Coffee Break For A While

Here is my new blog: As Food To Life. It's all about food, ideas on food, riffs on food, how to make things, where I get ideas for what I make, and general thoughts of this kind.
I've been realizing for awhile that nothing's happening in my life that I want to write about on here. Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing, it's good. I'm living a life and not worrying about how to get to where I want to be. I know where I want to be and I'm going to continue to work towards it. But right now an office job doesn't leave much to enlighten you all about. And everything else is private and shouldn't be broadcast about without regards to others.
I still plan to write on here about how things are going, but I feel the need to edit, write on a theme, expand on something I love. And along with books, food's the next best thing that won't complain when I bring it up. My blog on food will be about food and drink but also the friendship that comes with a good meal, the literature that I love that mentions eating well, and any other ideas I have about food, food, food.
And now I'm going to take a break and eat a salad. I'm starved.

We Have A Winner!

Hahahaha! I feel quite vindicated right now. You've heard me speak the name of the beast here, right? The woman I work with that sometimes terrifies me? Actually occasionally we have very nice chats about things that aren't work related. But when it comes to work she morphs back.

Anyway, I'm editing these certificates of appreciation she had to make for some stupid conference when I come across the typo she made: 'Gorgon Doe'. Obviously Doe isn't his real last name. And neither is Gorgon. It's Gordon. But you know what a Gorgon is?? Medusa was a Gorgon. According to Wiki, the Gorgon comes from Greek mythology and was 'a vicious female monster with sharp fangs who was a protective deity from early religious concepts. Her power was so strong that one attempting to look upon her would be turned to stone'.

Immediately the beast has a new name. That's how I feel about her sometimes. That to look at her I will be turned to stone, quaking in my sandals, bitten by her sharp fangs.

Lost New York

How I feel about New York, both before I moved there and after I moved back has been well summed up in this Vanishing New York interview with Chris Stein of Blondie. Sad, sad, sad. I think New York has lost its cool--temperwise and culturally too. It used to be the center of the scene. How many artists, writers, musicians, directors and actors got their starts there? Countless numbers of young people moved there, broke and idealistic, to follow their dreams. They created their own music, clothes, style and culture. It was co-opted by a hungry nation, hungry for the percieved air of cool in New York. And then, slowly young college grads moved there to be part of the scene, developers discovered this rich cache of iconography and hipness associated with the dirt poor styles that started there. It's been gentrified and swept up, tidied into a place tourists can marvel at but never really see. And of course it's brought millions to the city, but those tourists' dollars come at a price. Lose what you used to be and what are you left with?

Electrical Storm - U2

Outside my office window the sky grew a sickly yellow. Leaves were brushed by unseen brooms and a bird struggled to maintain a straight flight. The trees bent backwards in unison like a corps de ballet. Wind swirled down the spears of the Air Force Memorial as though demons had made themselves visible in the here and now. The sky darkened from its unearthly yellow to a dark gray fog. The city was swallowed under its heavy blanket. Thunder began to rumble and rain fell in gusts and torrents. Lightning zapped through the dust in bright white cracks.
Now the storm has past us by, the rain has slowed and the trees are waving gently, they are washed bright green. The slate gray sidewalks by the memorial shine, as does the air around it. I can still hear the thunder overhead, and see white lines of lightning in the distance, and some still close, but we aren't in the middle of it anymore. Once again we breath a sigh of relief and go back to our work. The immediacy of the electric storm doesn't get in the way of the work day.

I am always awed by the natural power of these storms. So often we forget just what that power means. So often we view it as troublesome or a nusiance in our day. Occasionally we are reminded of what nature can do, Katrina, the cyclone in Myanmar. But here, where nothing seems to happen, where no recessions or house market crashes or food shortages seem to affect us much these little storms are like wake up calls for me. They shake me out of my safe coccoon that I get lost in and wash everything clean from the dust 'more dangerous than silica'.

Lately I have been reading about Johnny Cash and his life and times. It makes me want to do something with my own life and times, the storm reminds me of how wild and unpredictable life really is. Sometimes I forget that and think it is a mundane cycle of working for money, paying bills with that money, going home to your apartment which is supplied by working. I'm trying to find ways to subvert the cycle, to use the freetime I have at my job to get out of the cycle and actually do some living. More tomorrow on the small details of what that living is.