May 26, 2011

rewards



a cool, dry evening with new yorkers and atlantics, after a humid day featuring the transportation of many boxes. (that's not water in the canning jar).

May 23, 2011

fame

without the perks, plain ol' fame and fortune just ain't worth the trouble.

also see the tarahumara and peter latham.

May 20, 2011

jefferson's ice cream receipt


via loc.gov

flottille


via etienne cliquet

for more cool stuff that also uses capillary action, see george whitesides's wonderful paper-based analysis devices. appropriate technology, elegantly implemented.

it is the season

May 19, 2011

May 18, 2011

pig, cabbage, tomato, milk, oil

Photo

porchetta; 110 e 7th st, ny, ny.

May 16, 2011

back to the drawing board

Photo

this drink delivery device was not successful.

outdoor lighting

Photo

May 14, 2011

bar | oysters



maison premiere has many absinthes.

May 13, 2011

May 11, 2011

working hard

May 10, 2011

i too have stolen a cake

"To summon a thing that is not there at all, to call it by speaking its true name, that is a great mastery, not to be lightly used. Not for mere hunger's sake. Yarrow, your little dragon has stolen a cake."

Yarrow had listened so hard, gazing at Ged as he spoke, that she had not seen the harrekki scuttle down from its warm perch on the kettle-hook over the hearth and seize a wheatcake bigger than itself, She took the small scaly creature on her knee and fed it bits and crumbs, while she pondered what Ged had told her.

"So then you would not summon up a real meat-pie lest you disturb what my brother is always talking about—I forget its name—"

"Equilibrium," Ged replied soberly, for she was very serious.

"Yes, but when you were shipwrecked, you sailed from the place in a boat woven mostly of spells, and it didn't leak water. Was it illusion?"

"Partly it was illusion, because I am uneasy seeing the sea through great holes in my boat, so I patched them for the looks of the thing. But the strength of the boat was not illusion, nor summoning, but made with another kind of art, a binding spell. The wood was bound as one whole, one entire thing, a boat. What is a boat but a thing that doesn't leak water?"

"I've bailed some that do," said Murre. "Well, mine leaked, too, unless I was constantly seeing to the spell." Ged bent down from his corner seat and took a cake from the bricks, and juggled it in his hands. "I too have stolen a cake."

"You have burned fingers, then. And when you're starving on the waste water between the far isles you'll think of that cake and say, Ah! had I not stolen that cake I might eat it now, alas!—I shall eat my brother's, so he can starve with you—"

"Thus is Equilibrium maintained," Ged remarked...

ursula le guin, a wizard of earthsea

May 9, 2011

travel and leisure

He was not only the greatest traveller I've ever known (because he was the truest), he was also one of the happiest people I have had the good fortune to meet. I'm sorry not to know what has become of him, though, to be honest, I'm not really sorry, I only feel that I should be. I'm not really sorry because today, ten or more years on from that brief period in which I knew him, he must be a grown man, stolid, reliably fulfilling his duties, married perhaps, someone's breadwinner—in other words, one of the living dead.
fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet.

May 8, 2011

beginners

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through.
ira glass, on telling stories (but really on everything)
this was posted and reposted everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reposting again. on this see jackson pollock, arthur ganson, and robert irwin

May 5, 2011

ten bulls

露胸跣足入廛来,
抹土涂灰笑满腮。
不用神仙真秘诀,
直教枯木放花开。

May 3, 2011

long-term thinking

Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come ... Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever ... For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold ... it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture.
john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture (the lamp of memory)

khichdi, khichri, khichuri, khichari, kedgeree



large quantities of parsley and a healthy dose of turmeric and cumin are crucial. good with smoked mackerel, but maybe even better with the original, but hard-to-find, smoked haddock. our people are working on it even now. bowl by judith motzkin, maker of the awesome bread device. for more on kedgeree, consult pages 305-327 of john thorne's superb pot on the fire.

liriodendron tulipifera

May 1, 2011