tuesday, december 31
for the first time perhaps ever, this new year and entire holiday season feels grey. i'm not sure why. and who is driving the train? where is the conductor?
3:30 PM

monday, december 25
my offerings:
candied sweet potatoes
twice baked potatoes with feta cheese and chives
sauerkraut (with bacon and apples)
11:54 AM

monday, december 23
from nytimes.com: "So medical experts ask whether it is right to regard aging as a disease, as fierce as a malignant cancer, to be fought with any and all means, tested or not... The treatment is expensive: $1,000 a month for the panoply of drugs and dietary supplements, including human growth hormone and testosterone for men and women, estrogen and progesterone for women (the doctors say their "bioidentical" hormones are safe), melatonin, DHEA, vitamins and antioxidants... Others, like Dr. Warner, worry about animal studies. "I agree that mice and rats are not people, but mice that don't make growth hormone live longer," Dr. Warner said. "Mice that overproduce growth hormone live shorter lives. The same principle applies in fruit flies and little worms called nematodes. It may be irrelevant, but it makes us wonder."... Dr. Livesey and Dr. Raffaele, at the Anti-Aging Medicine clinic in Manhattan, had expected most of their patients to be old people trying to gain enough strength to rise from a chair unassisted, or middle-aged people wanting to look young. Instead, they tend to be baby boomers, the doctors said, who are searching for something that other doctors did not provide... "By the time they come here, they've already gone to places to look better," Dr. Raffaele said. "They've had the Botox, the plastic surgery. The reason they're here is they want to have a good quality of life." Most keep their visits a secret, he said, adding: "They don't even want to tell their close friends. It's kind of like plastic surgery."
2:00 PM

friday, december 20
Peace Corps
1:09 PM

this morning as i was walking out the door and saying bye to my mom who was reading on the couch, she said "you will find me dead when you get home." she was joking but it felt manipulative so before i knew it i smiled really big, my eyes lit up and i said "really? you'll be happy and content with a smile on your face?" she said Yes. i replied "ok" and closed the door. later on the phone she asked if i really wanted mom to die. and instead of saying i couldn't take any threats and that i have enough problems of my own without dealing with a possibly suicidal parent, i tried to deflate the topic. but she saw me smile and we both know it was genuine. ----- for the record, i do not want my mother to die. of course i don't. but she is putting more pressure on me than i realize. instead of becoming more compassionate, i fear the last 3 years have made me aware of my limits and the pain which comes from feeling. i know i have a set amount of strength. before dad died i was cold (or so some close to me have said). i was unconsciously cold. now i think i am wiser and sometimes softer but i feel i Have to protect myself and so deliberately try to detach. buddhists say detachment is the way. ----- i cannot become a bitter old woman. forget old... middle-aged and bitter is even worse.
12:42 PM

thursday, december 19
nytimes.com has a feature on the proposed 7 designs for the twin towers. if i had to choose, it would be between Meier and Foster. United would be in 3rd place. Libeskind is morbid from a distance. looks like shriveled up towers. and i don't like the jagged edges of the bldgs. they are not friendly. THINK team is sad. too much like the towers and too fragile. i expect them to fall on their own. the inside is nice and airy but too futuristic (am i that old and conservative?) United architect is a blob and looks a lot like the Fred and Ginger bldg. in germany / vienna was it? i forget that guys name. he's big though. actually, i do Love how they dealt with the memorial. the concrete squares on the ground and the footprints in the sky. but the bldg. itself is too amoeba like. or again, as if the twin towers were fuc%ked with. you know how in Alien 3 (or Alien 4) they brought ripley back genetically. this is a bit like a genetic experiment that didn't go too well. they all are. i won't even write about the last two (Littenb and S.O.M.) because they are ugly.

so now to the ones i do somewhat like... Richard Meier: it's like a tic-tac-toe board or Connect 4 and maybe this makes me feel safer since i recognize the symbol / shape. it IS harsh and a bit like a ruin. but it's clean and seems solid. i like the park to the water's edge too. and it encloses but doesn't totally obstruct. Foster is ok. just ok. i like the parks. the transportation system is smart but could it be a danger to people? can they fall in the water? i can't read the image very well. the towers themselves are not exactly melted which is Good. but they are again genetically altered. however, unlike Libeskind, Foster has elegance. so his version is allright. do these explorations even matter? has the group to re-build already been chosen? i'm sure there are a lot of deals being made behind the scenes.
11:01 AM

monday, december 16
"The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good." -- andrei tarkovsky
3:07 PM

Andrei (Tarkovsky) reached for the Bible which he kept on a little table by his bed and read from Ecclesiastes:

...Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
(...) the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us...

...Naturally we began discussing American cinema. He did not consider himself its admirer. He was a European conscious of his roots. Andrei had been to America but had never felt comfortable there, he disliked commercial film-makers and never treated film as a commodity. To him, film was art, young and free from any burden or any ossified traditions, and he felt sorry for the talented American film-makers exposed to commercial pressures. In his opinion only a few Û Kazan, for example Û were able to resist that pressure. Tarkovsky's European roots could not survive that kind of artistic emigration. In the literary aspect of his work Andrei was a heir to Dostoievsky, Chekhov, Tolstoi, and Pushkin. For his visuals he sought examples from Rublov, Theophan the Greek, Leonardo, or Piero della Francesca. Tarkovsky is a link in the chain of the great European culture. He also looked for inspiration to the poetry and music of the Far East and dreamed of going to India and Japan. Andrei was very particular about his reading and the works of art he surrounded himself with. He was concerned about the cultural pollution which continued to flood us daily with mountains of rubbish. His judgment was less severe only in the realm of film and he did watch a lot of them although his evaluation of them was strict. The creative minds he talked about most often were Bresson, Antonioni, Fellini, Kurosawa, Wajda, Zanussi, and Bergman.
2:26 PM

thursday, december 12
the nurse who gave me a flu shot this morning saw my birthmark on my left shoulder. she first asked what my mom did while i was pregnant. maybe she hit her shoulder and i got the bruise. that sounds about right. then she said "hmmmm let's see what it looks like... it's a bunny!" and it totally IS a bunny. she traced it's head, ears, tail, tummy, legs. jeanette is right. i thanked her a lot. it's been a work in progress for so long now the birthmark finally looks like something specific. i used to think it resembled a map of romania. well, it's a bunny now. i have a little friend with me at all times. i'm not alone after all! (: ----- the flu shot itself is making me drowsy. it could be psychosomatic or not. i still want a nap.

Roast pork with bay, lemon and baked apples - Nigel Slater

A classic, but with the aromatic note of bay, a herb I feel we don't use nearly enough. This is good cold too, in Boxing Day sandwiches of soft white bread, with pickles on the side and a glass of cold beer.

Serves 4-6

1.75kg boned loin of pork, tied, fat thinly scored, ask the butcher for the bones
olive oil
about 20 fresh bay leaves
a large lemon
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
about a tablespoon of chopped rosemary leaves
a glass or two of white wine

Mix the lemon juice, crushed garlic and rosemary with a little olive oil and sea salt and black pepper to give a thin slush then rub it into the skin and flesh of the pork. Set aside for an hour or so, uncovered.

Set the oven to 220Éc/Gas 7. Scatter the bay leaves around the centre of a roasting tin, place the pork on top and put in the hot oven to roast for 20 minutes. Tuck the bones around the meat, they will help flavour the gravy. This short burst of high heat will help to ensure the crackling puffs up nicely. Don't worry that the bay leaves darken, they will still do their work. Turn the oven down to 200Éc/Gas 6 and continue roasting for approximately another hour. Remove the meat from the tin and let it rest, then fish out the bay leaves and discard them. Put the roasting tin over a moderate heat and pour in the white wine. Scrape away at the bottom of the tin, pushing the bones aside to do so, stirring any tasty looking bits from the tin into the wine. After a few minutes you will have a thin gravy. Season it with salt and black pepper. Strain the gravy into a warm jug.

For the baked apples:
Ideally I would put an apple per person, scored around the middle, around the pork, about 20 minutes before it is due to come out of the oven. They will fluff up and can be lifted out with the pork. If there isn't room then put the apples in a baking dish on a lower shelf about half an hour before the meat is due to be done. Again, slit them round the middle, and pour a few of the pork's roasting juices over them.
1:22 PM

tuesday, december 10
call me stevenm
3:20 PM

i learned how to make pillowcases this weekend. thank you YS! i am also suspiciously tired and feel like another cold is arriving. oh, and providence is a super town with very good food and quaint little houses. the river makes it even more special. i wonder if i can find a way to always have a water view. man, this journal is getting more and more boring.
1:22 PM

thursday, december 5
due to RCN incompetency i cannot "surf" / post from home. there is nothing truly new anyhow. i'm hoping to go to providence, RI tomorrow to celebrate ys's birthday. the snow is not helping. surely it must be under control by tomorrow. you'd think we were in the 1920's by the way snow storms affect this place.
5:09 PM

monday, december 2
"Earrings are more than just baubles in a patent granted to Ken Aricola, Richard Morton and John Ross, all from California. They won patent 6,277,079 for "an earring that flashes in synchronism with the wearer's heartbeat." While their patent says the earring can monitor medical conditions, they prefer that it be used so that "a lover is able to determine when his or her partner is excited by observing the rate at which the partner's earring flashes." - new york times
1:47 PM

it was a good long weekend. i ate a lot but not enough to be 59 kg! i'm starting to be less excited about writing "here". only because i find i do censor myself because it is a public place. ----- i moved to another space today. i don't know how much longer this freelance job will last but at least i can work in a more quiet area. the last was out of control. my neighbor was a girl with powerful lungs. i try not to use headphones. i'm sure it's not healthy to have them bombard our eardrums. no animals wear headphones. do any actual monkeys operate computers?
11:25 AM