Einstein's Dreams/The center of time

There is a place where time stands still. Raindrops hang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing. Dogs raise their muzzles in silent howls. Pedestrians are frozen on the dusty streets, their legs cocked as if held by strings. The aromas of dates, mangoes, coriander, cumin are suspended in space.

As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly. His heartbeats grow farther apart, his breathing slackens, his temperature drops, his thoughts diminish, until he reaches dead center and stops. For this is the center of time. From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles–at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed at greater diameters.

Who would make pilgrimage to the center of time? Parents with children, and lovers.

And so, at the place where time stands still, one sees parents clutching their children, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. The beautiful young daughter with blue eyes and blond hair will never stop smiling the smile she smiles now, will never lose this soft pink glow on her cheeks, will never grow wrinkled or tired, will never get injured, will never unlearn what her parents have taught her, will never think thoughts that her parents don’t know, will never know evil, will never tell her parents that she does not love them, will never leave her room with the view of the ocean, will never stop touching her parents as she does now.

And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey far from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice, will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant in time.

One must consider that these statues are illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished almost to nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.

Those not quite at dead center do indeed move, but at the pace of glaciers. A brush of the hair might take a year, a kiss might take a thousand. While a smile is returned, seasons pass in the outer world. While a child is hugged, bridges rise. While a goodbye is said, cities crumble and are forgotten.

And those who return to the outer world…Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live in their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old. Children curse their parents for trying to hold them forever, curse time for their own wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. These now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.

Lover who return find their friends are long gone. After all, lifetimes have passed. They move in a world they do not recognize. Lovers who return still embrace in the shadow of buildings, but now their embraces seem empty and alone. Soon they forget centuries-long promises, which to them lasted only seconds. They become jealous even among strangers, say hateful things to each other, lose passion, drift apart, grow old and alone in a world they do not know.

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.


Alan Lightman
Einstein's Dreams (The center of time.)

Renewal

"Stem cells are the body's reservoir of renewal. The entirety of human blood, for instance, can arise from a single, highly potent blood forming stem cell (called a hematopoietic stem cell), which typically lives buried  inside the bone marrow. Under normal conditions, only a fraction of these blood-forming stem cells are active; the rest are deeply quiescent - asleep. But if blood is suddenly depleted, by injury or chemotherapy, say, then the stem cells awaken and begin to divide with awe-inspiring fecundity, generating cells that generate thousands upon thousands of blood cells. In weeks, a single hematopoietic stem cell can replenish the entire human organism with new blood - and then, through yet unknown mechanisms, lull itself back to sleep."

Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Emperor of All Maladies

Better safe than polite

In his book The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker says that humans have been given marvelous, complex, highly evolved instincts designed to keep us out of harm's way. The problem is that we override internal alarms in the name of being "polite" or "reasonable".

He illustrates his point with the following example: Say that you are waiting for an elevator. The doors open and you see someone already inside that sends a chill down your spine (or turns your stomach into a knot.) But, it would be so rude, even offensive, to stare at the person and then refrain from getting on the elevator, right?

You decide to ignore your own message, telling yourself that being afraid of someone you've never met makes no sense and determine that it instead makes a lot of sense to get into a small, sound proof, inescapable metal box with someone you instinctively are afraid of.

This story blew me away. Because I make these types of decisions all the time: doing things against my better judgment in an attempt to "make sense". Making an elaborate intellectual effort to convince myself my instincts cannot possibly be right. And, I love my instincts! They are so often correct! They were put there to help me!

I've decided they deserve more respect than this. Not just mine - everyone's. So I invite you to listen to yours too.

The banana

I’m reading a book by Dan Koeppel that is so fascinating, I cannot help but regularly interrupt my husband’s reading to share excerpts with him.

The book is about bananas, and you just have to read it.

A banana tree is not a tree, it’s an herb. The banana you eat today is not the banana your grandmother ate when she was little, because that banana was destroyed by blight and another type of banana was created to replace it.

Bananas are seedless. They are sexless. They cannot reproduce without humans. They all look the same because you are eating genetic twin (a clone) of a banana. Bananas are particularly susceptible to disease because what makes one banana sick wipes out all bananas, and the banana you know and love is at risk of ceasing to exist.

Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. And, bananas cost less, despite the fact they are grown in tropical countries and shipped across oceans and apples are grown within hours of most large cities in the United States. You have no idea the amount of things that have gone into making this possible. I have no idea why this question (how is this possible?) didn't occur to me before.

For bananas, jungles and rain forests have been cleared and governments have been toppled. They have transformed cultures. And, it’s very likely that the banana was the forbidden fruit Eve could not resist.

I will never again take for granted anything in my fruit bowl.

Resolution for 2010

Kindle is a modern day Trojan Horse – disguised as a reading device for book lovers, it’s really a buying device for book addicts. The pull is impossible to resist.

I walk into a bookstore, say, at the airport, look at books that intrigue me and download samples as I walk around. I get on the plane and read them; deleting the ones I don’t want, keeping the ones I do to buy “later” (the more honest word is “soon”.)

Or, a friend recommends a book and instead of making a note of it I immediately download it, feeling giddy.

Or, I’m in my Sunday spot (my sofa) reading book reviews, downloading recommended books that interest me. I feel, in words of my friend Victor, like King Midas.

I can own any book in the world in seconds without ever leaving my house. I don’t even have to turn on my computer. And it doesn't feel like a purchase. It feels like....well, a download.

Just last Saturday I bought five books in less than two minutes. Maybe my eyes were wide and I was cackling maniacally.

In sum, it’s gotten completely out of hand.

I therefore present you with my New Year’s resolution for 2010: to read at least 50% of the books on my Kindle before I can buy any more.

If you want to give me a book, however, I can’t stop you.

Photo: painting by Giandomenico Tiepolo, wikipedia

Make me a word

Have you ever heard of the word schadenfreude? It’s defined as “the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.” I’ve often felt that I needed more complex words to more accurately express my feelings.

Jeffrey Eugenides, in his brilliant book Middlesex, says it best:

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness”, “joy” or “regret”. Maybe the best proof that language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster”. Or “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy”. I'd like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in the middle age”. I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar”. I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.

You have more power than you think

My friend Lori gave me a book called “The better world shopping guide”. It is based on the premise that every time you make a purchase you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. The book goes on to rank companies in different categories so you can decide which ones you want to support (by buying their products.)

The main issues are human rights (for example, child labor or fair wages), the environment (such as toxic waste dumping, sustainable farming), animal protection (humane treatment, ecosystem impact), community involvement (volunteer efforts, local business support) and social justice (cover ups, harassment, class action lawsuits).

Here is a list of the 10 best companies on the planet based on their social and environmental records: Seventh Generation, Working Assets, Eden Foods, Organic Valley, Clif Bar, Honest Tea, Patagonia, Tom’s of Main, Ben &Jerry’s, Aveda.

There are many companies out there that need to clean up their acts whose names won’t shock anyone (Walmart, Tyson Foods, Kraft) but others that surprised me: United Airlines, Samsung, Nestle, Nabisco, Planters. Gerber, for example, won the “most irresponsible” corporation award and is involved in a child slavery lawsuit, as well as aggressive takeovers of family farms. Chapstick is on the list of “top 100 corporate criminals”. There is evidence that M&M’s suppliers use child slave labor.

In most cases, it’s a matter of being informed and switching from one brand to another. Take cereal: Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat and Grape Nuts have an “F” raking, while Cascadian Farm has a B+, for example. Kashi could do much better and is currently a C. Or Chocolate: Toblerone ranks F, while Dagoba ranks A.

The reason I liked this book so much is because it reminds me that as a consumer we have more power than we think. With this information, we are in a better position to use it.

Photo: www.aveda.com

It's not about being green

I was watching a TV show earlier this week (In Treatment) where a psychologist asks his 12-year-old patient if she thinks about death. She stares at him like he has just exposed her secret. He leans a bit closer to her. "We all do, you know".  

I don't know if everyone thinks about death, but I know I do. I always have. When I was little my burden was the certainty that I’d die young, because I could not conceive becoming a grown up. (Guess what, kid? You were wrong.) When I was a teenager I was defiant, challenging the possibility of my life ending, until a car crash proved I was just as mortal as the next guy (wrong again). I now mostly think of it in the context of vulnerability. My own, and that of the people I love. (Wrong again? Please?)

Through all of this I've assumed that one day I will be returned to the earth, my ashes scattered in a discreet location with a nice view. You know - ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

This is part of the reason I found the subject of the book "Grave Matters" so intriguing.  I know funerals feature metal caskets, burial vaults and embalming fluid, but I had never really considered the consequences: embalmed and encased inside a metal casket, "dust to dust" is, well, unlikely.

The book, by Mark Harris, a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, is "a journey through the modern funeral industry to a natural way of burial".

Whether you think about death or not, the funeral industry is one that most of us will contribute to. According to Harris, Americans bury more than 1.6 million tons of concrete and nearly 830,000 gallons of toxic embalming fluid a year, not counting enormous amounts of steel.

I want a green burial. A biodegradable casket. Maybe an ecopod that is handmade, comes in colors and is made of recycled paper.

In a green burial, my body would be placed in a simple coffin, if not like the one I describe above, then one made from cardboard or soft wood, like pine. I would be laid in a natural cemetery in rural land. No headstone, please. Plant a tree there instead.

If my body can return to the elements it came from, it can contribute to generating new life. And that is all the legacy I need.

Early adopter

I got a Kindle for my 40^th birthday. Her name is Sophia.

I admit I was skeptical at first. Reluctant. Shy.  (OK – I looked at Luca and wailed “Why? Why? Why did you buy me this? How could you do this to me?”)

Since that brief, myopic moment, I’ve discovered Kindle is not a gadget for gadget lovers – it’s a gadget for book lovers. It’s sleek and light, yet sweetly unassuming. The screen is sharp, high-resolution electronic paper (so, technically, not a screen but a surface.)

It’s very easy to use. You don’t need cables or a computer. There is no need to do any synching.

If you’re reading a book and come across a word you don’t know the meaning of, you can look it up. This has prompted me to look up words even when I do know what they mean, because it’s so quick and easy I can satisfy my curiosity about, say, their etymology.

My favorite part: If I’m holding Sophia and you recommend a good book, I can find it, download it and start reading it in less than a minute. Although it claims to use cell phone technology I think it’s a combination of pixie dust and telepathy. It’s not that I don’t understand how it works. It’s that it feels like nothing less than magic to see the book you want in your possession in less time than it would take you to find your car keys.

I can receive the New York Times (or any mayor international newspaper, magazine or blog) every morning before it even is available in print.

Kindle saves paper (there is nothing to print), and if yours breaks and you send it back to them they recycle it. It isn’t cheap, but hard cover books cost around $25, and the same book in the kindle version is $9.99. Books that aren’t the latest bestsellers can be yours (in under a minute) for less than that. For example, after running into a great quote (“it's a poor sort of memory that only works backward”), I decided I needed to re-read Alice in Wonderland and paid $2 for it. President Obama’s inaugural address is mine to read whenever I want, I don’t have to carry the newspaper clipping with me, and it was less than half a dollar.

On Kindle, you can not only read, download free samples (roughly the first chapter) of almost every book you’d like to check out, acquire books at the speed of light and carry 200 books in a device that’s less than half the size of a small laptop, you can also take notes, “clip” pages and archive them (in order), and listen to music. You can also use the “search” feature to find anything online. (What are the Seven Wonders of the Modern World? Give me a minute!)

To all you naysayers who insist you must hold a book, turn its smooth pages and smell that clean, new paper smell, I say to you: I understand. Why would such a convenient device and a book be mutually exclusive? Use Kindle for travel, and read books at home.

 

Photo: http://aaroncrocco.wordpress.com

I'm here!

One of our closest friends was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She is young and gorgeous, a wonderful wife, mother, daughter, friend and one of the best hosts I've ever met - you should be lucky enough to be invited to her house for dinner!

The news affected us deeply for all the reasons you would expect, compounded by the fact that she is an ocean away.

Our first reaction was to go out and buy some books we felt she and her family might find useful. As a result, I’ve been reading “Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips” by Kris Carr. It’s such a treasure - joyful and inspiring and visual. It looks like someone’s journal (well, someone brilliant and very creative.) It includes many invaluable tips (from the importance of decorating the hospital room with things you love, to always getting multiple medical opinions, to finding yourself a patient advocate to help you navigate through doctors, treatments, medical insurance, etc.).

A few pages into it, it occurred to me that I (and everyone I know) should be following the advice in this book, with or without cancer.

It's not just that we could all use a support group or the creation of a sacred place or that we should be making lists of things we want to do before we die. It's that the minutia of our day blurs what we all know to be true. So here is a reminder: life is precarious and precious. We should be celebrating it more often.

Used bookstores

I love used bookstores. I love that they are so down to earth and un-glitzy. I love that there are piles of books in corners and under chairs, that the attention is on the story line more than on the story line being in hard cover. I love that typically the people who work there have read most of what they are selling and offer running commentary on things I've chosen as they ring them up.

I love the inherent thrill of the treasure hunter, the sense of adventure in finding a book you're interested in reading. Anyone can just order something - it takes patience to find what you want in a bookstore that can never be considered completely organized or fully stocked.

I like the illusion of virtue in making a contribution to putting something back into the world. A book I buy there is not being wasted, is not sitting on a shelf somewhere, stagnant, cast aside. Its life is a kinetic journey that I'm a part of.

And, used books are such a steal. A used book in excellent condition is at the very least half the price of a nearly identical new one. I read a lot so it's good to find a cheaper way to finance my number one habit (OK, number two after making sure all doors are locked.)

I took a photo of the actual stack of books I found and bought during our last road trip (above). If you see something you like and can wait until I finish it, I’m happy to let you have it.

The instant karma of bookmooching

Bookmooch is a simple to use book swapping site. You register and give away books and in exchange mooch books from other people. You only pay for the price of shipping a book when you send one, which is how you collect points. In this way, receiving a book you’ve chosen is free.

I’ve commented before that books deserve a better life than to live on a cold shelf. Most of us read a book once, and then abandon it. In this way, a book fulfills its destiny: it’s held, appreciated and read by one, then passed on to be held and read again, indefinitely.

Sharing books also saves resources. Why buy a new book when what you want is lying around somewhere, unused?

I can’t promise I’ll never visit another bookstore, but I’ll definitely go less often now that I can mooch.

And the miracle of Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson was a climber who became a nurse just to do something between one climb and another. An unsuccessful attempt to summit K2 almost killed him. He got lost (or so it felt at the time), taking the wrong turn and ending up in an isolated village in Pakistan called Korphe.

Grateful to the people there for their graciousness, their generosity, and for nursing him back to health, he promised he’d return to build a school. He has dedicated the rest of his life to doing just that. He's built 50 schools in an area often considered the most dangerous place in the world for an American to be; not to mention, a location where the most unimaginable obstacles have to be overcome in order to get anything accomplished.

You can learn more about Greg Mortenson if you read his book "Three Cups of Tea". An inspiration, because:

- It proves Luca's theory that your destiny will come find you even if it has to nearly kill you to get you to pay attention.
- It demonstrates that a single person can (and does) change the world.
- It reminds you that there is a little bit of Greg Mortenson in all of us.

(Photo by Greg Mortenson)

Steal a word

I recently read an absolutely delicious book titled "The Meaning of Tingo" by Adam Jacot de Boinod. It's a collection of words from around the world. Here are some of my favorites - I just can’t believe I’ve survived so long without them.

Iktsuarpok - Inuit for "to go outside often to see if someone is coming".

Nglayap - Indonesian for "wander far from home with no particular purpose".

Mingmu - Chinese for "to die without regret".

Termangu-mangu - Indonesian for "sad and not sure what to do".

Nedovtipa - Czech for "one who finds it difficult to take a hint".

Narachastra prayoga - Sanskrit for "men who worship their own sexual organ".

Fissilig - German for "flustered to the point of incompetence."

Mukamuka - Japanese for "so angry one feels like throwing up."

Sekaseka - Zambian for "to laugh without reason".

Neko-neko - Indonesian for "one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse".

By the way, "Tingo" is Pascuense for "to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them." I'm not sure if this would make me mukamuka; or if it would first induce a feeling of liberation, then invite me to sekaseka and finally set me free to nglayap.

Reading less

After I read a book I write the title in a notebook I keep with me at all times. This highly satisfying habit brings together two of my many compulsions: list making and notebook bearing.

This is how I noticed with dismay that this year I haven’t been reading nearly as much as I usually do.

I know exactly why: I read the newspaper every day (San Jose Mercury News, New York times, and news reports online throughout the day), and receive a ridiculous amount of magazines I force myself to go through (Time, Newsweek, Wired, Oprah, Real Simple, Sunset, to name a few).

I have my own blog and have discovered many others I like to read (see column on the right). Not to mention my subscription to Netflix, through which I watch at least two movies a week; and my out-of-the-closet television habit.

By the time I get to bed, I read two pages of whatever is on my nightstand and fall asleep.

The fact that I’m sleeping better lately plays a role too. This unexpected, somewhat mystifying absence of insomnia is not helping further my reading at all.

Also, I used to listen to audio books during my commute, which was cut in half due to a job change about a year and a half ago. This otherwise fortunate occurrence had a huge impact on our audio book burn rate.

Most recently, instead of listening to audio books in the car, Luca and I listen to music. Either that or one of us is on an important conference call, making it impossible for the other to do anything else (even cracking the window open causes the one on the call to make violent jerky movements with his hands – and by “his”, you might be able to infer that I don’t mean mine.)

The consequences of all this are evident in my notes: I read five books in January, two books in February, and two books in March. Before February, the last time I only read two books in a month was December 2001.

I guess something has to go. Should I suspend a few magazine subscriptions? Sacrifice a television show or two? Sleep less? Should I read a few pages of a book over breakfast instead of the newspaper?

So little time, so much entertainment.

Let's lash

Frank McCourt is a brilliant writer. In his first book, Angela’s Ashes, he writes about what growing up poor in Ireland was like. He spends most of his childhood wet, cold and starving.

One of the characteristics I find most delightful is that throughout his books he displays an unabashed appreciation for food. The times his father brings home wages (rather than spending them on drinking) he goes to sleep knowing “there will be a breakfast of eggs, fried tomatoes and fried bread, tea with lashings of sugar and milk, and, later in the day, a big dinner of mashed potatoes, peas and ham and a trifle, layers of fruit and warm delicious custard on a cake soaked in sherry”.

Does this not make you want to “lash” your tea with sugar and milk?

(McCourt’s father, an alcoholic, rarely eats, claiming food is “a shock to the system”.)

I recently read Teacher Man, where he recounts how he almost got fired on his first day as a teacher for eating a baloney sandwich one of his students had thrown at another. (After picking it up, he notices the thick home made bread, the marinated sliced peppers, and knows this is no ordinary sandwich. Sure enough, the kid’s mother was Sicilian.)

You’ll be happy to hear McCourt’s career survived the incident, allowing him to remain a teacher for over twenty years.

Meanwhile, I wonder where I can find a comparable baloney sandwich.

Pass it on

It all begins when someone recommends a book, when I read a book review or fall prey to one that tugs at me at the bookstore. Or, someone gives me a book. (I love it when that happens.)

I take it home and put it on my “unread books” bookcase. After a while, it’s promoted to my bedside table or near my comfy chair. An unequivocal indication that I intend to read it in the short term.

Once I’ve finished the book the rule is this: no matter how much I loved it, I have to let it go.

I was born in the midst of a family of serial library creators. This savage dictum - give your books away - is vexing to parents and siblings alike and has been shunned in the past.

I’m sticking to it, people.

Yes. the reason behind this is in part due to my aversion to hoarding things. But more importantly, I believe it's a sad destiny for a book that's meant to be read to sit forlorn on a bookcase, collecting dust, getting old without anyone cracking open its pages.

Books should be held, opened, their sentences traced, passages bookmarked. So, in order to fulfill its destiny, once I’m done reading a book, I give it to a pre-designated recipient. In turn, they have to pass it on.

Take what happened with my book by Wislawa Szymborska.

The first time I heard of her was from my father, who placed an urgent long distance call and said I absolutely needed to read her poems. “Must” is one of his favorite words. You certainly don’t want someone you love missing out on something you loved.

He in turn learned about Szymborska through my brother Pedro.

Wait. I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression. We are not like a book club, which would be too forced, too stale for our fiercely independent sensitivities. We are, instead, accidentally inclusive. Every recommendation in our family is unintentionally elliptical.

And so it was that Szymborska found its way into my evergreen “list of books to buy”. In time, I dutifully bought one of her books, brought it home, took it out of its crinkly brown bag, and left it on you know which bookcase in my room, where it sat, waiting patiently for its turn, for several months.

About six weeks ago, I noticed it, thin, pale, unassuming, sandwiched between other more flashy things that had caught my eye. I took it, patted it, felt its reassuring weight, and set it down near my favorite chair.

I intended to start it that very evening, but other more insistent books got in the way.

On a recent Sunday morning I finally opened it up and read one poem chosen at random. And, well, I just wasn’t taken in.

Never underestimate the sneaky, smoldering kind of love that grows on you slowly.

The very next day I saw a poem my sister Isabel had generously posted on her blog. I felt a new brand of indignance - indignant kinship - towards whoever had dared write it. Each sentence I wanted to say “Heeey! I’ve felt that! I wanted to write that!”

I looked for the author down at the bottom. You guessed it. Wislawa Szymborska.

I’ve finished her book (incidentally, I’m giving it to a friend tomorrow. I sent him a couple of poems via email to test if he’d be a worthwhile recipient. He passed.)

Now I’ve become somewhat of a Wislawa Szymborska groupie. I've gone online to find out more about her. To my surprise, she was born in 1923. It grates on me that I’m reading poems that have been translated, from Polish to English. (Part of what initially turned me off.) Less surprising is that she won the Nobel Prize of literature in 1996.

I present you with a sample, so you can see for yourself. Granted: disturbed as I am by recent world events, I gravitated towards something appropriately chilling. But make no mistake. She makes light of nothing, and you need to be prepared.

Wislawa – I apologize to you for leaving you on the shelf, unattended.


The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with an unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

It must’ve been something I ate

I’m reading a highly entertaining book by Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue’s food critic. I’d like to share some of the points he’s made so far (I just started it.)

- What he calls the “calamari index”. In the 60’s, calamari consumption in the US was the lowest in the world. Now, almost every restaurant offers calamari as an appetizer. This is his indicator of how far we’ve come as a nation of eaters over the past 30 years. I agree! Menus offer so many things not available in the US even recently. And I don’t mean just creatures with tentacles. Balsamic vinegar is an example Luca and I were discussing over dinner the other night.

- Steingarten read in a medical journal that “profound interest in good food may be caused by a lesion in the anterior portion of the right cerebral hemisphere of the brain.” Gulp.

- He notes that people are extremely unlikely to utter the following: “I feel light as a feather this morning. My mind is clear as a bell. I’ve got a smile on my face for the whole human race. It must have been something I ate.”

The book is “about the primordial glee we feel every time we’re called to dinner” which made me think “I DO feel a primordial glee every time I’m called to dinner!”