Spines Realigned

You know how when you were little your stuffed animals used to wait until you'd leave for school to hop down from the shelf and lumber around the room, chatting it up?

For some reason I think of that when I see what this artist does with books. She clusters them into groups, and they quickly make friends, and before they know it they're finishing each others' sentences.

As far as I'm concerned, the coolest thing about this project is that it taps into an issue of great importance for bibliophiles, namely how do books feel about being stacked together, spine to spine. Do they prefer to hang with their own kind, or do they like diversity? Case in point: Overhead, Kate Chopin is rubbing shoulders with Oliver Sacks. Now that should be interesting.

Victor, who told me about the book project, notes that the artist has done other fascinating things, including recording the messages delivered in Morse code from popping popcorn!

Mmm... art.

Philly tofu steak

So what that I've drastically reduced my meat consumption and I now know more about preparing tofu than any mortal really should. That hasn't changed the fact that I still harbor a faint skepticism of the culture that surrounds vegetarianism. It hints at a certain fussiness--a wish to call attention to oneself for the things one doesn't do, instead of all the exciting things one gleefully undertakes. Another part of me knows that's just snobby crap and has happily exploited the carne deficit in my life to become really good at preparing delectable vegetable dishes (Want to know the secret? It's roasting pretty much everything).

Well, dinner at a vegan restaurant in Philadelphia last weekend pretty much put to rest my ambivalence about meatless eating. Horizons has the trappings you'd expect of a vegan place, including the funky decor. But the food was-- phenomenal.

To start, we ordered flaky empanadas filled with hearts of palm & truffle cream, and a fragrant edamame hummus paired with black sesame crackers. For the entrees, we tried grilled tofu with ginger lime butter, hearts of palm paella, and portabella kebabs. A sassy salt-rimmed margaritini with agave, lime and a little wheel of jalopeno was the perfect liquid accompaniment. It was all so scrumptious I briefly thought about moving to Philly. The money we save in rent could go straight to Horizons.

I've concluded that cooking minus meat can, in the right hands, be a little like writing formal poetry. Constraints that at first seem frustrating can actually lead to wonderful, unexpected results, e.g. edamame hummus.

----

Okay, I've just about had it with winter. With all the hard snow and ice on the ground, the bus ride to campus today was slow, and all the passengers in big puffy jackets jostled around like irritable planets tossed out of orbit. What I need right now is summer, and if that's not possible, then a poem about summer tomatoes. This one by Neruda praises the the simple romance of cooking supper as the guests arrive.

From "Ode to Tomatoes"

we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!

Why We have Round Heads

So my latest quest (no, not for the perfect habanero sauce with which to pulverize my tastebuds; that one's ongoing) is to trace the 19th century literature I'm reading to possible source material in much earlier periods. That was the the idea behind my decision to sign up for Early Modern (otherwise known as "Renaissance") Bodies this semester. I feel kind of like an academic tourist in the class, but the material is proving fascinating. I find I can follow it just fine so long as I remember to shelve my modern prejudices, such as my tendency to assume that medicine is a secular discipline. Not so in ye olde days. Respected Medieval anatomy handbooks attributed, say, man's upright stature to his need to be close to the Heavens. Ideas that we assume were meant as metaphors simply weren't.

Since you've no doubt been lately thinking to yourself, "Self, why don't I devote more of my time to reading 17th century anatomy guides?" why not rememdy the situation by checking out this snippet from Helkiah Crooke's 1615 handbook, Microcosmographia. Or a Description of the Body of Man. In this passage Helkiah investigates the many ways that mankind is different from the brutes. One key factor, oddly enough, is the shape of the noggin:

Of all living Creatures, only Man hath a head made into a round and circular forme, as it were turned on a wheele, both that it might be capable to receive a greater quantitie of Braines and less apt to be overtaken with danger either from without or within; as also, for the more ease in mooving and turning about; and lastly, because it was to be the Mansion-house of Reason, that is, the Soule. Now we know, that the Soule was Infused into us from Heaven, which even to our sense is round and circular: Seeing then her heavenly habitation is round before she is infused, it was likewise requisite that her Mansion here below should be orbicular also.


A guy with braines