Senor Pinata

Heather and I made this Pinata for Diana's birthday. I asked Diana what her birthday wishes were--meaning in my mind breakfast and dinner foods--and she told me she wanted a fitted baseball cap (I forget the size), roller skates (ditto), and one other thing. Anyway, I'm sounding like a jerk who doesn't care, but I remembered at the time but ignored them to bring her, in almost her own words, 'the best present ever.' A direct quote would be more like this:

Me: Be honest. Is this the best present you have ever received?
Diana: Y--
Me: In your life?
Diana: Proba--
Me: Including the inestimably precious gift of life our sweet mother gave you?
Diana: Hmmm... yes.

Look how happy!

Before the bestowal of the gift, I was imagining all the ritual suicides that would ensue from the Pinata's sheer beauty, from the utter shock of seeing something so perfect and heavenly in this mortal realm.

Part of me realized I might have been setting myself up for disappointment. But another part of me had such faith in the glory that was the pinata, I knew it would absolutely blow their minds back to the stone age. It'd be like the opening scene in 2001 space odyssey if you replaced the monkeys with my family and the black intelligence-bestowing effigy with the pinata.

Anyway, here's what happened:


I was so happy when her petting the Pinata didn't make the fuzzy crepe paper come off.

So, I was probably the most excited. This video captures only the tiniest slice of the ecstasies I felt about the pinata which--let's remember--completely ignored the birthday wishes Diana had given me. But I guess the lesson there is that you don't always know what you want more than anything else in the world. And the lesson in me being such a freak about how awesome it was is that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And the lesson I hope to be learning from the tons of requests for our new and unimprovable Pinata kits is that sometimes doing something awesome can make you millions... millions and millions of dollars... with which you can do more awesome things... not as in something that is more awesome, but as in more things that are awesome... in their own uniquely awesome way.

Oh, and Annie would never have believed that we'd made it ourselves without some pictures to prove it, so here's one for any skeptics out there:

There, that's enough! You've seen enough of our secrets...

Little Pinata doing what he/she/it was made to do.

The Oregon Trail

The plan was to fly out to Provo, pack Heather’s car and drive it back to Pennsylvania where I had a class to take and a gothic runway to walk down. But after talking to Cort about his upcoming vacation to the Oregon coast, we thought that might be a nicer way to spend a summer.

The first night at the coast, the sea was booming and furious. Boiler Bay—although named for a sunken boiler ship—was white with shaking Oregon’s coast. Later, below our balcony, white-crested waves crashed day and night: sometimes the whole lower half of the windows showed a frothy, white sprawl, sometimes the sea quieted down and we had to wait for a large crash to spread out across the rocks below us.

Then we found some last-minute, ridiculously cheap flights to New Zealand, so away we go. During it all I keep getting emails from my Dissertation Chair wondering when I’ll be back in PA to meet with my committee and get going on this PhD thing. I’ve replied with vague statements so far, but better give him a more definite window sometime soon.

And now we’re in Carson City. We visited an old Mormon fort today: Genoa, NV, the state’s oldest settlement. It got me thinking of Brigham Young and how many settlements he planned and sent people to in trying to create the mighty state of Deseret which would stretch from present day Utah down to the California coast somewhere around San Diego or Los Angeles.

Deseret didn’t quite pan out. Neither did the alphabet Brother Brigham planned out and wanted the saints to adopt (the more phonetically accurate alphabet would have made it easier for immigrants to learn English, and a similar project was funded posthumously by George Bernard Shaw in England.) He didn’t live to see the completion of the Salt Lake Temple either. Probably plenty of things didn’t quite work out for him. So, when I think of the lists and lists of things I’d like to do or write or read or see or research (i.e. accomplish) in my life, I feel (a) a bit comforted from my fears that I won’t get it all done by the realization that of course I won’t get it all done. Who does? Who can? (b) good that I have so many worthwhile projects to work on and dream about, and (c) spurred on to get working.

So plans change, classes wait, roads are and aren’t taken, and I get some things done and leave some newly-invented alphabets for another lifetime or world, and all the time keep moving from the almost violently beautiful Oregon Coast (note: highway 84 along the Columbia is a long, scenic procession of sharp slopes covered in green trees with intermitten cliff faces looking over a sometimes placid river broken by rushing waterfalls—i.e. gorgeous.), to the lovely Carson valley, to a warmer California coast and on to New Zealand which, by the way, is getting kind of close to the farthest point on earth from Hershey, PA where you can stand on land.

Sakura, 桜

This last weekend I went down to see the Cherry Blossoms in DC. The trees circling the Tidal Basin were a gift from a Japanese Emperor in the early 1912 (or thereabouts) and again a couple decades later. From my time in Japan, I gained a fondness/fascination/love/ardent desire/violence of affection for these trees which the Japanese name for the flower more than the fruit. Cherries, in Japanese, can be translated as "fruit of the cherry blossom," which sounds circular and ridiculous in English, but makes sense in Japanese... that could probably refer to a lot of things actually... quite a lot.

But I digress.


Heading down I was expecting/hoping/wanting a zen experience. Something that connected me with Japan, or my memories of it. Something transcendental. I wanted to stand in light filtered by the cherry blossoms. To have gentle winds come and blow the pink petals over me as I recalled haiku such as

Like the cherry blossoms,
let me fall
pure and radiant
(found in the jacket of a kamikaze pilot)

Watching cherry blossoms fall,

one falls up!
A butterfly.

These are my own translations and from memory, but they still illustrate what I was expecting. Silence, the sounds of petals falling on water, stealing a peek at time as air and water worked on the delicate petals. There were thousands and thousands of others who were perhaps looking for the same sort of experience, and there we were ruining it for each other.


My zen mindset eluded me while shuffling through lines and groups and hordes of visitors. Even when the wind blew and cherry blossoms fell on us all, the jean-clad photographers with cameras larger than newborns standing contrapposto in the hot spring sun scowling beneath sunglasses. But then, while doing laundry a couple days later, I was reading some Kenko, an early Japanese essayist from an anthology I used in a class but never finished. Kenko wrote about visiting a small village, making his way down "a moss-covered path until [he] reached a lonely-looking hut. Not a sound could be heard, except the dripping of a water pipe buried in fallen leaves." Enjoying the "sprays of chrysanthemum and red maple leaves" he is amazed that someone might live there and then notices a fenced tangerine tree enclosed in a forbidding fence and is immediately disillusioned by the whole scene.

Annie knows what I'm talking about...

So, my imagined ideal discomfitingly butting against the actual, is still fairly zen and Japanesey. Plus, Kenko goes on to ask "Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?" and wonders where the poems written about "going to view the cherry blossoms only to find they had scattered" or "on being prevented from visiting the blossoms." So, perhaps I need to write the poem "on going to see the cherry blossoms and seeing everyone else going to see the cherry blossoms."

Still, the flowering trees out east here: gorgeous.

And I really like DC.

New York^2

I feel Warhol would have loved this mocking homage.

I was in New York again this past weekend for my birthday and my cousin's wedding. Piggy-backing the two went really well because it meant all my brothers were in town for my birthday and that there were a lot of fun things to do like late night Karaoke and lots of wedding dancing. And this in a town that leaves me with no lack of wonderful things to see and do. Some of my favorites:

Cookies!

They sell fantastically huge cookies. My double chocolate chocolate chip cookie had layers of chocolate chips through the middle. An highrise of sweet sweet goodness.

Cupcakes!

The first time I walked in front of one of these, my taste buds needed a cold shower. They're cupcakes are big, fancy, covered with goodies and filled with creams. For passover weekend they have chocolate covered and candied Matzoh breads and themed cupcakes with Moses, Elijah headlining flavors. Kind of a spiritual cake version of Ben and Jerry's. I.e. yummy! Even the muffins are tempting.

Butternut Squash Soup and Dog Theme!

Went here with some friends, and my only regret was that I didn't have time that evening to get to a nearby Crumbs after. The butternut squash soup was incredible. But then, so was everything. Great food and the dog theme was tasteful but not too intrusive (ie, fun design motif but no dog-themed menu items.)

Doughnuts!

Kitty corner to my newly-wed cousin's place of work, these doughnuts are amazing. My highest recommendations go to the cake donuts (the carrot cake and tres leches blew my mind). Even the filled donuts have hole which makes for perfect filling to doughnut ratio in nearly every bite. Having spoken at length to many people about my love for some "best doughnuts in the world" as found in a basement bakery in the Amish country of Lancaster county, PA, I feel I need to add that if Doughnut Plant borrowed a page from their book and made their yeast doughnuts with potato flour--thus adding a substantial fluffiness to their doughnuts, they'd be unassailable. Peerless. Immaculate.

Ribs and Date Cake!

Cafe Moto is hard to find at first. The intimate (read: tiny) cafe looks like an abandoned building from the outside, but the well-seasoned ribs and mashed potatoes are a delight--but have some napkins and purell handy--and the date cake... oh, the date cake! I don't know how to explain it other than just saying its name in a such a way as to express deep longing and desire while adding, the sauce is incredible and the fresh whipped cream to the side doesn't hurt.

Now if I can find a great place for pies in NYC, I can start putting on some real weight.

And I have to mention a bit about my cousin's wonderful wedding. The bachelor party involved a drunken and rowdy but harmless posse people kept clear of on the subway and in the karaoke bar where we sang long and hard till the wee hours. The wedding was gorgeous and so wonderful to be at. Loved the song the bride came in by



and loved the dancing which was highly encouraged and highly enjoyed.

And loved my cousin's wedding vows which included imaginary numbers, exponential growth, powers, and 1 in there somewhere. Didn't check his math myself, but I think it all adds up.

Basically I had a lovely time even though it was a bit chillier than it ought to have been, and I apparently took pictures of little besides Magnolias which were or were almost blooming.

Ah, spring!

I just love New York...

MLK Jr. Day: Let Freedom Ring

... by banging resonant rocks at Ringing Rocks County Park. That's right, a County Park. I've never heard of one of those either. Nor have I ever heard rocks that ring like bells when struck with a hammer.

If I had a hammer... I'd hammer out danger. I'd hammer out warning... all over this land. And that's what I did. Climbing over the field of resonant rocks hammering to see which ones were most resonant.


And then hammering some more when we got the hang of it.

Maybe you can't see it, but I'm using a nice floral-print hammer courtesy of Kristen's sister, Emily.

Makes you other rocks seem pretty lame.

Yeah, I'm talking to you, non-ringy rocks!

And as usual...

New York, New York

New York. Amidst its uniquely offensive smells, while biking along pot-holed roads with the constant threat of being hit by cars and accompanied by their honking refrain, I thought of the relative ills and beauties of this metropolis and kept thinking of how its name conjures one of Basho’s lesser-known haiku about the limestone islands of Matsushima bay. Because, supposedly, he couldn’t conjure the actual beauty of the experience he simply wrote:

Matsushima

Ah, Matsushima

Matsushima

Perhaps I was only told this to further sell me on the tour I was taking, but even that, I think, can be appropriate to New York: home of Capitalisms most holy of holies, Times Square, and the endless, 3D multi-media marketing blitz invading your senses at every angle. My most socialist friend has only lived there 6 months and is already softening to Capitalism under New York’s insistent charms.

New York transforms. It took the torn-edged mountains of my mountain home and the jagged pine-topped hills surrounding my current home and replaced them with squared, even, and endless horizons of cement and steel. The tiny valleys, dales, and canyons of the city were labyrinthine. Every time my sister or a friend took me to a great diner or chocolatier or bakery I asked them how they ever found it. I don’t know that they ever answered me, but maybe it was the same way I found the fanciest food shop I’ve ever seen or how I stumbled upon The Strand bookstore unexpectedly, they just went walking. Still it seems a miracle to know where anything is in a city so large and unwieldy. I loved biking down to the beach, watching the dense city slowly lose its grip on the earth and air till it receded into the background, a more distant noise to the wind and waves.

But they do find these places. And that contributes to my next wonder at New York. So many people in such a complicated and multifarious concatenation of walkers, runners, bikers, drivers, bussers, and taxis, that the mostly fluid execution of so many independent minds, thoughts, and actions not bringing it all down in rubble or at least to a screeching halt is a marvel. Sure, the dance is accompanied by the honks, roar, and stink of the city, but take a step back into Central or Prospect park and the tones soften and take on a certain rhythm and beat that a large portion of the earth is stepping to.

Because I can't resist.

I don’t know if it was this unexpected pleasure of finding anything that inspired me, but I felt almost certain I’d run into some old friend I’d lost contact with at some point during my visit. No one in particular, but it seemed, with so many people, I’d have to run into someone I knew sooner or later. Maybe I needed to sit and wait for it. But it did mean that instead of encountering a faceless horde reflecting how dehumanizing and devouring masses are of individuals, I was always looking out for someone I knew, half-expecting to run into them. In New York such an impossibility seems nigh inevitable.

And the languages. Riding a bus there was Spanish, Italian, and Russian being spoken in the bus while we passed stores with Arabic and Greek on the signs. It’s incredible. It is a world metropolis where languages, cultures, and people abut to create an endlessly fascinating mosaic.

In the end, I decided that just as you shouldn’t trust a man who has no enemies (quotation unknown and probably non-existent), the fact that a city as vibrant, magical, messy, and transcendent as New York exists without a dystopian nightmare future, is miraculous.

Be seeing you soon.

Plying our Manly Oars

Here's me and Brant leisurely winning our first canoe race--on the Susquehanna no less... love that name. We didn't get the mid part where we have another quick spurt to catch up to the leaders, you get a pretty good sense of the chaos and the sweet, sweet victory.