Electric Ladyland

easy breezy

the memorial day weekend with dad was a lot of fun.  highlights include:

• watching the sox beat the yankees 17-1 on saturday at home
• watching the sox beat the yankees 7-2 on sunday at the riviera (a sox bar)
• finding a bottle of red sancerre
• sushi at hasaki with lloyd.  i've discovered i do like mirugai.
• walking along the old high line, then by hudson river park
• roaming through chinatown and stopping by the brooklyn promenade
• mousse cake and espresso sambuca at caffe vivaldi, also the loopy pianist with three empty beer bottles by his feet fumbling through chopin and beethoven
• waking up in the morning to a cool breeze
• stumbling into vosges haut chocolat kind-of-by-accident and sipping iced cocoa on the steps outside

we were supposed to get thunderstorms at some point, but that never happened so we walked all around the island of manhattan.  blessedly, today was quiet but productive at work and i got to enjoy the pleasure of late afternoon sunlight and a light breeze throughout the apartment when i got home.  while planting seeds for zinnias and nasturtiums in little pots i bought today, i listened to the sox beat the orioles.  quiet and simple, nothing too involved.  just enjoying life.  sometimes that's really all you need.

executive lounging

v-tek just homered off randy johnson.  aaahh... i think this weekend is going to be a good one.

this long week of ups and downs (mostly ups) has drawn to a close.  now it's time for some serious relaxing.  my neighbors are having a party and i say right on.  sox are playing the yankees, got dad coming down for the food parade part II starting tomorrow, and things are quite good.  roses are blooming down the street, weather was actually nice today... feeling quite peaceful and content. 

had a fun, entirely unexpected celebrity encounter last night:  while volunteering at the ticket table at japan society for their lecture titled "on the battlefield of superflat:  the origins of japanese neo pop," i was approached by a young japanese woman asking for her ticket and it turned out to be none other than miho hattori of cibo matto!  i was introduced to their music by a fellow JET in japan and found it unique and lovely.  so of course i had to pipe up a little and say "i love your music!" when handing her the ticket.  she smiled.  how fitting that she'd be interested in the superflat lecture -- it was all about japanese pop culture and subcultures.  interesting lecture too -- got a better understanding of manga and anime, two aspects of japanese culture i know very little about.   glad i went.  got to reconnect with the people i know at japan society too.  seems like things are going well there.

a sweet treat

it's been hard lately.  even good stress is still stress, and i've had generous helpings of both the good kind and the bad kind lately.  that's why it was awfully nice when i returned to my desk after another long and intense day at work to find a bag of mrs. fields cookies waiting for me with a note:  "sit down.  relax.  take a deep breath.  eat a cookie.  repeat."  i think i know who my mysterious cookie benefactor was and i gotta say:  thank you!

cinematic evil, real evil

so i saw episode III yesterday on the digital projection screen at lincoln square.  that was amazing eye candy and i would agree that this final installment far surpasses episodes I & II (well, was that really a challenge?  jar jar?  wooden acting?  feh...) but i'm not quite sure it's better than episode IV.  jury's still out.  i really would like george lucas to make -- or at least authorize someone else to make -- the final trilogy.  what happens after luke, leia and han save the galaxy?  one only wonders.

so here i was watching the cinema version of a descent into evil at the same time, ironically, that i was reading about real-life evil in rwanda.  i finally watched hotel rwanda this past weekend and that motivated me to finally buy romeo dallaire's book about the genocide, shake hands with the devil.  scary scary scary scary scary stuff.  didn't everybody say "never again" after the holocaust?  then this happened and according to dallaire, the US and others didn't want to get involved because there were "only humans" in rwanda.  now there is genocide taking place in darfur.  what kind of people can shut off their humanity and try to wipe out an entire people?  it's very hard to understand, so that's why i recommend checking out dallaire's book as well as hotel rwanda.  there's a pbs special called crisis in rwanda that's also very detailed and thoughtful.

beat your headache away: whap-whap-whap!

after my headache subsided a bit i went to see unleashed, the latest jet li vehicle.  this one was another french production (don't get me started on how my beloved art house directors of both east and west -- zhang yimou and luc besson, i'm talking about you guys -- have sold out big time to the hollywood influence) and it was pretty much as expected:  jet li was fun to watch but the dialogue was intensely bad.  i did like the point they made about art and music having the power to warm your soul and those scenes of him encountering pianos were sweet (hey, jet li is getting better at acting), but otherwise, well, yeah, it was predictable.  even so, his star seems to be shining and maybe one day he'll be involved in better movies?  one can hope. 

everybody back off

words of the day:  tension headache and stress.  as in, i've had enough of both of these.  my head is pounding and i am done for the week.  i don't plan to be in touch with anyone this weekend except to see star wars on sunday.  otherwise, if i'm hard to find it's because i don't want to be found.  people need to leave me alone.

time out

today felt like it was going just a little too fast -- too many people demanding too many things from me.  all nice people but i was feeling very put upon, so i closed up shop and left promptly at 5.  headed home, put some sunflower seeds in a planter box to hang outside our kitchen window, and then prepared a small dinner assortment:  a small bit of cana de cabre (a type of goat cheese from spain) , some provencal olives, a bit of smoked salmon and what was left of last week's mousse truffee along with a couple of white spanish anchovies, some bread and a couple of glasses of morgon (beaujolais cru, which the wine lady recommended i give a try this past weekend). 

i have been seriously into luxury food lately for some reason -- just little bits of exquisitely tasty stuff.  the french would say that taste itself has volume -- something super-sized america has trouble understanding.  which reminds me:  last week a new girl in our calligraphy class told me, after we'd been talking for a while, that she was surprised to find out i was american.  she said i reminded her of her french friend.  i told her "well, there's a reason for that..." 

as if dinner weren't sumptuous enough, there's that chocolate truffle cake mom and i made sitting in the fridge.  this definitely constitutes what my dad would call attitude adjustment hour.  a couple of hours ago i was feeling fried but now life is quite lovely, thank you very much.

numb3rs

it's may sweeps and i'm late to the party -- i only just found out about numb3rs, which i think star rob morrow says he heard described as a cross between CSI and a beautiful mind.  that's about on target -- it's a crime show with a strong math influence and although i don't watch much tv to speak of (failing to do my cultural homework, i know) i did hear about this show on npr's science friday and thought the premise was kind of neat, so i tuned in. 

i'm loving it!  as a professional geek i'm all for having my geek compatriots well represented on the big screen and it doesn't hurt that the guys on this show are cute too.  and you just can't beat judd hirsch.  (i do wonder at the fact that they're all j-guys, though -- is that representing jewish guys or stereotyping them?  it hasn't been brought up on the show but i'm a little curious about that fact.)  having known a few math geeks in my day i think it's great that they're getting better press.  alas, being so geeky that i catch my tv torrent-style rather than on an actual tv i didn't know about them until well into the season.  i will be looking forward to season 2, though.

以心伝心

Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered."
    - from the Mumonkan

this week our class had its first unit on zen calligraphy.  we had a week to consider what type of theme to use and i kept thinking i wanted to do isshin denshin (以心伝心).  i did and i think that evening was easily one of the most transcendent and joyful experiences i've had in months.  maybe such experiences have a half-life because i am still feeling the effects three days later.  yesterday i spent the afternoon in the new york public library reading about zenga and found this quote, which seems to touch on the sentiment of isshin denshin. 

my practice session at home today went much better than usual. 

the grass is always greener

i've been really missing japan lately.  listening to that latest utada album kind of brought it out, i guess, with its references to tokyo and whatnot.  the club/dance feel reminds me of a lot of the music my JET friends introduced me to (delerium, crystal method, fatboy slim, dj shadow, dj krush etc) while we were all there in japan.  utada says she writes music when she's in transit or on the move, so perhaps that's why i identify her new beats with my experiences over there.  more often than not i was listening while on a bike, on the shinkansen or a regular JR train. 

last week everything passed in triple-time, it seemed.  no chance to pause for a rest.  this week is more normal but the recent juggernaut of work-related issues has had me yearning for a vacation.  i'm planning a trip back to japan for the first time in four years this november, hopefully well-timed to observe the fall foliage in kyoto towards the end of my visit.  i'll begin in tokyo, though.  just the other day i realized that not only is my oniichan living in tokyo but so are two other dear friends who i haven't seen far too long.

then there's shizuoka, which i've been missing so much lately.  i swear this past weekend as i was walking in my neighborhood i could almost see former images of my old hometown in japan layered on top of the view before my eyes as i was walking down the street.  very disorienting but brought the memories back, did it ever. 

speaking of things japanese, this week our calligraphy class is going to try zen calligraphy for the first time.  i'm sure this came out of our trip to boston for the exhibition there.  i have to ruminate on a theme before arriving at class and then i will do a very quick two-character piece based on it.  this will be very different from the careful, deliberate and slow work i do when producing a formal kaisho piece.  i'm looking forward to trying this out.