Locomotoring

To tell you this story, I have to go back a few weeks. I heard this podcast titled Exhausting A Place, on “the 11th”, and it got me thinking about possibilities of a place. In this episode, three people spend several hours just sitting in one place, observing and recording. A cemetery in Virginia, a cafe in New York and a plaza in Mexico. The episode is inspired by the book An Attempt At Exhausting A Place in Paris, “what happens,” as the author Georges Perec puts it, “when nothing happens.” While I found the idea intriguing, I could not convince myself that I knew how to exhaust a place, not even my little 12×12 patio with a single maple tree and two loungers. Then nothing happened.

Then a few days later, on a busy weekend afternoon at my grocery store parking lot, I noticed a sign I would normally not notice. On top of a familiar sign that threatens towing all unauthorized vehicles, I noticed some stickers. Anthony Bourdain’s face was one of them and it was he who grabbed my attention. I took a photo because I could not make sense of the collection of stickers. And that started a journey. A journey that I am calling An attempt at exhausting a photo.

Aside from Anthony Bourdain’s photo, it had three stickers, one was partially covered up. One said, “FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND LET IT KILL YOU.” Another said, “ATTENTION DEFICIT ORDER PODCAST” and the final one that was partially covered up, read, “A FEELING OF SADNESS THAT ONLY BUS STATIONS HAVE”. I did find myself curious. Were they related in any way to each other? Were they related to Bourdain’s photo? If the owners of the stickers were saying something, what was it? This was my neighborhood grocery store, so chances were, these are my neighbors. As I root, I find myself increasingly fascinated by those who are around me.

Find something you love and let it kill you: After some rummaging about the internet, I found that the quote is misattributed to Charles Bukowski, a German-American poet.

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours
― Charles Bukowski”

Maybe Bukowski didn’t write these few lines, but the words seem to convey the meaning of the line. He appears to be a controversial persona, but apparently Bukowski often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject. LA is my favorite subject too, particularly when discussions focus around film noir or mid century architecture or the golden California light or Mexican food.

It turns out that the quote should be attributed to humorist, novelist, singer, and songwriter Kinky Friedman instead (see link to Quote Investigator). Kinky’s biography is so long that it needs an intermission (bio by Michael Simmons). He loves mysteries by Agatha Christie. I love mysteries by Agatha Christie.

A feeling of sadness that only bus stations have: This is attributed to Jack Kerouac as part of a longer quote “The floors of bus stations are the same all over the country, always covered with butts and spit and they give a feeling of sadness that only bus stations have. – On the Road”

OK, this quote is something I can relate to, or rather, not relate to. When I first came to US, now more than a quarter of a century ago, Greyhound buses felt safe and affordable. An experienced driver would navigate the snow and rain while one took a nap or looked out the window. And it was a chance to see people who you wouldn’t see otherwise. At the bus station, I remember experiencing possibilities of a space shared with strangers. Last time I read Kerouac was decades ago. So, I have decided it is time to reread him again. Exploring around, I found at least one writer who champions the bus as a window into America’s soul (link).

Attention Deficit Order Podcast: Here is how the creators describe the podcast – “This is a free-thinking, pot-smoking, media-loving podcast, based out of California. We watch and rate a ton of movies, tv shows, and video games. We also talk comics, books, technology, and whatever else catches our attention.”

They publish weekly and have over 500 podcasts. I picked “S22E22 Wolf Beatles Moon Party” to listen to – season 22, Episode 22 in Year 22. When they finally get started, they want to talk about the movie Moonfall but instead play Whitey on the Moon, suggesting that the spoken word poem should have been part of the movie. I had to look up the poem and its context and then was reminded by a recent Jon Stewart podcast “Jon talks with Dr. Mae Jemison: The first black woman in space”, where Dr. Jemison talks to Jon about how space is for everyone and not just the billionaire boys’ club. The second movie they talk about is The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert. They played a number of Beatles songs. Their recommendation, if you like Beatles, watch it, otherwise it sucks. A little afterwards, they did a voice over on Halo The Series official trailer, almost made me wish I was an eleven year old boy. Over the course of the hour long podcast, they refer briefly to The 355, The Tender Bar, The Afterparty, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window and a few more.

Overall, this podcast delivers what is promises, free-thinking stream of consciousness. For the listener, maybe influence of pot will help join the free-thinking spirit.

Anthony Bourdain: And thinking of Bourdain, I only feel gratitude. I really appreciated his comfort on the street, with strangers, with the new.

The year 2020 can be best described as being stunned – the political, and social turmoil were bad enough but then a war with the virus started. The year 2021 has been about settling in for the long haul. Now that we are approaching 2022, omicron has raised its ugly head. There is no adapting to the multitude of losses that has happened and will continue to happen. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to remember the good moments.

We were six months into remodeling when the pandemic started. Despite all the challenges, our team brought us to the finish line in a timely manner and we were glad to be back in our own space. The new facets of the old house kept us occupied for most of 2020.

The pandemic has turned cooking into a therapy. We celebrated anniversaries and birthdays with homemade cakes and multi-course meals. Like many others we took to baking sourdough loaves too. We have taken up Ottolenghi with a new vigor and each week focuses on one of his cookbooks.

The new trees, planning, sourcing, acquiring, placement, have taken up most of my free time. The courtyard got a Japanese maple. Coming from the nursery, it was all wound up in a narrow format, I added some training weights to spread it out a little.

When the tea tree went into bloom this spring, I stood under the tree and heard the buzzing of hundreds of bees. The tree and I have spent 7 springs together, but the pandemic allowed me the time to explore a little.

Inspired by memories from home, I start nurturing a baby moringa tree. It is now out of the pot and in the soil, but still not out the woods yet. I wonder if it will make it. In hot and humid climate of India, these trees grow up large and with ease. On my visits to India, we have to convince someone to climb their local neighborhood tree and get us some leaves. I have been turning them into south Indian’s style spiced powder – oil roast leaves, dry roast lentils and spices and grind together.

Our plum tree decided to bear 40 lbs of fruit this summer. The fruits ripen about the same time, so two weekends were spent furiously jamming, and fermenting.

The new shower with its gorgeous tiles is a joy to behold. Who says money doesn’t bring happiness!

We also planted some Grecian bay leaf trees. I will never have to buy bay leaves again. And the aroma is divine. I am letting the leaves air dry and it helps retain the fully depth of the green color.

Prior to the remodeling, we had a lot of rose bushes. These bushes had to be taken out. We put in a couple of thornless climbing yellow roses only to have them badly infected and then spending nearly the entire 2021 trying on a variety of fungicides. Fingers crossed!

Last but not the least of the noteworthy has been Einstein’s Tomb by Lebbeus Woods. The exhibition was running at SF Moma the day one of us was scheduled for vaccination at the nearby building. The tomb is a theoretical construct, a proposal for a celestial cenotaph (an empty tomb/monument for a person buried elsewhere), for physicist Albert Einstein. More here. Now if I were Elon Musk or Jeff Besos, this is precisely what I would want for my afterlife.

2019 is the year that I learned that orchids can bloom for an year. It was a seemingly ordinary orchid from the neighborhood Whole Foods. I had brought it home right before mom and dad’s trip in Sep 2018. The photo on the left below, in full bloom, is from Nov 2018, and the one to the right, with a single remaining flower, is from July 2019. Alas, I don’t have the skill to re-bloom my orchid.

We started a remodel of our home this year, and a large part of the design has revolved around maximizing the view of our neighbor’s majestic oak. To me, the process of remodel feels like trimming a tree and grafting new branches. New spaces will presumably create new possibilities.

Prior to the start of the remodel, we snuck in a quick trip to Philo in Anderson Valley. Nothing special, just a get away from the internet. It reminded me of the trip to Tokyo, the trees around the cottage were buzzing with the sound of cicadas. Those of us who live in California are spoiled by our microclimates. We go away for an hour or two, and we might as well be thousands of miles away. The first week that we had moved into our temporary abode, a mere mile from home, we were graced with visit from a curious deer family who live in the abutting hills.

The remodel is a mental tether, so travel is limited. We managed to squeeze in a quick trip to India at the peak of summer heat when mangoes are at their sweetest. My husband enjoyed his first taste of palm fruit, aka Talshansh in Bengal. He has always enjoyed the Bengali mishti version of the fruit called Nolen gurer Jalbhora Sandesh with fresh jaggery liquid on the inside and soft fresh cheese on the outside.

My grandmother’s home has been turned into a vocational training school. Over the last 5 decades, many wonderful memories have been created there. I remember the rangoon creeper (Madhumalati in Bengali) that surrounded the windows of the guest bedroom on the second floor. The intensely scented flowers attracted honey bees by the day and fireflies danced around the bed at night. Intense thunderstorms during monsoon nights were mesmerizing. Grandma would light sandalwood incense, kindled by coconut coir, in a genie lamp and walk about the house in the evening to shoo off mosquitoes. The mosquitoes inevitably came back, but the smell of incense lingered late into the evenings.

Many decades ago, the surrounding land was a charming small village abundant with ponds and trees.  The house was surrounded by beetle nut and coconut trees. And grandma would invariably ask someone to harvest while we were visiting and we would watch with our pounding hearts as the harvesters would free climb the tall trees. Ladies of the house would gather around the freshly harvested beetle nuts and indulge in their addiction before starting coconut grating marathons that would eventually turn into sweets for the kids. The rooftops had their own dedicated activities, from drying clothes to sunning pillows to drying lentil wadis. I remember my mother and grandmother, both drying their long  abundant hair in the warm afternoon sun during winters.

I particularly remember the polished cement floor of her master bedroom. It was a seamless geometric pattern in pink and cream. I try to imagine the skill and patience it would have taken to put together a continuous seamless block of cement with a wonderful geometric pattern. The end product was a floor that was buttery to touch and on hot summer days, we would lie down on the floor and listen to radio plays. We have been eyeing some of the handmade tiles from Heath and Fireclay for our home and I am grateful that these artisan tiles are still around.

When we left for India, we had a lot of green unripe fruits on the plum tree and came back to ripe ones. Based on a recipe from The Noma Guide to Fermentation, husband salt fermented the plums. We put these plums in everywhere we could think of, they turned out to be delightful in sauces – pasta with a hint of warmed and crushed black walnuts, thinly sliced fermented plums, tossed with garlic-y olive oil or truffle oil and lightly showered with lemon zest.

2019 was also special in that we were transported for a day to France. De Young museum organized an exhibition of nearly 50 paintings by Claude Monet, the final phase of his career when he was inspired by his own garden at Giverny. It was nearly as spectacular as a visit to Musée de l’Orangerie. Alas, thinking about Paris reminds me that there will be no more sunsets from the top of Notre Dame.

In 2019, we discovered food from Mexico City at our doorsteps! Since the first tentative taco, we have tried Huarache and Gordita. If you are in Redwood City, don’t forget to pay Los Carnalitos a visit and get cuitlacoche if it is on the menu.

Welcome 2020. I hope it doesn’t fly away like 2019 did.

Casteel is an accidental finding. A recent trip to Cantor, where I go for a quick fix when the right half of my brain needs nourishment, revealed the young artist, Jordan Casteel. Cantor is staging her west coast debut and first solo museum show. The collection is eye catching with its larger than life canvases and their vibrant colors. But then you start seeing the loving details in portraits of everyday people. Here are couple of my favorites from the collection.