Rice talk

Despite the mediating vinegar, the ingredients for sushi had a nasty fight, resulting in the mysterious disappearance of some nori sheets and the departure of almost everyone from the kitchen. I had just finished a big plate of rice & peanut butter, as well as converted three skeptics to the idea, when the first wobbly roll appeared. Maki continued to enter at disparate times and with disparate fillings for the next few hours while the rest of the crew took charge of the remaining bottles of wine.

After midnight we pried the lone chef, dead on his feet but exhilarated in his bones, from the scene and made him rest on his laurels.

A new breath

for the blog, for the room. With a concentrated effort--my sister and a helpful neighbor--we scrapped together the aquarium in which I now reside.

Far from the red deserts. Now my feet take me through the city every day, a flatland for which I am grateful on my fixed-gear bicycle, a landscape so different as to evoke the feeling that it is me--my own consciousness--that's changed.

A capital reef,

or, At Capitol Reef. The rock formations massive; the sky ever larger.

Trailing up to the top of Chimney Rock in the midday sun, P cautioned me never to be the second person in line when passing a rattlesnake. Startled by footsteps, the snake composes itself in time to strike after the first person has passed.

Armed with this knowledge, I kept an eye peeled for snakes, but all we saw were sandy little lizards and great swooping birds among the stubborn shrubs, rubbery and tough to the touch, in line with the austerity of the desert.

The first of many climbs

began at the Rocky Mountains National Park in Colorado. Curving in round the tallest mountains, their austere statures softened by forest green, we spent the night nearly 9000 feet above ground. The next morning found us scaling a trail that led past this and two other ponds before losing itself to the everpresent snow. At one point I took advice from a one-armed woman on how to inch down a slope narrow and icy without slipping. For consolation I considered that no skeletons were visible, at least, from any vantage point, only the giants and the shadows they cast.

Friedrich at the falls

Shelburne, that is. On Route 2 west from Boston, we veered off course down to clusters of houses & flowers. We climbed on the sublime--ancient glaciers, perfect circles of rock, waterfalls above, eddies at our toes. All the diners were closed, so we went home.

To flower

The page in front of me was patient. The clock muttered to itself but left me alone. Finally the last word, tired of being teased, settled into place. In my hands the manuscript turned to lead. I stepped outside and the world burst into a million gentians.

Coffeeshop, pt. 2

A week back and a week without the coffeeshop--this is how you can tell it's been a difficult week. Which way does the causality run? you may wonder. Either way there is a delight in evoking the surroundings in which I currently reside--a wonderful circularity of reality into representation, representation into immediate reality. Correspondence.

The man behind the counter, with a silvery shirt, is wearing light blue checks today. Typical. He knows my name. I don't know his, but in my mind I tend to call him Sean.

Embracing my heritage

That is, having a coffee at the Bourgeouis Pig over a game of Scrabble last January. Despite the marvelous opener of "uvula", I believe I came in second to last (last being I, who came to the table late but magnificently spelled out his three-letter name with his last three letters).

My own set has been lost, or stolen, if you will, by an absentminded acquaintance. Geologist friend A mailed it to me the summer before Oxford so that we could play Scrabble-by-Mail, a somewhat laborious interpretation that involved making a move, taking a photograph, and mailing the photograph to the other player. He was in New Zealand; I was in England; the game was battered among time zones, essays, mountain-climbings, and international posts before it was laid to rest by the aforementioned disappearance.

In some cultures the egg is symbolic of the soul

There was a period in my life when I would not eat eggs because of a vague feeling of shame associated with them. Not the shame a vegan would experience, or an informed consumer, or the recipient of a bad egg. Just a feeling: inappropriate, embarrassing, odd. An intervention and some searching questions made me come to the realization that it was the sound of the word that evoked those feelings.

My friends helped me, working slowly, to face the fear. We called them huevos for about a year.

Tonight we brought the salt outside the egg in a radical new dying technique. Alas, scant success.

City without rulers

A bizarre snowstorm yesterday confused city & citizens alike. The Sears Tower, stretching highest, was the first to feel its effects. I dangerously took this, one hand on the wheel, on the Eisenhower in the late afternoon. Moody, brooding, the sky gave us hail while driving to dinner at 9 and sleet while driving home at 4.

Amor de loca juventud

Drunk, he wrote on my mirror with merlot-colored lipstick. Below, where the picture ends, another picture is taped to my wall where I had done the same at E's apartment last summer: Elope with me, Miss Private, and we'll sail around the world...

I took this about a month ago. Tonight, my mirror, a different mirror in a different room, startles a little with its lacklustre reflections.