Sound waves, star waves

There's a connection through radio, when you realize that someone in a distant location hears the same sounds as you at the same moment, experiences the same sensory input, reacts with a similar recognition. Thus radio transcends earthly broadcast to heavenly status-- it's a locale for lovers' trysts, like wishing on the same star or looking up at the same moon in the sky.

On the way to work, driving over the Hawthorne Bridge where it carries you over the train tracks (east side), and a small cloud puff rising from underneath gives a moment's warning before the whir of the horn, directly below, permeates the bridge structure, my car, my bones. The pleasing magic of the Doppler Effect as I swing past the tracks and over the water.

On the way home from work, small patches of low cloud break the unseasonably smooth blue, two lights in the sky send cylindrical beams ahead of an airplane that meanders ponderously onward like a friendly, celestial manta ray.

Oh leaf dreams

Stir in my chest, the ache in a short breeze plucks at the top. When I slowly turn to look, I will close my eyes and breathe deeply instead. The smell of earth, dark and heavy, waits for my hands and heart, waits for the collapse of leaf-veins and all of the between parts. With an ear to the ground, you can share the dark secret and giggle with the rest of the roots lifting their arms to the sky in supplicating green blades. I won't give up, but in my sleep I will dream of giving in and returning to the tree.

kitchen science

We leave tonight for New York, and as usual we don't have plans. I love that about returning to places I used to call home. You can show up, no list of things to do, stay with friends or family, and visit old haunts. Surely we will end up ambling down St Marks, eating at Red Bamboo and Crif Dog, Kate's Joynt, Zen Palate, the cheap bubble tea place named only in Chinese on Canal St... If all of my favorite places seem food-related, it's because they are.

Food is a huge part of my life, but it wasn't always. Growing up, my mom's cooking was not particularly good, punctuated by instances of true mealtime horror. It was a treat when my dad cooked his microwave gourmet meals-- baked beans with hot dog pieces or turkey and mashed potato sandwiches.

I can't think of a distinct time when food became so important to me, but there were at least three key influences. The first is Nate Cook, a unique, energetic friend in high school who opened my eyes to so many things. He lived just off Sligo Creek Park, he had his own car plastered with bumper stickers, and he played drums. He also introduced me to cilantro, the unmapped and unlighted roads through Rock Creek from Maryland into DC, and the now big-time Spanish tapas restaurant Jaleo.

During a summer of travel in college, I spent a week or two outside of Watsonville, CA, crashing with a group of people picked for a special marine science internship. One of the guys, whose name I can't remember but might be John, was an enthusiastic cook and came up with a plan whereby we'd all pitch in to buy fresh ingredients at the farmers market, and he would cook. The only meal I remember is an asparagus fritata, but something about his zeal for creative dishes really rubbed off on me. I think I may have claimed to the group to also be a good cook, which would have been a total fabrication. After leaving Watsonville for San Francisco, I spent the rest of the summer unable to afford more than one meal a day, eating a lot of French bread and tomatoes from the grocery store.

My final and most evident culinary influence is giving up dairy products. When I returned from that summer of travel and got a job as a short-order cook in a health food cafe, I had money again to eat ice cream every day. My usual was a scoop of rocky road and one of chocolate peanut butter stripe from Baskin Robbins. I was so enamored of ice cream that when my second job-- working the late shift at one of the university dining halls-- started back up for the school year, the student manager bet that I couldn't go without dairy for two weeks. Being a stubborn lover of challenges, I took him up on it. At the same time, I had to come up with daily specials for the cafe, so I read many of the cookbooks that were also sold there.

Now I have my own kitchen, garden, and local farmers market; I don't smoke, so my tastebuds are more awake; and I run so I eat a lot more. Food is a favorite subject, so I could go on and on, but one of my far-off, dreamiest dreams is to have my own cozy tea house with no set menu, a relaxing atmosphere, and customers who don't talk to me very much. I'll be in the kitchen.

pointless thought

For days this thought has run through my head: show me a room of truly intelligent programmers, and I'll show you a room (mostly full, and I debated myself on percentage here) of people whose deepest desire is to produce a great work of literature. You think they're all just computer nerds, but a surprising number of them truly care about our literary canon. Really.

lost heroics

You know the game where you choose a superpower? Flying is way too easy, and doesn't count because as a power it only exists in conjunction with other powers. No superhero has only the ability to fly, without other powers to gird their arsenal.

I think I'd choose to be able communicate with all other animals, although I'd word it as such so that I could speak any language, human and otherwise. I wouldn't want to be psychic or able to read thoughts, as it would be too invasive and overwhelming.

Then again, a very memorable answer-- to be able to urinate from one's fingertips-- comes to mind and I imagine the many scenarios in which such a power would be much more useful than being able to ask a sparrow which way Superman flew. If you can't come up with any such scenarios yourself, email me. I have a few.

One of my real-life super powers is the ability to walk down stairs quickly. I'm not sure why, but I can descend stairs abnormally fast, not skipping a single one. It doesn't apply to ascending, although the some of my skill could be attributed to my vast experience going up steps. When I was in high school I often took the subway home, and it was a point of pride for me to walk up the entire escalator from the train to the surface. At the time it was the second-longest one in the world. I didn't run down it very often, though, since I rarely used that station as a departure point.

Another odd power of mine is visual memory. My memories stand like single Polaroid pictures, and if I inspect them closer I usually find multiple exposures-- sometimes only a handful, but often enough to make a flipbook with smooth, flowing motion. This power also allows me to tell Erik where he left his keys, or to give precise driving directions to a friend over the phone, or to recall where I put something deep in my sewing room closet two years ago.

This power is extremely fortuitous, but makes up for its benefit when it backfires in two ways. The first is that it does not apply to numbers. I cannot remember numbers. Rather, I remember all of the numbers, but not in their correct order. I mix up phone numbers, birthdays, bank accounts, addresses. Luckily with the latter I can see the building in my head.

The other malfunction is when I cannot find something. My mind conjures a picture of where it usually is or has been in the past, and flips through these photos, repeating in vain. A few weeks ago I lost my drivers license and credit card between the front door of my house and the kitchen, and I will never find them. I keep looking in the same places over and over. The same power which normally makes me a small hero in finding my husband's lost phone has decided in this particular case (and in a few random others) to sabatoge my search efforts. I guess every superhero also needs a tragic flaw.

post memory

I received a postcard from Eric yesterday, written about memory and self. The central question was that if human memory is only half accurate, is it possible for the self to be made up of its own memories? Wouldn't that be an untrue self?

I love this quandary. I do think that we are our memories. Regardless of their precision, memories are faithful in that they remain true to one's overall vision of how the world works.

Perhaps then self is that vision? But which came first, the vision or the shaped memory? They influence each other, both everchanging.

As Eric points out, this only applies to intellectuals. And as he also points out, f* the rest.

transit

Transition is the beauty of life. I've been mulling it over, and I am convinced that this is the crux of what is beautiful. Spring and autumn trump summer and winter-- what can compare to the effusive bursting of buds on a cherry tree, or the smell of fallen, sun-warmed leaves in autumn? I thought of so many examples that my head started to fill up, but of course they've all slipped away now.

I think what prompted this line of thought was joy in the actual act of traveling while I was in Costa Rica-- the hours in minivans over rutted mountain roads, sparkling ferry trips through red tide-infested waters, walking through the jungle to get to waterfalls.

Falling in love is a huge transition. The giddiness, the mood swings, the vivid visual imaginings. This week I'm in love again, and it's amazing how fresh the emotion feels, viewing it a bit detatched, with a wary eye. Of course, my new love is Kenard the kitten, so there's no chance of heartbreak. The rush is the same. I sit at my desk in the afternoon and stare out the window, dreaming of his wiggly belly. I long to put my arms around him, to just spend time with him, to hear his voice.

Admitting all that is turning my post towards silliness, but I insist upon the seriousness of the revelation-- transition is beauty. The good news is that the adage "the only constant in life is change" is true.

yawning in autumn

Depression must be like yawning, when even if you don't see or hear someone else nearby yawn, it makes you yawn too. If you're reading on a train and you only hear the person next to you yawn, at least you know why you are yawning.