to meet them), I watched from the sidelines.

That's not to say that I felt out of place. I felt comfortable in the company of intelligent and inquisitive people representing a wide range of wavelengths on the spectrum of Mormon-ness. I walked away from the conference with the sense that there is room in the church for heterodoxy in an infinite number of iterations: there is a place for everyone.

While I was a bit disheartened by the fact that many participants are no longer active Mormons (some never were but are just interested in the curiosities of Mormon history & doctrine), I was however put at ease by the fact that I witnessed no hostility. As far as I could tell, everyone there was very respectful, there for no malicious purpose but rather for personal enrichment and to exchange ideas and connect with other people (which, if you've been here before, you'll know is a pet theme of mine): unique individuals with beautiful minds, sharing and comparing the elements mined from our common ground. And then I was all the more encouraged to find active Mormons who have not only successfully reconciled their membership in the church with unconventional views and interests in other traditions, but have managed to integrate them in sort of spectacular ways.

When I briefed my mom on the conference, she said she imagined that talks by non-Mormons would probably be more interesting because the presenters ought to be disinterested personally. I think what she meant is that their views would likely be more objective than those of people formally affiliated with the church, which may or may not be true. I'm inclined to say that a purely objective point of view does not exist. Anyway, I've found that the more obviously "subjective" presentations are indeed more interesting precisely because they have personal implications. Theory and history and math and science are necessary, but as far as I'm/we're concerned, they are missing something until they are applied and understood in the context of the human condition.

Highlights from the day include a panel on personal spiritual journeys (away from, back to, parallel to, and interweaving with Mormonism), Th.'s "Saturday's Werewolf" paper (which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I've neither read the Twilight books nor watched Saturday's Warrior), House of Falafel falafel, a series of NPR-inspired "This I Believe" segments, and the excellent documentary film The Constant Process (read here the article that appeared in February on the front page of the LA Times).

In Saturday morning's discussion of neuroplasticity and quantum dynamics (with the intention being to explain how people can change their behavior), the presenters cited the observer effect as it relates to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Don't ask me to explain it (at least not at 4 a.m.), but their point was that the observer's desire can determine the outcome of the experiment—he will find what he wants to observe. I think it's not really as simple and mystifying as they made it sound, and in that sense I don't really buy it (i.e., it may have more to do with measurement technique than anything else, and I'm not a quantum physicist so I don't really get it). But still, it raises the question: is it possible to remove that desire for a particular outcome, becoming a truly objective observer? When I go to church with a bad attitude (though not so bad that it kept me at home altogether), does that become self-fulfilling prophecy, my experience confirming my doubts and sending me off after sacrament meeting because I "wasn't really feeling it" (from the moment I arrived, or even before)? Can I ever be entirely stripped of self-interest in my interactions with the world and the people around me?

Yesterday I rode my bike to church and sat alone in the corner. Some days I might be more willing to break out of my shell and participate more actively, but yesterday was one of those when I wanted only to watch and listen, to observe unobserved. Also, to render a sketch inspired by a scene from the previous night/morning's dreams.

On my way home, my skirt got caught in the spokes of my back wheel. My white skirt. Lessons learned: (1) flowy fabrics and spinning wheels should be mingled with great care, (2) stain remover is my friend, (3) bike shorts may be a smart addition to my wardrobe, and (4) had I actually crashed, I'd be grateful to find several friendly Palo Altans out for a two-wheeled spin on a sunny-Sunday afternoon who, far from being cold objective observers, would, I believe, be happy to help me up, ask me if I were okay, call a medic, and/or laugh with me at my humiliating stupidity, as appropriate.

spotted at whole foods last night

2009-03-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I am at the grocery store at night, I see things that amuse me enough that I must record them.

Remember the Coca Puffs in Utah? Well, here in California I've found a milk substitute called Hemp Dream. Pour those two into a bowl, and that's part of your complete breakfast trip.

I know, hemp itself isn't a drug.

Neither is coca.

I'm just having fun. As were, apparently, the Hemp Dream package designers:

Subtle, yet effective.

probably made of toothpaste

2009-03-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that the ghost in my bathroom sink was not so readily apparent to others as it was to me.

O ye of little faith.

This should help.

ghost in the bathroom sink

2009-03-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, so he's not technically in the sink, just hanging out on the faucet handle.

At any rate, please say hello to my new friend. Just discovered him this evening:

What shall I name him?

grumbles

2009-03-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Fruits of my first night in Toronto (thanks to Claire for naming them).

look

2009-03-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I walked three and a half miles in the rain.

Somewhat drowsy from skipped breakfast and a week of late nights, I experienced my surroundings as in a dream:

cheerful yellow daffodils alongside a shadowy asphalt river

pumpkin-orange doors centered on a silver-gray façade

blushing petals discarded in circular patches on delicious green rain-soaked lawns

all shining dully in this translucent blue-gray light sailing on cool gusts of freshly washed air

and everything was so achingly beautiful.

And it occurred to me that I am in a stage in my life that is largely dominated by aesthetics.

(No doubt you'll have noticed, if you have been following my recent musings here.)

And I don't think that's a terrible thing.

The aesthetic quality of any entity is an essential part of its being. I'm not saying that everything should be judged solely in terms of aesthetics; indeed, this would be limiting almost to the point of ridiculousness. Ignoring aesthetics entirely, on the other hand, would be just as tragically laughable.

Within biological systems, aesthetics play a key role in perpetuating any given species. Aesthetic beauty holds amazing potential to inspire the beholder, and artistic creation—which exists not without the aesthetic—can easily mimic the divine. Aesthetics are not everything, to be sure, but certainly they merit our consideration.

At the moment I have nothing more profound to say on the matter, except that we ought not overlook that which is here to be looked at.

listen

2009-03-03T23:24:00.000-08:00

I just want to take a moment to share with you a few of the songs that are making my world go 'round these days. No commentary today, just the goods. Enjoy.

Son Lux: "Throw"

The American Dollar: "Anything You Synthesize"

Bluetech: "Leaving Winter Behind"

28: vine

2009-02-28T23:52:00.000-08:00

I spent the afternoon in Napa.

Yes, a day in wine country. And I don't drink.

I inhaled the volatile esters of some nice fruity cabernets and for once in my life the smell of alcohol didn't make me physically ill. As my friend tasted and compared the 2003, 2002, and 1999 vintages, I read the lovely, sometimes fanciful descriptions of the different varieties, one of which was purportedly "opulently structured."

We got to see the Quixote winery, the whimsical Hundertwasser's last design. (I mentioned the Austrian architect once before.)

The landscape in Napa county is stunning: all that greenery and the rows of old-growth vines rolling by, the occasional babbling brook, and dramatic open skies. Plus, wildflower season is coming on, so a rainbow of poppies and my favorite yellow daffodils were popping up along the roadside. And the air is so clean and refreshing. The word idyllic comes to mind. So does fantasyland.

As my friend made his purchases, I checked out the labels for design inspiration. Eponymous is nice, as is Blackbird. And there was another one that I made a mental note of, but I've forgotten it already. This is why I usually write things down.

As we drove back toward the city, the odd little world of monoculture and almost surreal natural and societal environment melted away behind us. And yet I know that somehow it still exists. As do a lot of other microcosms that I have little to no contact with in daily life. In some ways, it's not really that small of a world, after all.

(all photos mine, of quixote winery)

27: climb

2009-02-27T23:46:00.000-08:00

As a child, a favorite pastime of mine was jumping off stairs.

On a recent urban mountain-climbing jaunt on Potrero Hill, I found my camera drawn to the stairs leading to other people's houses. I always liked the shapes in staircases: something about that orderly repetitive jaggedness is so pleasing to the eye. The replicated pattern leans and stretches toward infinity.

And now I am thinking: why must we always be going up? We as a people are obsessed with building the tallest structures and scaling the highest mountains. Maybe it is a part of our collective unconscious to associate high places with the heavens, and thus we are drawn to them because something tells us we will be closer to God there. I think it is no coincidence that we equate belief in God or some other-named great spirit with belief in a higher power, where higher may refer both to intangible creative and moral stature as well as to relative physical situation.

On the other hand, our reachings skyward are not always so noble or spiritual. We are obsessed with rising above mediocrity and above the past. We climb the corporate ladder and scale the ranks of academic and government positions. Most commonly, and worst of all, we are obsessed with rising above one another. Where do we think we are going? And why do we insist on doing it alone? What do we expect to gain by getting there before anyone else?

Let us continue to build stairs, but let them be wide enough that more than one person can climb them at a time. And then we'll explore the heights together.

26: but not lonely

2009-02-26T23:54:00.000-08:00

I love living alone.

Among other things, it means I can play weird music in the morning and dance around the room half-dressed, falling all over myself because I was up most of the night writing or playing online scrabble or baking cookies or watching nerdy documentaries.

Nobody is here to laugh at me, except me (and I do).

Nobody is here to get annoyed by me, except me (and sometimes I do).

This is the first time I've lived entirely on my own, and it's fantastic. First there are the simple, somewhat selfish joys of being able to do what I want when I want, having to see and deal with only my own messes, and just having the space to myself without having to share it with anyone (except when I want to).

This literal space, as Virginia knows, is great for creativity. Then it gives way to figurative space as well. I could not be in a better place right now: I am exploring this space and finding myself in it, uncovering new interests, discovering what is really important to me, trying to figure out who I am and who I am becoming.

This all may seem very self-centered, and indeed in a certain way it is. But I believe and insist that, even as—and because—I am "coming into my own," so to speak, I am also learning to connect with other people as I never have before. And that, my friends, is worth the monthly rent check. (Also, the hardwood floors are a nice touch.)

(note: the photo here is one that I took, of a house that I like, which is not my own)

25: foot where

2009-02-25T23:54:00.000-08:00

When I don't sleep, the toes on my right foot cramp up.

On the street where I live, there are some messages that were scribbled into the concrete sidewalk before it set, I suppose.

This message reads:

BE A HOOLIGAN

BUY SHOES

And that's what I did.

On Saturday I went to Target to get a pair of black flats to wear to my concert Saturday night. Being in the percussion section for this show, I didn't want to be on my feet and in heels the whole time.

Target is my favorite place for shoes as of late. Cute + comfy + inexpensive. Repeat.

Also, I have a great pear of blue-tipped brown ballet flats that I got on clearance at Old Navy for $7. Fabulous.

My favorite shoes are, and perhaps always have been, moccasins. I like to be able to feel the earth under my feet.

24: vanishing still

2009-02-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

I am ever the linguistic analyst.

Today's case in point is, well, a matter of two points. Namely: vanishing and focal.

(Note: this post is an extension of yesterday's discussion of vanishing points.)

A vanishing point is the element in an image that creates the impression of infinity. It is the point at which our eyes cease to process an object's presence and our brains fill in the blank with its going on forever. When we look at a vanishing point, we are really looking through it, beyond it.

A focal point, on the other hand, is a spot fixed on something visible. It is inherently tied to the finite. I'm thinking along the lines of a still life rather than a grand detailed architectural drawing.

Vanishing point vs. focal point: it was in church a few Sundays ago that I scribbled the two terms in my notebook. I don't remember whether they were directly related to the specific topic being discussed at the time. Odds are they weren't, but rather through a series of successive associations and tangents, they occurred to me as relevant and worthy of jotting down for the sake of future recall.

The dichotomy is, however, applicable to a gospel topic. Likely it could be applied to a number of gospel topics, but one in particular comes to mind, as I recall a recent conversation with a friend. We were discussing the different approaches to the Atonement that are generally found in our respective churches. In the church she grew up in, the focus was usually on the crucifixion; in the church I belong to, the angle is often toward the resurrection. Both are real and essential parts of the same doctrine; it is only that slight shift in viewpoint that makes for subtleties of meaning.

Consider the following paintings of identical subject matter, with entirely different approaches:

First, Francisco de Zurbarán's Saint Luke as a Painter, Before Christ on the Cross (1630-39):

[click to enlarge]

The crucifixion corresponds to the end of Christ's mortal life. It is a finite event with a clear aspect of completion and a single, inevitable result. When we contemplate the crucifixion, we know what we are looking at. There is one focal point, and it is the culmination of the mortal life of the One who embodied the exemplary blend of humanity and divinity. There is no doubt as to where Saint Luke as a painter (widely believed to represent Zurbarán himself) is directing his focus in this image.

Compare Salvador Dalí's Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954):

[click to enlarge]

Dalí's depiction of the cross is unconventional, to say the least. For our purposes here, what is important is its three-dimensionality and, more specifically, the use of vanishing points to represent the shape in proper perspective. The form is clearly defined; the cross itself does not appear infinite; but still, its edges extending toward vanishing points give it a sense of motion, of continual movement through infinite space and time. This is not a terminal event being commemorated here; it is just one moment in eternity or, in other words, the beginning and the end (the Alpha and Omega): the beginning of immortality born of the end of mortality. The cross's position in mid-air—floating, as it were—almost certainly alludes to the resurrection—the rising from death. Already He is detached from the cross, rising from the crucifixion, because that wasn't really the end. Unlike in the Zurbarán painting above, it is unclear where the observer here is directing her gaze. This is not a completion-based, focal-point-centered image. Death is consumed in the vanishing point and from there new life expands and extends forever, not just for one but for all, everywhere in space and in time.

23: vanishing interminably

2009-02-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

Remember way back when all the paintings were flat?

Then one day people started drawing with perspective. Yeah, I know, like the artists who came before never brought their own perspective to their work. But that's what we call it, you know? This technique of arranging the lines on the page or the canvas in such a way that they mimic more closely what our eyes perceive in a three-dimensional world, rather than replicating mere snapshots of the two-dimensional surfaces that define the three-dimensional spaces. The new technique of using perspective in making images added depth to a pictorial world that had been largely limited to length and width.

If this concept of perspective drawing is sounding familiar to you, odds are your brain is connecting it with the related term, vanishing point. You know, the point on the horizon where all the lines meet—all the lines that in two dimensions appear parallel but, viewed in a three-dimensional perspective, appear to converge at some point in the distance.

A vanishing point is called such, I suppose, because it is the locus where all the lines leading to it seem to disappear. From a theoretical standpoint, it is not too difficult to understand that, from a point where all lines ultimately converge, no single one of them can continue along the path it had previously set out for itself. There is nowhere for it to go but forever into that same point, along with all the other lines.

The thing about the vanishing point is that it is not really the point where things vanish. Rather, it is a spot where, when we look at it, we can tell that things are vanishing, that -ing suffix locking the verb in the present progressive tense, which means that everything in this scene is in a continual and interminable state of vanishing, always vanishing and therefore never finally vanished. The logical conclusion, then, and indeed the typical effect on the viewer as well, is that the vanishing point betrays the sense that all the elements of the scene in question in fact go on forever.

The bridge vanishes, but only from our imperfect sight. We strain our eyes to follow the lines as they extend infinitely, but try as we might, we cannot really comprehend eternity. We can't really see it. Not yet, anyway; not here, not in this now.

(photo credit: Jim Frazier)

22: or until golden

2009-02-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

There's nothing quite like baking in the middle of the night.

This batch of cookies is the first thing I've baked since I came to California. Yes, that's right. It's been nearly seven months. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long. Maybe I just needed a worthy cause. You know, besides, 'I want cookies and therefore I am going to bake three dozen and eat them all by myself.' Doesn't make a lot of sense.

It was Claire's idea. And she always has good ideas. (And it just so happens that today he admitted to having a serious sweet tooth.)

So I consulted my new copy of How to Cook Everything, selected my recipes, and went out to gather the ingredients, including all the essential "baking needs" (I always found that designation on grocery store aisles sort of amusing. I'm weird). I didn't have any flour. I didn't even have sugar. Not to mention cookie sheets.

It wasn't until sometime after midnight that I got around to the chemistry experiment (yeah, yeah, I'm lying about the time again). I apparently have no proper measuring spoons, so I totally guessed on the baking powder. Also, I completely forgot the vanilla. Luckily, the cookie sheets fit in my somewhat diminutive oven, and the finished product turned out quite nice, I think.

Behold:

Chocolate Chip

Blueberry

Oatmeal Cookies

There's something about baking sweet treats in the middle of the night, making messes in the kitchen while everyone is asleep, that's... I don't know, really. Like it just fits, somehow, even though it may seem unusual. The act of mixing the dough and then arranging bits of it in neat rows on a cookie sheet, it nestles into the dark, quiet hours between midnight and dawn, as a drowsy cat on a sunny windowsill. Like it belongs there, like this is the time baking should be done.

I must say it's more fun with a partner in crime. I'm thinking of the epic Larson cinnamon rolls, countless pans of late-night brownies and lemon bars, and industrial-sized batches of rice-krispie-oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies that I used to bake with Claire (of course, who else?) It's not so bad going it alone, though.

21: replenish

2009-02-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

I suddenly want to be a farmer.

I have been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's fascinating exploration of our nation's industrial food system and some possible alternatives. Representing the alternative in food production, Joel Salatin attained something akin to rockstar status once he was featured in Pollan's book in 2006.

Mr. Salatin spoke at Stanford on Thursday evening. Several hundred people turned out to hear him, and he did not disappoint. Certainly no country bumpkin, he is clearly a very intelligent man who is entirely devoted to (a stance which includes motivation by love) his farming by smart and unconventional (oddly, most conventional methods in this country are simply counterintuitive) methods. Plus, he is a thoroughly entertaining speaker (not to mention inspirational, even though that sounds kind of cheesy).

A self-described "Christian libertarian capitalist environmentalist lunatic," Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farms in rural Swoope (pronounced swope, with a long o), Virginia. His "beyond organic" farm is grass-based and thrives on naturally-evolved interspecies relationships. He calls it allowing chickens to express their chickenness, pigs to express their pigness, and so on. As descriptors of Polyface, words like holistic, circular, and sustainable join the ranks of idyllic, pastoral, and communal.

As a Christian, Salatin believes that his mission is to be a steward of the land and to return it to its Garden of Eden state.

There are plenty of good reasons why people of faith ought to be conscientious of the way they treat the earth and all its inhabitants, including humans of course, but also all other forms of life. I remember attending an excellent lecture with Julie in our freshman year of college. Professor George Handley spoke about LDS perspectives on environmental stewardship. I don't remember any specifics now, but I do remember getting a general impression that I might articulate as "Duh, why don't more people see how much sense this makes? The gospel + environmentalism = resonance." I really ought to write more about this another day; I think it's just one facet of how the gospel can be applied, as we like to say, to everyday life, and with eternal consequence for good. (I just discovered this LDS Earth Stewardship website; will be checking it out and likely reporting on it here later.)

Mr. Salatin reports that, based on the demographics of current U.S. farm owners, about 50% of the nation's farms will change hands in the next 10-15 years. Somehow I find that really exciting. Without too much imagination, I can see myself in a decade or so farming a nice green patch of land in the central valley, perhaps. Maybe you'd like to purchase the farm adjacent and we can be neighbors as we return to our agricultural heritage and commune with the land and its creatures?

(photo: turkeys at Polyface, by Spicy Bear)

20: ensemble

2009-02-20T23:48:00.000-08:00

I play the bongo drums in a local orchestra.

I also play bass drum, suspended cymbal, woodblock, and glockenspiel. After this weekend's concerts, I'll join the oboe section. In case you're wondering, I don't plan on switching to cello or trombone after the next concert.

Playing music has been an essential part of my life for, well, pretty much forever. I remember tinkering on a Little Tikes piano/glockenspiel combination and, later, on our little (like 15") Casio keyboard. My sisters taught me to play the basic melody of "Lean on Me," and we played it over and over. And over. Having only four notes, it is both very easy to learn and very sticky. Even now I can hear the sequence repeat itself in that oddly charming synth sound, a bit clunky and uncertain under a novice's little fingers.

One day in the third grade, I came home from school and (so the story goes) I exclaimed, wide-eyed, to my mom: "Did you know you can learn to play an instrument in school?!!" Supposedly, my parents had tried to encourage the other kids to take a serious interest in instrumental music, but to no avail. Then I came along and shocked them, in that where did you come from, you weird child? sort of way.

So, where I went to school, you could pick up a stringed instrument as early as third grade. For wind instruments you had to wait another year. Wait? Who could wait? I was going to play the violin. For some reason I chickened out at the last minute. I don't remember why. In fact, I remember distinctly that there wasn't a why, and my not knowing why I was upset and suddenly didn't want to play the violin only made me more upset.

That passed, though, and by the time I hit fourth grade, I had made up my mind. I was going to play the oboe. I'm not entirely sure how that came about. How many nine-year-olds even know what an oboe is? (Besides the children of music teachers. I have a good friend who is an instrumental music teacher, and not only his six-year-old daughter but also his three-year-old twins can identify just about any instrument by its sound in any given recording. Amazing.)

Unfortunately, oboe was not an option in elementary school. Not to be defeated, though, I started playing clarinet. That was fun. And the reeds were really inexpensive. But I think I always knew it wouldn't last. My double-reeded love was waiting for me to discover it. Even though I used to spend hours at a time with a plastic recorder flute, practicing songs we learned in general music class, transcribing other familiar melodies, even making up my own tunes, all that was just tiding me over until the right time.

I first picked up an oboe in the summer preceding sixth grade. And that was it. I was hooked. Three years of middle school band; four years of high school wind ensemble, marching band (where I picked up percussion) and various extracurricular bands and orchestras; and five years of university orchestra later, I found myself in California, no longer enrolled in school and therefore suddenly thrown out of the easy ensemble-joining circuit that I had gotten used to over the previous dozen years.

It didn't hit me immediately, but as soon as I started to feel settled, it suddenly became very clear to me that I needed to start playing again. So I contacted this orchestra, asking if perhaps they had room for an oboist. Not until the next concert set, they said, but, in the meantime, we're short a percussionist... can you play? It's worked out rather wonderfully so far, and it feels great to be playing in an ensemble again.

My best friends in middle and high school were people I played in the band with. (My brain keeps looking at those last two words and wanting to make them bandwidth.) When I played ensemble music, it was with a lot of people that I knew rather well. What a wonderful sense of active community.

I've been playing in my current orchestra for only a month or so. I know very few people: just my colleagues in the percussion section, one of the oboists, and a few of the viola players.

My report: It's still marvelous to make music together with a room full of people that you don't even know. And as I come to know them, we will always be linked by these memories.

(photo credits: antiguadailyphoto.com, quack.a.duck)

19: flower (one who flows)

2009-02-19T23:32:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, I played a lot of Scrabble.

For a while during the last year in G5, three or four games a week was pretty standard. The board frequently came out during thesis breaks or What Not To Wear marathons in OM, too. In contrast, in the nearly seven months since I moved to California, I had not played a single game of Scrabble until last night.

Without Claire or Vanessa nearby, and without roommates besides my alternate personalities, circumstances apt for Scrabbling present themselves far less frequently than they did in my former life in Utah.

Last night, however, I met a new friend. We're just two people reaching out to one another, breaking out from isolation, seeking a little warmth and unity amid a cold and fragmented society. And arranging lettered tiles on a grid.

The product:

Making words is fun.

Making friends is delightful.

Making words with a new friend? Marvelous.

18: scene

2009-02-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

There are just a few degrees of separation between me and a famous film director.

At least, he is going to be famous. His name is Cary Fukunaga, and I heard about him from a colleague a couple of times removed who happens to be related to him. His feature debut, Sin Nombre, scored a couple of awards at Sundance last month and will hit theaters in the next.

I was doing some light research, reading a bit about the making of the film, scanning reviews, watching the trailer, finding this all somewhat interesting and coming to the conclusion that Sin Nombre would probably be worth watching. And then. And then I found out that one of the producers is Gael García Bernal.

I'll just let that sink in for a moment.

And now that the original train of thought has completely derailed, let's continue with the theme, shall we? and take a moment or two to appreciate a few beautiful people of the male variety. It may appear that we're going for pure aesthetics here, but, in the case of many, if not all, the men I greatly admire (these from afar), their good looks are not what first caught my attention. It was their voice, their demeanor, their wit, their music. Their honesty, perhaps. Speaking of honesty, though, the aesthetic layer is indeed a welcome enhancement.

Only recently, say in the last five years or so, have I begun to appreciate portraiture. I used to find portraits (painted or photographed) boring, mundane, deserving of less attention than other works with more exotic themes. I have come to realize that portraits—good portraits—celebrate the joys, reveal the sorrows, and capture the confusion of human existence. The really great ones do all of these things at once, while at the same time offering a glimpse of universal divinity in the individual person.

People are beautiful. Really, truly beautiful. Take the time to look around and you'll see.

(photo sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7)

17: hot soup

2009-02-17T23:29:00.000-08:00

Life is heating up.

Nearing its boiling point.

And when you boil it down, it's all about making connections.

Connections between:

man and woman, woman and man
man and man, woman and woman
parent and child, child and parent

man and nature
life and death

rhythm and melody
harmony and discord

mutually resonant worldviews
opposing philosophies

the human and the divine
the individual and the universe

teacher and pupil
pupil and teacher

the vagabond and the painstaking traveler
the lost and the found

(the widows in paradise and the fatherless in ypsilanti)
brother and sister, brother and brother, sister and sister

neighbors
ex-strangers
friends

These are, in essence, all human connections.

(Indeed, since our point of view is by default the human one.)

And when you stop to think about them, you'll see that they're really quite miraculous.

16: i see

2009-02-16T23:55:00.000-08:00

As a general rule, room temperature is not an ideal state for a beverage.

However, many products are stocked that way in the stores. Cranberry juice, Dr Pepper, tequila, Vitamin Water... just to name a few. This makes sense, of course. No need to waste energy on refrigeration of products that will not spoil without it.

Still, I prefer to consume liquids either hot (think chocolate, chamomile, or related families) or chilled. So I've gotten into the habit of tossing newly-purchased bottles of room-temperature beverages into the freezer to quickly chill the contents. The problem is, approximately 59% to 83% of the time, I completely forget that I have done so. Vanessa will attest to this phenomenon. It was a particularly frequent occurrence during the thesis-writing days (which were also fueled by large quantities of hot beverages).

And since the room-temperature beverages that I purchase are always water-based and never ethanol-based, they always freeze. Sometimes I snap out of my moronic moment in time and the subject has only reached a slushy state. I've found that Cherry Coke and the dragonfruit-flavored Vitamin Water in fact work quite nicely that way.

At other times I have been known to leave two-liter bottles in the freezer overnight. Solid. Tonight, I deposited a bottle of Diet Coke into the icing chamber a little before 6 pm. After returning home from orchestra rehearsal, I remembered that I had just bought some Diet Coke today and it would be nice to pour a glass before sitting down to finish a movie I had started earlier. It was then that I also remembered that it was in the freezer. It was about 11 pm. Giant bottle-shaped Diet-Coke popsicle, anyone?

It's sitting on a towel next to the radiator, slowly metamorphosing into a more readily drinkable form. Sometimes I am nearly blinded by my own brilliance. (Like just now when I tried to type that sentence with my fingers one key off: it came out Domryimrd...)

(photo credit: Darren Hester)

15: mustered

2009-02-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

While in San Francisco yesterday, I spent a good amount of time wandering around Potrero Hill.

At one point I stopped in a little corner market and asked:

—You wouldn't happen to have any yerba mate, would you?
—What?
—Yerba mate...?
—What? Mustard?

He finally pointed me to the selection of herbal teas. No yerba, of course, but the shop owner suggested Walgreens. I didn't go to Walgreens. I continued on my way, and laughed. I wasn't really expecting to find what I was looking for, but I wasn't expecting that much confusion, either. Silly me, I guess I should have. Nothing like sharing a hot cup of mustard with a friend on a cold rainy day, I suppose.

I had thought that I would find some (yerba, not mustard) in the Mission. I remember having seen a little shop on 24th St with an Argentine flag in its window, but somehow I missed it even as I strolled the length of it between Mission and Potrero. I think it's because I was on the phone with Claire. A worthy distraction, anyway.

After returning home, I sent an email out to a mailing list for area Argentines, asking where they buy their yerba. Instant responses. There seem to be several good options in the area, including a few near Palo Alto, as well as one on 24th in San Francisco—and now I know the cross-street!

Technology can be a wonderful thing.

(photo credit: Gerard Girbes)

14: respiration

2009-02-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

I spent the day in San Francisco.

It was wonderful just to breathe in the energy of the city. Also, I got to see some cool art.

Destination: San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design.

An out-of-town friend tipped me off to the San Francisco Graphic Design exhibition through a review she had found somewhere on the interwebs. I didn't even know the museum existed until a few days ago. Now enlightened and intrigued, I decided to check it out. It's a small venue, tucked away in the shopping district downtown, near the Academy of Art University. There were plenty of interesting things to see in the two rooms and a hallway, and those of you who know anything about my museuming style will likely agree that a small gallery is healthy for me. I devour museum exhibits. And not in the ravenous, wolfing-down sense. I savor every teeny tiny bite and let the flavor linger as long as possible.

The show features the work of a handful of local designers, ranging from Michael Schwab's iconic Golden Gate National Parks posters to Barbara Vick's logos that you'll see branding many familiar products in the grocery store, Chen Design's eco-friendly tags for North Face to MINE's (that apparent combination of possessives makes me somewhat uncomfortable) everything is ok caution tape.

Walter Landor (founder of the prolific Landor Associates) is credited in the current exhibition with the statement "Good design is friendly. It's nice to have around." The 'friendly' designs on display today got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could make pretty things that are nice to have around, too.

So that's the inspiration. Concerning the next step in the respiration cycle, well, I guess it's my turn. We'll see what I can come up with.

(photo credit: me)

13: crawl

2009-02-13T23:54:00.000-08:00

It's raining again, like it was last night.

When I left home this morning, though, it was not raining. Walking through the courtyard toward the street, I nearly stepped on a six-inch long earthworm that had ventured out to check out the sunshine while the pavement was still wet, I suppose. I don't really know why worms appear on the surface after it rains: maybe to escape underground flooding? Anyway it's a delicate balance, it seems, since they dry up if they stay out in the sun too long. I've seen the evidence. Can you imagine living in a body so fragile that it would shrivel up completely after, say, a day at the beach or an afternoon in the park? And that's it. No more earthbound wanderings.

I remember tiptoeing up and down the long driveway in front of our house, dodging the scores of worms that would wriggle across the black pavement after a summer rainstorm. I was always really sad to see one that had dried up, and sometimes I would whisper to the others that they should be careful and go back home soon. On other days I might look more closely at this same terrain and see a single ant trudging along, and for some reason I found it fascinating to watch how it reacted when I placed my foot directly in its path. Ever tenacious, it always set immediately upon an alternate route.

In the fall I would gather helicopters—maple seedpods—by the armful and release them (the higher the starting point, the better) just to see them whirl ecstatically toward the ground. A related hobby was exploring the beds of impatiens (of which we had tons when I was very little) and popping the seedpods. They have a sort of rubbery, elastic epidermis, and when they are good and ripe, they have inflated like little balloons that, at the lightest touch or gentlest squeeze, burst and curl up on themselves. It was always so satisfying to play a part in that transformation. I could entertain myself for hours with these simple activities, micro-interactions with nature, just outside my front door.

Sometimes I miss that purity.

(photo credit: ian boyd)

12: weather, the storm

2009-02-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

It's not really 11:59 pm.

Not in this time zone, anyway. The timestamp lies, as I try to convince myself that I am succeeding at this February blogging project, even though I fell asleep on the couch at 9 pm and didn't wake up until six hours later.

It is raining now, as it likely will be all weekend. It sounds lovely, the steady flow of droplets melting onto the driveway, dancing on the roof, snapping against the window, the sweet streams singing in ensemble all around. Now a crescendo, and it is all accented by the occasional pop from the radiator, generously sharing its warmth as I sit here huddled in my old hooded sweatshirt that I bought on clearance for $3.97 at least seven years ago, that has seen at least five states and two, soon to be three, countries, that boasts a little hole in the elbow just from wear and that somehow makes me love it more than when it was intact.

Yes, rain like this all through the long weekend, they predict, and wind, too; storms all over the bay area and beyond. I'd rather have snow, I think, you know that dry, powdery Utah snow that isn't too miserable to go out in, but that won't happen here. Snow in the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia mountains, they say, but I, as do most people in the region, live in a valley.

And it doesn't matter, anyway, because forty-nine people just lost their lives in a fiery plane crash, and when people are dealing with storms like that, who the hell cares what form of precipitation I prefer? I get the feeling that neither the music of rainfall nor the hush of snowfall would do much in the way of comforting those forty-nine families or the town of Clarence Center today.

11: wordbook

2009-02-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

I got to hang out with my mom and dad over the weekend, and we reminisced about some early instances of my verbophilia.

For my fifth birthday my parents gave me a dictionary. A hefty hardcover collegiate dictionary. Now, before you go wondering what on Earth my parents were thinking, I would encourage you to shift your focus to the fact that I asked for a dictionary. Yes, hello! I'm the weird one here. We had a dictionary in the house, of course, but I wanted one of my own that I could keep by my bedside in case I needed to look up a word while reading under the covers at night.

And what did I do when I got that dictionary? I examined the preliminary pages and decided that it would be fun to memorize the Greek alphabet that was listed there. So I did. And it was. And then I took to reciting it backwards. Just for the heck of it. So, you see, in this context, it isn't terribly odd that I used to spend many an evening helping Claire study for her ancient Greek classes. Not only that, but I enjoyed it.

But I digress (is that word of Greek or Latin origin?) Some time before I graduated to that serious dictionary , my mother surprised me with a copy of Richard Scarry's Best Picture Dictionary Ever. When Mom told me what a dictionary was and that she had one for me, my eyes lit up (or so the story goes) and I exclaimed, "You mean there's a whole book with nothing but words in it?!?" This is a ridiculous question, of course, since most books in fact consist entirely of words, but just go with me on this. I was really excited by this dictionary concept.

I had just gotten out of the bath. Normally, getting dressed immediately follows bathing. But that day there was something far more important to tend to. Wrapped in my bath towel, I crawled into bed and spent all morning and part of the afternoon reading the dictionary. There. I said it.

The German word for dictionary is Wörterbuch: wordbook (Wörter, words, plural of Wort; Buch, book). One of the things I love about German is its generous allowance for compound words, which results in some really elegant and often intuitive combinations. Like Wörterbuch, for instance. Or the word for vocabulary: Wortschatz (Schatz=treasure). Airplane? Flugzeug, flying stuff.

There I go again. And that's barely the start of it. Linguistic curiosities are the kinds of things I find entertaining. Sometimes I seek them out; sometimes they find me. Either way, language has always enjoyed a state of hyperpresence in my world. It is becoming increasingly apparent that I was, in a sense, born for language.

10: don't drink the kool-aid

2009-02-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

I took a shower this morning.

Wait, wait, that's not the news.

So I step into the bathtub and turn the hot-water knob counter-clockwise, wait a few seconds for the water to warm up, give the cold-water knob a twist and test for an ideal temperature, adjusting the mix accordingly. And, well, after the water had been running for twenty or thirty seconds, it started coming out black. You read that right. Black. Water. Flowing into my home. (Not that Blackwater, though.) Surprise! Good morning!

Reflexively, I shut off the tap and stared disbelievingly at the black droplets that had splashed onto the tile wall. I cautiously turned the water back on, and almost immediately it began running clear again. I wondered briefly if perhaps I hadn't hallucinated the whole thing. I mean, black water running from your tub faucet? Come now, fantastical stories have their place, but they also have their time, and it's early morning and I prefer clean, colorless water for my shower, if you don't mind.

A freak occurrence. Except that it happened again while I was rinsing the conditioner from my hair. And once more while washing my hands in the sink.

The question on your mind at this point, as it is on mine, will no doubt be What the hell?? (or some variant thereof).

My answer is (a) I don't know, but (b) I have some theories, and (c) I am open to other theories/explanations that you might offer, both serious and facetious (bonus points if you pull off both at once).

My property manager is sending a plumber over tomorrow to check it out. In the meantime, well, I guess I won't be so surprised by a moment or two of discoloration in tomorrow morning's shower. Unless, of course, tomorrow it's a color other than black. Now wouldn't that be exciting? I'm hoping for magenta.

(photo credit: Stunt of the Litter)

09: music-memory, three movements

2009-02-09T23:55:00.000-08:00

Some songs will be forever linked to certain times in my life, certain places, certain people. When I hear the music I find myself for an instant in a familiar scene. Here are a few fragmentary examples, scribbled in my notebook a few months ago under the heading "musings & blunderings on a friday morning." (Click on the song titles to listen.)

I. "Let Go" (Frou Frou)

Swells of harmony rise from the floor, roll through the room in pulsing loops, envelop me and all the books and papers strewn about the couch and on the floor. Waking up to delirious brightness and dreaming harmony and my best friend at three a.m. in the place we called home.

II. "Boy With a Coin" (Iron and Wine)

July. Burning afternoon. Solitary walk uphill toward an open field. Accompanied only by a troubled mind. Trying to lend rhythm to disoriented soul.

III. "Við spilum endalaust" (Sigur Rós)

Stepping down from the Muni onto Judah St to be embraced by September sunshine or enveloped in chilly fog, either way a pulsing brilliance emanates from inside as the adventure begins to materialize and I am seeing that my whole life is energizing love.

08: pacific union

2009-02-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

For the past week or so, Union Pacific locomotive 9734 has been waiting patiently in the background on my computer screen.

I took this photo about a year ago, when I still lived in a place that sees snow in February. The weathered golden beauties frequent the trainyards at the southern edge of Provo, Utah, and I used to go wander around the area just to soak in the oddly stirring desolation of the place.

You may already know that I like trains. A lot. Incidentally, my nephew loves trains (and especially "up-downs"). Also, I find industrial wastelands extremely appealing, both aesthetically and emotionally. That's weird, I know. But it should help explain my impulse to explore trainyards.

One Saturday afternoon last spring, I journeyed down to the south Provo tracks, looked around for a few minutes, then sat down on the edge of the road just outside the fence. I could hear the low hum of an engine motor and the occasional mechanical click or clank that told me that a train was getting ready to go. It seems it was only getting ready to get ready, maybe loading up for a freight haul. I don't know, really, because I couldn't see what was going on down the track. It didn't matter, anyway, because it was a sunny afternoon and I had no plans, so I made it my plan to sit right there and absorb the atmosphere while waiting for the train to roll out. I alternated between reading from Neruda's Odas Elementales and jotting little blurbs in my notebook, pausing every so often to look over at the tracks for signs of any movement.

All the while I was conscious of the deep rumbling of the running motor. I could hear it, but mostly I felt it. It ran through the rails like an electric current, seeped into the ground where the earth met its voice with is own and together they resonated in arrhythmic pulsating harmonious humming. Concentrated latent energy was making itself known to me, like something fantastic was about to happen. I waited, listened, felt, and marveled at the communion of this monstrous child of the man-made industrial age with this terrestrial child of the ageless universe.

The engineer waved as the groaning steel caterpillar crawled along the rails, leaving the station for the open country of the west, wild and limitless. I smiled, and waved back.

07: liquid collisions

2009-02-07T23:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was cold and rainy, which made today's warmth and sunshine all the more delectable for the contrast.

Late Friday afternoon, I sat in my office mulling over the week's interactions. Misdirected messages and confusion; apprehension and disappointed expectations; impossible requests and bizarre phonecalls.

I had just spent the previous half hour or more talking and laughing (laughing really hard at some moments, indeed to the point of tears) with my coworkers, and then I turned back to my desk, intent on crossing a few more items off my list before day's end.

The rain was pouring outside my window, talking at me in its lively percussive dialect with just a touch of melancholic tone. I looked out into the purplish-grayness and watched with mesmerized eyes the multitude of micro-explosions glinting in the late blue light, as post-invisible droplets ricocheted off the shining black pavement and shattered into oblivion.

The sweetwater puddles quavered in concentric circles, and I was momentarily transported to my childhood home, where I gazed at the stream in the backyard, flooded in a downpour and rippling continuously at the impact of millions of raindrops. Each one, when it hit the surface, expanded outward in an ephemeral series of infinite rings, and I studied them, attaching the image to the name—concentric circles—that Mom or Dad had just taught me, a six-year-old at most.

There is something at once cozy and romantic, challenging and primeval, about the rain. I am learning to appreciate it more, and to feel less hostility towards it, than I used to.

Still, today's return to this kind of eternal-spring weather was an idyllic treat, and it made showing my parents around town, partially on foot, much more pleasant than it might have been in splashier conditions. I won't mind too much when the rain comes back another day, though.

(photo credit: rhettmaxwell)

06: straight lines and curves

2009-02-06T23:53:00.000-08:00

When I was in elementary school I loved art class.

I was a math whiz (well, arithmetic), I read and wrote just fine, and I had little trouble doing what I was supposed to do in science and social studies classes. But my heart was in art class. A perpetual slowpoke, I found myself two or three steps behind everyone else on any given project, but I was persistent through the painstaking creative process. There was always something very satisfying about the process: forming shapes and bringing colors together, and the product: something new and unique that I made all by myself. One day, when I was in second or third grade, my mom wanted to take me out of school early for some reason or another, and I absolutely refused because I could not bear to miss art class.

I'm not certain why it took me so long to figure this out.

The thing is, we all have artists inside us. As creations we have in turn been endowed with power to create, and that power includes the capacity to procreate —to immortalize the human race in the flesh— as well as the potential to create art —to contribute to the eternal progression of the human mind and to the enlightenment and delight of the collective human spirit as it strives to locate itself in the universe.

I remember this one assignment in particular: we were to take two pieces of paper and to fill as much of the blank space as we could. The rule was that one piece of paper could contain only straight lines, while the other would permit only curves. For some reason (or none) I just adored this exercise, and I remember being really happy with how my pieces turned out. They were entirely abstract and, as I recall, extremely colorful. (I wonder if Mom & Dad still have them somewhere?)

What you see above is a sort of variation on that theme, a little something that I did, not in elementary school, but just now, on this sleepy, rainy Friday night at home. Please forgive the weird shadow at the top: the page was just slightly larger than the scanner bed. Other than that, it's not really noteworthy, I know. But I feel like grabbing onto these roots will help me to get somewhere, or at least keep me grounded as I grow, ever reaching up toward the sky.

05: open up

2009-02-05T23:58:00.000-08:00

There are twenty-three hinged doors in my apartment.

For the last hour or so, I have been drifting in and out of sleep and therefore failing miserably at watching this movie that I am supposed to discuss tomorrow. It's not a bad movie; I have just been staying up late all week and my body has announced that it can't take it anymore. A familiar battle, this: the mind begging the body to forego sleep in favor of any number of activities requiring consciousness and clarity, while the body insists that both it and the mind are starved of rest and it is not going to sit idly by while—well, in fact, that's exactly what it is going to do, and with eyes closed, if you please.

My point is that I have just slept through the last hour of the day without having written something first.

My counterpoint, then, which I may have led you to believe was my topic by announcing it at the start, is that there are twenty-three hinged doors in my apartment.

Yes, I counted. It occurred to me as a question worthy of exploration, and so I explored. By counting. Included in this tally are closet doors, cupboard doors, a door that conceals (or reveals) nothing but a built-in ironing board, the oven door, refrigerator and freezer doors, the door to the circuit breaker box, and my printer's paper tray, which happens to look very much like a door on this particular model.

You may think that last one to be a bit of a stretch, but it's really not so odd when you consider that I had gone on to contemplate (but ultimately not to count) other hinged items under my roof, like this pretty calligraphy box, my oboe case, CD- and DVD cases, my electric teakettle with hinged lid... And what about books? Granted, they don't have mechanical hinges, per se, but their spines do a pretty good job filling that function. The action of opening a book mirrors the physical movement involved in opening a door, and once it is open—either the door or the book—you are presented with new opportunities for exploration, in worlds which are unique in their position on that side of the door/book cover.

It might be argued that sleep is a door, behind which swirl the bizarrely beautiful and beautifully bizarre mysteries of the dreamworld. (And you thought that doors theme wasn't even my point.)

Soon I'll be pulling back the covers and gladly crawling through that door into sleep and dreams. After giving these other two movies a go, that is.

04: waywords

2009-02-04T23:53:00.000-08:00

Do you ever wonder what happens to your thoughts when you send them out into cyberspace?

You take them and wash them of irrelevancies, dress them in lovingly woven phrases that complement one another in tone and pattern, and maybe accessorize them with a few additional colorful descriptors or surprising interjections. The final punctuation secured on their feet; enough substance but not too much weight in their backpacks; their lunchboxes stocked with homemade syntactical treats, peppered with unanswered questions, and finished with a heartfelt note; you walk them to the end of the street and look them over once more to be sure you haven't forgotten anything.

They turn and wave goodbye, pausing just briefly before climbing the steps into the packed bus, which presently rolls along the information suburban boulevard, lunging toward the ramp onto the freeway, which is just becoming crowded with the first electronic greetings of the day, urgent requests and efficient-to-a-fault one-liners speeding impatiently by in the fast lane.

At the end of the day, they're at the front door again. They've traded sweaters or shoelaces with a classmate, and they have plenty of words to offer in response to your "what did you learn in school today?"

Sometimes, though, you send them out in the morning and, in the evening, the bus comes by your street but does not drop them off. And so you cannot help but wonder: How might they have become sidetracked? When will they make it home?

03: duet

2009-02-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

She knew she needed to get back into the music.

Leaning on the bongo drums, she gazed at the black markings on the page and tried to focus on counting the thirty-seven measures of rest before the woodblock solo. Once having glanced up at the conductor to check the tempo, she then followed her eyes as they wandered across the room and allowed them to linger on the cute viola player, until he looked up, at which instant they scurried back to their place and attempted to reconnect with the monopods as they marched across the lines printed on paper.

Ba-da-ba-doon-kah! Nailed it, and took a step back. Here, the parallel lines of the staff rotated ninety degrees into her field of vision, and she could see him through the harp strings. As the ensemble moved on to a new section in the piece, she stepped up to the drum and reencountered an uninterrupted line of sight. When she saw him looking at her from behind geek-chic black frame glasses, she dropped her eyes bashfully, though not quite as quickly as before.

As the rehearsal rolled through the evening, they hit upon some mutual sense of amusement at the various goings-on around them, and the spaces between pizzicatos and bass drum hits were populated by plenty of shared smiles and funny, mock-quizzical looks. Odd, she thought, that she had been so sleepy just a few hours earlier and yet she now felt quite awake and alive.

As she was loading the glockenspiel into the van, he walked by and barely paused for a quick glance and a shy smile. When he returned, he stopped to say hi. They each learned the other's name, and they recounted whatever silly thing they had been laughing at. She wanted to say that yes, the situational humor was nice, but mostly she kept smiling at him because he was just so darn cute. But she didn't, because the whole exchange had already attained a level of adorable awkwardness that was actually kind of perfect, and she didn't want to risk ruining it by pushing it over the edge into just plain uncomfortable awkwardness. Either that, or she was just too shy.

(photo credit: mr.beaver)

02: synecdochal attraction

2009-02-02T23:08:00.000-08:00

It started when I decided to get a bike.

Once I had accepted the bicycle's potential to enrich my everyday existence and to open up new and wonderful opportunities, I suddenly noticed the two-wheeled beauties all around me. They were there before, of course; I just hadn't really seen them. I brushed them off as symbols of a sociomobile category that I did not belong to and that therefore did not concern me, or, even more coolly, as a mass of meaningless objects... stuff... clutter. No, come to think of it, I wasn't that cruel. I couldn't have been. Really, at the time I didn't give them much thought. I mean, I was aware of their existence, but I didn't sit around and contemplate the question of their immortality.

Soon after I determined to allow the bicycle concept to materialize as a real, living, breathing, moving thing, I found myself gawking at fine specimens like

(photo credit: antiguadailyphoto.com)

and

(photo credit: moriza)

and

(photo credit: PixelAndInk)

The intensity and frequency of my making eyes at the lovelies have held steady, if not increased, since I actually got a bike. The one I have is a good pal, reliable and comfortable, in excellent shape and pretty good looking, easy to get along with even though I'd been living without a bike for a decade and a half before we met. It's just a loaner, though, from my wonderful and generous sister, so sooner or later I'll give it back and invest in one of my own.

Ask: how could I have been so blind to these pretty, peace-loving beings with whom I had crossed paths so many times before? Well, it seems that in this, as in many contexts, it took an individual to open my eyes to the beauty of the group. With that introduction, I was then freed to discover the admirable qualities of other individuals. Now the difficulty lies in committing to just one.

01: inspiration

2009-02-01T19:12:00.000-08:00

I've been inspired.

NPR's All Songs Considered has opened my ears to a whole new world of wonderful music. That's not really news; I've been listening to the podcasts for quite some time now and consequently discovered many newfound musical loves. I just want to take a moment to recognize its important role in my life and to give thanks to the host, Bob Boilen. Not that he reads my blog or even knows it exists, but still, I feel like it's something I should do.

Mr. Boilen just announced the third annual RPM Challenge, whose motto is "Record an album in 28 days, just because you can." I don't know how to record an album. I've been thinking more about musical creation lately, so... maybe next year.

In the meantime, I am feeling inspired by the challenge and slightly embarrassed by what turned out to be a rather poor blogging showing during the month of January. Therefore, during the month of February, I will record a rhetorical album in 28 days.

I don't guarantee thematic or even stylistic coherence like you might find in a musical album, but I will add a track every day for the remainder of the month, just because I can. I have recently discovered many new sources of inspiration, so I have a lot of ideas running around in my head and looking for a place to go. I want to see what comes of recording them together.

This is my record; these are my songs. I broadcast them from my perch in the California canopy, as I take stock of the materials I have been gathering for my nest. I invite you to listen and, as you feel inspired, to add a verse or a countermelody of your own.

a grotesquely serendipitous combination

2009-01-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

As seen in my Google Reader this morning:

(click to enlarge... or don't)

Some things just need to be shared.

avian drifters

2009-01-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

[natural bridges state beach, santa cruz, california]

That's right, it's Skywatch Friday again (where did the week go?)! Check out the views here.

twitterpated

2009-01-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

omigosh omigosh!

plop plop fizz fizz

2009-01-12T12:48:00.000-08:00

For the most part, I consume a fairly healthy diet. But when I feel even mildly ill, all I want is Saltine crackers and 7up. What with the high fructose corn syrup and all, I know that I cannot be biologically evolved to crave these highly-processed foodstuffs (can you tell that I've been reading Michael Pollan?), so I'm sure it's a cultural thing. No doubt the connection is largely psychological: I have Saltine-and-7up memories from childhood sick days, and somehow the pair has been built up in my mind as a semi-magical elixir, despite how unhealthy I know the components to be. I figure, since I never eat Saltines or drink 7up unless I'm feeling sick, it's not so bad to let them sneak in a couple of days a year, right? If nothing else, they make me think that I feel better. And they give me some calories when I don't feel like getting them from anything else.

What do you crave when you're sick?

skywatch flashback

2009-01-09T19:22:00.000-08:00

[Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico. June 2006]

Highlights from my visit to this site:

1) watching the golondrinas (swallows) flitting in and out of the archways

2) witnessing the outburst of an exhausted student in the group, who exclaimed, among other things, that I and two of my friends should just go back to the U.S. because we thought that we were Mexican. what?

Watch the skies from your desktop:

longing for something like home

2009-01-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not quite who I want to be.

Ultimately, that's a good thing. If my becoming were complete, then there would be no more being. So, as long as I am not quite who I want to be, I continue to be. And as long as I work toward realizing—and continue to refine—that vision of who I want to be, I continue to become.

The problem with the discrepancy between who you are and who you want to be is that, for the most part, people don't see who you want to be. They don't see who you are becoming. They see only who you are.

To complicate things further, other people's conceptions of who you are differ both from your own and from one another. Each person whose path crosses yours, defines you (whether consciously or not) in terms of any of an infinite number of combinations of names and images, spoken words and written correspondence, facial expressions and physical movements, diplomas and categorical labels, achievements and failures, moments of laughter and silences—all things which are perceived externally and empirically.

So how to get them to see that vital part of who you are which is who you are becoming, the you that you want to be but that has not yet breached the surface? How to get them to see that you need them in order to become who you want to be? That you need them to believe in you because you don't always believe in yourself?

An acquaintance, whom I admire immensely, provides a moment of light: "do what your passions demand of you, and keep your eyes open to the people that you'll see around you." In them you will find the people who can see who you are becoming, the muses who inspire you with who they are becoming, the friends who believe in you and encourage the you that you want to be.

It is easy to get impatient and try to go about it the other way around, only to run into a wall, become frustrated and disillusioned, and then to pick yourself up again and move along okay until you hit another wall. And then, insight from a smoother traveler, and you see that you've been trying to do things backwards. You see why we need each other?

Today I am longing for something like home, but home to me is little more than an abstraction. Today home is a dream of a magical and brilliant place where I am becoming who I want and need to be, where I learn and play with friends of mutual understanding and inspiration.

Today I am too physically and emotionally exhausted to do much in the way of building that home, or even selecting the site. Today I long only to be in a frail substitute for home: in bed, snug under the covers, warm and toasty in my apartment where the overactive radiator is getting its way no matter what the settings on the knob say. It's stubborn, but at least it's comforting.

what i realized with despair as i tried to fall asleep last night

2009-01-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

A vegan diet precludes chocolate.

If I were Vanessa, I would have had a big bowl of wheat chex for breakfast this morning.

a year in preview: ABCs of 2009

2009-01-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

Ah, the new year's resolutions. I never really liked that terminology. I think it's because the word resolution implies that a person means to do away with a problem that was left unsolved at the end of the last year, possibly due to a broken resolution made at the beginning of the last year. And so the typical new year's resolutions tend to be about the same every year, most items on the list remaining perpetually unresolved.

I am certainly not immune to the allure of new beginnings, but I prefer to think of the new year as a blank page rather than a blank slate. I'm taking pen to paper on a new chapter, not an entirely new book. And I didn't burn everything that my life wrote in previous years.

Well, now that I've set the semantic scenery (a conspicuous linguist am I), I give you now my list of twenty-six goals, predictions, and dreams for this year that we number 2009. Question them, critique them, adapt them into your own lists, make alternate suggestions, mock them; just please, don't call them resolutions. Thank you.

ABCs of skylark's 2009:

Adventuring
Bizarrities
Canadian escapade
Dinner parties
Eccentric acquaintances
Forest exploration
Grad school applications
Hikes with new buddies
Iphone purchase
John Steinbeck pilgrimage
Kiwicha in Bolivia
Long bike rides
Modern dance
New blog
Oboe performance
Published translations
Quechua classes
Romance and heartbreak
Sufjan live
Twitter tweets
Underground art
Vegan experimentation
Weekend in Austin
Xerophyte adoption
Yuppietown to hippietown
Zapateao

sky of eighteen winters

2009-01-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

Lake Kittamaqundi, Columbia, Maryland

26 December 2008

a year in review: 2008 by the numbers

2008-12-31T23:47:00.000-08:00

I've never been that into new year's festivities. More and more I am feeling that no particular calendar day is inherently different from any other (it's what you do with the days that matters). I like to think that time doesn't exist (though I can't completely deny that it does, for us, in our sphere), and I have a friend who insists that it is cylindrical. I don't quite get it, either. What I am trying to say is that the difference between December 31 and January 1, between 2008 and 2009, is artificial, but it is there, so I can't help but take a moment to reflect on the past year. It was kind of a big one, by some accounts. Let's have a look, shall we?

skylark's 2008, by the numbers

4 hours writing for the specialty exam

96 pages in the completed thesis

1 diploma

2 weddings

1 passover seder

12 flights

1 drive to cleveland

3 solo trips to salt lake

1 walk to mexico

5 years in utah came to an end

2.5 moves

142 job applications

7 job interviews

1 job offer

137 train rides (estimated)

2 new wheels

1.5 heartbreaks

6 reunions with old friends

95 posts on etxerantz

1 new blog

Wherever you may be, happy new day. Well alright, happy new year, too!

roots and wings

2008-12-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

[columbia, md. 25 dec 2008]

Here I am in my childhood home:

walls and roof, trees and sky.

Happy Holidays & Happy Skywatch Friday!

and the boxcar goes to...

2008-12-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all of you who participated in the first ever etxerantz balderdash contest. It was fun to see what you came up with, and many of your answers made me laugh. Out loud. Repeatedly. In a manner that might have been embarrassing had anyone been around to hear it.

It was not easy to choose the winners. But I said that I would, so here we go:

First of all, a bonus point goes to Kim for cross-bread. I don't know about you, but whenever I go to the grocery store I see a number of products that easily fall into the category of cross-breads. Sprouted wheat sourdough with flaxseed, anyone?

Honorable mention goes to Mac for his definition of mysteriopus:

/mi steeree ō'pəss/ n - a large cat-like carnivorous dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period whose method of hunting involved spreading mud on the upper part of its face and around its eyes in order to paralyze its prey with suspense. [etymology 'unknown']

Honorable mention goes to Vanessa for both of her entries. Although I had to disqualify mysteri.opus on the grounds that it was not a clearly circumscribed definition, it deserves comment because (1) the film in question might be a good example of a mysteriopus, as Vanessa implies (i.e., a work—in this case, a film—focusing on a mystery), (2) that scene always makes me laugh, and (3) it was uncannily appropriate in light of the fact that when I saw Vanessa's answers I happened to have just finished reading And Then There Were None, which continually made me think of—and want to watch—the movie Clue.

Vanessa's second definition:

lanudary=wool milk

kind of makes me gag, but it was too charmingly nerdy in its etymological literalness to ignore.

First prize goes to Claire for her definition of mysteriopus:

a many legged (and therefore footed) creature whose leg count has yet to be determined by science.The centipede and millipede look practically footless in comparison.

And the grand prize goes to FoxyJ for her definition of lanudary:

what happens when you need to do laundry but have no clean clothes to wear while doing it; hopefully this doesn't happen in a public place.

The winners do not really get boxcars. Sorry. I know that would be cool. Mostly I picked that word because I like it and it sounds a little like Oscar. FoxyJ wins a Librarian Action Figure with Amazing Push-button Shushing Action (not in its original packaging, but like new. includes stack of accessory books and trading card). Claire wins the pleasure of my company in Toronto, probably sometime in March. Okay, so that was going to happen anyway. I'll bring some other prize, too. I don't know what yet, so it'll be a sur-prize. You honorable mentionees, well, you win all the glory that comes with being mentioned honorably on my blog.

Thanks for playing, everyone, and Merry Christmas! Look out for the dangers of public lanudary and lurking mysteriopuses.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the edifice

not a creature was stirring, not even a mysteriopus...

at least there's no awful music like when they put you on hold on the phone

2008-12-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

Hi. I'm at the airport.

I have been at the airport for about five hours.

And boy lemme tell ya, you may not think that standing and waiting in a ridiculously long line would require a lot of energy expenditure, but add to that another unbelievably long line, a couple of shorter, nearly motionless lines, and in the first place an absurd little line waiting to board the airport shuttle at the train station (I really don't know what that was about. Seven or eight of us, all lined up, waiting for the waiting bus to, well, I don't know really, open its doors and then close them—a little bus driver humor, perhaps? haha, just kidding! teeheehee—and then open them again and finally let us on—okay, really, i was just teasing. no hard feelings?) and you have yourself rather an exhausting afternoon.

Anyway. I finally sat down with an overpriced pizza (though, come to think of it, airport prices aren't too far off from normal California prices, and it's yummy so it's cool) and, free wi-fi! Cool, right? Okay so I guess it's not all that novel, but it's the first time I have come across it. Maybe that has something to do with most of my flights during the last several years having departed from Salt Lake. Oh, I miss that airport today. However. The last time I checked, SLC International did not offer free wi-fi. So, for the moment, I win.

Summary: Arrived at the airport. Lines are horrendous. I've never met such a long, slow-moving line in my life. Except maybe at Disneyland. Left curbside line to check out line inside. Worse. Went back outside. Flight delayed. Thought I might make it. Kept waiting in line. Started to rain. Kept waiting. Finally reached the front of the line. Flight status: boarding. Me (mildly frantic—well, inasmuch as I ever become frantic): Do you think I can make it?? Skyhop (with no apparent sense of urgency, almost drawling): Well, I don't know, I can't really say... I'll do my best with your bag, but I don't know if you'll make it on the plane or not... Checked my bag (I wasn't really thinking). Ran to the security line. Stopped to wait in line. Look right: flight status: departed. Back to the line (opted for the indoor line this time). More standing. More waiting. Rescheduled my flights.

Now I'm off to board a plane to Phoenix, and in the morning I'll leave Phoenix for Baltimore. If it all works out I'll be there less than 24 hours behind schedule! Yeah. Oh, and I get to see Julie. Bonus!

Cheers from SJC! (Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know the way to San José.)

PS. You are, I am sure, anxiously awaiting the results of the balderdash contest. And I will announce them tomorrow, once I have safely arrived in Merryland and will have no need to navigate another airport. For a few days, anyway.

balderdash: a call for definitions

2008-12-19T19:58:00.000-08:00

Today in my various readings I ran across a couple of curious typos. Typographical errors are not always interesting (and surely to normal people they are never interesting), but these two in particular got me thinking that perhaps a stray keystroke or a moment of slipped typing rhythm can in fact become a felicitous vehicle for a neologism. That's right, careless typing can create new words. The question is, what might such new words mean? How shall we use them?

I hereby issue a call for definitions of the following words:

mysteriopus

lanudary

Please offer a definition of one or both words in the comments section. The composer of the best responses will win a prize! Answers will be judged on creativity, plausibility, laughability, and howmuchilikeitability. Bonus points if you make a typo that results in a new word of the ilk of mysteriopus or lanudary. But it doesn't count if you do it on purpose. Ready, set, go!

why so blue? a monochromatic study

2008-12-18T20:37:00.000-08:00

[lawton st & 22nd ave, san francisco]

Yes, that's really the Sunset district. Yes, it's usually very foggy in that part of the city. Yes, Sunday lived up to its name. Yes, I take my camera everywhere. And yes, I am going to recommend that you check out Skywatch for more atmospheric views. And if you have your own blog, you are encouraged to participate!

nocturne without naiad, or, why am i still up?

2008-12-17T01:33:00.000-08:00

I have been fighting sleep, staying up far later than I ought to, many nights during the last few weeks. Trying to stay on top of all the things I want to read (Google Reader is deceptively simplifying) and all the things I want to hear (surely I've mentioned my NPR podcast problem). And I have so many things that I want to write, and now, but the trouble is that I'm so tired that I can't manage to complete but a few of the half-thoughts that I have scribbled in a score of draft posts. But my reading list is not what is keeping me up. That's just a convenient excuse, I think.

Then what is it, you ask? Well, I have a theory, and it is that somehow, just below the surface of consciousness, my person is wholly convinced that, being as it is mid-December, I simply ought to be undersleeping and overintellectualizing. That's just what I do at this time of year, right?

This is the first autumn that I am not a full-time student since, well, since I started going to school twenty years ago. Twenty years! Okay, okay, so nursery school wasn't really that intense. But I think it can be argued that five consecutive years at university could have sufficiently conditioned my mind and body to expect the reeling, brilliant, sickening, prolific, anxious, exhausting, bizarrely beautiful stop-motion speeding chaos that is the closing phase of a school term.

Many of my friends are currently in grad school, and several of them have recently on their blogs discussed their sentiments or at least mentioned their frustrations as they struggle to tie up the ends of the semester or quarter. The general consensus is that they hate it. Of course they hate it in the moment; we all do. The way you feel when the clock is tick-tocking-telling you that you have twelve hours to write twelve more pages, and you can't figure out what you're trying to say, and oh NO what if, what if you don't finish on time? what if you fall asleep... that sounds nice... but you must finish! you can't go to sleep! not yet and you pour another tall glass of Diet Coke with Lime, no, Mountain Dew this round, and scrape another lemon bar from the pan, gooey sticky sweet and almost gone and you bring one to Claire, too, and it makes you feel ill, you've already had too many, but at the same time it is strangely consoling and the sugar should give you some energy at least, and you're back to the page and Sufjan is singing this time of year you always disappear and you think if i can just get this done and turned in then maybe i can squeeze in a nap before the next one and it's AWFUL! But don't you see? It's some sort of crazy wonderful, too. Sweetened at the end, of course, when you finish everything and slip the last paper under your professor's door and you feel like maybe you've accomplished something meaningful and now you can finally put your weary, frazzled little self to bed.

What's that you say? Do I miss it? Now why would you say that?

(I didn't think that it would happen so soon.)

Good night. Good morning. (It's all the same at this time of year, anyway.) And if you're still writing papers or preparing for exams, good luck and take cheer. Odds are I'll be right back there with you, sooner or later.

my new favorite architect, or, why i should start practicing german again

2008-12-15T07:23:00.000-08:00

It all started with this posting on Google Sightseeing: an aerial photo of what turned out to be my new favorite building. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure that I had a favorite building before. But I do now.) The roof takes an unusual shape: a long, curving incline; and it also happens to be green, planted with maple, beech, and lime trees. That's cool enough, and it also explains the building's name, Waldspirale: Wald is German for forest; spirale, as you will have guessed, refers to the spiral shape.

But then! Then I saw this:

(click photo to link to original flickr source)

What splendid craft! What controlled exuberance! What a glorious use of color! Is it...? Could it be...? I think I'm in love.

Waldspirale is an apartment building in Darmstadt, Germany, and for its design we may thank the late Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. No, I'm not making that up. Friedrich Stowasser was born in Vienna on this day in 1928, and he adopted a rather more colorful moniker, which translates (rather clunkily) into English as Peace-empire Rainy-day Dark-colored Hundred-water.

Here's another sample of the prolific artist's work:

(click photo to link to original flickr source)

That's the Hundertwasserhaus in Plochingen, Germany. It's not my new favorite, but it certainly has its merits. (Does it remind anyone else of the Spanish missions in California?)

So. If I suddenly take off and move to Germany, you'll have a pretty good idea as to where to find me.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Herr Hundertwasser. Sie lebt noch, im seiner Kunst. Danke.

a year ago today

2008-12-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

I was in Arizona. I stood in the glorious desert sunshine outside the temple, and from within its doors emerged the newlyweds. My best friend and her husband were positively radiant. It was a joyous occasion for them and for the many people who love them. It was also a moment of catharsis for me. I can't really explain it—or at least, I don't want to here—but needless to say, I was more than a wee bit emotional. All I have to say is that it's a good thing my mascara was waterproof.

A year later, she has finished her master's degree and he is halfway through his; together they have survived a Chicago winter and now they are braving the season in Toronto. (I guess love keeps you warm.) And I miss them terribly.

Happy Anniversary, Claire and Joseph. May you share infinitely more happinesses in the years to come.

Love,
me

an observation, a complaint, a question, and an ellipsis

2008-12-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

It has been a week since my centennial post on etxerantz.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing it, and not one person —not even a non-person spamming robot— commented on it! (Therefore, I feel kind of ridiculous.)

Is it just that I did such a thorough job on it that there was nothing left unsaid?

…

skywatch friday, week 18

2008-12-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

[from the archives: provo, utah, october 2007]

Behold my beloved cottonwoods,
undressing in preparation for winter,
outside my last apartment in Utah.

without major incident

2008-12-11T14:26:00.000-08:00

...but not without a minor one, today for the first time I biked to work. There was a bit of stumbling while crossing the six lanes of El Camino (notice how I make myself feel better by using passive voice?) but overall it worked out very nicely. In fact, it felt great. I haven't quite figured out how all the different speeds work, but at least I can feel cool saying that I have twenty-one of them. And while three and a half miles sounds like very little, I'm pretty sure I'll be worn out by the time I finish the second three-and-a-half home tonight. A healthy, keeping-the-air-clean, making-my-muscles-work, i'm-ready-for-bed-now sort of worn out.

And now, it's flashback time: for me, back to my college German classes when one of my favorite teachers introduced me to Die Prinzen; for some of you, perhaps, back to the early nineties when you secretly wanted to be a groupie for this punked-out German a cappella group. Come on, admit it.

Die Prinzen: "Mein Fahrrad" (My Bicycle)

And by the way, my sister is awesome. This is true for many reasons, but here I point out particularly the fact that mein Fahrrad is actually hers, on super-extended loan until I figure out what I want and save up the cash to buy it. Cool, right?

i'm from barcelona

2008-12-10T00:06:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not really from Barcelona.

But then again, neither are the musicians who call themselves I'm From Barcelona.

They're from Sweden. And they're delightful.

I first heard the track, "Headphones," on this episode of All Songs Considered (let it be known that I am a hopeless NPR podcast junkie), and since then I've caught a few more of their tunes (because they're catchy, get it?) from pandora and from the band's website. Not the most intellectually challenging music, sure, but it is bright and cheerful, and sometimes that's all you need from a song.

Here's the official video for "We're from Barcelona:"

what's in a name? have a taste and see

2008-12-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes my brain does very odd things with words. I am not referring to the mildly bizarre, yet simple, word associations like grateful --> full of graters or confusions like did he die in the fire --> upgrade to papaya which, though perhaps surprising, are nevertheless logically traceable in morphological and/or phonetic terms.

No, no, here I am thinking of an even weirder phenomenon.

Exhibit A: Lenscrafters.

Remember Lenscrafters? Sure, they're still around. These days they don't seem to be advertising much, though, at least not like they were a couple of decades ago. Recognize this?

There is really no reason that this ad should be memorable. It's not funny; it's not clever; it's not aesthetically pleasing; it has no catchy theme music. The 3-D graphics--the lab dropping into the store--were pretty cool for their time, I guess, but not spectacular. The apparently 80s fashion may be amusing now, but it's not really all that glaring and, in the 80s, it wasn't really strange.

Nothing, indeed, makes this commercial memorable except that, for me, it conjures up crackers. That seems simple enough, given the visual and aural similarities between the words crafters and crackers. But it's not that simple, I tell you. This unassuming, and really rather boring, commercial, creates for me the impression of a very specific taste. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but it has always been the same, ever since I first saw the ad as a very young child. The best description that I can formulate at the moment is like a sort of stale Saltine cracker that is not very salty and slightly sweet besides.

Seriously. Where does that come from?

Exhibit B: Whitney

Here is another one. It is similar to Exhibit A both in effect and in duration: I can remember experiencing both phenomena since I was about five years old.

However, Exhibit B is, as I see it, far more inexplicable.

I'll keep this compact and posit just the question:

Why should the name Whitney make me think of, and nearly experience, the fragrant, sweet, just slightly tangy taste of vanilla yogurt, specifically the Yoplait variety?

Really.

Does this happen to anyone else?

for the 21st-century nomad

2008-12-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

The N55 Walking House is a compact, solar- and wind-powered "modular living system" that can walk across any terrain. The idea is to allow people--and their homes--to escape rising flood waters. (Found via WebEcoist.)

Anybody else think of Howl's Moving Castle?

ten times ten and seven times seven

2008-12-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

This is my one-hundredth post on Etxerantz.

As it happens, never in the first ninety-nine posts did I mention where the name etxerantz comes from. It is a Basque word, etxe meaning "house" or "home," -rantz being the directive case suffix (itself a compound of the allative -ra, "(going) to," and the destinitive -rentzat, "for"), indicating "toward." Hence the full title, Etxerantz - Toward Home. Now you know: both where the name comes from, and how nerdy I am. But you probably had a pretty good idea of the latter already.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate my hundredth post. Like it or not, I am conditioned to measure accomplishments in numbers. And the number 100, in our base-ten society and double-is-better culture (like it or not), is kind of a big deal. My first blog topped out at 55 posts before I retired it; interestingly, the next one ended up with exactly 55 posts as well. (In its defense, it was meant to be short-lived, documenting only my five-week stay in Peru.) My photo blog is marching steadily toward its centennial, but, being very young still, shan't celebrate the big three digits until February. Having reached one hundred posts here helps me to be optimistic about the future of this writing space. I hope to celebrate with you many hundreds more.

Let's do one thing at a time, though, shall we? The task at hand is, or at least my desire was, to write a special commemorative centennial post. However, I did not come up with anything meaningfully worthy of such a weighty calling, and rather than spend more time brooding over it, thus unnecessarily delaying the next etxerantz installment--who really cares that it's the one immediately following the ninety-ninth, anyway?--I opted to post something that has nothing to do with the number 100 (though number 3 under the second category comes pretty close).

That said, one might be surprised by how much time and energy I managed to put into what one might have expected to be something of a throwaway blog post. Ah, but I take these silly lists seriously, you see. I'm doing my duty here (not that I don't enjoy it): I was tagged, after all. And I liked Vanessa's variation on the sevens theme. That was a lot of v's. Here's my own slightly modified edition:

7 Things I Can Do:
1. ride a bike
2. write
3. host a slumber party
4. surprise people by speaking Spanish when they least expect it
5. get lost in strange cities (and enjoy the experience thoroughly)
6. play the oboe (and English horn, when I can get my hands on one)
7. cartwheels

7 Things I Cannot Do:
1. speed-read
2. fly a plane
3. control the size of my netflix queue
4. fall asleep with cold feet
5. understand everything
6. ski
7. survive without water

7 Favorite Foods:
1. lomo saltado
2. tacos al pastor
3. tofu
4. pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream
5. costa pork salad
6. snow day black bean soup (it's kind of a family recipe)
7. chocolate (pretty much any variety, but especially the hot, drinkable kind)

7 Books I am Currently Reading (or at least intending to read in the near future)
1. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
3. Casi una mujer by Esmeralda Santiago
4. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
5. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
7. A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters

7 Songs That I am Currently Listening to Obsessively *Note: if you follow no other link on this page, you really ought to click on the one labeled "Elephants on Parade." you won't regret it.*
1. Headphones by I'm From Barcelona
2. Airport Surroundings by Loney, Dear
3. Face to Face on High Places by School of Seven Bells
4. To Cure a Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song by Adem
5. Mirando by Ratatat
6. Elephants on Parade by Podington Bear
7. Incubator by A.R.S.

7 Favorite Words:
1. cacophony
2. luciérnaga (Spanish for firefly)
3. Flugzeug (German for airplane, literally "flying stuff")
4. ma'muaang (my best shot at transliteration. Thai for "mango")
5. matzaqik (Maya K'iche', said at parting and roughly equivalent to "take care;" literally "don't fall")
6. q'omer (Quechua for green. the sound transcribed q' might be my favorite phoneme.)
7. sassafras

7 Travel Destinations Currently High on my Wishlist:
1. Toronto
2. Bolivia
3. Chile
4. Lassen Volcanic Park
5. Iceland
6. Berlin
7. Australia (all of it. yes, I know it's a whole continent. could take a while to save up enough vacation time.)

skywatch friday, week 17

2008-12-04T22:47:00.000-08:00

[22nd st at indiana, san francisco]

Thanksgiving day:
silhouetted stubby claw trees (not their scientific name)
reaching toward wintry grey clouds over the city.

See more at Skywatch!

the sound of an old friend's voice

2008-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

(Sometimes it is just the music a soul needs to get up and dance again.)

A week ago today this fair city where I live was graced with the presence of a fine young man, indeed.

I met naB'is nearly three years ago. We were in a foreign language class together. He reached out to me in friendship and turned my world upside down. I fell in love with his eyes. I am convinced that their singular color is directly related to the unique way in which they see. naB'is and I never became very close friends, but we exchanged enough fumbling human poetry to establish a connection that remains intact. We ended up in another class together several months after our first meeting, and from time to time we ran into each other on campus. It was always such a joy to see him, even if it was only for a moment, just long enough to say hello and nice to see you. He used to wear this purple t-shirt, not really all that often, but enough that now, anytime I see a young man with blonde hair and donning a t-shirt of a violet hue, I immediately think of naB'is. It's a reflex.

Last week, naB'is and his best friend were in town. I hadn't seen him in probably a year, at least, and I had never met her. It was wonderfully refreshing to spend the evening with them. We attended a discussion with a handful of other bright souls, shared bits of our stories. We played Apples to Apples (I lost to everyone, including the dummy hand). We had a slumber party at my house. We didn't build a fort. My morning walk to the train station, always solo and sometimes lonely, was last Wednesday transformed by the warm, cheerful company of this delightful pair as they headed out on the next segment of their adventure. How fortunate I am to be able to call them my friends.

Last night I called up a friend of mine whom I haven't seen for over six months. We ended up talking for over two hours. Two hours. I'm not typically super chatty, and even my long phonecalls tend to top out at just under an hour. We talked about graduate schools and bicycles, Cuba and Bolivia, films and foam. Nothing terribly deep, but how lovely it was to hear his voice. This friend and I, we met over three years ago, and we were very close for a time. Now, we live in different states, and we don't see each other anymore. We don't talk very often, either. We go about our own separate lives, but not in ignorance of one another. We remain connected, even if it is on a level perhaps more superficial than I ever wanted to admit before. Whenever one of us happens to pass through the other's neighborhood, we will celebrate a momentary reunion. I will offer him shelter for the night, and I will always be his friend. That has already been decided, long ago, perhaps longer than I even know, and I believe that nothing will change that.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been stubbornly independent. As I grow closer (sometimes unwillingly) to becoming a grown-up, I am learning more and more that I need other people, that I must (often painfully) learn to rely on them. I used to hate to admit it, but now I know that it must be this way. What sense would there be in our being here together, the whole lot of us who (whether we like it or not) share this planet Earth, if we were not meant to be together? not merely to coexist, side-by-side in our separate bubbles, but rather to live together, to share our experiences and not only our globe, to allow our Daseins to overlap and to become entangled one with another, and to stop believing once and for all that they are ours and ours alone.

My friends, I love you. Thank you for being my friends, for being with me in this big, crazy, magical, terrible, glorious place that we are calling home.

on the n-judah inbound (tableaux from a solitary weekend, 3 of 3)

2008-11-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

Gazing through the window of the light rail car as we clickety-clack along the rails on Judah and Irving streets, I spy:

a little girl in a stroller, daddy walking behind her. they are wearing almost-matching hoodies. daddy's has horizontal stripes in turquoise and charcoal grey; the stripes on baby's are turquoise and white.

a black and white cat sitting on a windowsill, calmly licking its paws.

on a building face: surreal you hair design.

on a garage door: sortie de voitures / défense de stationner.

The car filled up at the last stop; now my eyes are entertained by the sights on this side of the window, and my thoughts turn to what my eyes cannot see.

What is in your little Wishbone shopping bag, woman with large rocks on your finger and consternation on your face?

What did you pack in your backpack today, earbud-wearing young man leaning on the doors?

And you, old man with a cottony white Santa-Claus beard, what do you carry in the pockets of your cargo shorts?

Perhaps those packages hide nothing very interesting, anyway. It is the baggage that we keep bundled up inside ourselves that makes us who we are, that alternately makes us suffer and allows us to experience joy, that colors our thoughts and informs our actions, that motivates our desires and, sometimes, is revealed when we share our love one with another.

So, what are your feet dragging along with them inside those chocolate-brown canvas shoes that you have tied up so tight?

What makes your feet bounce when you walk?

Why do you dance?

How do you dance?

on the way to san francisco on a sunday morning (tableaux from a solitary weekend, 2 of 3)

2008-11-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

I was wearing the same skirt that I have on today. He was wearing pants of nearly the same color. I taught him the word sequin.

I left home later than usual today and had to run the last block and a half to catch the train. These aren't exactly running shoes on my feet this morning. The train is nearly empty when I board, which is not terribly unusual for a Sunday, at least not for a non-game-day Sunday. I sit down by myself, which is not at all unusual. I am used to having an empty seat next to me. But today it is different. Today it is not empty. Today it is full of loss.

Seven Sundays ago, I found myself, as I usually do, on the train to San Francisco on a sunny morning. That Sunday was different, though. That day I found next to me not an empty seat but a smiling face, a musical voice, a bright intellect, a beautiful, if enigmatic, soul. Cheerful conversation and warm company took the place of what can sometimes be a tedious hour-long train ride. The excitement of a new friendship and hope in the beginning of something great accompanied me for the rest of the day.

Now, all those things are gone, and today, here on the train, I feel the sting of loss. The warmth and excitement lasted for a while; the mystery and fascination only grew over time. But desires clashed one with another one too many times, and finally the hope was broken beyond repair.

I can only hope to hope again, to find hope embodied in someone new. Someday. When I am not even hoping for it.

on dining out alone on a saturday night (tableaux from a solitary weekend, 1 of 3)

2008-11-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

After a delectable Thanksgiving feast and a day-after meal of scrumptious leftovers, on Saturday I am in the mood for something lighter. So I walk down the street to get a salad. Normally, I would get it to go, head back home to eat alone, maybe in the company of Ed Chigliak and Chris in the Morning.

But there are no gifts from Netflix waiting for me at home, and although retreating to a lonely corner is exactly what I want to do, somehow I feel that, today, it is also exactly what I should not do. So tonight I decide to stay in the restaurant, to eat alone, in the detached company of strangers.

I do not know that it did any good for my psyche; merely being in the same room with other people does not necessarily lessen one's feeling of loneliness (in fact, it has been known to have the opposite effect). At least I saved some takeout packaging. And I got to pay plenty of attention to my salad, which happened to be delicious.

I am no stranger to dining alone, to being alone. But this particular experience is poignant. Suddenly I feel like I'm starting over, from scratch, and I don't even know what the ingredients are. Applewood smoked bacon, matchstick-cut apples, toasted sliced almonds: they make for a tasty salad, but, even as a team, their powers are limited. Comfort food is only food, after all. We humans, as reluctant to admit it as we sometimes are, we need each other.

skywatch friday, week 16

2008-11-28T12:21:00.000-08:00

[chinchero, peru, june 2007]

How embarrassing: here I am posting on Skywatch Friday, and my last post was... last Friday. A whole week has gone by and my poor little blog has no writing to show for it. Worse still, today's photo is not even recent; it's from my archives, nearly a year and a half old. Oh well, at least it's a cool-looking sky, right? At the very least, you can surely find a cool-looking sky at skywatch.

skywatch friday, week 15

2008-11-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

[judah & 22nd ave, san francisco]

sunset in the sunset district
with muni lines overhead

happy skywatching

what do you listen to at work?

2008-11-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

I work in a charming historic house situated between two student residences.

About an hour ago I started hearing the sweet sounds of the marching band coming from somewhere outside and very nearby.

I assumed that they were making their way down Campus Drive, just on the other side of the house next door. It is the week of the Big Game, after all.

Ran outside with my coworkers to see them and, turns out, they are practicing ON THE ROOF OF THE FRAT HOUSE next door.

How fabulous is that?

They're still playing. And making me feel all cheerful and nostalgic.

I love this place.

well that's great

2008-11-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

In my readings lately (in blogs, emails, newspapers, and what have you), I have frequently come across the word grateful.

Probably not abnormally frequently, but for some reason the word has stood out to me.

It is not because I am particularly aware of the gratitude that I personally feel at this time in my life. I do, and I suppose that I am, but, at least consciously, that is not the reason behind all these gratefuls jumping out at me.

No, but rather because of some odd dance of neurons in my head it keeps occurring to me that grateful must mean full of grates. And yet I don't even picture grates. I picture graters.

That doesn't even make sense. The word is not graterful, after all.

The human brain can be so weird. You can expect more from me on this theme (meaning the brain's weirdnesses, and not necessarily graters, but perhaps grates) in the future.