Monday, April 12, 2004
The Liberation Will Be Live
This was indeed the rejuvenating, redemptive paschal weekend that I’ve been needing so badly. I won’t drag you through it step-by-step because you’ll grow despondent and morose that you missed all the fun, and that’s no way to start a monday. What you need is festive tales of gladness and triumph. So I’ll tell you that seder went great. There was enough food for an army - the finest roast brisket drowning in a sea of carmelized onions, paired up with matzagna, three different tsimmises, mazoh ball soup, crispy chewy coins of pure horseradish root, and Kel made her homemade chocolate-dipped macaroons which are astonishingly good - and these are just a few of the items I can still remember. I was able this year to do a bit of additional research for the hagadah, throwing in a few new theories and poems, making it - if I may say so myself - the BEST SEDER EVER. You’ll just have to take my word, because, as Dr. Andy said, “The Liberation will not be televised.” What I can do is share
this
image of me doing a bit of mazoh-talk - the mazohs are in the pink watered-silk case I am fondling. I’m in traditional-style all-white dorkwear, and in the foreground you can see evidence of a wandering princess. In fact, this may have been the most princess-intensive pesach in the history of either pesachs or princesses: evidence can be found 
here.
I should take this opportunity to thank every person who came to Jon and Lisa’s seder, because all 37 adults and 13 kids brought something unique and valuable to the experience. I, for one, was especially grateful that we had so many people who did not know me or my unweildly group of friends; many of them had never been to a seder before, which is especially meretorious. I got a major spiritual boost and we had a wonderful time; when we went home it was with a really shockingly generous token of my friends’ appreciation - thank you, Jon and Lisa, for my beautiful new iPod. I mean, gevalt. Really.
On Easter sunday I made Easter Brie (fried mazohs and eggs, and I make it a lot better than it sounds - adding dried fruit, cinnamon, jam, and other secret goodies), and then we hit the road for some seasonal experiences. You think you’re doing easter right with a bunch of chocolate eggs and the hollow shell of a confectionary bunny? Well check this out: we went to Audibon Canyon Ranch, a birding sanctuary where we watched some beautiful nesting egrets and herons in the trees - I’m used to them strutting nobly around the tidepools and wetlands but here they were filling the pines, the sleek fletching of the egrets festooned with long filmy frond-like “aigrette" feathers, unique to the mating season; we watched from an observation post through spotting scopes as the birds, their eyes emerald green and gleaming in the seaside light, stood in their huge nests and carefully turned their melon-green eggs with their long bills. That is the easter egg that I most valued - least calories, most significance. I didn’t get any good shots of the birds, so here’s the 
clubhouse and 
here’s the old milk cans outside the exhibit center. Afterwards we cruised down the coast past the Bolinas lagoons - where dozens of huge fuzzy brown seals were hauled up out of the water, looking cuter and more anthropomorphic than any lousy verminous bunny on this fine easter day; we proceeded to the Pelican and had a plate of bangers and mash with some frosty pints; back home to walk the dog and then over to Berkeley to gorge on chinese food and to watch the Sopranos with Dave and Kim and two excellent bottles of Meeker wine.
I may have other stuff to say at some point but for now I’m just revelling in a weekend chock-full of bliss. If I play my cards right, I can make it last right through Friday.
