Monday, February 28, 2005

(vamps till ready)

Okay this is going to be sort of a punt this morning.  I had way too much weekend for me to be able to do it justice here and now, so instead I’ll just mention that we finished oiling our new ranma.  I personally think it looks great and it relaxes me, so I’m going to keep it around today in blog form.  Tonight I go to GAMH to see a fun concert with good friends; it will be a party the likes of which I haven’t seen on a Monday night in a dog’s age, assuming a reasonably well-aged dog.  So I’m psyched and I’ve had a good time, but god knows when I’ll have a chance to fill you in on the details.  I’ll try to write it up on the bus today while it’s still as fresh as the durian currently stanking up my fridge.  But as a photo-teaser, try to guess what’s happening: here!

See you tomorrow, maybe with another phone-it-in post that isn’t worth your paltry subscription fee.  I mean....

... hey…

Friday, February 25, 2005

Caltrops: An Introduction

Big day today - committee meeting on eligibility.  I was working till nearly midnight reading up for it: you know, dockets, applications, summary project descriptions - good stuff.  I then slept deeply and almost without interruption till 5, and now I have only one more day of this week left to endure.  Then, this weekend, I get to join a friend from work and someone else cool from the office whom I barely know but whom I intend to know better soon, for a Chinatown History and Cuisine Walking Tour.  YES THAT’S RIGHT - the funky-fun stroll I had not long ago among Clement’s weirdest gustatory offerings will now be repeated in Chinatown’s Edwardian alleys and kitchy kitchens.  I’ve been doing research, working out, focusing my chi, and now I’m almost ready to go.  I just have to wait till it’s actually time to do it.  In the meantime, here’s a little essay about how my tourguide friend introduced me to a food I thought I’d known for years:

We met at 11:30 in the lunch room - a space where, before the remodel a few years ago, my desk used to be located.  I rarely get up there anymore, for no good reason.  Even on that lowering grey day the view was inspiring - the towers of the big grey bridge thrusting up out of the cold grey water into etherial grey clouds, Treasure Island hunkered down on Yerba Buena’s flank, the bay spreading out before me, disappearing into distant mists…

She was already at the brightly-lit sinks, paring a bag of water chestnuts. She showed me what a bad one looked like, how to trim them and peel off the tough skin; she taught me to wash them off and to soak them in water once they were hulled.  The caltrops (isn’t that an evocative name for them?) were clumsy, as was I, but the task was sped along by good conversation and her own nimble efforts that made up for my hesitant slow ones, and before long we’d shucked the bunch of them.  Then she pulled out the container of catfish stew she’d set aside for me from her mother’s kitchen, sliced up a lime, offered me that vietnamese hotsauce with a rooster on the bottle… I sat down to a bowl of broth thick with tomatoes and squid and onions and nameless vegetables that I recognized from stores where I couldn’t read the signs.  It was delicious - tangy and spicy, rich and textured, and I ate it gleefully.

But, though that was one hell of a bowl of soup, it really was nothing more than that.  The water chestnuts, on the other hand - they were something altogether else. 

She presented them on a small plate, a dozen or so pale orbs that glistened in the halogen glare of the lunchroom lights.  Over them she poured a few teaspoonsful of golden cold-pressed flaxseed oil, and with no more ado, urged me to have at them. I thought I knew what water chestnuts were, from countless cans of them I’d opened, drained and munched.  I’ve cooked with them in casseroles, stir frys, and rumakoid appetizers.  But when that first fresh nugget hit my mouth, I realized I’d been duped. 

Those things I’d een eating before - they may once have been water chestnuts, but by the time I ever got to them they’d had their souls sucked out.It’s not that they’d been bad - in fact, I’d always enjoyed them; it’s just that they had, apparently, been dead by the time they reached my table.  And this thing I was now eating, it was alive.  It shattered and crushed satisfyingly between my jaws, a tactile delight that was heightened by the unction of the flaxseed.  Together they formed a smooth creamy confection in my mouth.  The flavor was less bland than delicate - a light nutty taste like a sunchoke or jicama, but somehow deeper, richer, more satisfying. 

Once I’d swallowed it my mouth immediately craved another, and then another, until the little plate was almost empty.  In a gesture of reluctant generosity, I told her the two remaining prizes were hers to enjoy (as, in fact, she’d brought them and I was just a tag-along invitee).  She popped one easily in her mouth with chopsticks, and then delicately placed the last one on her spoon and poured all the sunny oil that remained on the little plate over it, letting the final drops creep down with thick slickness, splashing over the single snowy globe that rested in the cup of the spoon.  I heard it crunch as she bit down on it.  I have desired more for myself from that moment to this one. 

Have a great weekend.  I’ll take pictures on my tour and if they’re any good I’ll share a few.  Till then, eat hearty.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Wednesday Night

Yesterday I posted a vignette about a woman on my morning ride last week.  This one is about my ride home that evening.  I tell ya, some days the 38L is pretty boring, and some days it isn’t.  As the busdriver himself told me not long ago, “This line is always a heavy ride.”

It’s Wednesday evening and I’m on the evening bus, riding home again.  It feels like my jaws have been clenched for hours; I’m finally asserting control over my world by having chosen, again, my favorite seat, where I sit with my tablet in my lap.  I’m writing about that morning’s bus ride and the woman who realized she’d forgot something and was sad, and I wonder idly who’ll sit in the open seat next to me.  It’s usually some gruff businessman or an ambiguous younger guy with overly-attended-to facial hair; sometimes it’s an elderly Chinese lady laden with odiferous plastic shopping bags.  The cuties never sit next to me, I grouse, and my jaw locks a few degrees more grimly down. 

By the time the bus pulls out I’m writing writing writing away my tension by parasitically exploiting the anguish of another.  And I don’t care, it’s refreshing to wallow in someone else’s anguish for a change.  The bus drives on, begins to fill, and the seat next to me remains, as if often the case, one of the very few available seats on the bus.  People are starting to stand in the aisles rather than sit next to me.  But near Union Square a mass of riders climbs on board.  As is typical in these precincts, many among them are young pretty women.  One of these inexplicably opts to take my neighbor seat.

With practiced subtlety I try to get a read on her as she moves in.  Short, slim, nice denim jacket, nice denim pants, black knit turtleneck; straight brown hair cut to a line at her shoulderblades, parted neatly over her forehead and framing a well-proportioned round face; pale base makeup and dark red lipstick.  She clearly projects intelligence, confidence, and an intense desire for privacy.  She takes her seat with crisp efficiency - not shifting around, managing her large purse with authority, keeping her legs out of contact with mine.  Once she’s properly seated and arranged, her eyes drop immediately to her purse (leather, black with a pink accent) from which she pulls a small office-issue pad of legal yellow notepaper, flips rapidly to a fresh sheet, and starts to write with a furious burst of rapidity. She’s a rightie and she’s to my left so her hand is in my way and I can’t really make out much of what she’s writing, but some words I can discern: “angry,” “punish,” “disappointed,” “bitter.” Her penmanship is florid; she crosses out at least a third of what she’s written as she pursues le mot juste and evident literary exorcism.

Within several minutes she’s filled several pages, and her face, so composed and paraprofessional before, is now like a road from which the blacktop has been ground off, removing all evidence of the journeys made on it, leaving only the rough bedrock of possibility.  She pauses, then flips the notepad closed, holds it tightly in a fist that, it seems to me, wishes it could punch something.  Something, perhaps, in particular.  Her eyes close and her lips form a brick wall over her mouth.  She does not move again until her stop is announced, and then she stands up quickly and strides out and away as if she were quitting her job.