Mission 11/17/2010

Make dinner for roomies + my new friend Naama.

-Acorn squash is delicious. Peel the rind off though. Thanks for the advice, Sarah!
-I forgot to squeeze the lime juice into the chili-lime vinaigrette. So it was just chili-...vinaigrette.
-There IS a difference between les haricots verts (French green beans) and regular green beans. The latter is more beany; the former is more leafy.
-If the recipe says use ice water, do not substitute "very cold tap water". The ice makes for a flakier crust for your Alsatian onion tart.
-However long you think it will take to cook a big dinner, double that time (at least). We ended up eating at 10pm instead of the appointed start time of 8pm.
-Cheez-its make a great dessert. I drew a mouse on my emptied plate with sriracha sauce and fed it a crumbled up square of Cheez-it. The real Hamouse, our newest house pet, never showed up, though he had been invited. His prolonged absence is disconcerting. It is likely that he is busying himself with building more cheese bombs. Also, there is a fish in the house, and no one knew except for Kathleen because it is in her room. 
-I love our house and the residents of our house and my new friend.
-Opened with Goosebumps today. Made a double leaf! Aw yeah...right in front of the Master Barista, too! Happiness abounds. A tiny baby boy with a tiny bald head came in for a coffee. His pajamas matched my socks. We were green-&-blue stripe buddies!

Babies

Once you are out of school, you have to give yourself assignments.

Walking home from ballet with a female classmate much older than I. She was going home to a husband of 37 years of marriage this December.

"Wow, congratulations!" I meant it. "I wish that upon myself."

"Oh, it'll happen! You've got to marry your best friend."

The simplicity of the advice is striking. And so sensible, too...I do hope my best friend is not a dog. Sometimes I think it might be a baby. I spent an hour in the children's section at the bookstore "studying", which is Arabic for "playing with babies". Being a baby is so exciting. You get to throw fistfuls of autumn leaves into the air for the first time. You get to alternatively give and take contents of your mother's wallet to a stranger over and over again, with increasing delight. You get to explore everything from books to feet with your teeth...even if you don't have any yet. Everything is amazing and new, and you are adorable just because you are so small and alien-looking and acting and because you walk funny...if you can even walk yet. Hah! Babies...

New Perfume

I smell like work..."caramel, nutty, and fragrant". Or is it "uncommon, rich, and full"? Whatever the particular coffee smell, it's in my hair, in my clothes, on my hands, and in my very skin. The grounds are stuck under my nails, too. Every time I grind a bag of beans, and shake it down to settle the grounds in the bag, I like to imagine the tiny brown particles flying all over my face and in the air like an earthy, organic pixie dust. It's no wonder I come home smelling like I do. Today, my co-worker and I took turns being latte-making machines. The line of customers did not clear until three hours into our shift, and only for a minute then before the next wave began. Wow...as a newbie, I'm still wowed by this.

"How do you say 'factory' in French?"
"Usine."
"Je suis une usine!"

Rhythm in Work

A facebook friend just tagged a dead man in one of my photos. I didn't even know of his existence, or that I had "seen" him without really seeing him before. But there he was in my photo-- two of my photos actually--, and now he has passed on after his body was hit by a car a couple days ago. Strange feelings abound. I memorialized a man with my camera. Just coming out of a photography moratorium, I am driven once more to pursue this line of work/art.

Work is wonderful. There are moments when customers get on my nerves, but for the most part, I consider myself lucky to be behind that bar. It's getting busier and busier as the season progresses into winter, so it's good that I am getting better and better at hitting a stride with my regular weekend co-worker. Last week, during a very busy shift, I was facing the machine pulling shots when suddenly I heard a woman's voice behind me say "It's like a ballet!" This made me look up and come out of a "zone" that I hadn't even realized I'd been in until that moment. I saw that we were being watched like performers on a stage by our customers as they waited for their drinks. Apart from the usual compliments about our coffee and service, this had to be my favorite customer comment of all time. Rather than a ballet, working behind the bar when it is super busy can feel like being on a swing. The rhythm of teamwork is tangible. It is the presence of rhythm in a given process that makes it comparable to an art like dance or music.

It occurred to me later that night that the entire process of working behind the bar at LC is a creation from nothing. There was no absolute rule that governed the process of making and serving coffee; no rule that placed one at the register and the other at the machines; no rule that governed how to deal with dirty dishes and spoons; no rule that detailed how the person at the register was supposed to assist the person at the machines and vice versa, and when. And so on. Nothing had to be the way it was, but because of the way the machines and other equipment were set up, and the given roles and the way the roles were trained to interact, a process was created that eventually came to be regarded as a dance by one customer.

A New Friend

I picked up the cello last night. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful...friendship.

If there's a cello lying around the house, one should learn to play it, yes? Yes indeed!

I struck my first note (a low C). "It sounds like a boat!" were the first words that flew out of my mouth.

Who picks up the cello at the age of 26? But then again, who picks up ballet at the age of 25? I, I.

I begin with Bach's Suite. It's gonna be my one-hit wonder.

Immunized & Primal

Longtime customer of LC wanders into the back kitchen. "Hey, do you need a flu shot?"

This year, I got immunized while perched atop the metal milk repository in the back kitchen of my coffeeshop. This is the best health care I've had since turning 18. After getting injected, I went back to chowing down on the most delicious falafel I've ever had.

Today was a good day. I got to open with Goosebumps. Endowed with an incredible ability to read my mind and mood, he makes me feel safe and taken care of. As soon as he goes on break to chow down on his own falafel, I set the pot of coffee dripping into the to-go cup, and forgot to watch it while grinding beans and ringing up the register. Coffee flowed all over the counter.

The day just got better as it aged into night. I was on my A-game in the best modern jazz class I've had yet. The teacher had beautiful form-- simultaneously powerful and dainty--, she didn't fuck around, she nitpicked, and she broke down the steps in an easily digestible way. The music was haunting and moving, and the choreography style was very Koresh-- lyrical and primal. Always the touch of jungle fever.

Ballet never leaves my bones, but here, in a modern class, it was important to move more instinctively. Also important to associate key movements with count as Kip always reminds us and not try to fix everything at once and consequently get overwhelmed and lost.

As I walked home from my usual evening study hall at the gelato shop, I swung the world by the tail and bounced over the white clouds, a la Allison Krauss and Robert Plant.

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Why you should be fascinated by red-eyed tree frogs:

(a) They are living mood rings. Normally a bright lurid lime green, depending on their mood they can change to dark green or a reddish-brown. Obviously, frogs only have three kinds of moods: happy, sad, and jumpy! Besides the green, their sides are striped by blue and white bands, and their feet are red or orange. They really are beautiful creatures.

(b) Sometimes, they eat smaller frogs. Can you imagine if humans ate smaller human beings? I would not live to tell the tale.

(c) They (and frogs in general) are an indicator species. Because of their ultra-sensitivity to changes in their environment, if anything is wrong, frogs are the first to feel the effects. If you hear less ribbiting at night, it means your ecosystem is not so healthy.

(d) Contrary to what their freakishly red eyes might lead you to believe, they are not poisonous. The color is used as a startling mechanism.

(e) They look funny and adorable. Bulging eyes, wide mouth, flat head...cuter than your average chihuahua.

I became curious about red-eyed tree frogs after a meeting at my coffeeshop with a Rainforest Alliance representative. The meeting was casual, yet informative, and now I know what to tell my customers when they ask if our beans are "Fair Trade certified". Answer: "No, but we are Rainforest Alliance certified. Check out the cute froggie sticker on our packaging!"

H Sound

Semitic languages are so interesting in both structure and sound. I love the deep throaty H sound of Arabic (like the sound you make when blowing on your glasses before wiping them). Such a beautiful, breathy, yet full sound coming from deep within. It's a shame the English language lacks such a sound.

Initiated

I just worked my 5th shift in a row at LC. I feel like a real barista now, especially since during this last shift, Handlebars entrusted me with making the drinks for half the time. Also during this last shift, one of the signature ceramic cups shattered and drew blood from my right middle finger. I feel initiated. Welcome to the LC baristahood, Angie Chung.

Union

How strange! I can hear my heart beating through my ipod! My heartbeat melds with the strains of Tchaikovky's Violin Concerto. This piece of music is so unbelievably gorgeous and exalting at times that it makes me want to scream or cry-- or some other form of release from this corpus cage.

Consumed

Lately, I've been struck with this fine idea that I'm spending the next few years or many years in anticipation and preparation for the homecoming of whoever I'm destined to be with. It's a wonderful idea. I'm not wondering, I'm simply waiting. The difference is the element of inevitability contained in the latter, and the lack of it in the former.

In the meantime, my study of ballet has taken on a level of seriousness that I never would have predicted not a year ago. I go to class nearly every day, practice and stretch for another hour (sometimes more) after each class, then go to my favorite gelato palace to take notes and think about ballet for awhile before cracking opening my Arabic book. It's become rather obsessive, I admit, and all-consuming. Absolute bliss.

Because of this all-consuming dedication to ballet, I am left with little time for socializing, and so find myself leading a rather solitary life of late. In another lifetime, this would have bothered me greatly, but nowadays, I am driven more by a sense of purpose than by a desire for camaraderie. It's a different sort of fun.

Fleeting Faces

A couple days ago, I ran by a figure sitting on her stoop and was momentarily terrified. I could not figure out how her head was positioned, and so what I took for her face appeared deformed, like that of a monster. I stared and stared trying to locate her features until I ran right past her and the monster became human. Just an old woman with her head twisted sideways away from me, leaning on one hand. Phew.

A couple days ago, I attended a lecture at the Kimmel Center featuring Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs-- minimalist artists of the post-modern age. Lucinda held herself gracefully, was slender as a paper doll it seemed. Her veins stood out prominently, snaking down her long, thin, wrinkled arms and ended in large, beautiful hands with long, thin fingers that gestured elegantly in the air as she spoke. Her permanently knit eyebrows gave her face a hawkish look that was softened, however, by her gentle smile. Whenever she looked toward her right, in Philip's direction, half of her hawkish face was cast in shadow, the other half lit by stage light. I took a mental picture. In hearing a reference to her "silent pieces", she amended the term, saying they weren't quite silent as you could hear the pitter-patter of the dancer's feet on the stage. I loved that.

First Sound

I woke up to the sound of rain falling. It was the first thing I was conscious of...way before opening my eyes. It fell heavily, steadily. It was so beautiful...Love mornings.

Snowballing

Sometimes, when I read the news, I get the feeling that the stability of our race is hanging by a very fine thread. It's rather like an elephant balancing on a pebble. Or a marshmallow peep stuck in the microwave with the seconds counting down. I believe religious tolerance is key to maintaining this precarious balance, but it's the smallest incident that could snowball into something horrifically damaging on a global scale.

Who (besides da Vinci and Nostradamus) could have foreseen that the actions of a tiny church in Florida would lead to actual deaths in faraway Afghanistan? That is a very scary demonstration of cause-and-effect. Incidents like the planned Qur'an burning and that infamous Danish cartoon a few years back are just small ripples in a sea that is quietly seething underneath.

So which is it gonna be, religious strife or nuclear warfare, that finally puts an end to us? Stay tuned!

Tolstoyan Euphemism

Tolstoy's preferred euphemism for "to make battle/war" is "to chop and hack at each other" (Constance Garnett translation). He's a man of 4-lettered words.

And yes (as my fellow early-riser roommate pointed out), I am spending the good morning eating challah and reading War & Peace. Shana Tovah to all, and to all a good morning.

This Good Morning

Good morning! Good morning! It's the turn of the season and of a new day, and the possibilities seem endless. Who knows what this day will bring? What people I will encounter? Could be good, could be bad, could be LIFE CHANGING. Could be the love of my life. Could be ballet...Could be a greasy, cheesy, fatty burger. Could be a new feeling or a brand new idea. An alien might sweep me away, or I will sweep IT away into the vast possibilities of my new day. Already the birds are chirping! There go the possibilities of birds not chirping into my morning. An airplane drones in the distance. It has marked the sky and my morning. A rattle of tools, voices carrying indistinguishable words, a truck starts, the birds continue to chirp, my purple curtain ripples as the autumn breeze blows softly into my good morning. It is fresh! I must go and mark my morning.

Infinite Yet Bounded

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep
The more I give to thee, the more I have
For both are infinite.

I have a theory about love. People say that love is infinite, but I don't think this is quite true. I think it is infinite so long as all your love is given to one person. But once you start loving more than one person, you begin to realize the finite qualities of love. I think you can love each person infinitely, but the overall amount of love that you can give in total is quite finite. This theory may be nearly as confusing as the fact that the universe is infinitely huge, yet bounded.

It is 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm babbling incoherently about something that can never be pinned down, about an ever-elusive butterfly.

Rhythm of Life

I just realized that for the past 2.5 months, I've spent 6 hours a day, 3-5 days a week in a narrow 2.5-foot-wide space with whichever co-worker I happened to be scheduled with for that shift. That's a lot of hours in such a narrow space, and yet, I don't ever feel confined.

To be sharing that tiny space with another person is an interesting and new experience. It becomes essential to say "behind you" every time you pass behind your co-worker, no matter how repetitive it may seem (and I did feel like a broken record at first, but got used to it eventually).

It also becomes essential to know when to step in and help out in making drinks rather than manning the register (the business side of the job). I didn't get the hang of this until I began taking over the drink-making here and there and realized how many orders a barista can take before he or she becomes overwhelmed. Now I sort of get it, though it's not quite perfect yet.

When I do get the hang of it though, it feels rather nice because I hit a sort of rhythm with my co-worker and it becomes a partnership, or if you prefer more poetic imagery-- a dance. Working in this narrow space behind the bar has made me realize that there are rhythms to situations in life that don't explicitly involve dancing or music.

This evening, just a few minutes before closing, I looked out the window and saw dozens of naked men and women riding by on bicycles.

"Oh my god, it's the Naked Bike Ride!" I cried. Customers turned from their coffee to the windows, and my co-workers and I rushed over to the edge of the counter nearest the window and gaped at the mass of pale buttcheeks sitting atop bike seats, riding by with cheers and whoops. We gaped and gaped and I felt strangely uncomfortably at seeing strange men's dicks hanging out in the open.

The Penniless Picasso gave me another drawing today-- the 4th one so far. I love our Penniless Picasso. I still haven't told you what he said to me the other day, have I? Story for another post. Suffice to say that tonight, due to no particular reason, or perhaps due to several reasons at once, I am full of seemingly imperturbable happiness and love. As well, a piece of rabbit sits in my stomach (a consequence of dinner). I'm feeling jumpy.

Modern Jazz

Symmetry is closed on holiday for the rest of the week, and so I decided on a whim (and an invite) to take a jazz class at Koresh. I had no dance clothes-- not even a hair tie-- so I danced in denim capris and borrowed a hair tie from the girl at the front desk.

The class was lovely. I was surprised by a few things:

1) By how balletic the moves were. We used balletic arms (port-de-bras) and degages in warm-up, changements across the floor, and coupes and pas-de-bourres in the dance combination. Most pronouncedly, the teacher himself moved and carried himself with balletic grace, even when he was teaching a "jazzy" move.

2) By the lyrical quality of the dance. I was expecting jazz walks and such, but there was nothing of a sort. Throughout the class, we were continually falling into gravity, using natural momentum, never fighting against what felt natural. I think I am by nature a jumper and so I tend to spring up rather than fall into the ground by default. I had to work to fall into the arabesque instead of bouncing out of it.

3) By how much fun I had. In continually falling into gravity and using my natural momentum while dancing, I felt so utterly free. I walked home feeling like I'd been playing on a swing for an hour-and-half. I adore swings.

4) By how much of my nearly-yearlong training at Symmetry came into use in this jazz class. As I balanced on releve/high-pose, changement'ed across the floor, and simply every time I moved, I felt all my learning from the past year coming into play. What a worthwhile year it's been!

5) By how much I loved dancing in bare feet.

First Leaf and Tolstoy's Fundamental Theorem of History

"Beautiful," said the LC customer as I set his latte on the bar.

"Sure is...You were talking about the coffee, right?"

"The whole process. It's a beautiful thing to watch."

I felt pleased. I recalled for an instant what it was like on the other side of the bar, to have no idea of the difference between a cappuccino, a latte, a macchiato, and so on. To be amazed at the gorgeous foam and the complex leaf designs. Oh wait, it's only been two months since I've started working at LC, and I still am very much amazed by the leaf design! I made my first baby leaf on a latte last Sunday, and it really was a beautiful thing. My hand was going for a heart, then at the last minute, it did the side-to-side dance as if possessed by a will of its own, and suddenly, a small baby leaf sat atop the brown like a tattoo, curving with the rim of the cup.

Today, I watched as my co-worker, Handlebars, created leaf after leaf after leaf, and each time I watched amazed and tried to figure out how he made it look so nice. His leaves are especially circular and wider at the base with many thin prongs. My latte milk was not so on today. It's all about getting the right milk-- not too foamy, not to wet. The design will come of its own accord, as they all have been telling me since the beginning.

I know I can't be serving coffee at LC forever (and why not?). I know I cannot be doing ballet at Symmetry forever (and why not??). But for now, let us appreciate and count our lucky stars that Angie gets to do both, day in and day out. Yesterday was the first day back at Symmetry after a week-long hiatus, and boy was it lovely! I had missed our teacher entirely too much. After the horrid, abyss-like Dark Age of Symmetry, whenever there is an extended hiatus at the studio lasting more than a couple days, it always starts to feel like a thing of the past, and that is a very melancholy feeling indeed.

Ultimately, life is a sad affair because everything good and nice will come to an end, and this summer has been especially good and nice (in fact, 2010 has been the hands-down the best summer I've ever lived in my 26 years). Pardon me if I sound depressing but sometimes these thoughts do occur in my otherwise obliviously blissful mind. I feel like Gilgamesh coming to terms with his mortality. Or like myself coming to terms with the fact that Prince Andrey and Natasha will not live happily ever after and grow old and curmudgeonly together. And Why Not???

Because Tolstoy says so, and he is the master of their fate, fictional as they are.

Tolstoy espouses an interesting view of fate, which goes something like...we are each of us free to make our own decisions, but once we do, our resulting fate is tied to the rest of mankind and history. Mathematically-- logically, it appears to make little to no sense. That is until one reaches page 937 of War & Peace:

"The progress of humanity, arising from an innumerable multitude of individual wills, is continuous in its motion...Only by assuming an infinitely small unit for observation--a differential of history--that is, the homogeneous tendencies of men, and arriving at the integral calculus (that is, taking the sum of those infinitesimal quantities), can we hope to arrive at the laws of history."

You see how hilarious this guy is? He applies complex laws of mathematics to discussions of fate! For all the ways in which he makes fun of Germans and their irrationally pig-headed faith in the sciences, he sure does enjoy using logic to pound his views home. Hey, Roomie, you see now why I burst out laughing when I read the above statement? It happens* to read very much like a typical math theorem from my old analysis textbook (I've added the bold fonts to emphasize the likeness). I laugh because I've finally discovered the reason for the existence of my math degree-- and it is to understand Russian literature. Thank you Tolstoy for giving purpose to my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics.

*coincidence? I think not! I'm sure Tolstoy did his research into actual calculus textbooks.