"Oh! The horror!"

Warm weather has arrived, blue skies and sun, but I was sick so I didn't go out. Instead, Christina came over and we talked about books. I guess you could say we were two chicks talking Lit though I hate the term "Chick Lit" just as much as I hate the term "Chick Flicks" (though I've been guilty of sneaking off to a few).

I guess Jane Austen re-makes count as "chick flicks" though Bob will actually watch those. Poor Jane Austen.  All those romanticized remakes. Then murder mysteries appeared with Austen as the detective and now her books have morphed into horror stories. I see their ghastly covers in bookstores everywhere: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Die, Die, My Darcy and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  It's a travesty.

I looked up the definition of "travesty" to see if I was using the word correctly and found out, to my surprise, that the term in its most literal sense perfectly describes the books:

1. An exaggerated or grotesque imitation, such as the parody of a literary work.

Though I intended another meaning:

2. a distorted or debased version of something, a travesty of justice

for these travesties do a great injustice to poor Miss Austen's literary oeuvre. (Though I confess I do like some of the remakes. Colin Firth as Darcy brings out the werewolf in me, that is to say, my inner Flick Chick.)

Fish Fries

I very rarely get a response from my readers though I know you're out there, all five or six of you! But I actually got two responses to my sardine post. Apparently, sardines stir up something in people. My friend from the East Coast wrote:

I have not eaten a sardine, either. That can of oily slippery silvery fish just does not appeal to any of my senses, though the attached key has always fascinated me.  However, I have eaten freshly caught deep fried smelt, head & tail attached, bones included, like a weird Icelandic version of a French fry.  I spent many weeks  of my early 30's  crewing on "The Gray", our British friends' Dominick and Cecilia's 130' Baltic trader.  One summer evening Dominick rowed us away from the ship into Long Island Sound and we set up seining nets between the ship & dingy.  He said that the smelt were running and they surely were.  We followed his commands and eventually hauled in a squirming mass of smelt.  Cecilia then floured & fried them up and I ate mine with ketchup.  And I even liked them, though I was a bit squeamish at the thought of eating eyeballs and intestines, and fins.  The sea gives a person a unique appetite!

Sardines

I love cookbooks. It's too bad that I don't like to cook. Yes, I'm a voyeur in the world of cookery. Occasionally, I do make something, but the activity doesn't come naturally. I'd rather read about cooking than do it. 

I bought a panini cookbook at Walden Pond Books. "God," said the guy behind the counter. "Looking at the cover makes me hungry. But then I haven't had lunch yet."

I looked at my watch. "It's four thirty. How can you go so long without eating?"

"Coffee and more coffee."

"If I could only skip lunch, I'd be thin," I said, enviously.

"Well, I'm not thin, as you can see. That's because I do all my eating at night, which is unhealthy."

"I don't know about unhealthy. Look at the French. They eat fattening foods, but they keep their weight off."

"Yes." He brightened up. "Half my family lives in Spain and they don't eat dinner there until ten at night."

"How do they do it? I couldn't go that long."

"Oh, they eat all day  They're constantly eating little snacks. Sardines on toast and stuff like that. Tapas."

"Sardines?" I wrinkled my nose.  "I've never had one. They sound disgusting."

"They're not. They're like tuna, only stronger. You should try some." 

"OK, I will."  But I haven't screwed up the courage yet.

Pho Anh Dao

We ventured outside for a mini-outing -- just a trip to 18th Street to Pho Anh Dao for lunch. It had actually stopped raining, but we could hardly believe our eyes. We were like dogs afraid to come out of their cage, sniffing warily at the edges of freedom, but ready to be beaten back at any time. OK, I exaggerate. But we were timid.

We often eat at Pho Anh Dao, especially when we can't think of anywhere else to go. It's not the best Vietnamese restaurant in town, but it's the closest to our house and it's cheap. Besides, I like the atmosphere.  The premises are large, dark, and rather shabby. There's the requisite fish tank in the back with cloudy water and semi-conscious marine creatures, things you don't want to examine too closely. There are the worn-out plastic tables with their jars of hot sauces, their metal containers jammed with paper napkins and their plastic chopsticks lined in a grimy row where the table meets the wall. There is the odd mixture of artwork on the wall and the occasional roach crawling down its wooden panels. The only new-looking objects in the place are the wide-screen TVs, angled down from the ceiling.  They play soundless sports footage, in this case basketball.

In the summer, Pho Anh Dao's cavernous gloom gives it a bit of coolness, at least compared to the harsh sun beating down on the sidewalk outside. In the winter, it's a warm hide-out, somewhere where human bears like us can definitely hibernate in comfort, huddled over our bowls of steaming pho. (I'm into animal metaphors to-night.)

Actually, we didn't eat pho this time. Instead, we devoured bowls of cold vermicelli topped with bits of meat, carrot and cucumber plus shredded lettuce, peanuts and bean sprouts. There was also the usual saucer of fish sauce to pour over the concoction, which we did.

The restaurant is usually fairly empty, but today it was filled with tables of animated young people. They were runners from Oakland's second annual marathon. They wore running gear and baseball hats and laughed and giggled and joked around, high-spirited over their bowls of pho. And they were all Asian. It was cheery to have them there with us in the restaurant, slurping up their noodles.

A Confession

Bob accuses me of mostly reading mysteries. That's true. I did most of my "great literature" reading when I was young. I prefer mysteries to literature for a lot of reasons, but I have to admit that one of them is that they're easy to read. And they don't require much thought. I especially like the ones that are amusing and quick-paced.  Either I've become a lazy reader through an excessive combination of mystery and magazine reading plus Internet scanning or I always was a lazy reader so naturally, I gravitated to those forms. I also like memoirs, essays and poems, but it's ironic that novels are usually my last choice since I've always wanted to be a novelist.

I did read In The Eye of the Sun by the Anglo-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, but that was only because my friend Christina lent it to me. And I re-read Herself Surprised by Joyce Cary because I was word-starved in the dead of night and there it was on the shelf. Joyce Cary wrote two sets of trilogies, which he referred to as "triptychs." Herself Surprised is the first volume of his first trilogy. To Be A Pilgrim is the second volume and The Horse's Mouth the third. That one was made into the 1958 film starring Alec Guinness about a crazed but brilliant artist. The Horse's Mouth is the only one of the trilogy that I didn't own so the following day I had to have it. I hunted down a tattered copy in our neighborhood bookstore and started to read.

Chapter 1 begins:

I was walking by the Thames. Half-past morning on an autumn day. Sun in a mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop. All bright below. Low tide, dusty water and a crooked bar of straw, chicken-boxes, dirt and oil from mud to mud. Like a viper swimming in skim milk. The old serpent, symbol of nature and love.

How could you not like that as an opening?  I'd forgotten how good the story is, but it does need to be read slowly -- not raced through like a suspense novel -- and this I found hard to do. I skimmed through the pages, reading non-sequentially. It's true, Cary's writing is a bit dated and tedious at times, but my impatience does him a disservice. I haven't the will to go back and read it properly, though.  Maybe I'll dip in and out of the rich comic prose until I've constructed some sort of story, collage-like, out of its random pieces.

Circle of Protection

There are the days that nothing much happens and then there are the days that too much happens. That was yesterday. Too much happened and not much of it was good. Most of the bad stuff wasn't happening to me or Bob, but to people we love. I don't want to write about their private troubles on a public forum, but I do want to offer -- What, is it, exactly, that I want to offer? Grace, compassion, and a circle of protection to keep them from harm. So it's a good time to call on Green Tara, the goddess of compassion. What the hell. I might as well invoke her protective powers for the people of Japan, too. May they stay safe from the harmful effects of radiation. And may she protect the citizens of Libya, Syria, and Bahrain from the perils of warfare and oppression. OK, the whole world.

Buddha Nature

Bob's Buddha sits serenely in the center of our mantle, as he has for over a decade, enlightened in his lotus position. I don't know if he's our god or our altar. Through the years, his lap has held rose petals, pennies and pebbles; his head has been crowned with vines, flowers, Santa Claus caps and bunny ears, his neck draped with beads, feathers, and twigs, and his face disguised in sunglasses and Halloween masks. He's endured all these alterations calmly, as a good Buddha should.

Right now he's wearing a sort of woven toga, which is really a piece of shredded tree bark that we found on the path by Lake Merritt. Bob has draped a bough from our monster parsley bush over his head: Buddha as a Roman consul on his triumphal march into the city of Spring? I hope he prevails. So far Spring has not been conquered. Today it rained even harder than before. It was daunting.

Bob ran out in the yard in the cold and wet, returning with the parsley branch grasped in his fist as he laughed maniacally: his gesture of triumph against the forces of evil (those being boredom and frustration at the never-ending rain.) I, too, struck a small blow against the rain by taking my Winter collage down from the wall and replacing it with Spring.

We pray that our domestic rituals may subdue the wet wild weather: rain dances in reverse.

White Ghosts

It continues to rain. Our yard is an overgrown jungle. The ground is so soaked that you sink down into mud when you step there. Better to stick to the sidewalk. There are crushed snails on the front steps, slick and slimy against the wet concrete. The boulders in the front yard glisten like satin, adorned by the rain. The parsley in our vegetable garden has mutated into a monster bush. It's frightening.

One good thing: the Calla lilies have decided to make their annual appearance. Usually, the view through my bedroom window is of dried-out weeds. Now there's a wilderness of tall green stalks dotted with splashes of white. Those are the Calla lilies: slim, tall and elegant. You can only see their upturned faces, white ghosts peering through a sea of green. Their whiteness stands out even more against the dark foliage and gray skies that surround them. It's a startling sight, but beautiful.

Murder Begins at Home

I love the light-hearted mysteries by Delano Ames, who is a bit of a mystery himself. If you look him up on the Web, you won't find out much. All I know is that he was an American writer and translator who also seems to have had a musical bent and who traveled a lot. His most popular mystery series feature a British husband and wife detective team, Jane and Dagobert Brown. They have a great deal in common with Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles , i.e., they are young, attractive, sophisticated and very very funny. They spend their time drinking, smoking and hanging out in bars. They also travel a lot.  A few of his books are set in post-war Britain, but many of them take place in other countries, mostly European countries where the couple are staying at some cheap pension when a murder invariably occurs. They proceed to solve it with style.

Dagobert is a charming dilettante who has an aversion to work and flits from interest to interest, most of them obscure and intellectual. I imagine he may be modeled on the author himself. The first person narrator is Jane, his wife, who is certainly as smart and witty as he is. Their conversation is full of light banter; her observations are sharp, sarcastic and funny.

I can't recommend these books enough, but they're hard to find, being out of print. I had to order mine from Abe Books. They arrived from all over the world: little parcels from the UK, Canada and Australia plastered with foreign stamps and wrapped in brown wrapping paper and string. What a pleasure to find one on my doorstep!  Unwrapping the package to discover a 1950's hardback inside was even more of a pleasure. My final pleasure was reading it, of course. Thumbing through its browned pages, still smelling of cigarette smoke after all these decades, I imagined a 50's housewife in Sydney doing the same thing.

Wind Concerts

Bob and I took a walk by Lake Merritt, a brief walk because it was so windy. The lake water was gray and choppy. Small black and white coots bobbed up and down on its liquid ridges. We walked with our gloves on and our coat hoods pulled up, shivering with the wind at our backs, so we were amazed to see more than one jogger run by wearing shorts. They all had tanned legs like it was summer instead of winter. Oh, I forgot. It's not winter anymore; it's spring.

On the way back to the car, it got a bit warmer. We even had what my friend in Seattle calls "the occasional sun break," though the sun looked sickly, like it needed to get out of the house more.  As we neared the row of apartment buildings where our car was parked, we heard a clamor of bells, everyone's wind chimes ringing madly in the breeze. So that was our outing, but I felt restless so I drove to the Alameda Library. The wind was even harsher there. The library's three flags (The Stars and Stripes, The California Bear, and an anchor insignia for the island of Alameda) flapped loudly against their metal pole, another discordant wind concert. I fought my way the few feet from my car to the library doors and then went to the reading room where I huddled over a book for the rest of the afternoon.

There But For Fortune

We went to see a documentary called Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune about the protest singer Phil Ochs who was well-known in his time, but isn't as famous now as he should be. He wrote a lot of beautiful, passionate songs and he organized and participated in political protests throughout the sixties and early seventies. He was deeply committed to ending the Vietnam War and his song "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" became the anthem for the anti-Vietnam movement.

It was the first day of spring, but it was a sad day. The weather was cold and gloomy. The theater was sprinkled with a few old lefties like ourselves. I doubt if very many young people have ever heard of Phil Ochs, much less know the details of the political struggle he and a lot of us oldsters engaged in. The sixties and seventies are depicted in the media as a time of sex, drugs and rock n'roll with a wave of nostalgia coloring it in cheery psychedelic bubble tones -- or on the opposite pole, it's portrayed as a crazy time filled with Charles Manson cults and wild-eyed drug-taking radicals. This film portrayed a more accurate version of the era. It was hard for us to watch as it took us through the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. All our heroes were shot down and our bright hopes destroyed. It still hurts to see the footage. And of course, we had to grow up, which Phil Ochs wouldn't or couldn't do.

He committed suicide in 1976 at the age of 35. That was sad for Bob to relive because he knew Phil back in high school. It was sad for me because, as I watched him disintegrate on screen from a brilliant lively person into a raving alcoholic and drug-addled manic-depressive, it brought back painful memories of tormented people I knew back then. That was a dark time, after the student murders at Kent State, which is when the peace movement began to break up and disillusionment set in.

We came out of the theater overwhelmed with painful memories of the past. We felt down for the rest of the evening, but the film was so good, it was worth it. It made me remember that some things are worth being sad for -- and fighting for.

Wind Storm

I drove through the rain to the gym where I walked in the indoor pool. It was lovely to move through the warm water as I heard the rain beating down outside. Afterwards, I sat in the jacuzzi, feeling peaceful and at one with the world. I had a massage and that was good except my masseuse was upset about the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown and blizzards. She spent the first ten minutes of the massage talking about the disasters. That was OK. It's on everybody's mind. We ended up offering a prayer together for the poor people in Japan. Giving me the massage calmed her down, but I felt guilty, thinking I should fly over to Japan and give massages to members of the traumatized population there (as well as food, water, warm clothes and blankets) instead of selfishly receiving a massage here.

I drove home through a deluge of water, plowing through the deep puddles that flooded the pot-holed road. It was miserably cold, too. I tried to maintain my friendly relationship with the rain, but it was coming down so hard that once home, I didn't want to venture out again. Then her ugly sister, the wind, took over. We could hear her crashing around the house in a tantrum, maliciously hurling splats of water at the windows with her fists. All night long she raged, tossing the trees about and banging against the windows, doors, and roof of our poor little house until it shuddered and creaked. Odd things started to happen, like the mirror came crashing down in the bathroom.

"Did you drop something?" Bob asked me through the bedroom door.

"No, I thought it was you."

I knew the house wasn't going to come down or the door blow off its hinges or the redwood tree in our back yard split in two and cave in our roof because it never has before. Therefore, it never will, right?

Rain and Miso

It's been raining again, long and hard, day and night. We haven't had a rainy season like this in years so it's welcome, but it's a bit difficult to move around in. I'm always amused when people from other parts of the country make jokes about "sunny California." Of course, once the rain finally stops, it is sunny -- nary a drop for months on end -- but this winter it's been raining almost nonstop. I believe there was one sunny day last week and we've had a few days that are merely gloomy. It threatens to rain, but politely holds off until nightfall. Other days, like today, it's pouring.

Nonetheless, Deb and I met at the L'Amyx cafe for our weekly writing session. We're tired of writing about any old thing with no structure or discipline behind it so we gave ourselves an actual assignment, which was to try dialogue. Deb ended up with a scene that sounded like it was from an absurdist play by Harold Pinter. I felt more comfortable with monologues. Neither of us believed we had written anything particularly brilliant, but it felt good to try a different approach.

Meanwhile, the rain increased its pace, streaming down the windows of the cafe. We parted ways and I ran through the downpour to my car and then over to the sushi restaurant down the street. For lunch, I had a steaming bowl of miso soup and salmon teryaki with a mound of rice. Mmm, so good!

"After all, tomorrow is another day"

I've been reading a novel called In the Eye of The Sun by Ahdaf Soueif. She's an Anglo-Egyptian writer who grew up in Egypt and was educated in the UK. She now lives in both countries though the novel is written in English. It's an ambitious book that spans in time from Egypt's 1967 war with Israel to the country's decline under Sadat, told through the lens of a female character. It's three in one: a feminist novel, a cross-cultural novel and a historical novel.

Reading it, I learned a lot about day-to-day life in Egypt for a certain class of people, that is, the upper class. Not way rich, but somewhat privileged intelligentsia -- whose privileges are clearly in jeopardy as Egypt changes from a colonial state to a socialist dictatorship. The characters in it are all socially concerned and nationalistic yet nostalgic about their old way of life disappearing. Truthfully, it reminded me a little bit of Gone with the Wind. It certainly seemed as lengthy. (I spent an entire summer reading about the vicissitudes of Scarlett, curled up in an armchair while my father kept suggesting I go out in the sunshine and "have a good game of tennis" which was odd since there were no tennis courts nearby and I didn't own a racket. I ignored him, obsessively turning the pages.)

I did the same thing last night, going on to the next chapter -- and the next -- in spite of my resolution to quit reading and get some much-needed sleep. Many of the scenes were brilliant, but the novel was just too damned long. I became bored and impatient with the romantic agonies of the heroine. Naturally, she ended up alone as all good feminist literary heroines should.

Like Scarlett, she went back to the land for her strength. In the final scene she comes across an ancient statue of an Egyptian woman being unearthed. That gives her strength and renewed hope. The statue as an affirmation of the strength and beauty of Egyptian women?  As a symbol of Egypt resurrected? I don't know, but it was a good symbol. It worked.

Artificial Intelligence

I was up all night last night. Whenever those bouts of insomnia occur, I've learned to work on collages instead of tossing and turning in bed. The time goes by very quickly that way and besides, the middle of the night is an excellent time to work. Everyone else is asleep and in that deep night silence I can actually concentrate. No distractions. No interruptions. It's marvelous if it weren't for the anxiety I feel about being up at three in the morning.

So I finished up one of the collages I've been working on, one of my "artificial intelligence" series. Shari said if it were a dream, what would that phrase mean: "artificial intelligence"? I don't know. I don't know the meaning of the collage, either, except that egg has a pretty anxious look in his face, hemmed in as he is between two clone-like women. (Actually, it's one woman halved into two by my scissors.) I just noticed he has multiple pairs of eyes in his forehead. He looks like an alarm clock ready to go off.

Sarah and The Octopus

One of my favorite artists is Masami Teraoka. He grew up in Japan, went to art school in L.A. and now lives in Hawaii. His early work in watercolors and prints mimics the style of ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints) and is influenced by Pop Art. He often introduces something contemporary into the old-style print, like an ice cream cone, condoms, a cell phone or a camera. The work is satirical, sensual, and amusing.

His later work is darker both in subject matter and in style. He borrows late Gothic and Renaissance traditions from the West to comment on ecological disasters, AIDS and sexual hypocrisy in the Roman Catholic church. I love his cross-cultural borrowings, but the earlier work is easier to digest. The later work takes on the apocalyptic tone of Hieronymous Bosch, which seems appropriate to what's going on in Japan at the moment.

Above is a quite erotic and probably pornographic example of his earlier work called "Sarah and The Octopus." It's one of my favorite pieces. Consider this poem by Ted Hughes:

Mermaid


Call her a fish,
Call her a girl,
Call her the pearl


Of an oyster fresh
On its pearly dish


That the whole sea sips
With gurgly slurps
And sloppy lips.

Sea Monster

I got to bed quite late last night. I was upset because of the situation in Japan and couldn't sleep so I rummaged through my bookshelf for something to read. I came up with a slim book of children's poetry called The Mermaid's Purse written by Ted Hughes and illustrated by Flora McDonnell. I bought it a few years ago because its looks appealed to me. (I love small illustrated books.) What pleases me most is how perfectly intertwined the poems and drawings are. Neither one is subservient to the other; rather they work in perfect yin/yang harmony, each one distinctly itself yet an essential part of the whole.

When I bought the book, I quickly perused the poems, amused by their titles such as "Jellyfish," "Heron" and "Hermit's Crab" --  and then promptly forgot them. They were short and charming. What is it that someone says in Brideshead Revisited about charm being a fatal weakness of the British?  Anthony Blanche: "It was charm, my dear, simple, creamy charm, playing tigers."  (Thank you, Google.) Well, there was a bit of that going on. Or so I thought. But I hadn't read them closely enough.

Reading them at 4 in the morning, I discovered there was a darker underlay to their frothy tone. Yes, they were fun and light, but they did have a bit of a bite to them, which I liked. I could really feel the powerful presence of the sea, in both its playful aspect and its more sinister side. In homage to the tsunami, I'll leave you with this poem, which is both playful and dark:

Sea Monster

Calm, empty sea
So soothes your eye
"Such peace!" you sigh --


Suddenly ME!


So huge, so near,
So really here,
Your stare goes dry
To see me come


So like a swan,
So slow, so high,
You cannot cry

Already gone
Completely numb.

Forbidden Pleasures

We had a day or two of sun, but now we're back to gloom and rain. Bob and I did manage to take our usual walk by Emery Bay. We usually enjoy the sight of the sailboats moored by the pier, but this time they alarmed us because of the tsunami that hit Japan after the 8.9 quake. Even in Santa Cruz, just south of us, boats in the Marina were violently knocked together and damaged by the waves, the moral lesson being that events have far-reaching consequences -- like building nuclear power plants in a major earthquake zone. Or building them at all. Not a good idea. On top of that, there were eerie sound effects. The wind blowing through the sails made a high-pitched whining noise and the clanking of the boats' metal parts added a ominous layer to the mix. This aquatic soundscape was kind of cool, actually. It would have been fun to record it.

Apart from worrying about The Big One hitting here and nuclear melt-downs, I had a nice day. I made Thai chicken soup with Forbidden Black Rice for lunch and we used the rest of the black rice for a stir-fry dinner. I love Forbidden Black Rice. Legend has it that it got its name because it was forbidden to the peasants in ancient China. Only the nobles were allowed to eat it. Eating it does feel sinfully indulgent. Even handling the stuff is a luxurious experience -- letting the glittering black grain with its sensuous texture fall through your fingertips as you get ready to wash it is almost as good as having sex. Bob says "almost as good, but not as good." He also says it's weird to talk about pleasurable things alongside horrible disasters. That's true, which is why I entitled this piece "Forbidden Pleasures."

Under The Sun

Christina once belonged to an artist trading card group. The group has continued to meet long after they lost interest in trading the cards. They meet at Cafe Leila in Berkeley once a month, supposedly to make art, but over the years it's degenerated into more of a social thing.

"Degenerated" is the wrong word. I'll substitute "evolved" because the stimulating conversation that I experienced at that table was not a debasement, but an enhancement of my day. It's fun to talk with bright lively people about everything under the sun: dogs' breeding patterns, domesticated foxes, cats' food preferences, Israel and Germany's fight over Kafka's literary estate, the class system and economics, health insurance and collective bargaining issues, and the origins of Yiddish and Hebrew. It's lovely to see old friends enjoying each other's company and it's wonderful to be welcomed wholeheartedly into their circle.

Of course, they still do create artist trading cards as well as art journals, hand-made jewelry, collages, paintings, drawings and small 3D sculptures. They turn everyday things into art, which leads to the question "What is Art?" I'll leave you to decide that with your friends, preferably as you sit in a sunlit cafe on an almost spring day.

Sherlock Updated

In my defunct mystery blog, I stated that I disliked the latest BBC Sherlock Holmes series, but last night I watched the first episode and liked it. (Previously, I had only seen the second one.) Perhaps I liked it because there wasn't anything else to watch or because I was eating French vanilla ice cream at the time, but I did like it. It seemed clever and funny whereas before it had seemed contrived and annoying. What I particularly liked was the way they wove the cell phone text messages into the scenes. That was very nice, visually. It reminded me of a collage with text mixed into the pictures. It also reminded me of news programs where they flash subtitles at you that have nothing to do with what you see on screen or the station identification logos that pop up in the corner of the program you're watching and completely spoil your concentration. But that's the negative side of the text/graphic thing. In the Sherlock program, the texts were integrated into the story and worked beautifully.

There was some other nice camera work -- for instance, an original treatment of the split screen technique, but I can't describe it because it went by so fast that I'm not sure what I saw. The dialog was fast, too. Sherlock talked like he was on speed so it was difficult to understand what he was saying. That's an old trick borrowed from radio serials. Talk fast and the audience has to pay close attention in order to follow what's going on. It makes everything seem more exciting. Besides, it's a good way to cover up gaping holes in the plot. It also glosses over the fact that Sherlock's explanations are really rather tedious.

In this series, Sherlock is an obnoxious young brat, but he's humorous, too. Like some drunks I've known, he's entertaining when you're in the mood to put up with him. Sherlock is played by Benedict Cumberbatch. I love it that his real name is as strange as his character's.

On The Fault Line

I went to bed too late last night, disturbed by the news of the colossal earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. It's terrifying to imagine an 8.8 quake. Our 1989 Loma Prieta quake was only 6.9 on the Richter scale with 7.1 surface magnitude and that was terrifying enough.

Apparently, Japan is well-defended against earthquakes with very good building and safety codes. We're not. We're definitely better-prepared than Haiti, Chile, China or probably New Zealand (though I don't really know how earthquake-ready their buildings are --or were), but we're way behind Japan. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our transportation is bad and our hospitals are mostly located near -- or on -- fault lines. The Loma Prieta quake that destroyed part of the Bay Bridge took place 22 years ago and we still haven't built a new one. Though it took a long time to get the money together and to overcome opposition to the project, the Golden Gate Bridge took only 4 years to construct. The Bay Bridge took 3 years and was finished six months before the Golden Gate. Actual construction on the current bridge project began in 2002 and is expected to be completed in 2013 -- almost a quarter of a century since Loma Prieta.

Japan has bullet trains and we have Amtrak. Why can't we get it together as a country? What's wrong with us? Don't answer that. It would take too long. In the meantime, my prayers go out to the people of Japan. The tsunami that came in the wake of their quake did the real damage. Earthquakes are a large part of our consciousness here, but tsunamis are only a barely considered possibility.

Cobalt Blue

I'm in the middle of things so there's not much to write about. You know, those things that make up so much of life, but are extremely tedious -- like I had to put air in my car's tire because it was low. It was low because there was a nail in it so I had to take it in to get patched, but it couldn't be patched so I had to buy a new tire. Then Toyota  sent me a recall notice so now I have to take it in to the dealer. But first I have to find a dealer to take it to. And then I have to make an appointment. And then I have to take it in.  And as long as I'm doing that, I should get the brakes checked.

I'm painting my next collage card. I like to Gesso and then paint the cardboard before I glue on the images. I decided on cobalt blue, but then I discovered I only had a little left in the bottle. So I had to go to the art store and buy another bottle. Cobalt blue is expensive, I discovered, and it doesn't layer well. With some colors you just have to do one layer, but the blues are a pain. You need to apply several coats. In this case, three layers sufficed, but I had to wait until each layer dried before applying the next.

And I have a dental appointment later today so I need to drive to the city. But first I must make sure I have enough money for the bridge toll.  If I don't, I'll have to make an ATM stop.

I just read my horoscope: "You might be extra busy today, especially if you have lots of loose ends to tie up prior to going out and having fun. It doesn't matter if you need to return to work afterward; you still should be able to make time to play later in the afternoon or evening. However, don't procrastinate; it's best to get the hardest jobs out of the way at the beginning of the day."

Prijatnovo Appetiva

Our local community college, Laney, has a culinary program and they've recently opened a bistro on campus. We discovered this through our neighbor Joyce, who is a fount of information. Two days a week the bistro serves international food for lunch. We decided to try it out. This was Russian week so we dined on Chicken Kiev and Beef Stroganoff. My Chicken Kiev came with kasha and roasted vegetables.  Bob's Beef Stroganoff was accompanied by egg noodles and pickled mushrooms. It was a real treat for us since the Bay Area is scarce on Eastern European cuisine. We have every type of Asian and Mexican, a lot of Italian, some French and Middle Eastern plus the nouvelle cuisine/ local /sustainable/ California-type stuff, but hardly any German, Polish, Scandinavian or Russian restaurants. (There used to be a wonderful Scandinavian deli near the Castro, but alas, it's gone.)

There's a Russian community in San Francisco. I remember delis out on the avenues that featured piroshkis as well as tinned caviar, Russian Orthodox icons and nesting dolls, but I don't remember many, if any, actual restaurants. So it felt quite exotic to be eating the Kiev and Stroganoff while looking out the cafe window at the estuary that connects Lake Merritt to the Bay.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

I hear rumors that it's Mardi Gras today, though that celebration seems remote here in the Bay Area Bayou. Still, let the good times roll, which in my case are collages and carrot muffins. I am definitely on a roll. The carrot muffins have mostly been consumed, but the collages are still baking -- not literally, of course, though that would be interesting. (Bob did melt a CD in the oven once, one of his 3D concoctions.) I seem to be making a new series using strange artificial looking women as my focal points, the kind you see in glossy fashion magazines. I've only finished one so far (see above), but three more are on the way. I'm thinking of calling the series "Artificial Intelligence."

The Light Fantastic

Another rainy day, perfect weather for visiting the neighbors so we walked one door down to call on Ruth and Joyce. Ruth is 95 years old going on 96. She was dressed in her Sunday best, having already been to church. Joyce, her daughter, was also nicely dressed in slacks and a blouse that looked vaguely tropical. Perhaps her taste in clothes reflects her line of work, which is selling condos in the Baja. Before that, she owned a game shop in Jack London Square. The first thing we saw upon entering their house was a splendid 1,000 piece puzzle put together on the table. As soon as we admired it, she destroyed it with one grand sweep of the hand; then put the pieces in a bag and handed it to us. "Your turn." 

We sat down to a table of purple grapes, salmon spread and tortilla chips, which we munched on while sipping ginger beer. First we talked of health while Joyce bounced up and down on her big blue exercise ball. Then we thought up ideas for a game she was inventing for her friend's 80th birthday party. She brought out a big photo book of the 20th century. We were supposed to go through it and think up do-you-remember questions. That was difficult because so much of the 20th century was a downer. We ignored the two World Wars, the Holocaust and the Atom Bomb and stuck to the light fantastic. What kind of dances do you remember from which decades? Joyce sprang up from the couch to illustrate the Charleston. 

The afternoon flew by. It ended when Ruth brought out her latest quilt for us to view, a splendid affair composed of African textiles. "It's a Crazy Quilt," she said. "A little harder to make than my usual ones. I used smaller squares."

City of Vapors

Bob's niece Sheila flew in from out of town to attend an academic convention in San Francisco so we went over there to meet her. We traveled on BART to the Powell Street Station where the cable cars turn around and then walked up the hill to the Hilton Hotel where she was staying. Though we visit San Francisco often, we rarely go downtown. Nothing much had changed except for us. In the intervening years since we actually lived in the city, we had become tourists ourselves, gawking at the crowd of tourists lined up to ride the cable cars and amazed at all the pandemonium that is normal for Powell and Market Streets. A hip-looking young man yelled at the crowd through a megaphone, "We are all vapor. Vaporous spirits not long on this earth. Living tombstones." At first I thought he must be a Dadaist poet/performance artist, but then I realized he was preaching the Word, that is, Hellfire and Damnation.

Further up the hill, we encountered the panhandlers. "Spare change?" "Sorry, I don't have any." "I take plastic, lady."

We met Sheila in the Hilton's luxurious lobby with its top-hatted doormen and glittering chandeliers. It was fun to people-watch. A flock of Japanese stewardesses arrived, neat and petite in their trim red uniforms, shepherded by their brass-buttoned captain of the air. Soon after that, another crowd of Japanese arrived, all young and fashionably dressed, the boys in tattered jeans, spiked hair and metal studs, the girls in orange and purple hair, with expensive handbags and towering footwear. They didn't look like your usual Japanese tourists. Who were they? Privileged children of the rich? Fashion models? An avant-garde film crew? The winning contestants of one of those weird Japanese quiz shows?

We had a pleasant time with Sheila. Walking down the hill back to BART, a panhandler accosted me again. "Spare change?" "Sorry. I'm all out." "Nice earrings," he muttered as I walked away.

Gentle Conditioning

I meet Deb at the gym. She's in her Gentle Conditioning class. I look through the window, see them doing push-ups against the wall, "them" all being older ladies with white hair and Deb, younger than the rest, but like me, not so young. It's my first time there so I do 10 minutes on the recumbent bike, 0 level, then wait around for her to finish. She comes bursting out of class, her cheeks rosy with exertion.

"You should take this class," she brims over with enthusiasm.

"I don't think I'm up to it yet," is my feeble reply as we walk to the locker room.

"I want you to meet Shirley," she says. "An African-American woman I met here. I think she must be in her 80's, but she doesn't look it. She's great. She'll be an inspiration to you."

Just then, Shirley whirls around the corner. "Shirl! Come meet my friend Catherine. She's new to the gym." Shirley advances towards us, beaming. "You should take our class," she says.

"I don't think I can. My knees are giving out."

"Water-walking, then" she moves on, briskly. "I've had two knee replacements. You've got to build up the muscles around the knees. Good idea to do that now, before you get the surgery. But let me tell you, that surgery is a big deal. It hurts afterwards, You have to take your pain pills every time you do your exercises." She looks at me. "I won't lie to you. Not like some people did to me, telling me I'd be back to the gym in a couple of weeks. It takes a long time to heal." A radiant smile spreads across her face. "But then, girl, you got a whole new life. It's like being reborn!"

Art Saves The Day

Our monthly collage party is always fun, even though everyone was a bit grumpy this time. My theory is too much rain and gloom. It makes you cranky. But creating art is wonderful therapy so by the end of the session, we had become our usual delightful selves.

Chris worked on a painting featuring a fantasy creature. I think it was a centaur. I loved the swirly sky and pattern of dots on the beast's flank. The creature blended in so well with the background that the painting could have almost passed as an abstract. He also donated several picture frames to the group.

Bob chose one of them, a small wooden one with an inlaid pattern, and made two collages to fit inside it. He pasted a few solid objects against richly textured backgrounds so that the finished pieces looked three dimensional even though they weren't. Also, the colors and textures of each collage perfectly matched the patterned frame. I liked the contradiction of permanence (the frame) with impermanence (changing the pictures inside it) and I liked the idea of creating the picture from the frame instead of the other way round. Clever Bob.

Deb was our honorary guest. She made two jagged collages, one with eyes as its focus (excuse the pun) and one with white beach and surf. Lots of blue, white, and gray. Her collages are dynamic. I didn't get a good look at Katherine's collage because she was still struggling with it when we finished up. I know there was a pig in it. As for me, I've almost finished my little book, the one I've been working on for years. I covered one page with transparent orange paint and pasted another page with layers of see-through tissue paper. Very satisfying.

39 Remakes

My day was blah. Nothing happened. Even the entertainment was second-rate, a recent Masterpiece Theater version of 39 Steps. I liked the 1936 Hitchcock movie much better, but I sat through this one for lack of anything else to do. The ending was totally improbable. They were obviously setting you up for a sequel. I hope it doesn't come to that.

Masterpiece Theater has become very lame. Perhaps it always was and I never noticed, but the endless remakes of Dickens, Austen, and Upstairs, Downstairs are beginning to get on my nerves. Their mysteries are even worse, which is disappointing to a fan like me. How many versions of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot can we watch? Apparently many. I hope makers of these potboilers are just going through a phase, but they seem tiresomely infatuated with style rather than content. Little hats with veils and scarlet lipstick that matches the fake blood. Out-of-focus camera work also seems to be the rage. And the Wallander series really sucks. I've had friends tell me they like it, but that's just because they haven't seen the infinitely superior Swedish version. Besides, like me, they're desperate to watch anything new.

I read somewhere that they were remaking these "classics" to appeal to a new generation. It seems a shame when you think how many good British mystery novels are out there, just waiting to be translated to the screen.

Midwinter Madness

We here in the Bay Area were entranced with the idea of possible snowfall, but the actual snow never materialized, as I had predicted. Though I scoffed, secretly I was hoping to see the white stuff. Instead, we're back to rain. We should be grateful after years of drought and I am grateful, somewhat, but this closed-in lifestyle is becoming a bit cloying.

That's where Netflix comes in handy. Over the years, I've learned to love Midsomer Murders, the British mystery series starring John Nettles. One of the series writers referred to it as "Agatha Christie on acid," an apt description for the surreal pile-up of corpses in the small Midsomer villages that seem like "The Village" in the old 1960's Prisoner series, what with their continual fetes upon the lawn under eternally sunny skies. The victims are murdered in various inventive ways, so many of them that you lose track after a while, but it doesn't matter as you curl up in front of the fireplace in mid-winter, lulled into a midsummer dream.

I started to worry, though, when I saw that John Nettles (Inspector Barnaby's) hair was going gray. What if he died and then no more series? Like John Thaw in Inspector Morse and Leo McKern in Rumpole of the Bailey? That would be a tragedy. So I went online to investigate and found out that he's retiring. Someone else will take his place as "his cousin" or some such nonsense. Sigh. I'm willing to accept it as long as my addiction can continue, even if the whiskey (changing metaphors here) has been watered down.

California Dreamin'

I had a massage, the first one I've received in several years, at a gym in Alameda that I recently joined. My masseuse was Mexican though she'd lived here for thirty years. She was great; warm and talkative, but not intrusive. She's fifty-two years old, but she told me that she feels young inside, "like a little child," she said enthusiastically -- though as she worked on me, she began to catalog her various aches and pains. I didn't mind. At fifty-two, you're entitled to a few aches and pains, especially if you give twenty massages a week. I liked her a lot.

Laying there on the table in the dark, with soft New Age music playing in the background to offset the sound of balls thumping loudly against the walls in the racquetball courts, I thought about how lucky I was to live in California. I know there's massage everywhere now, just like there's sushi everywhere, even in the landlocked states (which bothers me), but it all started here.

I spent much of my thirties and forties getting all manner of massages from friends who were practicing their trade: Swedish, Shiatsu, Reichian, Deep Tissue, Esalen: you name it, I got it. Naturally, I remember that time with deep affection -- those difficult but pleasurable decades that I slid through in a California dream.