The Sable Quill

Disquiet at our power

2011-12-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

I hear the night song of the cicadas;
I hear the lamentations of my soul;
I hear the disquiet of an uncertain world
amidst the cawing of the traditional order;
we are not too few to bring change
but too many not to realize it

Running in the Patient Morning Hours

2011-01-23T07:02:00.000-08:00

In the stillness of your breath,
under the crepe silk of your jet skin
my solitude is met in its quest:
when I would ask less of myself -
when I would allow fear to strand me
on the barren marl of grainy doubt -
your tranquil susurrations minister
to the lime-strewn valves of my heart
and the sweat-streaked muscles exerting,
"Keep moving, Son of Eve"
And just as I crest over the apex,
beginning the descent towards the glint
of the incipient dawn, of gilded transit,
your chill-tinged arms embrace my dream,
more than a friend, more than a lover,
quelling disquiet, returning me once more
to the choice of possibilities
and the boundless expanse of all that is

An Evening

2010-07-10T22:19:00.001-07:00

Loneliness, sometimes, allows us to connect with ourselves in ways we often avoid before the onslaught of fears which riddle the armor of our lives:

An Evening

Alone with music of silence

I gather from the darkness

from the stinted limbs

of hope's shortened corpse

instruments in lonely symphony

plying their melodies

to connect each to a chord

of memory that spans the

sheets between here and

morning's birth but the

key of life is elusive, and

in the cools arms of night

I assemble the notes,

orchestrating final movements

before quiet settles over

my brow and I am

again holding myself

to ward off despair

Fighting Life: A Poem

2010-07-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

As a child when I or my siblings would rail against naptime, my mother and grandmother would say that we were fighting sleep. As adults ironically we frequently take refuge in sleep, seeking escape from the peaks and troughs of our lives; nothing is more telling than the struggle which ensues in our waking moments:

I fold back the mesh
raising up out of
Sleep's warm netting;
I press my back down
listless against softness
desperate to recall dreams;
a blink, a nod, a yawn
acknowledging the inevitable
but defiant in the face;
I grasp firmly my pillow,
thrusting my legs forward
in pointless mimicry
yet all argument is moot,
squelched before absoluteness:
Morning has come, and the day begun

Haiku Couplets - Answers Between

2010-07-04T08:33:00.001-07:00

Our most conventional stories portray the journey of our lives as a struggle between light and darkness. Rarely do these tales realize that the truths we seek do not lie at either end of the polarities but somewhere between all the layers of fleshy occultation. Here I employ the haiku in a less customary format to make such a case.

Shadow clips edges
promising coolly, bluntly
Desire's veiling

Glaring brightness hides
Love's unyielding penumbra
shining concealment

From the womb of both
past, present, future echoes
invites the birth - Choice

A Crisis of Commonsense

2010-03-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

One cannot help but being bemused by the numerous items in conventional discourse regarding what the federal goverment should (or should not) be doing to propel the economy back to a bullish state. This confusion derives in part from the cavorting game-play of two headed beast we usually refer to as the Democratic and Republican Parties,in part from the equivocations of the Executive Branch and, completing the triumvirate, the expectations and (yes!) hopes of the public at large. It is an unholy convocation abundant in recalcitrance, rife with division and replete with unwieldy suppositions. In such inclement conditions, politicians seek out the usual anondynes and busy themselves in a flurry of bill proposals to fix what ails, that which may curry favor and insure reelection; the President and his clerics launch raucously into the gray water depths of policy, attempting to reconstitute the mantle of change which gave rise to his assumption of the regal purple of seal of office. And the public fractures into splinter groups, each staking claim that they represent the true interest of the American people. It is all a colossal spin, chocked to the gills with regret, recrimination and despair.

Lost in the helter-skelter are the simple facts of how this situation came to be and what needs are immediate. We consign ourselves to complexity, neglecting what we learned in mathematics as wee tots: all large fractions are reducible to their constituent elements.

Divorcing and divesting the emotional and psychological angst which understandably plagues the current conditions, we can stand on the precipice and see what is necessary.

First, if a free market is desired, the banks and financial institutions should have been allowed to fail. Period. No crocodile tears of remorse should have moved the iron manacles of government regulators. After all, if theory is correct, other more capable institutions would have come into being and subssumed these bastardized organizations; and all would be right with the world. Correct?

Now if we accept that there is no pure free market and these crises are cyclical - especially when commingling and cosiness between interested parties is not rebuffed by federal regulators - the government should recall its accountability is to the citizens primarily and act accordingly. Distribute money to those directly in need and still hold them responsible if in their decisions they have aided in the creation of these affairs. Did the banks engender this all by themselves? No, of course not. In fact mortgage brokers bear more than a little of the onus and the citizenry by burying their heads in the sand and borrowing on assets they did not possess were in collusion as well. Consequently, all must sacrifice.

Likewise remedies must be smart and proportionate. Neither the President nor the Congress can create jobs. The hue and cry for tax cuts to enable and encourage companies to hire more workers from the evergrowing till of the unemployed serves only large corporations. The majority of Americans are employed by small and medium businesses. What is requisite for them now is access to capital, and with banks not lending rigorously the lifeline for them is at a trickle. Foreclosures yet loom, and a legion of Americans are next in line to be thrust on the street. Why not legislate with a bit of thought and force banks to renegotiate loan terms based on current market value? It saves the banks the cost of foreclosure and retains for a tremulous public their residences without forgiving them their culpability. This should be the hour of clarity and commonsense or it will be a millenium of bitter sorrow.

Nightmare: Poetic Prose Gone Awry

2010-03-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

One sometimes feel it peering around every corner. Seated in a cafe, resting in a theatre or just in conversation with family, the ubiquitous presence is a pestering pressure, a constant reminder of what crouches in the shadows. We hear it in the discourse of our peers, colleagues and friends; it perambulates the corridors of our thoughts, rises shrilly from the throats of our children and admonishes brusquely in the utterances of our parents. With authority it issues orders from the professional cloak of our bosses, commanding and terrible, pillaging confidence and plundering acumen, raping certainty into oblivion. The media conveys it, tickertape-fashion, in a bubbling stream, challenging all we thought we knew and brutalizing the prostrate form so bloody and bowed as to be near annihilation. Politicians rail in polemical screeds, seeding the wells of government chambers, planting spores and fertilizing disquiet. It mocks us, pierces the soft tissue of our flesh and extracts a sanguine weal, beading our breasts with a ruddy, embarrassed glow. Ministers declaim its power from the pulpits weekly, and lash us with the brand of our sins. And when we lie abed, trying to fall into the darkness, into the feathery arms of sleep, it dogs our breaths and quickens the heart. What is this creature of such unimaginable horror? What harpy alights and savages comfort? It is judgment, the instrument we wield and deny. Our pain stems not from those external sources which we readily give causality and blame but our own internal experience and the yardstick of judgment which we use to measure it.

Potential & Realization

2010-03-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

Petals, like pearls, gleam
scintillating in a smile
welcoming, blushing

expand your tendrils
enfold ambivalent buds
from seed to jewel

Boxed: A Poem

2010-02-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

describe, detail, define
the line which separates
you from me, idea from actuality;
characterize, construe, convey
the intersection dissecting
inner from outer, nature from artifice;
depict, delineate, differentiate
the borders circumvolving
one country from another, brother from brother;
construct, chronicle, communicate
the cubicle abscinding intimacy
singularity divorced from plurality
heart from the soul, spirit from body
creating distinction in some dark corner,
some inchoate cell apportioned from the collective

The Position: Hope Meets Despair

2010-02-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

You are invited to submit an application for a heady but mysterious position with the cryptic corporation known as the Concern. Against a backdrop of economic and societal collapse, the very underpinning pillars of country and kin obliterated in the Great Downturn, the Concern offers a sirenic sinecure to a select individual from amongst the hordes of multitudinous candidates. If chosen as a finalist you will be conveyed to the Compound where the irrevocable evaluation will ensue with unknowable nuances, and you may be elect enough to ascend the pinnacle, master the tasks and be saved from the ravages of an uncertain future in the chaos from which you have emerged. Such begins the play The Position currently running at the Off-Market Theatre in San Francisco.

The next layer is the shedding of singularity and identity, a stripping of the epidermis which the applicants have borne for the totality of their existence to this point. Exuvation of clothing initiates, followed closely thereafter by the imposition of an alphabetical assignment displacing given names. This reduction to bare essentials, decoction of former selfness, is reflected in the minimalism of the stage sets and heightens the emotional intensity of all subsequent action; and the scantiness has the opposite effect of making something which appears at first blush to be insubstantial - inconsequential props, threadbare dress, the controlled tension of the players - in reality immeasurably significant, transforming nugatory elements to quintessential portions of the play’s bodily composition. There is profound depth beneath the skin and it rapidly reveals itself.

The panoply of personages fuels the furnace of the transpiring events. A Faustian HR Consultant is the puppet-mistress (Lady MacBeth, did you say?) who dangles the fatalistic carrot before starving supplicants who have come to prostrate themselves in hope of the saving grace of the Concern. She advises them to make no assumptions and invites them to engage in whatever behaviors they deem fit, to give vent to passions and emotions as if on a stranded, paradisiacal island. One cannot help but summon up the ghost of Lord of the Flies in an updated adult version. All the applicants are aware of is that they are being surveilled. Will their commitment be questioned, their worthiness judged and found wanting? Hope is inglorious, not the thing which “perches in the soul” but the awl used to rip out your eyes and steal vision: hope wielded as a sword of despair over the benighted and benumbed reeling from the abandonment of government and left to the manipulative intrigues of corporations. This vacuum creates the perfect tableau for the welling up of all the baseness of human nature, and these newly minted children of the alphabet meld into their milieu with rage and savagery which ever lurks in the heart of our darkness.

The Position provides an excellent exposition on what happens when the boat is only big enough for a few. The actors are crisp, polished and focused; the direction is unrelenting and the story so compelling that you are inexorably drawn in and almost forget to breathe as the contestants vie, each in their own way, for the shining medallion. As with London’s People of the Abyss and The Iron Heel, the characters possess a freshness which means any of them could be your neighbors, your friends or family, and are equally crushed under the weight of their devastation and ambition. Yet surprise remains in play. Even the Concern cannot anticipate everything which may occur; and where there is frailty in human nature there is also adamantine strength. In the end, one comes to know that the meat factory is constantly in motion, the gears always ready to grind fresh meat and make ubiquitous burgers which we readily consume as we ourselves are being consumed.

Oedipus: Master of his fate

2010-02-08T16:50:00.001-08:00

Greek tragedy, universally and almost by definition, centered around the disquieted lives of the wealthy and nobly engendered. When one considers the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides all of the protagonists (and antagonists) are either in the direct descent of royal lineage or closely approximating some familial relation to such status. This was a central concern for Arthur Miller when he was penning Death of a Salesman: that tragedy, like all other occurrences influencing the human condition, extends its province to the affairs of conventional men and women. In Luis Alfaro’s Oedius El Rey, he “millerizes” – yes I am engaging in that pastime of making a verb of a proper noun - Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and reweaves the panorama of this ancient drama, retaining and distilling its essence; casting it with renewed vigor in the midst of Latino culture and thereby making it a staged version of a fanfare for the common man.

With minimal props and inventive directing at the Magic Theatre in Fort Mason, Oedipus El Rey debuts with flourishes which invoke the classical elements - a chorus echoing the Grecian tradition of strophe, epode and antistrophe, the hubris of mankind, the oracular vision – but add a new system of poetry steeped in the Chicano tradition – the Sphinx becomes a bruja, the elders of the community curanderos. It is a transfiguration which embodies the age old question of kismet and destiny. Whereas this is answered unerringly in the original (Oedipus is fated to his doom from birth), Alfaro revivifies it for his audience. This Oedipus may or may not come to his doom through freedom of will. Much less shrift is given to the avoidance of predestination and much more imbued in the arrogance of men drunk on power. And there is multiplicity in that also: all of the inmates of the prison from which Alfaro’s Oedipus emerges have self-styled themselves gods and demigods, and this blustering audacity – the acts they commit from its wellspring – is their undoing. Certainly fatalism is part and parcel of the tragedy but the striking note in Alfaro’s symphony is solipsism and the isolation this indulgence visits upon those who partake of its libations.

Above all, Alfaro makes it approachable. Even if one is not acquainted with Sophocles and has never heard or read the tale of his Oedipus, this El Rey is knowable. Creative touches in direction further amplify and balance out the amazing voice of the writing with significant attention to details; from the synchronicity of the chorus and the oracles to the light-hearted wedding ceremony to the confrontation between Creon and Oedipus to the passionate love-making between Jocasta and Oedipus, the play breathes and pulses. (An aside – The singing of “Always and Forever” brought me back to those halcyon high-school days and I found myself singing along).

Critically, there is one other theme which surfaces and is tied like a flower in bouquet to the whole of the production. Respect for one’s elders, and their life experiences is found wanting in the soi-disant god El Rey. Because he will not listen, he will not hear, he is the author of his own fate and the captain who takes his ship into stormy waters to circle endlessly without berth or port, literally and figuratively blind. Alfaro reinforces for us what we know, even when we choose to forget: Destiny is what we make through our actions and choices.

Gay Marriage Debate: Idiotic Argument

2010-01-20T15:30:00.001-08:00

I caught wind of one the arguments being proffered by the lawyers defending California's notorious Proposition 8. It runs something like this: the primary purpose of marriage is for the procreation of children. The judge in a pretrial hearing indicated that he had performed as his last marriage a ceremony for a couple that were 95 and 83 years young, and inquired if this should not have been done. Of course the answer is obvious and even the lawyers advancing the foolhardy notion were quick to assert that he should have married this venerable couple. Besides the fact that in no point in the history of marital relations in this country has ANYONE ever been asked whether or not they intended to propagate or spawn anything beyond the unifying love of two individuals, logically you do not need to marry to beget. Is not the basis of the law suppose to be logic? Naturally, the reason for such a moronic statement is to find some narrow corridor to disqualify gays, much like the past notion that was utilized to indicate that Blacks were not quite human. I pray that Justice is not so blind as to be infected with this idiocy.

In Absentia, a Haiku

2009-10-06T09:31:00.001-07:00

Whether we wait upon our lovers, children, family or friends - whether it be waiting for renewed connection, a decision, or an epiphany - there can be an intensity which haunts:

Purloined moments wait
And in the absence of you
Restless thoughts assail

Entreaty of the heart

2009-10-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

If one could be drunk on love...such a large thing pressed into a thimble of emotion. It calls for a haiku:

Inebriate love
down to the dewy lees drink
liquor of my soul

Writing Resumed

2009-10-02T11:15:00.001-07:00

Anyone who scribes for a living knows how much effort is required to put pen to paper, and daily produce. Difficult blocks often come up and the valiant writer takes a break only to return to the source of inspiration. This poem marks out the perspective of someone renewing themselves through their work, remembering how writing calls to the soul:

Desire wells in fissures suffused by fear

like breaking sunlight filtering benighted sky,

The pen, set in motion, through openings

in the crust, once more attempts

to love a page ensouled with passion

vulcanized in twin chambers,

fed by grain imbrued feverishly

the color of sunset before

the autumn moon's coal-scarred swath

hawkishly descending, represses the tide

Hearts may be stopped, instruments blunted,

but purpose, fiery as lava, blazons

past worn passages guttering in shadows,

inscribes and marks the sheaf,

innervating minds to the testimony of the word

gifting moments expression untrammelled by trepidation

unsealing the ardor of hands,

consuming margins of the page

exploding to the surface in a molten hail

whose train sharpens the stars and

professes the perfusion of rapture unbound

Fledgling

2009-09-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

A poem I wrote a few years back but have never shared broadly:

Under the velvet of upturned leaves,
Sanctioned beneath green gauze and trembling,
The languid child strains against the womb
Wrestling equally with the practice and idea
Constraint is that bridge
Half caressed in sunlit memory,
Half crumpled in neoteric ruins,
Where the world girds society
And morality's skyscrapers sentinels
Known peripheries, planted just a stone’s throw
From the mire and muck of the extraordinary

Contest as it wills, the lash is firm
Effluvium lines the cottony membrane
There, in that spark of life, in that brace
Which straddles the crossing, groping
The child stirs towards seraphic peace-
The dizzying stillness of death settling-
Plunging without a whimper, without complaint
Releasing restraint, relishing its throes:
To die to live to love to hurt

Somewhere we cease to try, somewhere we become
Somehow we need no learning, somehow we come to know
The child within relaxes its grasp
Ruptures the verdigris placenta, scatters the leaves
Arrives in the limpid atmosphere
And walks upright, in time, in rhythm:
To die to live to love to hurt

Music: Born Free

2009-09-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

For Feruccio Busoni - "Music is born free; and to win freedom is its destiny"

Glaring hills of sound wink

into blaring bass, spinning, condensing

inky darkness breathing a sigh

slides through crooked clefts

stitching at a zip the liner's jacket

here a C, there a G

half erased, the pilings swell

each beat in time stroking its beloved's lips

scaling effortlessly up and down

expanding, alternating, wielding

never kissing the same moment twice

though knowing every valley, ridge and bluff

absent only to those who will not hear

tinkling brass crashing cymbals

chords slip the fetters

twist, shimmer, dance

lope over the procession of bars

scattering notes hopscotch measures

bending, blending, weaving

this key enfolding, that key unraveling

time unthreads a lover's knitted brow

marrying many to the touch of one

(kirbat abar) approach, pass, my heart

trebling the bugle

the world is your temple

Counting: A Poem

2009-09-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

Counting slow brushes of rain,

he feels at last alive

though not free

even in heaven's wet embrace

fragments of prison,

he called life, intrude

war sounds, distance-striped vision

barely meets one moment from the next

always loss, he considers,

of self we forget:

to stay, to be here now,

love's deprivation the common chorus,

counting inadequate measures:

our wealth, our will, fearing judgement

counting everything

without counting ourselves

"I remember," he thinks

within the storm liberation looms

this time he counts the strokes

made by the meeting

of his and heaven's tears

seeing no difference

Ideas Does Not A Reality Make

2009-09-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

"It's a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment. If you were born of ideas, then all you have are ideas," so opens one of the chapters of Man Gone Down which chronicles the ups and downs of a Black intellectual raised in the post-Civil Rights Era at a climactic point in his life. It summed up a groundswell of feeling I was experiencing watching our current President at the UN and the subsequent G-20 Conference.

I could not help but wonder where were all the ideas of the pre-election fervor had gone. To my endless inquiries of EVIDENCE of change I have been met only with deaf replies. Where is the normalization of relations with Cuba? Where are much vaunted reforms? The closure of the wars abroad? The realization of smart power? The healthcare overhaul seems to be a mote in the eye which will be washed away like a speck of dirt during the morning's ablutions.

The reality is that the Obama Presidency itself is a grand idea, fed by the American imagination but simultaneously riddled with the shortfall of American idealism. Americans are haunted by the idea of equality, bracing to embrace the idea of it but unwilling to recognize that validating humanity means demystifying any particular notions of racial identity, cultural origin and thus any attachments-favorable and unfavorable-to these. In effect this particular Presidency is a social experiment, and experiments always imply a norm (i.e., control group) versus a delta (i.e., change group). Of course, the most snowed under regarding the experiment is the titular head of the country, and this is attributable to the realm of ideas without action that have circumscribed the world from which he has sprung.

I fear that an ensuring passage of the novel presages much of the future of Presidential idea: "I suppose I should have been a superhero or an agent with no mission-AWOL, lost, forgotten, like a cold war relic, the laboratory, the training camp blown-up, the notes destroyed, my creator insane or in ashes...I should have been a vampire or a werewolf. But if that were the case, then there would be some kind of unbroken bloodline tracing back to the original. I feel artificial, man-made, like saccharin or LSD, something synthetic that was fucked up but issued nonetheless. I should have been something inexplicable, but at the same time nameable-a tolerable paradox, a recognizable dichotomy...guardian of the land of the obvious; and, obviously, phenotypically different. My internal conflicts need be expressed not in words..."

But unfortunately words and ideas are all the grass which has grown since the taking of the oath. We are masters of the oratory, and wielders of the image, but manifestation is a discipline we have yet to brandish and exercise with truth. There were smatterings in the press of the term engagement in dealing with other sovereign powers last week. The veritable question is, "How engaged are we with ourselves within the American landscape?"

The Beauty of Day

2009-09-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ablaze and radiant, morning salutes the dawn
brushing aside the mascara of clouds
resolutely striding through bilious winds
humming on the larynx of the earth
fluttering on rimed lips of heaven
until color breathes through the sky
spilling in a heady stream of iridescence
vermilion, azure, and amethyst droplets
to stir the imagination and prick the brow
bearing loveliness once more into the world

Another Day of Living

2009-07-30T06:41:00.001-07:00

Frustration bristles,like unruly hair
messy and tangled, an annoying menace
too much work here, too little pleasure there
the right mind gifted to the wrong heart
family nominally but strangers in reality
effort given to elusive success,
sloughing off despair, half asleep
slurping the morning coffee, berating tea
the endless mountain of meetings
followed by the empty landscape of endeavor
gym-toned, perspiring useless hope
And all these moments are the windows of Life

Declined Access: Healthcare

2009-07-24T03:35:00.001-07:00

I have listened as the healthcare debate raged back and forth over the past two weeks. And it seems that the scare tactic being utilized to block a public option is the question of cost. Now while I would not advocate spending willynilly, it does strike me as ironic that whenever the issue of paying for those necessary social goods which ultimately benefit the society as a whole, the specter of expense is resurrected to haunt the halls of public conscience. Curiously, this spook never raises its head when the military budget is up, or when voting for financial support of some rogue national power whose agenda benefits U.S. aims, despite said polity's lean away from democratic rule. But the reality of day should surface and banish the lingering shades of doubt: what is requisite for life - for all members of our community - should never take a backseat to the potentiality of debt. After all, whether or not, a public option is passed the healthcare industry is headed towards an explosive implosion due to unwieldy expense and an overrated fee structure. Will our elected officials have the courage to exorcise the demons laying waste to the commonweal or shall we succumb to despair and sever our limbs in a futile attempt to preserve the body?

Beginnings of a short story: Gathering The Tribe

2009-07-22T01:49:00.001-07:00

This week sees the initiation of short story installments on my blog. For the first one I have selected a contemporary topic.

On the eve of a Presidential election, two U.S. Senators in separate locations awaited returns. Both had engaged in the fray of politics, though one lacked the years of experience of the other; and both, while playing to their constituencies, had advocated lies. Of course, neither considered them untruths but a matter of expediency to whatever end they deemed appropriate. And in doing so they continued the grand tradition, the inalienable pageantry, from which American Presidents arose.

Fragments of Father

2009-07-18T01:22:00.001-07:00

Two years have given us the full measure, and still the hole left by my father's loss gapes. In reaching for the memories sometimes it feels like trying to capture rain, and the realization dawns that each drop is its own precious keepsake:

Sunset & Shadows

Indeterminate memories surface
on the rim of sundown's flange,
murky is the mind's eye, misted,
recall's uncertain grasp steadies
the fog, uncoiling Time, untwining
inaudible is the voice, cloistered
nubilous the final image, obscured
all I can reclaim, across distance,
is a prosaic portrait, near trivial,
of a young son with father, clasped,
warmed in the shadows of closing day

Summer's Pear

2009-07-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

Hugo, your continued inspiration flowers:

Luxuriant as honey, sweet as figs
my pear tree - Pereira - flourishes
bursting in darkness, white blossoms
against hardy brown wood, branching
into gray eyes and fruity fuzz,
swathed in the pinnate silk of Love

The Span of Love

2009-07-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

For Hugo

Our impassioned words are a bridge
across which our hearts travel,
ushered into wondrous assignation

Yearning: Poetic Murmurings

2009-07-06T23:43:00.001-07:00

I awoke this morning,
and like the settling dew
upon sun-kissed yellow roses,
my body sought immersion
in the warm folds of your arms

Haiku: Winter's Farewell Kiss

2009-06-03T21:53:00.001-07:00

While the season of winter has shuffled off and awaits the cycle of the stars until its time is once more, the autumn within may still be flickering in these rough economic times. It aids to remember that winter has its beauty, and strength can be measured in any interval, particularly when there is silence to allow hearing:

Downy snow shimmers
feathery brushes over sky
cushioning stillness

Haiku: Summer's Harbinger

2009-06-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

On the cusp of summer, color becomes a paramount theme. Yellow speaks of friendship and joy; it is the bridge between the moments of day and its' close:

Yellow like sunrise
unfiltered scent of lemon
the tang of sunset

Quillsby's Quip: Bay Area Rapid Trash Talk

2009-05-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

"Hmmm, our so not highly performing public transit service wants to raise rates again for less service and greater parking fees. Remind me again what BART stands for. Oh, that's right: Beastly Abominable Reprobate Transport. You know - the kind of thing you get at great public expense with little results."

Sound-byte Doltishness

2009-05-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

I am unfamiliar with President Obama's prospect to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court; but I am more than acquainted with the ridiculous clipping of commentary those cast into the sudden glare of the spotlight find themselves bracing against. This nominee, Judge Sotomayor, deserves serious consideration from everyone. However, in the land of perverse politics she is already being denigrated, and her statements parsed without context. Racism has been trotted out and lashed as a banner over the mast of her ship in the most recent smear attempt.

We should be smart enough to comprehend that being aware of race, and the nuances of it in America, is not equivalent to being a racist. Sotomayor's take that a Latino woman might come to different conclusions than a White man is mere common sense. Just as we are not solely defined by our cultural heritage, neither are we homogenous drudges living easily circumscribed tableaus.

Can we actually spend our time with greater wisdom and examine her qualifications? One wonders if the US politicians are capable of having rational debate with facts in evidence. Or has the roar of the sound-byte smothered and murdered reason?

Memory is Life

2009-05-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Summer approaches and the wheel turns with the year's progression. The anniversary of the loss of my father draws near. I continue to experience a sense of displacement and stunned bewilderment, as if nothing is real; all is wrapped in a translucent haze of albumen. Memorial Day evokes for me not only those who have given their lives in service but those who have touched and been intimate to my life, whether human or other. Yesterday, on the holiday, I attended a birthday party for a new friend and learned that one of his dogs had transitioned that morning. Once more I summon the wizardry of words to ward, to re-stabilize, the magic of existence. This is for you Robert and James:

On Death and Remembrance

Life's velutinous web,
we are reminded just now,
is frail but endures

Lives on eternally
in the lacework of memory
reviving and imbuing

Begets anew the circle
dirge to morning song
mourning to love recalled

The Awakening of Dreams

2009-05-25T23:29:00.001-07:00

We forget in the bustle of life those dreams which moved us in our salad days, and in this slump of disregard, a little of ourselves becomes dead tissue; papering over the life we have desired with a film of the mundane and mediocre. In this time of disassociation we can connect best with ourselves by rekindling the pyre of bygone reveries:

Nuevo Suenos

Because he could not fly,
he chose instead the Art of Building
and followed the threaded path
of soaring constructions and vaunted erections,
winging his way over edifices
assembled from the stuff of reality
in the practical guise of fulfillment

Success, that fickle master,
lay like a shiny coin in his palm,
and beset him from all sides
hemming in his creativity
and depositing it in a bank
molded by business acumen
but embattled by the idiocy
of management run amuck:
he found his competentcy
reflected in a pool of ignorance,
the chains of corporate responsibility
wound tightly about, encircling
his avid mind, and bit by bit
tarnishing the gilded edge,
until he knew the tables had turned
and he was the coin in the machine

On a morning, as he prepared
for the routine cycle, he perchance
spied a robin chirping in its nest,
welcoming the bright fillaments
of Life with the simplicity of being,
and memories, which had lain dormant,
waked from the attic of the mind;
he recalled the original desire,
the colorful mural of his youthful soul,
felt the incompleteness of the pattern,
and panted after the navigation
of the heavens, unbridled in form
mounting once more the vision
of flight unencumbered by society:
it was time, he noted simply,
the period of dreams had swung
its pendulum, projecting outward
where the future waited patiently
coalescing from gossamer wisps
to a vibrant canvas with his stylus
poised to draw a new reality

Simplicity and Conveyance

2009-04-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

I adore the lushness of Romantic poetry, and it moves me in ways which few in this modern time can appreciate; but their is power of expression also in succinctness. None exemplifies this better than the work of Jacques Prévert. As with my homage to Baudelaire, I have selected an exquisite piece of Prévert's oeuvre and written a response which captures the perspective from a different angle.

Last Breakfast

She pulsed the grinder
powdering the beans
She poured the dust
into the shiny press
She added the water
to the kettle
She lit the gas
fire under the kettle
And sat back to wait
Her eyes speaking volumes
She folded the towel
She creased the edges
with corniced flourishes
She tapped the press
absently clinking
Her eyes speaking volumes
Her gaze elsewhere
She poured the water
She depressed the dome
into the glass
She waited
She lifted the press
Because it was ready
She dispensed
liquid into the cup
Her lips motionless
Her eyes speaking volumes
She sipped
never seeing him
and she
She walked away
out the door
out of his arms
never glancing back
to what was behind

Silence is broken: Hope you did not hope too hard

2009-02-19T10:28:00.001-08:00

At the behest of a friend (yes, Judi, you) I have been biding my time (and tongue). I was asked to give our new President and his claque a reasonable amount of space to begin implementing his policies before commenting; in this friend's opinion my style and manner may sometimes come across as ad hominem but then we all know the quip about opinions and, er, fundaments{smile}.

Naturally, this means that I have a backlog of thought and feeling which now seeks expression, craves release in a written medium. I have recovered from my brief stint, the warm escape and balm, in Brazil and once more am ensconced in the native soil of mundane existence. My country is troubled on various fronts, chief among them the crisis and insolvency of leadership which has resulted in the crise économique. For the average citizen concerns have shifted from expansive ideals of where to vacation and what to buy to preserving the sanctity of hearth and home, wresting what they may from the ravenous jaws of disregard and greed.

Our federal government - first last fall under the auspices of erstwhile President Bush and now secure in the aegis of President Obama - has followed an abortive scheme of continuing to bailout fruitless financial institutions with the vaunted hope that these firms will extend lending to citizens and prop up the rapidly failing burg of the economy. Instead, this has had the opposite effect of insulating a particular class from economic ruin, essentially creating an aristocracy not allowed to feel the chill winds of national calamity while the garden-variety denizen languishes in hopeless despair.

If the government's goal was to give succour to Citizens Joe and Jill, then why provide monetary security to reckless banks without any oversight, consequences or clear direction? It would have been far more advantageous to let those firms meet their demise, and use the taxpayers' dollars to create a national bank where there was direct control and supervision. If I were to posit to conservatives the notion of an extremely risky investment where your returns are uncertain and your input was nil, very few would leap at this as a golden opportunity. Yet some of the most conservative legislators were the loudest voices in support of this boondoggle. (Not that the Left was much better, as they were thronging about in hero-worship for their new Demiurge). So much for change, Mr President; your ringtone is stuck on the unrestrained melody of status quo.

Celebration of Life and Dance

2008-10-29T02:23:00.000-07:00

In darkness it is the flare of the drum

which pulses life, brighter than the flames

of fire ringed about: it is the seminal voice;

as the beating of wings it blazes outward,

inaugurating the call to unsteady limbs,

come one, come all – let joy commence

Brother leg speaks to Sister foot, rousing

and conjoining, bestirring to the beckoning,

never you mind the weariness of day

Cousin toe tells Uncle heel, throw off cares,

well worn worry has no claim when

Mother rhythm sounds her summons, breaks

the stillness into which we settle, to hibernate away

step lively now and mind that you attend

Father Vigor's invitation to the banquet,

hear the bustling reeds, the flourishing branches,

the kingly courting of the lion, the majestic rush

of wind born on the tongue of the parrot,

see the owl swoop, utter its aria as the prey

rings out a threnody, brief ecstasy of ending

a splash of sound declaring the opening

here we go, whispers Aunt thigh to Baby joint,

into the assemblage, gathering momentum

first the clapping of hands, followed closely

by the thumping of feet, enlivened heartbeat

chased at a rush by quickened blood, throbbing

animal cries mingled with human yearning

the frenzied abandon of Dance materializes

all succumb to the sensual appeal, love unfurls

lovers intertwine, mothers sway and fathers swagger

the village of the world worships as one, receiving

the blessing of vivacity, free of burden, remembering

that all is briskness and movement -

con brio, amore; con brio, il mio cuore

Bailout - The Economic Dilemma

2008-09-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

The tumult of economic woes persists as Merrill Lynch just stays afloat by brokering a deal to sell themselves to Bank of America and Lehman Brothers flounders with a definitive flourish from Treasury that it will not sanction another unholy bailout marriage at the taxpayers expense. But this latter action creates the atmosphere of a moral dilemma. If Bear Stearns deserved a 29 million dollar sweetner to cuckold JP Morgan Chase, how does Paulson explain away why Lehman Brothers is not suitably worthy? After all the government has been interventionist barely a week past in securing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I suppose the shell game does wear thin as the collapses expand and the neatly erased demarcation between Wall Street, Treasury and the Federal Reserve appears more stark. Of course, the white elephant in the room is the greater ethical query: Why is it that government can find the political will to aid and underwrite the losses of corporations yet utilizes the language of wellfare when it comes to helping Citizens Joe and Jill maintain limb and liberty and stay in their place of residence? Someone should remind the mandarins of economic prowess that even in a card game an ace every now and then does not sustainable policy make. Crumbs from the table of the rich man did not keep Lazarus from death, and all his fine linen and purple garb did not secure the wealthy man the seat of heaven. The train is hellbound, folks; and more revelations will ensue. Watch carefully or you may think that sow's ear they are pulling out of the hat really is a rabbit.

Movie Review: Tell No One, Secrets Live Under The Flesh

2008-09-13T07:58:00.001-07:00

Brutality warps the pastoral lull of a romantic evening on an enclosed lake. Dr. Alex Beck (in the person of Francois Cluzet) is assaulted, knocked senseless and awakens to find that his beloved wife Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) has been murdered by unknown assailants harboring inexplicable motives. After eight years, the morose pediatrician still cannot resolve the questions and a thin thread of guilt which gilds his every horizon; but a chance discovery at that same lake begins the unravelling of a skein which implicates him as a prime suspect and throws doubt that a convicted serial killer was responsible.

Frantically, Beck begins searching for clues as to what really happened and trying to push beyond the veil of darkness enshrouding his memory from that night. He speaks with his wife's parents at their annual gathering to memorialize her death, orders a copy of the autopsy and starts piecing elements of the crime together. He receives mysterious emails which show videos of his wife, possibly in the present. Meanwhile, the investigation is reopened and another violent murder concluded. Beck, accused in both cases and forewarned that the police are about to arrest him, makes a spirited escape and is pursued. The action here is realistic and gritty: the chase on foot by the police lacks the artificial quality found so frequently in films, and once can see from the exertions of Cluzet and several principals of the force how vividly shot this segment must have been.

What is most interesting and engaging about this movie is that all of the characters - Bruno, the street punk Beck turns to for aid, the enterprising defense lawyer, the ambitious DA, the varied personalities of the police, the father-in-law - are not overly pretentious and yet fulfill their roles without a hitch. We are not overstuffed with details concerning each and there is no attempt to resolve all the loose strands, as in life such resolution is often not in the offing. The plots and subplots feel real, feel as if each person is simply living their life in the style and manner consistent with where they are in terms of it.

Fortunately, this extends itself to the principals. Cluzet is nuanced and unstudied. Even as bits of truth wrapped in lies stitched with more truths surface, Beck's morality remains constant. Where it is evident that this morality could conflict his own interest and has in the past, he persists. He cannot be other than what he is and that is a huge draw for the viewer.

Unlike other movies of this genre, it brings in an [effective] use of flashbacks and is as much mystery, romance and despair as thriller. Equal measure is given to all parts, and relationship issues - Beck and Margot at the beginning, Beck's sister (Marina Hands) and her lover (Kristin Scott Thomas) in a heightened exchange, the two police detectives, defense attorney Nathalie Baye and the DA, Bruno and his compatriot - are given full vent, forming a verite which injects believability ubiquitously through the film.

At its denouement, we are left with a bygone memory which quietly whispers that though innocence has been corrupted, it is nonetheless not forgotten.

Quillsby Quip of The Day

2008-09-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

Says Sable Quillsby, "This Presidential race is shaping up into a rather wonderful menagerie; we have a black sheep, an old goat, a rouged bulldog and a wizened bison's head: a veritable American Animal Farm. Certainly, the plantation remains in stable hands and on course. Napoleon did you say? Bah! We've got Obamination and McSame serving in execess of 30 billion."

Absurdity in Presidential Politics: Lipstick 101

2008-09-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well, politics as usual are back in the forefront of the news. Republicans, in a continued attempt to pander for a gender-specific votes, have trenched into the latest nadir of the Presidential season. It is more than dishonest to take a comment obviously intended for one purpose - the pork-barrel repackaging of McCain's economic policies to be inline with the current Bush(whacked) Administration - and slanderously apply it as a red-herring insult to your bullish running mate. One would have to inquire of Maverick McCain how this squares with the carefully cultivated straight-talking image he constantly promulgates as a hallmark of his character; but the hot winds of duplicitous, arrant, self-involved righteousness might be too deafening to penetrate. We should not forget that Governor Palin compared herself in the grand debut to a bulldog wearing lipstick. So should we logically conclude that a self-styled anthropomorphic reference is of lesser injury than another? Especially as the alleged second case was not aimed at the mulish want-to-be VP. Or is the Republican faith so amorphous that things mean only what they mean when they decided in that instance the meaning?

Oops! Now they will be saying that I called her a bull and a mule. Oh, well. Let the absurdity continue. There are a few bestiary allusions I could draw on for all the candidates but I will beg off from maligning the nobility of animals.

Questionable - A Poem

2008-09-04T23:16:00.001-07:00

There is always
a question as to
whether I exist:
am I dreaming
this nightmare reality?
do I recognize
this brutish form?
Or am I character
in a post-modern novel?
a fiction of film?
perhaps, I am
the lingering thought
of a lost culture,
an alien seed
planted firmly in
unfamiliar soil;
sometimes I wake
in the dark hours,
wandering and wondering,
whittling away
this unfashioned clay,
trying to conceive
who and what I might be
But only the question
seems to have substance,
and so I relax
into the relapse
of the benumbed mind,
sliding tight the lid
on the crucible
of my uncertain awareness,
and drift into fantasy,
vowing to make myself
whatever I choose to be

Obama 2008: Vainglory is thy name

2008-09-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

Running for high office in our republic (I really choke on the word democracy as we are a republic with democratic values as opposed to a pure democratic society) has always meant men (and women) who seek the laurels of public service (yea,right! neither for the public nor of service) usually have passed their egos at GO on the way to the super ego at Park Place. There is generally a certain arrogance belying even the grandest fashion charades of self-involved humility. Not for nothing is Pomp and Circumstance hauled out and trumpeted at any significant [political] event.

In the unfolding of the Democratic Convention last week, we were treated to the latest brand of solipsistic indulgence. Obama, touting the banner of Change Incarnate, proceeded to select a consummate Washington insider as his Vice Presidential champion. Never mind that those leaders who are fresh in the political realm and inline with his bandied about mantra of hope and renewal (Webb, Kaine and Sebelius among others) were passed over for a milquetoast who barely made a splash in his own bid for the Presidency during the primaries; nor even the glacial cum ice-water drift of his campaign towards more centrist views. His choice confounds the imagination as it is nowhere grounded in reality.

If one were going to select someone who is familiar with internecine labryinths of the national politics, why not choose the woman who nearly matched you in every contest up through the run-up to the convention? Besides the stunning 18 million voters who attached themselves to her camp, Hillary Clinton can deliver purple-robed states which can swing in either direction amidst the political gales churning throughout the country. Of course, if you are focused on winning that would be the smart, if not necessarily easy on a personal level. Once again ego and emptiness trump common sense and competency.

Sure you might have to swallow your gorge and deal with fiery debates within your administration but you would be handed the silver chalice on a velvet pillow. If change were the chief momentum behind Obama's movement, it would be evident that obtaining the gold is worth the sacrifice. Instead we detect the distinct whiff of hubris cloaking inexperienced brinksmanship.

Does anyone have a handkerchief that I can borrow to avoid the stench?

Moment of Reflection - Opposition

2008-08-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

To curse the darkness is to reject the light,
to deny the pain is to shun the pleasure,
to refuse the moment of silence is to avoid speaking wisdom,
to ignore blindness is to vacate sight,
for we live in the defined and the undefined,
each touching the other and imparting meaning

Commentary on the nature of the Divine

2008-08-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

Divinity is the sum total of all things. Religions celebrate an aspect, and sometimes a multiplicity of representations but the Divine surpasses all and encompasses all.

It is neither male nor female but both inextricably bound. Even where the feminine has been stripped from faiths some unspoken, innate yearning trickles in the cracks and resurrects it; for yang cannot exist without yin. Thus, Christianity ennobles both Marys, mother and whore, and Judaism is abutted by the Shekinah. The Sufis have their Layla, the feminine night which manifests the Divine Reality without borders, to accompany the questing Majnun, he not of the normal mind. They are made whole as One and together are the Divine. Allah, the One of Islam, is equally referred to as Huwa (He) and Hiya (She).

When we see others as separate from Self is the moment we step away from seeing the Divine and outside the boundaries of Truth. To recoil from another is to recoil from yourself. Embrace the world and embrace yourself: because you are a reflection of the Divine.

Movie Review: Brideshead Revisited, Neither a Bride nor Quite Ahead

2008-08-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

Make sure to have your tweed garments at the ready as you enter the upper crust world of Brideshead Revisited. It is exactly this entry point that the young protagonist emerges into that milieu, bemused and bewildered. Certainly, Charles Ryder (played ostensibly by Matthew Goode) has ambitions which become a bit more naked as the film unfolds; but that appears to be the single, one note emotion the character displays throughout. Ryder, even in the passionate atmosphere of Venice on holiday, spectacularly is incapable of emoting beyond the representations of class status and social standing. It is not so much that he rails against them; rather, it is the fruitless quest to become cozy within these grand halls of cultured esteem which eludes his meager efforts. The very scantiness of his attempts towards respectability ("I am an artist studying history") are consistently waylaid by his at the beck-and-call nature ("I have friend who is gravely injured.") He cannot quite carry the air of being above it all ("I am an atheist") and quite like a lapdog is ever yapping at the heels of English propriety, even when formally he has been elided from the august personages and sent packing with his tail tucked between his legs. Ryder is a dim-witted escape artist barely competent to avoid the trap of his quondam existence and clearly uncertain as to where he would like stage his next attraction. The consummate realization of ambition lacking drive: he is drawn to Brideshead as a holy grail which will offer him deliverance from the mundane, never recognizing that the mediocrity lies internally and will frustrate his every attempt.

Hayley Atwell as Julia Flyte dovetails nicely with Ryder in that she too is a sterile soul casting airs of superior mien to obfuscate from the viewer the lost little girl who can't live without the restrictions imposed. That she is a coward is revealed early on and grows in fevered pitch as the story accelerates through time. Her anger in Venice, her listless marriage to an American and her flouncing reentry into Ryder's life years later all are paper-thin matryoshkas, concealing the rags belied by the princess-image evocation.

Emma Thompson's impeccable Lady Marchmain is the embodiment of Catholic hauteur, matronly control and sheer domineering bitchiness sveltely encased in white gloves. Edward Ryder, Charles' father (played by Patrick Malahide), is totally devoid of feeling for his son but ardent in his devotion to other pursuits. Ben Whishaw, Lord Sebastian Flyte, is one of the more nuanced, if minor, characters. He oscillates between the carefree sprightliness of gay romanticism, guilt-ridden Catholic child and hopeless addict of alcohol but does so believably. Another gem of a performance steeped with feeling, albeit her moments on screen are few, is handed down by Greta Scacchi as Cara, the Italian mistress of Mr, Marchmain, the estranged husband of Lady Marchmain. It is a tell that the supposedly flatter personalities are by far richly rounder than the principals. Though their elliptical orbit is circumscribed, these lesser beings paint more vibrantly on the canvas that one almost forgets about Charles and Julia. The real love and loss is Sebastian's and his development and saga frame a more interesting tale beside that of the haphazard jerks of Ryder's world. And the one glimmer of expectation at the offset is the ambiguous dance between Lord Flyte and Ryder which hints that Charles might be capable of a relationship with a man.

The movie is a beautiful set of scenes but lacks cohesive ties between the moments of action sufficient to convince that it is a whole and complete product. Waugh's quips and gift for dialog add flair but the directors, in paring away her ample time-line, simultaneously blur the edges of the story. There is no bride in waiting: more like A Rose for Ms. Emily dramatized on the steps of the Old Empire, drawing on the scraps of the miniseries popularized by Jeremy Irons but adding nothing new to the pot and possibly subtracting meaningful human interaction for the prettiness of effect.

Cooking: Innovation with bananas

2008-08-17T23:13:00.001-07:00

Ok. It is Sunday afternoon and you get a call from a friend accepting your earlier offer of a home-cooked dinner and a night out at the movies afterwards. You were prepared for the main aspects of the meal but have given no thought to dessert, not even an iota of a minuscule molecule of a thought. This is a rather new acquaintance and you don't run the risk of disappointing. Panic is a natural avenue but a hopeless journey indubitably.

You hunt about and happen on two bananas, the remains of your protein shake fruit menagerie for the week. Your mind spins; you dive inward, searching for taste profiles which may be your salvation. There is no quick recipe you can pluck from the past. However, you are resourceful and have a good palate. So it is time to invent; Desperation really is the mother of innovation.

From the cabinet you take honey, cinnamon and nutmeg. From the liquor cache, Meyer's Dark Rum and Smirnoff's Vanilla Twist Vodka present themselves. You slice the bananas in perfect halves, place in a shallow baking dish, and retrieve organic cane sugar from the top of the refrigerator. Mixing one tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, you sprinkle this over the banana halves. In a saucepan 1/2 cup of honey, 1/8 cup of rum and 1/16 cup of vanilla vodka are combined and heated. Taking a bit of sweet butter and slicing it into cubes, these are arranged on the halves. When the sauce in the pan begins to slightly boil, it is poured over the halves and baked in the oven at 350 F for 13 minutes, until they are golden brown.

And they are divine! An excellent complement to the dark chocolate brownies with which your guest surprises you. Now you wish you had just a few more overly ripe bananas to soak in that auric nectar.

Quillsby's Quip of the Day

2008-08-17T22:31:00.000-07:00

Says Sable Quillsby, "Americans face a great dilemma in the next election. The choice is between two pretenders with the principal difference between them not being age or race; but the unmitigated zeal of one investing himself with the divine right of maverick claimants to act as benevolent dictators while the other is angling constantly for the priestly investiture of that most pernicious faith - Popularity - to rebuff the appearance of there being no there there. Donald Duck might be a more credible candidate for the American reality but I suppose these two are perfect specimens of the American dream!."

A Response and Compliment to Baudelaire

2008-08-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

In his Correspondences, Baudelaire gives nature an intelligence and empathy that embraces all of creation. Man is shown as part of this grand opus but moves through it unaware of his intermingling and engagement with the whole, on an unremitting and constant rhythm. The metaphysical power of Baudelaire's words imbues the reader with a sense of being in a magical arbor, where time is slowed and one may observe as if from the shadows. And perhaps man still lives in those shadows. I respond with my "modern" perspective and turn the view on its head to see what else may be plumbed from the depths:

Correspondences

Amidst the arms of gloaming stillness,
Suckling sweet dew from vestigial remains
Sight, sound and sensuality mingle,
A carousing trinity, dimly perceived
In their bright license, by the shadow-Man

Where once a shade was indistinct,
Indiscernible from twilight and radiance,
Caliginous robes, now, betray presence
Dressed without virile perspicuity,
Raiment devoid of colors, tang and coolness

Like thread through cloth, Shadow infuses
and is infused by the fabric-land, sea, air
Lives in the eclipse, and is noted by the stars,
Travels aromatic paths unhindered, oblivious
of the eleemosynary blessing of kindred souls

Green as the rind of melons, the arbor encloses
Inumbrates the shade, wrapping and overhanging
Its lively borders with the citrus balm of oranges,
Trilling dulcet fragrances, sighing scents
And feathery perfumes, bathing itself in
The redolent memories of shadow-children
who came before and breathed in unison
With the celestial and the ordinary

Cooking: Simple pleasure with Aglio e Olio

2008-08-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Continuing in the iconoclastic mood from the weekend, I abandoned protein shakes for the day. For breakfast a fruit parfait with granola eased the tension of Monday morning at the office, and a bagel with smoked salmon, tomato and capers satiated the stomach and the soul. A bran muffin with currants and golden raisins for a snack insured the minuscule affair of lunch, a turkey-ham sandwich with grain mustard on a bed of vegetables, would maintain a postprandial fullness. So naturally the question became what to do for dinner?

It is a facile precis to enumerate the variegated types of protein shakes one may craft as a substitute for that end of day meal. Determining on the fly what to create for a dinner, which is healthy and does not result in break-neck haste to descend on the grocery like a starved lion, can be more of an interesting challenge. After stopping at the tailor's to drop the latest bunch of pants requiring alteration due to my shrinking waistline (hooray!), I took stock of what lay in the pantry. Wholegrain pasta from the Italian town of Gragnano, golden garlic from Gilroy (alliteration, nice!), garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil from Napa (the gods take Rachel Ray), organic dried basil, parsley and fresh thyme (Bless local farmers) were the key elements which garnered my attention. In the freezer I recalled that I had some mozzarella left over from the lasagne I had made for friends. Edison must have been working overtime as the light bulb started to flash: Spaghetti Aglio e Olio.

Literally, spaghetti with garlic and olive oil. Humble, timeless fare whose preparation is mostly in the boiling of the pasta. A rather spoony coziness invaded my kitchen and I decide to chronicle this event with photos. The first of which is the top shot of this post.

After breaking the(1 pound dry) pasta into manageable pieces and placing in a mixing bowl, I put water onto boil, adding in 2 teaspoons of garlic salt and a dime of the olive oil to it. (This is not just for effect - salt raises the temperature at which water will boil and thus aids in cooking more intensely). When the gurgle of water sounded, I dropped the pasta in and set about mincing the (6 cloves of) garlic. Eleven minutes later I judged it to be al dente and dumped the pasta into the colander. Rinsing out the pot, half a cup of olive oil was poured in and set back on the burner. Impatiently I waited for the oil to heat and sizzle. Garlic was up next, followed by (a tablespoon of) basil, (1/2 teaspoon) red pepper flakes, (1/4 teaspoon) garlic salt and a hint of cracked black pepper. Within minutes the sweet aroma of the garlic and spices permeated the kitchen and wafted out into the apartment, signaling the moment for the return of the pasta and, unlike Hamlet, I did not hesitate to act. Making sure that all the spaghetti was tossed in the oil-spice mixture everything cooked for another 5 minutes with yours truly adding more salt and pepper to taste. Dishing a sizable quantity into a bowl, I crowned it with a handful of mozzarella (some prefer parmigiano-reggiano) and parsley.

While all this had been going on I had decided I needed some vegetables as well. Oven was preheated to 350 F. I chopped an onion into round slices, and two vine-riped tomatoes as accompaniment. Seasoning them lightly with garlic salt, pepper, parsley, savory and rosemary, I stacked them in a shallow roasting pan, drizzled olive oil over them, topped the onion slices with minced garlic and the tomato slices with sprigs of thyme. During the boiling phase these were roasted with verve and further enhanced the delightful scents running rampant. I even took a photo of this so that you could imitate St. Patrick's Day without garments. LOL!

The culmination was in the dining. All I can say is if it sounds good, it was even better in the tasting. Guess you will just have to try it on your own to see.

Reflection on a moment - Morning

2008-08-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend - an atypical one for me - I woke early as usual. But instead of the mad dash to the gym which has become my habitual rhythm, I lingered. Savoring the unrolling of morning hours and appreciating the vagaries of Bay Area weather, I let the enchantment drift over me. Fog shrouded all in sight for some time, and then the bright beacon of sun washed away the gray and filled the world with resplendence. I opened the windows in the living room and kitchen and was greeted by a myriad of sounds - birds trilling, insects buzzing and brisk breezes rattling my blinds. It was a quiet miracle, almost surreal in a way and reminiscent of Monet; the Muse whispered inspiration in my ears:

Morning

Whether hurriedly hectic,
consumed in a flurry,
or leisurely paced,
careful, caressing
it is the stage
upon which we enter,
initiate our performance,
and start inexorably
the act we call life

Whether a wobbly, tippling sun,
shaking off flushed excesses
spent in night-time revelry,
or a cloud-strewn, hazy sky,
bracing the trade winds
welcoming equatorial rain
it is the point of emergence
an unfolding of flowers
harbinger of cricket song
the metronome of day

Whether a kitten's plaintive mewl
for milk to break it's fast
or a baby's peevish whine
for mother's warmth and suckling
it is the rebirth of our hopes
proof that nothing is static
change ever-present and continuous
each experience a doorway

Granola is not just for garanimals

2008-08-10T09:17:00.001-07:00

My friends have been pestering me on a regular basis now about simple recipes which I make for myself in the ever evolving quest to transform from the thralldom of geekdom to the superhero status of star jock.

Seriously, the past year has seen me embrace weight lifting as an essential element of my workouts, and because of the expressed goal of fat loss and lean muscle acquisition, I have returned to preparing the majority of my own meals. I am often teased when I show up with protein shakes for caloric consumption, and one colleague at the office has even remarked upon it with emphasis, supplying the adjective ubiquitous. But joshing aside, I do still eat real food.

One the largest challenges when you eat out is that you have no idea how much oil, salt, sugar, ect are being added to anything you may be sampling. And diet is foundational to successful achievement of any program promoting lipolysis (i.e., fat burning). So I have been on a mission to revamp more traditional recipes, recasting them with altered ingredients which result in greater nutrient density while not compromising flavor or taste.

We will start simply with that perennial Berkeley favorite: Granola.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 to 4 cups of oat groats or rolled oats
2 cups of nuts (generally I do a cup of one variety and a cup of another variety)
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of allspice optional
1 cup of honey (preferably a hearty one like mesquite dessert)
a pinch of sea salt
2 cups of dried fruit (again mix it up here, use a diversity)
1 cup of dessicated coconut optional
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (specialty ones work well here, such as blood-orange; traditional recipes call for butter instead)

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large mixing bowl toss the oats, nuts, spices and coconut. Using a pan combine honey and olive oil.Put on low heat until honey completely becomes more liquid-like, stirring constantly. Pour contents into the bowl of oats and make sure all the oat mixture gets coated. Place mixture in a big shallow baking pan (or several if you have smaller pans) and bake in the oven for about half an hour or until it turns golden brown and somewhat crispy. Mix in dried food thoroughly and voila! You have a finished product which should last a few day if stored properly (e.g., air-tight container).

Some additions which I enjoy are pumpkin seeds and crystallized ginger. This recipe is infinitely malleable. Feel free to improvise. I sometimes pair the granola with yogurt and a helping hand of fresh fruit for contrast. After all, taste is a matter of personal style. Enjoy!

How can one measure loss

2008-08-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

My blog has been noticeably quiet in the last few days. This is not by accident or happenstance but rather it has direct relation to an ominous anniversary - July 17. Last year, as I was embarking on new discoveries of self, my father transitioned from this existence and returned to AllThat Is. One never knows what the loss of a parent can feel like until it occurs; words are inadequate to describe, summarize or even hint at the gaping tear in the fabric of your personal universe. So I have found myself alternating between the impassioned turbulence of resistant emotion and the resignation of muteness. Finally, the Muse touched my brow and expression began to rain forth:

Loss

The room is quiet now
silence speaks softly
filling void in space
lone remnant of the chorus
which just a while before
echoed through the house

The bed is empty now
sheets drawn, blankets removed
pillows carefully stacked
on the floor, to the side
headboard covered in black
unused but not dust-laden

The curtains are shuttered now
thin fingers of light grasping
shadow motes which reflect absence
of daylight, shrouding room
in a casement of darkness
a seal to lock away memory

It is hard to believe
Some days past, hours gone
a living soul inhabited
these desolate quarters,
breathed noisily in vacancy,
occupied this hollow of the world

2008-07-22T00:37:00.000-07:00

Night, an Ode

I kiss her velvet lips
tasting exiguous dew
from withering buds
preparing to slumber,
shuttering stamens
against ravages of wind

I lay on silky skin
feeling soft enclosures
as the veil is drawn,
and the sun winks out
of existence, revealing
tresses delicate to touch,
supple strands bearing
pearls of luminous strength

I hear the calls
of fowls in flight,
the lowing of cattle
in the fields,
and the scurrying feet
of mice just beginning
their nocturnal quest,
her lovesong of dominion
where she reigns without peer

Flawed Efficiency

2008-07-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

Since the arrival of graphically-interfaced operating systems the promise has been timely capability to complete tasks and increased efficiency through the facile manipulation of "windowed" functionality. This is all well and good in most cases.

But when subtleties of behavior are not implied in the interface, not handled explicitly, or not communicated so that the user is aware that he or she must deal with them, we find ourselves on a slippery slope. The features of the operating system can become a hindrance to getting the job done.

Last week, I was setting up a server to use as a development environment. Because remote access to the server was a requirement I installed a copy of RealVNC on the newly-minted XP box. I configured the software to allow access to the IP addresses on the subnet our machines reside under. I then tried testing connecting with the VNC client from my laptop. It kept timing out without connecting. I rechecked the configuration; opened Windows XP Firewall settings and made sure that RealVNC application was listed in the Exceptions tab and pointing to the correct executable.

Retested connecting and still no cigar. I tried several more passes, becoming anxious that such a simple task was consuming so much of the day. I searched online to see if the error I was getting had been encountered and if a solution might be listed. I found some documentation mentioning that upgrades of RealVNC which did not import certain settings could be listening on the wrong port; but confirmed that in fact my installation's configuration had the correct port. I pulled out the heavy guns and went command line, invoking netstat to see what connections were at play. Finally after the day was halfway over, I realized that the XP Firewall might not be interpreting what port the application was intended to run on. My expectation, which I don't believe was farfetched, was that if I add something to the Exceptions tab, XP would use the configuration settings to direct access.

And that was the mistake. The Firewall actually requires that you explicitly make a separate port declaration in addition to the application one already in existence, and besides the naming label there is no specific tie between the two. Once I did that things went without a hitch. However, I found myself wondering what would possess anyone to design a firewall which did not require that pervious points be bounded with the application?

Something as inconsequential as a port number can have wide-ranging impact. That I had to scale the walls of XP, scouring for a foothold to achieve realization of a temporally significant assignment, does illustrate that how a user utilizes a tool is as important in design consideration as the physical elegance of the interface.

Now I am sure there are more hills to climb before I find the Valley of Hallowed Bliss, where interface and design dovetail and dance a sprightly flamenco in syncopated, coordinated steps. I just hope I have enough hooks to sustain me on the trek.

Am I Not A Semite Too?

2008-07-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

While engaged in my usual reading of political and cultural goings-on this week, I came across an interesting article in The Nation. The subject of the article - "Warriors for Zion - in California" by an editor of the periodical, Jon Weiner - dealt with allegations by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) that the administration and faculty of the University of California at Irvine had failed to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic remarks and offensive acts. The piece goes a long way to disprove any concerted effort by any party to misuse, terrorize or subject to ritual condescension, collegians of Hebrew ancestry and, in turn, demonstrates the rather extremist position of ZOA, who ubiquitously indict any - Jews and Goyim alike - who do not pledge slavish devotion to the Israeli state and label them without reserve as "anti-Semitic". After I finished digesting the article, I could not help but ask myself do these people even know the meaning of the word? Are they aware of who the Semites are?

True, the term anti-Semitic was brought into being by uber-nationalist journalist and critic Wilhelm Marr in his polemic against Jews and their supposed degradation of German civilization. For Marr, all of the ills of German society could be laid at the door of ethnic distinction; Jews could never be assimilated as blood-in-the-bone Deutschlanders. And they were with celerity, in his opinion, laying waste to what had once been a noble and ancient kingdom. The problem was irreducible beyond the barrier of race.

If we fast forward to our age, the institutions of the Jewish state similarly have decreed that the plight of the Palestinians is circumscribed by ethnic and cultural derivation. Consider that Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are not allowed to rebuild areas or expand to the erstwhile habitations of their forebears; yet Jewish expansion is encouraged in these same places. How different is this than the pogroms which the Jews once languished in? Never mind mentioning the strife and ravages which are part and parcel of life in the West Bank.

There is a germ in all of this which is rarely voiced: Semitic refers to Arabic peoples as equanimously as it does to Jews. The eponymous nature of the word stems from the Greek variation of the name of a son of Noah - Shem. In Biblical tradition the Hebrews applied it to all of those nearby who approximated language and norms identifying them as having a common ancestry; and ethnographically it was linked with those groups belonging to a root family of languages (i.e., Afro-Asiatic, in this case).

So when we speak of Semitic peoples, we cannot escape being all-inclusive, and by logical extension anti-Semitism applies to vituperative commentary and acts towards Arabs as well. The Middle East is truly a conflict featuring family members, cousins, unable to see that beneath the veil of violence the blood of the other is just as precious and initiates from the same wellspring.

Note:
[As complexity is part of human evolution, certain groups - such as the Amorites and the Caananites - though not, according to Hebraic tradition at least, the children of Shem spoke languages which belong to the Semitic category. While the Lydians and the Elamites, marked as the seed of Shem also, used tongues not related to Semitic branch.]

Bringing Rome to San Francisco

2008-07-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

It was the name which caught my attention. Chiaroscuro. The art form from the Renaissance, which evokes Baglione's Sacred Love or Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, made an early impression on my sensibilities. The interplay of shadow and light, the tension of opposites, attracting and repelling with the same magnitude, has a certain allure. Primarily, because we see in it that those things which lie at different ends of the spectrum are reflections of one another, each existing in the contrast of its counterpart. So I could hardly pass up the opportunity to partake of the fare of a ristorante bearing this name. I knew it would either be an audacious, robust meal of epic proportions or a colossal, bombastic failure dishing up sub-standard fare under the banner of underivative grand cuisine.

Fortune smiled. It was a sublime kiss from the steps of Rome which had been planted on the brow of the City of St. Francis. The decor is elegant, the ambiance sweetly mellow and the staff as inviting as any Italian mother welcoming you to her table. The flavors of the food are bright, lively and bold; sometimes starting with subtle hints which explode out into full notes of savory goodness.

While it is quintessentially, undeniably Roman, innovative additions express nouveau gustatory melanges which enliven the palate, and court the tongue to relish repeatedly the offerings. The calameretti affogati and the fritturina di pesci both offer calamari in two different (dare we say contrasting) styles, equally succulent. The bruschette is a sampling of diversity, each one served portraying its own theme. The pastas are ascending clefs rising to the stairwell of heavenly lightness and boundless taste; homemade bread leaves one hunkering after more. And the veal burger, nestled between two slices of focaccia, topped with brie, crisp leeks and celery, is divine. What is amazing is that this only a subset of what is daily proffered.

The wine selection is no less impressive than the food. A number of excellent Italian varietals are available (I am partial to the honeyed Primitivo from Puglia). To be on even keel here in wine-soaked California, choice spirits from Sonoma and Napa have their place in the proverbial rack. Dessert wines are also of a high quality and not overly cloying in their bouquet.

Probably the most surprising revelation was the caliber of the desserts. Usually restaurants with great chefs only have incredible sweets if they have a dedicated pastry chef; but Chef Campitelli is sui generis, and manages to create an array that is eclectic and distinctive. His take on beignets is refreshingly creamy, and the strength of them lies in the custard with which they are infused. His mother's apple cake is hearty, his chocolate tort resplendent, and the mousse smooth as whipped butter.

If you don't have the serendipitous luck to visit Rome this season, you can still have an archetypal experience of what she has in the way of culinary fineness by habitually stopping over to break bread and toast at her emissary to the West Coast.

Journaling: Counting Myself

2008-07-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

I am often at a loss when it comes to dealing with myself. Connecting with others, assuming responsibility for items in their lives and bridging gaps unasked is the mode that I have lived in for the bulk of my existence so far. For the past three years, I have been working, at least ostensibly, with a facilitator to assist me in seeing what I create repeatedly experientially, how (and why) I sustain it, and understanding what is requisite for change. This has been my, at times wavering, commitment to myself.

There have been pitfalls; ones I birthed to justify why things cannot change, to explain my depressions and my exaltations. Because we are powerful and the ultimate primogenitors of our experience, illusion and delusion are tools we employ to convince ourselves of the steadfastness of our convictions or that an altered scenery is a shift in where we have been standing prior.

For me, a character in Where Angels Fear To Tread solidifies a summary of perfection: The brother-in-law speaks of how he is always absent when things are occurring, how he lives outside of life itself. His is a tremulous reality and I am his empathic brother-in-arms. Nor is the satiric twist lost on me that I most identify with a fictional character lamenting a fictional non-existence. The French Surrealists would probably take consternation at the notion and yet eke out some mirth at the absurd, comedic quality of this conundrum.

Of late, my facilitator has been more pressing on evidentiary manifestation of my willingness to deal with self. Specifically, the fact that I have not furnished my apartment after being here over 6 months has become a focus of my capacity to give to myself. I gave a party at the end of last month, and there was no place for the attendees to sit. People enjoyed the food and the interaction but many were squatting on the floor. So the gauntlet was thrown down. Research furniture and set a plan in motion to get it situated.

Tonight, I came to a crossroads. I had my session and my facilitator, after reviewing the research, gave me until the end of this month to get the living room established. Panicked, I came home, checked credit cards and then calmed myself. I surfed the Net for awhile. Then I took action: I decided on a couch, two massive chairs, a coffee table with a marble top, a side table in the same mold, a rather artistically abstract rug, stylish modern floor lamp, two accenting pillows for the couch, a silver tealight holder, two vases, whimsical candle stands and two trunks handcrafted by Chinese artisans.

And it felt good. I have always had an aesthetic but I usually ply it in only the service of others. This time I was doing it for me and the more I looked the more enthused I became. A chore transformed into an act of self-caring and worth. I was counting myself as equal.

I still have to secure the flatscreen tv and entertainment center this weekend. However, the trepidation of too much change too fast has taken wing, and I am stepping into my own power. The simplest, mundane things sometimes have the greatest amount of magic, and reawaken the wizardry of one's imagination. Or as J.K. Rowling writes in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, " It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up."

Unequal Independence: Deletion from History

2008-07-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

As we celebrate the intellectual birth of the United States this Independence weekend, the airwaves patriotically extract select portions of Thomas Jefferson's momentous document to reinvigorate national pride. Unfortunately, Americans are not great students of history. We are the culture of taglines and sound bites, easily swayed by summaries packed with expectations and select truths.

Most don't, for example, realize that Jefferson's original submission was heavily edited by revolutionary Congress; nor are they familiar with what was amended, added or extracted. Even a cursory read of what was produced and codified for public consumption is dichotomous - on one hand it is indeed a declaration but it rests much of its argument on the grievances of King George (III). One's declaration of self never requires justification because it has nothing, even remotely, to do with anyone else. However, this joint declarative and complaint directs us toward an unmitigated belief and fear that haunts the US to this day: that we can never be masters and mistresses of our own fate without intervening forces beyond our borders seeking to circumscribe our experience. (Indeed, Washington's farewell to the nation years later volubly demonstrates the continuation of this trepidation - "Beware foreign entanglements" - and drove US policy into the modern era).

The great irony of Jefferson's words become obvious when we learn that a paragraph condemning slavery was removed wholesale:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivatng and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.

The delegates from Georgia and South Carolina were the instrumental forces responsible for this deletion. Of course, the paradoxical aspect of this passage is that Jefferson is blaming the British for the importation and commercialization of slavery without acknowledging the implicit agreement of the colonists to participate. Though Jefferson's archives hint that this removal troubled him to the end of his life (which incidentally was 50 years later on July 4th), he himself never freed his slaves. Jefferson's character was inherently flawed in that his emotions and intellect pressed him toward liberty but his circumstances allowed him to choose to sustain this immoral turpitude. He similarly writes of the cruelty and misuse of Native Americans, pardoning it regrettably as the cost of modernity.

Naturally, women are ghosts and no mention is made of their rights in this venerable text. Can one help but wonder if this declaration meant anything more than the bitter invective of one interested party, who had accrued wealth stolen from new lands they had plundered and wrested from the aboriginal inhabitants, against another interested party staking the same claim?

It would seem that even before we coined the term sound bite, our Founding Fathers were practiced at the art of smooth recitations which explain away American self-interest under the guise of the importation and exportation of freedom.

Movie Review: Savage Grace, Detached Space

2008-07-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening, on the eve before Independence Day, friends were either absent or otherwise engaged Roaming about online, I checked Movies.com to see if anything interesting was playing in my area, and discovered an art-house (my favorite genre) film starring Julianne Moore running at the Albany Twin, minutes from my place. I quickly threw back on my work clothes, grabbed my briefcase and headed out.

This biopic ventures into the bizarre woods of a wealthy family. From the offset, one imagines that it will revolve around the son's homosexuality but that is only one subtext to the meandering rough road this irresolute clan wends its way across.

Julianne Moore dazzles the socialite world as Barbara Baekeland, warm in the vaunted graces yet chilling with her unnerving laughter. She is assuredly the most passionate of the characters in the film. (Though Hugh Dancy and Unax Ugalde shimmer in minor but significant roles). And saying that is saying quite a lot. The mood, the pacing, the shooting, all bequeath the viewer a sort of crystallized detachment; almost as if the characters are being glimpsed through a dull prism which light can only penetrate as listless rays of bright shadow. This detachment finds it ultimate expression in Tony (played masterfully by Eddie Redmayne), the couple's emotionally anemic son. His life's pursuit is the careful and careless construction of a broken bridge: he is quite literally "the steam" between his mother's "heat" and his father's "cold". In seeking to navigate the storms of their marriage, and the internecine battles during and after the divorce, Tony shows like a pale, weak watercolor, soon to be devoured by the raging sea. He embodies absolute disregard because he disregards his own needs. His sexuality is at best a limp worm, burrowing sightlessly; cavalierly destroying the link with the one spark of passion in his world - Ugalde's lovely, leather-clad wastrel character - in a meaningless tumble with Dancy's polished gallant.

The detachment becomes the subsuming force as the film crests, and follows the descending helix of the intensified but emotionally mute interwoven narratives. The father, Stephen Dillane as Brooks Baekeland, begins as a pompous drone, obviously aware that he is the lesser light. He basks in the accomplishments of his grandfather, eschewing his own father, and desperate to prove his mettle despite being an empty vessel. He is glacial, bristling and watery before the hauteur of his clever wife. He is born to money but she is heir apparent to the throne. And this chafes him to undying enmity towards her, planting seeds of bitterness which he will draw on to chasten her in his departure from formal family life. Even in such a state, his hatred is conducted in a sang-froid manner. Barbara reacts by retreating at first, reawakening her artistic impulses with Dancy's encouragement, and finally setting in place oedipal circumstances which can only lead to tragedy. As the decades crawl, her dress remains stylish and fashionable. Yet the clothing looses it warmth and elasticity as if reflecting the staleness encroaching on her life. She is calculating in public and neurotically needy in private. Tony shifts his energies toward his mother, writing unanswered missives to his father, and moving closer to a separation (a deterioration) between his emotional, mental and physical spheres. The culmination of his aloofness brings the film to conclusion and presages his final destructive acts.

In the midst of it all, one is not so much horrified as bewildered by the pluperfect disassociation of self and community which accompanies the happenings. There is an utter sense of removal which makes the lens appear to be telling a two-dimensional tale with three-dimensional cutouts. If detachment was the aim, it is achieved.

Development Wars: Misperceptions of Front-End Development

2008-07-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

I am convinced that something went awry in programming (or maybe in programmers) at the genesis of the World Wide Web. Prior to the meteoric rise of the Net, developers understood with abundant clarity creating applications required software engineering principles be applied from the server through the client fully. But with the advent of the Web, the front-end became relegated to the domain of template-makers and snippets of code not organized in any specific methodology. It was a reduction which did not concentrate flavor, as in cooking, but compounded egregious loose habits, rendering front-end efforts a thin soup of muddled HTML, CSS and Javscript .

Proper separation of presentation and core business logic is a necessity for good software development. We all worship at the temple of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. However, there are nuances to the MVC faith. In the early years, one faction found favor and was embraced unstintingly - the Controller was wholly the purview of the server-side, and the View essentially became a slave, a thin client without any cognizance or idiomatic expression. Indeed, the state of affairs became so dire the back-end generated HTML and spat it back to the View for display. Here, the pattern was obviously blurred. Why should the back-end care about display? The Model exists to preserve state, and sufficient decoupling from appearance allows the Model to serve as a engine for many Views of the same data to be displayed contextually as per user/role requirement.

Besides, on the presentation side, logical flows which enhance user experience required some mechanism to enact a microcosmic MVC expression. Enter the XMLHTTP Request Object. The ability to make requests to the server without reloading all the scripts running in a page opened a host of potentialities and catapulted the front-end into the arena as a possible contender to share the Controller with the back-end. Further, these interactions on the front-end made it absolutely essential that there be an overall coding strategy adopted.

Javascript up to this point had been widely used to compose scriptlets dealing with form validation and some level of event handling; but its capability far outstripped these utilizations. Due to its open nature and flexibility, it is a powerful tool which can see the realization of true object-oriented code for extensibility. This necessitates creating wrappers and idioms for things like classes, object instantiation, inheritance, polymorphism and encapsulation. Quintessentially, behaviors native to Java and C++ can be simulated by nurturing the construction of a framework to guide and gird developers from unsafe practices with Javascript.

The greatest challenge has been that whatever virus the back-end developers caught at the beginning precludes them from grasping that exactly what they construct on the server-side is infinitely possible on the client-side. Design patterns are solutions no matter which code they reside in and can be emulated without regard to programming language. Scripting languages should not be regarded dismissively because they are interpreted. Java, usually the principle argot to the back-end, is both compiled (to an intermediate format) and interpreted. So if one casts stones then one must be careful to not crack the house of glass in which one resides.

Journaling: Racism alive and thriving in San Francisco

2008-07-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

It was set to be a regular evening out in the City with friends, commonplace yet a bit exotic as it was happening mid-week. Dinner at the Salt House was pleasant, if a bit hurried as we had tickets for a show. The four of us, three African-Americans and one African, alighted on the threshold of the New Conservatory Theater, and descended into the basement to be regaled by the fresh tragicomic play Men In Uniform. From the moment we walked in it was obvious that we were a bit of an oddity: the audience was overwhelmingly of the Caucasian persuasion. This, too, is commonplace in San Francisco and we really did not pay much attention, even as stares were passed like a collection plate through the small assembly. The show got underway and we laughed and balled uproariously. One of the principal players was coincidentally African-American which is of no special note except for what occurred afterward. As we emptied out of the theater, we ran into a friend from the East Bay, exchanged greetings, and two of us proceeded to the restroom. When I returned, one of our crew related an interesting interaction. Apparently, one of the two ladies who had sat above us during the performance approached them and inquired if they were waiting "to give their friend a hard time." Receiving blank stares, she continued and made it clear that they thought we were friends of the Black cast-member and were lingering to josh him. Let me state that I don't think this woman meant to be offensive; but the assumption that we had only been present due to what seemed to them an obvious prerequisite speaks to how prevalent the persistence of racial stereotypes remain. If this is happening in San Francisco, the soi-disant bastion of left wing politics, imagine what spooks exist in the hinterlands of America. This also seems to be to one of the most pernicious forms of racism. The white-hatted KKK are obvious and unsubtle in their hatred. The insidious nature of racism unbeknownst to itself, where someone is not even aware that they have this issue can easily garner a perch in institutions where the individual is authorized to hire, fire and dispense compensation.

It is never the evils which are most evident that hold the greatest threat: the silent serpent which slithers in a benighted haze, striking without knowledge, is far more destructive.

A Man with the Music of All Seasons - J.M. Coetzee

2008-07-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

There is music in writing. The greatest of writers capture it, wrestle and shape the form, and transmit it undiminished to our ears, bearing the full symphony of emotion which may be evoked.

Two seminal American novelist come immediately to mind; the blues, jazz-infused and soulful surging of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison sings throughout their work, shifting and weaving within the unfolding stories and the lives of the characters who are the denizens of those worlds, which are all microcosms of our own. The sad refrains, the joyous abandon, the temerity and the trepidation cantillate on in the voice of others: the canorous oeuvres of Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, Achmat Dangor and Vikram Seth ply us with universal compositional mastery which partakes of the particular but never relinquishes the catholic quality of human understanding and expression.

And then one happens on the deft mandarins of the art. These wizards of air, water, earth and fire direct with subtle flourishes so delicate that they nearly escape the unrefined ear suffused with the cacophony of the witless and the unoriginal. One almost must strain to hear the dulcet tones they produce with rudimentary instruments, like wisps of the sea's orchestra emanating from shells which only hint at its power and majesty.

J.M. Coetzee is of this order of high mages. His work is lyrical from the initial, inculcating paragraph to the final trilling sigh of the remaining period. No matter the subject it rings of a classical gamelan, bridging the remnants of Western, African and Oriental cultures; banding together the disparate elements into a mettlesome chorus alternating between the susurrations of solitary reflection to the roaring onslaught of common brotherhood to the despondency of people blinded by personal rosaries they chant to themselves.

His novel Disgrace is so melodious that it is Shakespearean in lilt, gentle but persistent, compact but emotionally exhaustive. Its sheer capacity for reflection and similitude of an act performed by its protagonist with the correlation of equivalent acts of others from which this protagonist suffers, reaffirms that station in life is meaningless in the heady halls of human experience.

Timeliness, or rather timelessness, flows from his art. In Waiting for the Barbarians, an early novel, Coetzee creates a tale of separation, distinction and counterdistinction. The necessary "other" which makes conquest a singular course with a singular mindset is shown to be simply the living fear of man, and the internal conflict of the magistrate pro-an-tagonist is the central harmony which flares to an ascending crescendo and reverberates throughout. The problem of offensive defense, like our topical, disastrous Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, is dealt with handily, and the beguiling euphonic harmony of his invocation is not lost even amidst the despair and misery empires bring to themselves with selfish expansion.

Why Americans are "hopeful" about Obama, Part II

2008-07-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

When the picture we have painted begins to show age, wear and signs of decrepitude, one of the likeliest trains of action is to create a new mural; and hope that the finest oils marketed may preclude deterioration in a nascent picturescape after we hang up our brushes. Unfortunately, frequently this "new" work is inscribed over the pre-existing one. Thus, subject to the flaws of the canvas: the small, not immediately perceptible, rents in structure and form. Reuse without reconstruction in foundational cases serves merely as extension with the appearance of differing modus operandi.

So if we draw ourselves to truth in the upcoming elections, the embracing of the wunderkind Obama is one such gambit. We are dismayed by the face we present to the world and to ourselves in all the current crises. We want to redraw the landscape, ritually cleansing the stains of dishonor and blood, renewing the commonweal; but our effort is made in the same frame, unchanged, from which the pain of the past arises. We are restructuring without restructuring. Ours is an age which nears the apex of the diametrical opposition between the written promise of its founding as a nation and the reality and veracity of how we have behaved historically and exercised our will. In a furor of this magnitude, what better champion than one who embodies simultaneously the fruitless antecedent legacy of disenfranchisement and the fruitful pregnant hope of sanitized race reconciliation.

Figureheads make fine statues; but they are metaphoric cyphers, representing without the capability of action. If we are aiming for change, the system must be dismantled completely. Only then can we begin the work which we crave that will be in alignment with the picture of ourselves as we are. The temple of our body is rotten, and must be razed. Like the phoenix, our death in fire can be our renewal in spirit.

One thing is certain: emblems, even those emblazoned in gold, tarnish with time and are subject to all the ravages of natural progression. Better it would be to leave off with representations and plainly be what we are and transform as we choose.

Living Versus Existence

2008-06-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

I am the faceless man,
specter of countless lives,
keeper of that which
we choose not to see,
holder of memes passed
but not communicated,
lifeblood in the heart
of Memory's vascular cells,
plasma awash with vitality
of what has been, what is

I am the vagueness of twilight,
phantom light of day's cresting
and night's toiling labored afterbirth,
discarded over and again, reborn
in the exhalation of despair and desire,
in the recall before the recoil

I am the nameless pattern,
the winnowing spiral on which
one may rise precipitously
or fall precariously
fixed throughout with probability
but bowing reverentially to choice

Why Americans are "hopeful" about Obama, Part I

2008-06-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

We speak often of our national obsessions, and in the tallying of these we just as often lie to ourselves regarding the root causes. The provenance of this almost manic desperation toward hope, as a most apt current exemplar of this inclination, rarely (if ever) is given vent. The truth of the matter is that because of the retrenchment of civil, social and economic rights (indeed human rights in toto) under the Bush administration Americans have been eddying at a rapid swirl into the mire of hopelessness. Now this is held up as a banner for causality without acknowledging that it is merely the symptomatic denouement of the real cause: our collective irresponsibility in ceding the wielding of OUR power to leaders so that we can bemoan the fact, in apparent contradiction, that we are powerless to change what is done to us and done abroad under the auspices of this country. In a statement, we are hopeless because we have chosen to engage hopelessness in all aspects of our existence; and from this frenzy springs the unfettered end-run around despair towards the illusory smoke of hope. The consequences of our own irresponsibility are not some exogenous visitation from hostile forces beyond our ken. They are in every nuance the direct result of a dis-ease within the body politic, the body economic, the body social and all other forms of our manifestation as a nation. Bush is not the problem but a byproduct of the chemical reaction of our careless lab work; and just as no man is wholly the Devil incarnate, neither can one man be the angelic personification of peaceful and prosperous harmony in a society composed of a multiplicity. The leaders we have vested energy in are but a mirror reflection of where we are as a culture, and the window of our own soul is bared and waiting for us to recall the truth of what we hold; or in the absence of recognition and a choice to shift to a different experience, we will continue to be witnesses to what we have allowed and very witting participants in the manufacturing of our on-going hopeful/hopeless assembly line.

On the cusp of Pride, in the wake of our right to marry: a haiku

2008-06-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

Love's Labour

I have held him nights

While love laboured in my arms

Waiting to heal Life