"I was on the wrong side of a sword once,"

he said, and I left it at that. After a few minutes of talking, after his wife reminded him of the time, he told me "You've been good to talk to us for this long, let me explain."

"As a boy, my family and I lived in Japan when the war broke out. We'd been there long enough to call it home, but as foreigners we were treated as such. At first, we were merely different, but gradually the disdain became palpable.

'It would be my pleasure,' the officer assured me, 'should your Americans reach our shore, to run you and your family through with this sword.'"

And I showed him the sword that came from Suwa, with its fuller and hamon, the unsharpened blade.

My desk 5.20.09

My desk 5.20.09, originally uploaded by the nicole harvey.

My other car is a museum blog. Please comment and forward accordingly, and be amazed as I try to be somewhat cogent in the weeks leading up to what promises to be a really busy time.
And if you really care, maybe you'll volunteer lots of hours at the museum seeing as how we can't afford to hire anyone. Great thanks.

Tupelo Fashioned

Because I believe that Newtonian physics have applications outside of natural science, it follows that an incredible love for the City can produce a kind of vitriol that begins in the cool morning and foments into the hot middle of day.

Anyone living along the route of Bay to Breakers knows what I say to be true.

Waking early to the discotronics down in the Panhandle, then waiting it out indoors until the sound of sirens and streetsweepers began to join the bass and woots, we cautiously donned seersucker in search of a post-2PM brunch.

Our normally quiet secretly great bruncheteria was only medium full, with scant costumed frat boys (we managed three-quarters of a bloody mary before someone testosteronically boomed some trite tag lines from an 80s film). Not bad.
Upon leaving we did get the excellent opportunity to witness what happens when mixing drinking with a city-long run: a fight that had been making its way up the block culminating with a girl leaving her fratty counterpart behind on Haight and Fillmore. Sad, but the bouncer next to us had it right when he intoned to the guy, "just let her go, man."

After running into our good long-lost neighbors for a second time in as many days, we decided it best to repair to home and some much-needed privacy.

And, because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, I decided to create a cocktail that was the antithesis of today's sporting(drinking) event.

The Tupelo Fashioned does not run trippingly off the tongue. You have to articulate it, sloooowly. And you certainly cannot say it correctly having had more than two (or three) without fear of sounding imbecilic. Before drinking one I tried to say "Tupelold" and it didn't work, so I dropped the portmanteau attempt.

But more importantly, the drink takes time. It's a toss-up whether or not it's worth the extra effort when you could perfectly well just pour some of this and that into a glass, but I'd like to think that this is what separates those walking upright from those drunkenly slogging across our quaint town.

Tupelo Fashioned

three segments of Valencia juicing orange, denuded of membrane
three dashes Angostura bitters
one teaspoon Tupelo honey
one teaspoon juice of spiced, brandied cherries

Muddle above ingredients in a glass until the honey and oranges are sufficiently broken. Then add:

one jigger Bulleit Bourbon
three ice cubes

Stir until the three cubes of ice have melted a little, such that if you were to take a sip your top lip would not touch the third ice cube while drinking.

Add fizzy or still water as is your preference--a friend's husband always thought it a crime to add fizz to nice bourbon, and sometimes I agree. But it's hot, and I want some zazz, so.

By the time you get to the orange, it will have become a nice bit of boozy pulp, so removing the membrane makes sense: after having a pleasant cocktail, isn't it nice to have a little fruit? I know it's often called "the garbage," but considering that the Old Fashioned was one of the first drinks my mother trained me how to make for her as a wee chile, even that bit of orange is sacrosanct for me.

Cent'anni.

!

!, originally uploaded by the nicole harvey.

Truth is, in the uneasy springtime of this City I spend rather more time adrift that I'd like to admit. Moony gazing out of windows, staying up late trying to catch a whiff of the gardenia bushes that grow wildly on my street.
But it doesn't last.
Some bit of fate finds a way to moor itself to you: there's some rough news of sick friends, or you're having lunch and the immigration lawyer for your favorite Turk at the Falafelria is being told that he has to make out a check to the Office of Homeland Security and secure a certain number of signatures. All I want is to someday work up the courage to practice my useless Turkish on him someday.
"Ike kahfee, orka sherkelee."
I know it's really Turkish because when I've said it, people who are Turkish smile.
"Ah, she knows Turkiye!"

Yes, I know how to order coffee in Turkish. For two people.
But I don't know how to explain that all of life isn't a series of useless bureaucracies, not in any language. That would take years' worth of study, and, as previously mentioned, I've a touch more spring fever than is right.

Style versus

tattoo I should get so as to not keep losing at Scrabble, originally uploaded by the nicole harvey.

Because I start strong, then decide that I'm going to hold onto some tiles so that I can lay "FJORD" on the board.

So the point of the game is to score points, not have the best words?

Aves, Rattus

Waiting on the corner, squinting against the wind and sand, I almost miss that the crow just across the street isn't just being peculiar.
A few false starts (it's windy, afterall) and he manages to pick up the traffic-flattened rat that lies in the crosswalk.
He then alights to a tree to enjoy his treat: rat jerky.

Dokkodo, Musashi

1. Accept everything just the way it is.
2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6. Do not regret what you have done.
7. Never be jealous.
8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
11. In all things have no preferences.
12. Be indifferent to where you live.
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
17. Do not fear death.
18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
21. Never stray from the Way.

Good luck with that.

Hush, Memory

Whether it was the early onset exhaustion of trying to write in a noisy place all day, or trying to read Japanese Zen texts while fielding questions about why our work's computer programs are crap, tonight found me methodical about remembering, which in turn led me back to Steven Jesse Bernstein.

If you're a kid of a certain age (you're a kid if you're somewhere from 32-50, apparently) you got whatever Subpop put out, or someone you knew picked up a tape and then made you a copy (did I almost say "burn?" Yes, yes I did).
Of course we all somehow came across William Burroughs and then picked up on his collaborators, of whom Bernstein was one. To anyone who complains about how music/video/other media ruins children, I relentlessly believe that the curious always remain so. And so it follows that literature really was the gateway to so much, although I claim having known about Psychic TV before Burroughs, so I'm sure in some ways the cart is preceding the horse.
Please, let me not devolve into a cool kid symposium of I bought it before you and it's an import.

Is it because I come from a generation straddling two sides that I'm not entirely comfortable with the manner in which current living memory takes on the taint of technology? Would that magazines I have written for did not fold and I could argue this in paper.

Somehow I found it incredibly sad that SJB's son has a site dedicated to his father. Maybe I need another word for sad--melancholic? The overwhelming solipsism of suicide takes everything away such that when I sat for the requisite several minutes trying to put the name to the gravel-voiced memory, I didn't think on how he might have had a family--I only tried to remember what label he was on. He was the face on a cassette, black-and-white copied and played by my friend Mike Abelson on the way to our Saturday art classes (if I ever see you again, sir, I owe you a debt of gratitude for the Velvet Underground: I'm sure I would have found them, but those afternoons meant so much then).

They keep on going, being artists and voices churned on loop. And their families, they keep on being tied to the dead artist. But the grizzly details will always remain an important subject for wikipedia indexing, so there's comfort somewhere.

As I get closer in my readings (it's for work, really it is) on how important it is to get closer to death I still can't quite fathom it. Ballard dies, and I remember it wasn't so long ago that ReSearch had their party for him; a friend gets a call about her grandmother while we shop for records.
My culture doesn't do death well and it's a glaring oversight in my own life, although lately on a bike I'm feeling I'm getting closer to not caring. Giving up attachments is easy if you've spent most of your life not expecting exotic locales and umbrella drinks. Giving up someone, no, I'm a terrible Buddhist.

Is memory attachment? If so, maybe I ought to forget where I put things more often.