Exercise as an expression of self-loathing

Like you, or unlike you, I sometimes find myself trudging under the weight of some anxiety, which after some time trenches into an open pool of guilt and irrational self-loathing.  These days when that happens I think of forcing myself to exercise because I don't enjoy exercising just for the sake of it.  So it begins as an act of aggression against a guttering mind, a self-destructive behavior, but in the process it often rekindles the mind and strengthens the body.  Somehow I am actually drawing on the angst to press myself.  It's a little sadistic, but also masochistic.  I am both the dealer and the recipient of pain, pushing myself to run further, faster, longer, proving, disproving.

But isn't that how all exercise is?  And of course who REALLY enjoys exercising just for the sake of it?  Isn't it always this push and pull of sadomasochism?  Somewhere in our minds we're disgusted with who we are becoming, so we use exercise as a weapon against that person, which requires overpowering the body's inclination to remain comfortably at rest.

I suspect that most successful people in this world and throughout history have found motivation in creating distance between themselves and that which they have considered revolting, namely failure in themselves or others.  But in focusing on that failure as a means of inspiration, we're really embracing it.

Some things I've learned about running

1) You don't like doing it? Nobody likes doing it. Just shut up and go.

2) You don't have 30 minutes you can spare? I don't believe you.

3) You really don't have 30 minutes? The President finds time to exercise. So can you.

4) If you get out there 3-4 times in one week, it actually starts sucking less, and after a couple weeks, your body actually starts craving it.

5) Just run until you can't run anymore. You don't have to kill yourself over it, just go. Every time you go you're doing yourself a favor, and next time you'll be able to go further.

6) If you let more than three days pass between runs, you'll regress. See rule #1.

7) Unless you really enjoy running, which I don't, you don't need to run more than about 3 miles at a time to be fit. If you still have some time after that, you should move on to other things, like core strengthening, flexibilty, balance, and power (that's the actual order of my priorities).

Ceviche

Ceviche is one of those dishes that I could never have enjoyed as a Missourian (let alone as a West Virginian) twenty years ago. It is only because of our modern food supply chain that I can purchase fresh cod and fresh octopus at Whole Foods in Brentwood, along with a bag of limes, oranges, lemons, cilantro... It really is breathtaking to think of all the amazing foods we have access to these days.

Here is a story that could only happen in our time. Strolling through Whole Foods yesterday, I thought to myself hey, I want to make some ceviche. So out comes my smart phone and, after a 30-minute discussion about work with a colleague who happened to be wandering through the same place and time, I finally googled "ceviche". Within seconds I was reading a recipe for classic Peruvian ceviche.

I bought 1 lb of fresh cod (of which I actually only used about 3/4), and 1/2 lb of fresh octopus, which I had the fishmonger at Whole Foods clean for me (which was great that she offered, since I have no idea how to clean an octopus). In place of the rocoto chili, I used three large sliced Bird's eye (Thai) chilis. In retrospect, I should've used twice as many. The heat didn't come through very prominently.

Because the limes were actually a little dry, it took me the entire bag of medium-sized organic limes to squeeze out just 3/4s of a cup of juice. So to keep the ratios consistent, I only put in 3 oz of orange juice and 3 oz of lemon juice.

The thinly sliced onion is actually a very important aspect of this recipe, because it provides a crunchiness to the final dish that would otherwise be just a lot of soft, pickled fish.

I let my fish "cook" (technically "denature") in the marinade for nearly 3 hours, which is the maximum amount of time recommended. I served it on some slightly toasted french bread with thin slices of avocado.

Now here is the real ULTIMATE kicker, which I know absolutely must be a prerequisite in Peru, because it is so perfect... I had remembered seeing on an Anthony Bourdain episode that the marinade itself, called the Leche de Tigre (the tiger's milk), is considered the ultimate hangover helper. Plus, I mean just consider what it is. It's just begging to be consumed. I mixed 2 oz of the leche de tigre with 2 oz of Don Cesar Pisco Puro, which is an excellent Peruvian unaged brandy (pisco), over ice, flavored with a bit of cilantro, shaken, strained... YUM! I had to have two.

Clearly the cocktail is not shown above, where I actually ate (a second round, next day) on Crispini crackers with a modest dressing of Sriracha. Coconut water does go well with the dish.

The only changes I would've made to this recipe are perhaps a bit more salt and twice as much heat.

God's Reasons

Why would God create man and then give him free will and say Worship me or Die! If you tell me that he has reasons, then that implies that we could deduce his reasons through logic. But the conclusions are not attractive.

"Ignorance is not bliss. It is unconsciousness and slavery; only intelligence can make us sharers in the shaping of our fates." - Will Durant

Green Programming and Fundies

A few years back I started writing a blog entry about Green Programming, in which I attempted to define a philosophical position that views inefficient code as a moral failure. As a programmer, you are responsible for ensuring that your software runs efficiently, just as you are responsible for recycling your recyclables and conserving water.

It makes me remember that morals are sourced from a given worldview, and what may be considered moral by one person, like recycling, may be considered frivolous by another. For instance I know that some people view the world as a place of temporary existence on the way to an afterlife where everything on the planet is created and declared by their god to be at their disposal with no need to worry about exhaustion. Of course this is despicable to someone who doesn't believe in their god and sees them leaving their trash all over the place and making the world a progressively dirtier and sicker place to live, where ultimately they will effect the end of the human race by making our world too toxic to survive in.

On the other hand, that would be gravy for them, because they look forward to the end of the world. With that in mind, what is it that prevents them from simply destroying the world ASAP? I guess a person would not want to sacrifice their own salvation in order to bring about the apocalypse by destroying the world, since it is already promised to them anyway, and they should in fact endure the trials levied against them in preparation for the End of Days.

Also, and this is really my main point here. . . They should want to enjoy a long life in this place that was given to them by their god, and likewise they should show their god their worthiness by leaving this place as beautiful as they found it. If I build a house with the intention of letting my children live in it, and I promise to take them into my much more glorious house after judging how they live in the house I built for them, I would be more likely to take them into my house if they treated the house they lived in with due care and respect for both the place and each other.

America's Decline

To say that America is not declining is absurd. We're declining in both form and substance. Our government is in a perpetual deadlock of petulant brinkmanship and our level of social and cultural dialogue is embarrassing. This was punctuated for me on Friday in the comments of astronaut Scott Carpenter, who spoke at an event celebrating 50 years since John Glenn's historic flight, saying "There are lots of reasons behind our current predicament, but what it boils down to is the simple fact that when John and I went to work for this country, the United States was recognized around the world as a can-do nation. We have become viewed around the planet as a can't-do nation and I deplore that."

Why have we become this way? I think one of the primary factors is that the increasing complexity of modern society has rendered a large segment of our population feeling out of control and incapable of comprehending the technologies that operate this world. When a person feels out of control, he or she tends to clamp down, back up, reassess the situation, simplify, attempt to regain some semblence of control. In many cases, I believe, this is resulting in hebetude and withdrawal from meaningful social discourse.

This feeling of helplessness in the face of drastic global issues such global warming, economic collapse, serial killers, school shootings, genocide, human trafficking, environmental disasters, war and its atrocities, mass media, the 24-hour news cycle and its instant dissemination of every little hiccup, no matter how petty or grotesque, in excruciating raw detail, is causing people to react on a primal level. We are dealing with social issues that are beyond our understanding. Our primal minds cannot cope with the scale of these issues. We're treating issues that affect the whole of human civilization with a social intelligence that is overwhelmed by the nuances involved. Our primal instincts want to take over.

Precogs exist, but they're not people. . .

They're algorithms.

Pattern recognition algorithms can know things about you before you do. Tracking your daily routine: where you go, what websites you access and when you access them, your purchasing habits, your eating patterns, your social engagements, your work habits, etc., which thankfully are all in disparate and disconnected databases, if they're tracked at all, could be unified and mined to profile your psyche for comparison with other people's habits and mental states so accurately that it could actually provide foresight to actions that you have not yet even considered taking.

The amount of data we store about ourselves - all of which can be considered behavioral data in some way - is so vast that we absolutely depend on pattern recognition algorithms to make sense of it.

Today our algorithms are primarily based on statistics. Numbers can be mathematically analyzed for normality and variance. What other considerations could make pattern recognition algorithms more effective? Like the human brain making a discovery, a prudent algorithm will consider many patterns when learning about behavior. Even pruning data, like the human mind forgets, can be an important factor. How should an algorithm decide when it's time to forget old data, or lessen their priority?

We can even employ several algorithms at once to produce independent results that can then be analyzed by a supervisory meta-algorithm. The work can be farmed out to several different computers, several different databases, as long as this meta-algorithm is orchestrating the work.

Thoughtful Conservatism

Knowledge is a journey, and many bright people tire and quit the journey after they have advanced past provincial jealousies but before recovering their receptiveness from vain and hypocritical liberals. That is what leaves people stranded in thoughtful conservatism. They become so contradictarian, they actually come to oppose their own natural will to empathy, trapped in the role of devil's advocate.

They have thought their way past rudimentary tribalism, but then become frustrated by the fops and skanks found gathering in the intermediate spaces of liberalism. The distastefulness of that scene causes some wise people to turn to another track entirely rather than pushing past to the more difficult but rewarding worldview of order from chaos: systems theory. The interconnectedness. Grey Murkiness. Soft paradoxical forgiveness that is human behavior.

phone tones

This blog entry is written from my phone. The ever-increasing laziness or convenience-provided zeitgeist of modern technology is biting me. Hand grip on my shoulder, tearing the sinews like Beowulf on Grendel. I'm Grendel, that pathetic piece of fuck.

You can make music with your phone. This epiphany is probably an old dim incandescent gnat covered lemon to you, but to me it's an epiphany. I realized this while looking up my sister's number. Dial k-a-t-i-e... K-a-t-i-e... K-a-t-e-i... K-a-t-e-i... Repeat. # is the high note, 1 is the low. I've spent at least 30 minutes improvising on this tune.

I probably shouldn't be blogging from my phone, all formality kerplunked...

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Long ass week

Or long week of ass...

This was the first full week without my closest co-worker, Tom. Tom left the company for to pursue an amazing opportunity for himself and his own company. I'm missing him big time. He was the one person there who was fluent in my language, and I was the one person who was fluent in his. Now it's all on me to teach others our dream. The work has begun.

Also today I found out that one of our most important coaches is leaving the ski team to coach for Vail. I'm of course absolutely happy for him to have such a fun adventure ahead of him, but also... goddamnit, I guess it's time to step up and play a more active role on the team to help fill the tremendous gulf he's leaving behind.

The Art of Recklessness

I've just begun reading Dean Young's recent book on poetry, The Art of Recklessness, and I can already say that I have found a new favorite book. It was by page 15 that I felt my eyes swell and a deep sigh or relief pour out of me as I realized how he had killed me, and how wrong he was. HE being that wretched, wretchedly serious "poet" and creative writing professor at WVU: J.H. In the fall of 1995 that son of a bitch crushed in me the very spirit of imagination and visceral instinct that Dean Young advocates. I remember distinctly his discouragement of my "pure music," as he called it, and his encouragement of more reflective poems that were really submissions, in the truest sense of the word, of what I thought he would like. It's as if he disfigured a child, destroyed an ecosystem, trampled on a cherished gift. He dealt a critical blow to my creativity. Rather than develop and refine my instincts, he instilled a rejection of them, a disdain for my own energy: Self Loathing.

His classroom is a dead zone. He takes eager young poets and converts them into dry, boring pills who write about looking back and studying cloud movements; imagery as exciting as a porch swing or an irrelevant conversation between two idiots watching the sun escape into the horizon while he retards the growth of yet another student. He is the anti-poet.

"Pure music" is actually a fair description of the loosely controlled automatic writing that I was producing at the time. I had been working in that vein since around my senior year of high school when I learned about surrealism and Jung and Breton and Dali. Of course what I was doing was somewhat out of control, as he said, but letting go of myself and unleashing abstract yet structurally coherent phrases was my thing. He should've been helping me refine and mature it. For him to objurgate the entire enterprise was devastating. It made me question my talent. I was already questioning most aspects of my very existence at that point.

I couldn't relate to any of the faculty in that English department. I switched majors the next semester.

Put your dranking pants on!

I've come up with what may be an entirely new family of cocktails!

So, you know that there are families of cocktails, like something/vermouth/bitters... like gin/vermouth/bitters, vodka/vermouth/bitters, whiskey/vermouth/bitters. And then there's... well anyway that's one. I call it a family.

So, here we go:

2 oz Gin
.75 oz Brandy
.25 oz Falernum
.25 oz Liqueur that complements the brandy

It seems like a lot of booze, but this little formula will produce good drinks. The problem is that this is the right balance, imo, but a .25 oz component means that you can't downsize it w/out making it very difficult to measure with normal drink-making tools. Regardless, with some consideration you can come up with numerous combinations of spirits to produce something unique and wonderful. Here are three that I've come up with, in the order that I discovered them:

2 oz Small's Gin (this is an Oregonian gin with strong cardamom notes)
.75 Clear Creek douglas fir eau-de-vie (Clear Creek is from Portland, OR)
.25 Velvet Falernum
.25 Cointreau

Mmmm... The douglas fir e.d.v. is actually treated fairly, I think.

2 oz Small's Gin
.75 Framboise (the brandy, not the beer)
.25 Velvet Falernum
.25 Cherry Heering

Completely different from the first one, but nonetheless fantastic cocktail, if I do say myself, and then finally...

2 oz Martin Miller's Gin
.75 Clear Creek Eau-de-Vie de Pomme
.25 Velvet Falernum
.25 Benedictine

Oh. This one is just gorgeous. Everything is balanced, and that peppery gin just shines like a new hinge.

Notice that every recipe here has at least one thing from Portland, and one thing from France. Huh.

Speaking of hinge... Have you ever noticed that at the beginning of Radiolab, at the end of their introductory sound collage, a woman's voice says "enge N P R." That's right, she doesn't say "and N P R," like you think she should be saying. The sound she makes sounds like - I can only describe it as "enge", because I don't know IPA, or any phonetic alphabets. "enge N P R." God it would be annoying, but it's not... yet. What makes it even more interesting is that an older (?), different version of that sonic mashup also features a female saying it, I think in a different setting, the same way! You can hear it on the "Voices in Your Head" podcast, and others. Maybe she just has a weird way of saying "and".

Amazon EC2

I think I'm in love again.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an API that you can use to interface w/a suite of products including the mind-altering EC2 service, which allows you to boot up virtual boxes in the Amazon cloud infrastructure for, all things considered, very reasonable rates. I've just written my first AWS Python script, and I've booted my first EC2 image. It will be my always-on mail server, which will prevent the dilemma I'm in now from ever happening again.

Yes, my ISP is run by incompetents who did not realize that AT&T was going to drop me last night at approximately 2:30am, while I was just wrapping up a change window for work. I'm now without Internet, and they do not expect to have my service back up until tomorrow sometime, maybe. How am I writing this you ask? Well, my friend Tom was kind enough to donate his Cradlepoint to me, so I supplanted my own DSL modem with it, thereby putting me on the Internet via 3G, but since it works on what seem to be frequently changing IP addresses, I can't re-establish my mail server with it, so I had to urgently configure Google Apps as my email service and point my MX records to it, and manually enter in about 4 dozen email aliases. Not an ideal situation, because now my mail is being delivered to Google. It's nice to have some server accepting my mail, but it sucks to have it being stored on a different server than it usually is, because now it's split.

Anyway, check out my new EC2 server. This is a "micro" image. It's the smallest category of image they offer, and will run me about $18/month. The memory footprint is modest, but adequate for the image:

    [ec2-user@pyrocumulus ~]$ cat /proc/meminfo
    MemTotal: 610612 kB
    MemFree: 359064 kB
    Buffers: 6104 kB
    Cached: 205492 kB
    SwapCached: 0 kB
    Active: 88092 kB
    ...
    Committed_AS: 32908 kB

And the CPU provided is ostensibly a Xeon E5430:

    [ec2-user@pyrocumulus ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor : 0
    vendor_id : GenuineIntel
    cpu family : 6
    model : 23
    model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5430 @ 2.66GHz
    stepping : 10
    cpu MHz : 2659.996
    cache size : 6144 KB
    fpu : yes
    fpu_exception : yes
    cpuid level : 13
    wp : yes
    flags : fpu tsc msr pae cx8 cmov pat pse36 clflush dts mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
    bogomips : 5319.99
    clflush size : 64
    cache_alignment : 64
    address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
    power management:

And just look at this little tiny install image! I chose the standard Amazon Linux 64-bit AMI image, which they say is based on CentOS 5, but it has the RHEL 6 kernel:

    [ec2-user@pyrocumulus ~]$ df -k
    Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
    /dev/xvda1             8256952    963668   7209400  12% /
    tmpfs                   305304         0    305304   0% /dev/shm
    [ec2-user@pyrocumulus ~]$ uname -a
    Linux pyrocumulus 2.6.34.7-56.40.amzn1.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Oct 22 18:48:49 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

And there is a fully-stocked YUM repo handy, so I could immediately install Postfix with exactly what you would expect, "yum install postfix".

I guess it's about time something forced me to take a look at this stuff.

Inclination

Inclination is a dirty word in our coach's circle right now. But I am finally beginning to understand the principle in a way that I can vocalize.

Who here would deny that we learn every time we coach? Who here is the expert? I'm not. I'm constantly trying to understand the turn, the weight shift, the dance with gravity. Who here stands around during practice? No coach stands around. Drew might THINK we're standing around, but we're watching, studying. We're constantly studying the racers. What are they doing?? What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? What can I say to that child to improve his or her technique?

I'm no expert on inclination either, or really any particular aspect of ski racing, but I can explain what my current understanding of inclination is, and why it makes sense to me.

Gravity is our friend. But it must be tamed. Of course, taming gravity is a ridiculous proposition. Just an illusion, like any control you have in life, the only real control is how you respond to the world. So we control gravity by controlling our responses to it. It pulls us down the hill. It pulls us sideways, it pulls us in vectors relative to our stated direction.

What is the quickest way to get from 1000' to 0'? Free fall, with the lowest drag coefficient possible. Of course, we're required to follow a slope down, and we're required to make turns as we go, but gravity is our engine, and our goal is to be as close to a free fall as possible, while maintaining absolute control of our bodies.

Stacking. What are the five fundamentals of alpine racing?

Basic Skiing (Athletic Stance, Parallel Position)

Pole Plant

Carving Turns and Transitions

Gliding

Jumping and Terrain

What is the most important fundamental? Yes, we pick favorites, and it's Basic Skiing, of course, and the most fundamental element of Basic Skiing is the Athletic Stance. Why?

Why is the athletic stance so important? Because we are perfectly "stacked". Our whole body, all joints, bones, etc., is aligned in a way that maximizes our stability - our CONTROL over gravity - relative to the surface we're resisting gravity against. When we're standing on flat ground, gravity pulls straight down on us, and we therefore have the canonical Athletic Stance. However, when gravity is pulling in a different direction, we must adjust our stance in order to remain stacked. Shown here:

These flagrantly simplified drawings do not take into account movement, of course. While we are moving down the course, we're making turns: initiating turns, performing turns, completing turns, preparing for upcoming turns. These are all simplified drawings of positions that can only be explained in the context of a dynamic, modern turn, but the principle is clearly illustrated.

Gravity pulls our body in vectors relative to our stated position. Gravity is the engine that pulls us down the hill. In order to maximize our control over gravity, we must maximize our stability, and we do that by FINDING the Athletic Stance w/r/t our given position, which may be at an ANGLE or INCLINE relative to the surface we're gliding across.

Dogville

Altruism. Forgiveness. Motives.

Somehow these concepts kept showing up today, whether by choice or coincidence. I woke up this morning on the couch, fully clothed, except for my shoes. I had fallen asleep after three trials of a new (to me) cocktail called Sappho, and a review of season 1 of Archer, which I just got in the mail. There were many dishes to be washed, so I got right to work. And while I was doing that I tuned into a podcast of one of my new favorites, Radiolab. Specifically, I was listening to The Good Show, which explores the question of how to rationalize altruism with Natural Selection.

As is typical for Radiolab, the arguments were illustrated by poignant stories of research related to the question, and tales of altruism so touching I was actually moved to tears. There was a story of a college student who saved a woman who was being mauled by a bull, and another one about a man who pulled three drunk teens from a car engulfed in flames, and another one about a man who saved a stranger who fell into the subway tracks due to a seizure by laying flat on top of him while the train actually passed over!

The other side of hearing these stories is that you naturally must question your own moral composition. The problem with the question is that, as they suggest on the show, the only way you can be sure of the answer is if you've actually been faced with one of these situations.

Later this evening I made some dinner and felt the need to watch something strong. I had bought this Dogville DVD several months ago at a Blockbuster store closing because it was written and directed by one of my favorite directors, Lars von Trier. I guess I had never gotten around to watching it for one reason or another, so tonight seemed as good a time as any...

When we were freshmen, living in the dorms, I remember one night when Damian and I were rambling on, I said wouldn't it be weird if suddenly you could just see everyone without the walls around them? Like, neighborhoods, but the houses just disappear and everyone is just huddled about like they normally would be. We would all look so ridiculous! I remember years later Damian recalled the imagery, so I guess he thought it was an interesting idea. Well I'll be damned if that isn't EXACTLY what von Trier does in Dogville! Ha! So right off the bat I like this film. But it gets SO much better.

While you're watching this film, which at first seems so strange, with the set drawn out in two dimensions on the floor of a stage, and the actors walking about, other characters visible in the distance, you become absorbed in the story and the town, so that you eventually realize that your mind is filling in missing imagery exactly as if you were reading a book! Holy shit! It's amazing! Even now, as I think back about what I saw, it's as if there was so much more, visually, but there wasn't, it was as minimal as possible, but the story draws in your imagination like a book, and only the objects that are actually necessary to tell the story are present, exactly like a George Saunders story. My god it's brilliant.

The story itself turns out to be a very subtly layered tale whose symbolism become more obvious as you get to the end of the story, and the final revelation of that symbolism is so skillfully and tactfull unveiled, you just want to turn around and watch the whole thing over again. It is my new favorite von Trier movie. I want to go back and watch it again, right now, even as late as it is. I want to talk more about it, but I don't want to spoil it in case you haven't seen it yet.

After the movie I finished the frames. The large one is made from that ash wood I recovered. These ones are all bridle joints. They recall Escher's ever-ascending/descending staircase. Each of the four pieces has one end a tenon and the other end a mortise. My house is in desperate need of more pictures, but I refuse to pay money for frames when I can make them myself... but then I never make them, so here are two. They just need to have the outside edges trued up with a plane, have the groove rabbeted in the back, and be varnished... OK, I guess I'm actually about half done.

A lyric

"Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free to be more like the man you were made to be." - Mumford & Sons (Sigh No More)

I am utterly bewildered that a man of only 21 years could consider love with such maturity. That's about how old Marcus Mumford was when Mumford & Sons recorded Sigh No More. I'm assuming he wrote it. I'm just amazed at his perspective.

Of course, it's not the most graceful sentence, and I believe he is referring more specifically to a love of God, not a woman. Most of his songs have a strong Christian message, but if you listen carefully, those messages are often simply lessons in faith, not flagrant evangelization, and I believe those messages describe characteristics that I've seen in truly great men. So, for me, the love he speaks of in this song is any kind of love. He's speaking to the hesitancy or even fear that we feel when we deal with commitment and devotion.

I think one of the biggest dilemmas we must deal with in a post-religious, heterarchical age is how to retain and cultivate the advantages of religion. There are very strong, distinct benefits that come from having faith, and history has shown that people with strong faith are able to overcome devastating challenges where people who are not imbued with such faith cannot.

I just remembered a dream I had in college, and it might explain some of this. I was a boy back in summer camp. We were in the main building eating dinner, and every kid was seated at one of many banquet tables, digging into mashed potatoes and whatever else. The echoes of a hundred boys' and girls' voices bounced off of the shiny concrete floor. I looked up and saw two boys seated with their heads down, quietly saying grace. They were brothers and I didn't know them, but they looked a bit larger than everyone else and more neatly dressed. They even looked majestic there, although they made no effort to attract attention to themselves. Their presence was just that strong. I was astonished by their unashamed devotion, and I wanted to be just like them.

See, everyone at those tables knew that you should say grace before you start eating, but nobody wanted to be so uncool as to say grace when there were no adults around to mandate it. But those two strangers didn't look uncool at all. Instead they projected quality and strength. They were simply doing this thing because it was right.

That dream doesn't actually relate directly to the faith thing, but I'm talking about the kind of character I think could get lost in a post-religious society. Of course, it won't, as long as we don't let it. Maybe I'm just talking about myself.

On the other hand, just to reassure you that I am still me, despite this unprecedented public reflection on love and faith, I can't stand people who talk about their faith or put it on display or try to get others to be more like them or relate to their god the way they relate to it. It's shallow, vulgar, ugly, vain, and divisive.

At the risk of becoming backwards-looking

What is the word for backwards-looking?

I love how the word brûler means to burn, and in the aforementioned Jacques Brel song, Ne Me Quitte Pas, he uses the phrase "des terres brûlées". French poetry in the time of end rhyme must've been really something. I need to learn more.

These lyrics...

Et quand vient le soir

Pour qu'un ciel flamboie

Le rouge et le noir

Ne s'épousent-ils pas!?

And there was much walking.

That weird b.o. & colored pencil shavings smell is trapped in the Pompadou, just like in the Getty. It was right in the entrance in the Getty, but in the Pompadou it's at the entrance to Gallery 1. Blegh.

After about four hours of walking, the iconic red-flecked exoskeleton of the Centre Georges Pompidou finally peeked around the corner! I could spend all week here! And I just might.

I was ecstatic to discover that one of the two current exhibitions is a combo Piet Mondrian/De Stijl show! I bought my ticket and headed straight to the Gallery, obliviously skipping over the largest modern art museum in Europe, right through that weird b.o./pencil smell and into the exhibition.

Holy crap! I didn't even get through the first room, of like 20, and all these ideas and revelations came busting into my head! I had to walk straight through the rest of the show and back down to the bookstore to buy a pen and pad.

I started writing them down here, but really it's like several pages, and there's a sketch of a frame, and I can't cherry-pick them. Maybe some other time.

Anyway, I stayed there for a couple hours then took the subway to an area foretold to have great bistros. It was about 6pm when I learned that most restaurants in Paris don't open for business until 7, so I had to wander utterly aimlessly around the 6th district for an hour.

I need to sleep now, but here's the rest... Sticking to my "platte du jour" strategy, I had a foie gras appetizer and blanquette de veau for the main course. I think the wine was a Côtes du Rhône.

I hope I can walk tomorrow.

Paris: Premier Jour

Aujourd'hui, nous avons dimanche.

Most places were closed, mais pas de la Tour Eiffel. J'ai dormi dans l'avion, alors que j'avais faim. So, j'ai d'abord pris le déjeuner, puis je suis allé à la Tour Eiffel.


My delightful concierge, Frederique, recommended little Italian place around the corner for lunch, and as instructed by my friend Holdly, I did order the Platte du Jour, and it was Boeuf Bourguignon served with bread and a side of green beens. Everything was delicious, including the green beans, which were sautéed in garlic butter. The Boeuf Bourguignon was actually a bit too salty, and reminded me of a salty version my own Beef Daube, although it was missing some of the more floral notes I use, namely ginger and lavendar. Still, it was very good, and filling.

Just around the corner was the Eiffel Tower, which on first approach, I realized that, having stupidly left my ATM card in my printer at home when I was making photo copies of all my valuables, I was without cash. And of course, when I got to the front of the line, the lady said she would not sell me one ticket on credit. Even though they're 5 Euros a piece., so back to the hotel I went, and actually that's when I ate, then I grabbed what little cash I had and had it converted by the rapeman behind the exchange counter. He transformed $25 into 14 euros, but that was enough.

The tower was beautiful and cold, and there were people from all over constantly taking pictures of it. The line to use the tram was ridiculous so I went to the really short line where you can just take the steps. I climbed up to the second level, as far as I could go. You need to buy another ticket to go to the very top.

Then walked across the Seine and bought a chocolate and banana crepe and a small coffee, then walked about the Trocadero eyeing people's wears (and wares), and finally stopping to listen to a small choir singing hymns and Chirstmas songs in French, German, and English.

After that I went back home and passed out about 7pm. Woke up at 12am, thinking it would be much later. Took a sleeping pill, and I'm still up. Tomorrow I need to get to a bank. I found an American Express office at 11 Rue Scribe, which is in Arrondissement 1. After that I'm taking a recommendation on Lunch, and then going to Le Marais, a neighborhood that has the Pompadou Centre, Notre Dame, and lots of exciting boutiques.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to tell you about bit of... not sure what to think of this, but you can actually order a hotdog at the Eiffel Tower's concessions stand. Yes, a hotdog. The picture of it on the menu shows it being served on a French Baguette, but still. It's a fucking hotdog! I'm so relieved to know that American Cuisine has found its way into the French capital with such sophistication et de charme!

I'll leave you with a picture taken from La Tour Eiffel facing south, along the Seine, and, if you know where to look, my little Hotel Eiffel Seine, just out of view around the corner from La Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, which is that glass building just over the left shoulder of that curved building in the middle of the photo.

Black Swan

I really can't wait for this movie to come out, but here's the rub... Chances are it's not yet showing in your town, and it's definitely not in my town, BUT it was released in 8 American cities Dec. 3rd, and it WILL be released in two more cities on Dec. 10th... AND WE'RE ONE OF THEM! Oh yeah, the rub? Well, I'm leaving town on Saturday, but I think I might still be able to squeeze in a movie Friday night IF I can get tickets. It's only showing in one theater that I know of so far, and it's the rich people's theater. I mean it's in the rich mall w/the Saks Fifth Avenue and the Sur La Table, which, what a stupid name for a cookware store, and let me tell you they have a $300 omelette pan, but whatever, etc. (yawn).

I heard an interview with Darren Aronofsky on the radio last week and he said that while studying the story behind swan lake, it occurred to him that this is a story about a... wereswan! There! Excuse me? There swan, there castle. Why are you talking like that? I don't know I thought you wanted to. Suit yourself!

Can you tell I'm a little jacked up about this fil'm? I mean Requiem for a Dream is one of my favorite pictures of all time (yes, I've probably watched it a dozen times at least), and here comes this incredibly beautiful, dark, dramatic new work from Aronofsky that just happens to star the woman I'm going to someday marry, and then to top it all off they release these incredible promo posters.

Feast your famished eyes!

Uhguh!

I know, I want them to be bigger images too, so they like completely envelope you, but this blog sucks, so deal w/it.