Ode to Joy

Look, Jacob

-- Impression of Carpinteria






In the morning,
hidden amongst tall grass,
a trainless railroad sleeps by the bean field.
Farmers aren’t here yet,
but the field already awoke.
A mole sits quietly,
facing the sea.

The sea is as pale as an eye,
and it gets bluer as noon comes by,
blue and lucid
like some free-flowing blood.
Kelps arise in the sweetly fishy breeze,
under the distant islands
-- the long hair of mermaids fondles
airy paddleboards.

What are the red-beaked sandpipers in a tide
looking for, so hurriedly?
Half withered
stood a Eucalyptus by the Brewery.

And the sun’s about to set
by the edge of the ocean.
And the beach wetted by the waves turns gold,
all of a sudden;
And all the little birds are walking
on a warm mirror
when a fisherman yells out:
“Look, Jacob!”

Crepes Chez Kowawa

recipe for "Crepes Chez Kowawa" (my dessert crepes recipe)

1.25 cup flour
1 egg
2.0 cup milk
1 oz melted butter
2 pinches salt

optional but recommended:
3 tblspoons sugar
2 splashes of coconut rum

Put dry ingredients in a large bowl, mix 'em up. Add the egg and butter, and with a wooden spoon incorporate all the flour. If you need to, add little splashes of the milk. Once flour is incorporated, with a whisk beat vigorously, adding slowly remainder of the milk, and the rum. Let the mixture sit for 1 hour in the fridge before preparing the crepes using a crepe pan. Can double the recipe if desired and save extra batter in fridge for 1-2 days. Beat well again prior to cooking.

Dr. Kowawa's Crepe Suzette recipe

Prepare crepe batter as per above. Will also need:

1 Orange
4 tablespoons sugar
2 oz butter
2 splashes of Cointreau

Zest Orange and press for juice. Simmer for 5 minutes with all the above ingredients. Done while preparing each of 4 crepes: place crepe in simmering mixture and fold it into 4. Repeat for all crepes as they come off the crepe pan. Once done may make a Flambee by pouring ~1 tblspoon lighted Cointreau on each crepe.

Foxen Canyon Wine Trail with Modo

Stand up Paddle Boarding

Since March we have been exploring a new wonderful sport, Stand up Paddle Boarding. After several months of rental membership from Paddle Sports of Santa Barbara (a really great place!), we fell in love with the sport. Stand up is like traditional surfing except that the boards are longer, often in the 10-12 foot range, and you use a paddle to propel yourself forward. On a stand up paddle board you can paddle around the ocean, soaking up the amazing views, or you can use the paddle to help catch a good wave ( We got the best barrels ever dude!). From our boards we have excellent views of the Santa Barbara coastline, Channel Islands, and Santa Ynez mountain range, and have seen seals, dolphins, pelicans, huge jellyfish, and many other marine wonders. The sport is an excellent core workout as well as being a relaxing activity. We decided on the following gear, which we got from the super friendly folks at SUP Sports:

Sweewawa's board is a Focus Hawaii 10'0"" Classic. This is a stunning board with a gorgeous bamboo veneer finish on both sides. The trim is purple which matches her Oneill wetsuit. We both got bamboo-finished Quickblade Kanaha Carbon Fiber Paddles, which are light, strong, and paddle fast.



I decided on a original board from SUP Sports, called the One World 11'1". This beautifully designed board has dual-side Australian pine veneer, and a sleek sky blue trim. It is fast for distance paddling but still has good maneuverability, even at over 11 feet in length. This board is so much fun.



Below are some early photos of us just learning to use the boards, off the Carpinteria, CA coastline near our home:

Lab Report on Absinthe

All of a sudden, a silver spoon
reminded the green eye
of Paris.
When the wind lit the red candle,
up woke the night.

And Rimbaud gave a smile.
The instant my tongue was knotted,
the instant my throat caught fire,
the instant my breast was shredded,
the instant my flesh began to fester,
he gave a long quiet sigh, lifted a childlike brow,
and whistled at the Big Dipper.

The golden ear of Von Gogh,
the cold tulips of Wilde and the
vast woe Degas built
by a couple wooden tables –
these I have seen none.

But I always remember the chicken droppings
by the little fence,
the radio from the bedroom
sounded like lichen.
The wind grew white as
mother’s broom swept across the spring,
and the world stole away
during my nap.
When awake,
a wall amused me more
with its wavy ruggedness than a book.
There clearly was one year when
sounds, colors and words all whirled like dewdrops
on a sunlit gossamer.

I always dream about the lean eucalyptus on the shore,
a gray-eyed boy from the Middle Ages.
Locks of wormwood color
fondles his brow long paled by prescribed bleedings –
He struggles for life in the ocean mist,
beautiful as a yawn.

And how I wish when women express sympathy,
or when men show a sense of humor,
their teeth would fall off
one by one,
like mud drops in a rain,
so the emptiness in their mouths would finally match
the emptiness in their hearts.

-- But these images I have seen none.

As corruption would lend me no talent,
all I’m left with are:
a pale moon
a shrill fountain
a cold cat
and a silent lover.
The wind blew out the candle,
the night stayed awake.

They say that literary Romance, like all Romance
is but a wishful buzz, life
a hangover morning –
Such is the lab report on Absinthe.

Foxen Canyon Wine Trail

Thoughts on Idividualism -- A movie review for NAPOLA (Before the Fall)

“Oliver watched, observed, and was not surprised. From the very outset he had recognized the great inferiority of these men to the work which they were supposed to be accomplishing: but he had also recognized the inevitable force that swept them on… The current would have nothing to do with himself, who would have asked nothing better than to be carried away.”

More than a hundred years ago, Romain Rolland painted the portrait of a prevailing labor worker’s movement from the eyes of Oliver, a young French bourgeoisie. The uniqueness of the perspective had always touched me, given that the writer, Rolland, was strongly left-winged himself.

As powerful currents symbolizing collectivism sweep through the society, Oliver, a fair spirit of individualism, rests alone on the shore. Fates of others surge up or plunge down in front of his eyes – it is a sea of opportunity, an era of heroes. But he merely sits there, pained by his own perception, lost in his own thoughts. His hands, free of sand and mud, appear so clean.

And the clash between an observer and a participator, the outcast of individualism by society… these well explored literary themes once again constructed NAPOLA, a beautiful drama set in Hitler’s Germany. After all, Fascism was one of the strongest social currents that ever swept through modern history.

NAPOLA stood for National Political Institutes of Education. As a secondary boarding school, the organization sought to provide a new generation for the political, military and administrative leadership in the Nazi state. As a matter of fact, it was Hitler himself who came up with the idea of selecting young elites solely by talents, regardless of their social economical background, from which schools like Eton College derived so much pride. This passionate practice of social justice, alongside with numerous other National Socialism policies, won the Führer hearty support from the German youth.

Our two heroes in NAPOLA came from vastly different backgrounds: Friedrich, a factory worker’s son, was a promising youth with tough and realistic personality; Albrecht, the only child of an eminent Nazi Governor on the other hand, was everything but his father. Boyish innocence bonded them together, and together they strived to grow into Führer’s elites: it is a story about the beauty of youth, as well as the cruelty of growth.


I. Albrecht




This young boy carries a charming disharmony within himself, and it attracts the audience as a minor chord catches the ears, with all the richness and subtlety. His hair dark, his complexion pale, his features delicate, together with his introvert manners and eloquent eyes – such combination has made him as much of an outcast of the Arians as of the militants, yet he sat there in the chicly starched uniform of NAPOLA.

The essence of Totalitarianism, rather than genocide or war, lies in the assimilation of ego. Throughout history, Totalitarianism in all its forms had strived to put an end to the struggle between collectivism and individualism, as was tactfully mentioned in the welcoming speech of NAPOLA -- “Your body no longer belongs to yourself. It belongs to the nation, to the people, and above all, to the Führer.” When it comes to this invention, Nazi was far from being alone: an insightful picture of individuality in a Utopian society was offered by George Orwell in his 1984.

Unawares, Albrecht came across as a keen individualist. His love of writing betrays a strong ego, as writing is, above all, a hobby of self reflection; When Friedrich won the boxing match by knocking out the defenseless opponent on the rope, amidst a roomful of fanatic cheerers stood Albrecht, aloof and lost. His group won the match, he should have been happy. Besides, he knew the victim would have done the same if given a chance – you fight till K.O., that’s the NAPOLA rule. Yet he was still deeply disturbed. “Of course I’m happy for you,” said Albrecht to his best friend later on in the changing room, “I just wonder if there was an alternative way to win.”

During that scene, more than sympathy for a stranger, we get a deeper sense of the boy’s disregard to convention and devaluation of collective honor. His soul, like a pair of white sandals, rests on the shore of introspection, left alone by the panoramic current of a zealous world – to me, nothing else is more beautiful than that image, and nothing else further challenges the basis of tyranny.

I was deeply moved by the dialogue between Albrecht and Friedrich after the essay on German Sagas was read in front of the class.

F: Why did you have to write it?
A: I had no choice, just like you didn’t when you punched that trainer.
F: It’s different! You did not help anybody by doing so!
A: I did. I helped myself.

The ego of this shy and quiet child has long been bathing in fire, his struggles throbbing, his cries muffled. And yes, we are all animals of society; by no means have I intended to ignore the necessity of social compromising. But I could also see that a 16-year-old’s conscious, when tossed into the scorching flames of NAPOLA, would have to become either a Phoenix, or a handful of ash. There was not a third choice.

And it was the former that he chose. Thus on the wide screen we see Albrecht for the last time: shirtless and at ease in an icy pond, he looked even younger than his age.

Throughout the movie, until his death, Albrecht had always appeared well groomed in dazzling uniforms. I thought of the fact that uniform serves as an icon for social values, while one’s body and the soul inside only belongs to oneself.

As he went down, half-naked, unsullied, with his short hair loosely spread in water, the enigmatic dissonance that haunted the boy came to an end. It was only by suicide did he finally gain freedom, from a world of collective zeal.




II. Friedrich

The timeless aesthete that embodied Albrecht as well as his true ancestors, Goethe, Heine and LudwigⅡ, had to be deeply rooted in daily life, or else appears stagnant and hollow. Friedrich’s character served this purpose well. This young man looked, acted, even smelt like his time.

In the beginning of the story, Friedrich’s father had prohibited him from joining NAPOLA saying “those are different people from you and me”. He only woke up the next morning to find a note left by the son:

… Dear father, I falsified your signature. If you retrieve me from the school, I’ll announce what you have been saying about it.

Maybe my parents’ generation in China would find some resonance in this detail? Indeed it’s hard to overlook the interesting facts shared by various totalitarian governments throughout history: The rise of totalitarianism often benefits from the roiling of current social-economic hierarchy. It inflames rebellion from the young against the elderly, expedites promotion of the subordinates over the seniors. This social turmoil under the name of an idealistic revolution, having seeped into the personal aspects of life, specializes in demolishing family structures.

Here stood our young Arian hero: tall and blonde, fair and strong, he fit well into the ordinary definition of handsomeness. He was compassionate, honest, tough, and, most importantly, blessed with a lack of introspection.

Friedrich dwelled in a world without mirrors. The ice that claimed Albrecht’s life allowed him, for the first time, to greet his own soul. And one glance was enough to convert him for good, from a participator to a beholder.

Once the youth refused to participate in the game, he was out. I found it a cruel irony that Friedrich, having dismissed his own parents, having witnessed everything in NAPOLA, including the death of Cadet Gladen yet still choosing to compromise to the Führer’s doctrines, was finally abandoned by NAPOLA in such a disgrace. The very officer who announced “men make history, we make men” would not even spare him a pair of underwear on the way out, because, “your underwear belongs to NAPOLA as well”.




I was reminded of Riefanstel’s Olympia, a world famous documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic. The camera seamlessly joined a long shot of ancient Greek statues into a scene of a naked, handsome German youth throwing disc, skillfully weaving Arian beauty into the Olympic spirits. The grand statement of Nazi aesthetics Riefanstel made proved irresistible to the art loving audience, winning her the Golden Lion in the 1938 Venice Film Festival. Even to this day, Nazi aesthetics with its idealization of human forms and ritual worship still appeals to our eyes.

But a beautiful body does not just accept worshiping; it also invites the harshest humiliation. Milan Kundera in his Unbearable Lightness of Being described a broken down mother who would not allow her daughter Teresa to lock the bathroom door when taking a shower, “for she insisted her daughter remain with her in a world of immodesty, where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible.”

The elitist officer who ordered Friedrich to march out naked, how he resembles Teresa’s mother – at a time without individuality, to deprive one of his uniform is to deprive him of his entire values and esteem. The youthful and beautiful body underneath the uniform means nothing by itself: the world is a vast concentration camp with bodies one like the next.

Nazis doctrines inevitably led to the complete obliteration of privacy, which defied the essence of Beauty, for beauty is a distinctive feature that belongs to individuals. As every single youth in every single Greek city had his own beauty, the ant-like Spartan could not be aesthetically judged without a personal identity.

Riefanstel should have seen that. During the latter years of Hitler’s reign, modern artists as Picasso and Van Gogh was banned, and the so called “Nazi aesthetics” had deteriorated fully into kitsch.

Naked, trembling with shame, Friedrich marched down a long, long hallway. It was only now did he understood why Albrecht had chosen to take his own life.

The surviving boy left the gates of NAPOLA in his ragged shirt brought from home. I thought I saw for the first time, true strength, as his lonely back figure faded into the vast outside world covered with snow.

Hartwell's Visit to California

The Young Rock Climber in Red

-- Song of Yosemite



’Twas a misty day and
the boy in red set out from underneath
a giant Sequoia crown.
Around his lean waist a coarse rope grasps,
the end
of which he cannot see, but along which can only –

ascend
high past the Fall
they call ‘Bridal Veil’. As in mid air he sensed
the watery fingers of the mist weaving
through pine tree tops
to reach her,
silently freeing her
of her wind-born vanity.

The Sequoia crowns have turned into dots,
drops of deep
green ink smudged the granite
cliff-edges defined by a stroke of glaciers
long, long gone.
Yet the boy is still in red.

He set out for a view of the shapeless clouds,
drifting through the world
just to rest on
Half Dome’s shoulder, they say,
where a dying sun sets her long burning glance
until it’s too weak.
And many a ghost of youth start weeping
on many a twilit creek.

Only mist ebbs and flows around
the boy in red.
Now he looks too small,
to either rise or fall.

Best of Yosemite Photos

The best photos from our May 2011 trip to Yosemite:

6th Anniversary

Had a wonderful full-day date to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. Started off the day with a delicious breakfast at our favorite local family-run Carpinteria restaurant, Esau's. The interior of this place is all surfing theme. There are several surfboards hanging in the dining area, and many paintings and photos of surfing, and continuous video footage of surfing legends. The food was delicious. I had a "gnarly burrito" and Sweewawa had a smoked salmon omelette.

Then headed off for Stand Up Paddle Boarding near the Santa Barbara Harbor, a first for us! We fell a bunch (me a lot more than Sweewawa) but the wetsuits were warm and it was a blast. Started to get the hang of it pretty quickly. SUP is decidely even more fun than ocean kayaking. First of all, the challenge of keeping your balance is quite invigorating, and once you get good enough at it the feeling of standing and paddling along the gently moving waves is quite relaxing. You really get a great view doing SUP. The picture below is right where we were paddling -- absolutely gorgeous stretch of coastline right near the Santa Barbara harbor. Definitely excited to make this be one of our regular sports.



After working up a mean appetite, headed to Cold Spring Tavern, a unique establishment I have been wanting to try since even before we moved here a year ago. I thought this place would be perfect for our anniversary, and it was.

Cold Spring Tavern was built in the 1860's as a way station for stage coach travelers as they made their way across the San Marcos Pass. This now paved road is what we use to travel from Santa Barbara over the Santa Ynez mountains to get to Lake Cachuma and the Santa Ynez Valley wine country beyond. The buildings, decorations, and the surrounding nature really make you feel like you are experiencing an untouched piece of history. Dining here is the first time we had had this feeling since enjoying Honey Mead by candlelight at the Fleece Inn in Bretforton, UK (in the Cotswolds). As if this wasn't enough, the food was delicious. I had charbroiled new zealand rack of lamb with champagne - mint glaze -- nom nom nom nom. Bar-b-que baby back pork ribs, which was also excellent.



After our early dinner there was still plenty of natural light. We rode our "stagecoach" back over the San Marcos Pass and decided to take the scenic route past the Santa Barbara Mission. Took a romantic stroll along the Mission Rose Garden before heading home.



What a day!

Exercise!

Sweewawa and I have been working hard this spring to get in shape. Have been jogging by the ocean, watching the seals, dolphins, and sandpipers along the way. Also have been playing tennis at UCSB and at the end of our street in Carpinteria. Swimming at UCSB pool with the beautiful mountains in the background has also been a favorite. As well as hikes through the beautiful local terrain. So much fun outdoor stuff to do in the Santa Barbara area! To supplement these great activities and to work on the all-important core, I have decided to start doing the onehundredpushups and twohundredsitups challenges, starting this week. These are great, free, programs that look very cool. Links are below:

hundredpushups.com

twohundredsitups.com

Happy exercising!

Cheers,

Dr. Kowawa

Theenie

Theenie loves hanging out on her porch. She was struggling with hairballs for a while during the last couple of weeks (shedding off her winter coat) but she's all better now and likes the view from upstairs :)

Mosaic of Life

Tree


Heavenly bamboo stood by my door
wherever I move.
Sharp tiny leaves, spicate white flowers and the dangling red berries
are the flecks of her sun-burnt face.

I saw a peach tree the other day.
On the blackened cranky bones blooms such watery pink as
a teenage girl standing there
with rouge.

Yet the palm tree’s the last to go to sleep when
twilight comes.
With a hanging dead leaf, she touches herself repeatedly
in the ocean breeze.


Cat


If it weren’t for me
he’d be gazing at the hazy fire-flies under a
sharp crescent,
by a pond where grass grows high.
Now he’s sleeping on my lap, glancing at
my eyes.
I think of reincarnation, of its marvel and desolation.


Man


He doesn’t belong and was left
to meet her.
Life is lovely when she stops amidst a sentence
only to study his eyelashes.


Me


I open my night time window,
in flows the Gan River.
Your joke of scattering ashes there
remains in my heart.




* This poem was written after I went through Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The Gan River runs through my hometown, Nanchang.

Radiohead -- Weird Fishes

Tim Reynolds

Have recently been learning / transcribing the Tim Reynolds tune "You Are My Sanity", which is one of my favorite tunes of his. Found this youtube video of Tim playing the tune at Radio City Music hall in NYC as a guest of Dave Matthews. Beautiful!

Downtown Santa Barbara

Spent my vacation Friday afternoon wandering the streets of downtown Santa Barbara, and visited the old Courthouse which has the best view of the city.

A Kayak Trip from Santa Barbara Wharf

A Kayak Trip from Santa Barbara Wharf

Now it is February. Into the breezy arms of a Santa Barbara spring came the Rabbit Year of Lunar Calendar. Bobo visited us last weekend. Having checked out three kayaks from the wharf underneath Brophy Bros, a favorite restaurant, we set off for a tranquil afternoon in the open water.

The tiny red Scrambler kayak came with a long white paddle. On the way out of the familiar wharf where yachts and sailboats dock, we stumbled upon a harbor seal sunbathing on a pipeline, amongst tens of gray pelicans, white egrets and noisy gulls. From the way he raised his big dreamy eyes at me, I recognized him at once – it was here, the very same spot where we met last weekend.

Prevailing wind combs the ocean from North to South. We found ourselves drifting in a salty whiff, above the flickering light and shadows, under a transparent sky. For some reason, thoughts of riding on a vast green field in a carriage alone in a spring time, somewhere in Southern China kept on coming back to me – could it be because of the rhythmic ups and downs? Or maybe it’s the intricate smells of invisible life around?

I still remember that period of time in childhood, when I used to believe in flying blankets. Sitting on a woven bamboo matt by the window, quietly and piously I waited for it to take off – I never told anybody what it was on my mind, so many a summer night, my parents thought I was just watching TV with them. And although my matt never took off, I never got disappointed, not until my first plane trip.

It is sea kayaking that awoke the old dream of flying blanket in me.

Fleeting sunrays and monotonous waves join and split all around us, weaving a intriguingly soothing rhythm. A sea lion swam close; his dark little face emerged and took a silent glance from behind one of our kayaks. Mark paddled hard to catch up with him, only to find him disappearing without a trace. Then I thought of a Lord Li poem, The Fisherman:

Like a leaf the boat drifts,
on a breeze the oar rests;
the barely visible line,
through a puny hook it threads.

Flowers spread on the shore afar
wine joggles in the bottomless jar.
The path to freedom is hereby paved,
miles and miles on the endless waves.

The path to true freedom he never was on, with his entire life smothered in royal luxury and partisan anxiety, ordered to commit suicide as a wartime prisoner in the end. Yet it was the glimpse of a desperate yearning, a hunger for something fresh and free that touched me deeply when I first read the poem. After all who truly lives a life of freedom, from the gains, losses and compromises woven by the intricate nets of human relations? We let our thoughts wonder from time to time, like kayaks drifting on the vast and salty sea, inhaling freshness and trueness, venting the urge to be free.

Thus I looked up afar – Channel Islands have concealed themselves behind the foggy horizon, where it’s hard to tell distant clouds from the ocean, and the ocean from the sky.

Mark's Seafood Pasta

A delicious dish which is relatively inexpensive and simple to prepare. Bon appetit.

~1.5 lbs shelled shrimp (or a combination of shrimp and scallops)
1 cup chopped onions
3 cloves chopped garlic
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp chicken bouillon
2 tsp dried crushed basil
2/3 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 cans Italian style stewed tomatoes, partly drained
1 lb linguine
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
Parsley

Saute onions in 2 tablespoons of butter and olive oil until tender. Stir in wine, bouillon, basil, salt, pepper. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer 12-15 minutes until 2/3 of the liquid evaporates. Add seafood and simmer for 5 minutes or until tender (do not overcook). Stir in tomatoes and heat through. Toss with pasta, Parmesan cheese, and parsley.

Serves 4 generously. Goes well with Asparagus.

Google Art Project

Very cool . . . Google has opened the doors to the world's best art galleries online via Google Art Project!

Staycation / San Ysidro Canyon

Have really enjoyed being on vacation for a few days. The great thing about living in Santa Barbara is that if you do have some time off, there's less of a need to travel anywhere because you already live at a great vacation destination. The first day of vacation we rented some ocean kayaks from Santa Barbara Paddle Sports and paddled along the coast, starting at the Santa Barbara Harbor and paddling out seawards. Saw a seal and some pelicans up close, and got some beautiful views of the mountains, the city, and the open ocean. Yesterday played some tennis at UCSB, with the beautiful mountains again as a backdrop. Today as Sweewawa headed off for a day of teaching Physics and Math, I ventured out solo to explore another hiking trail -- picked the San Ysidro Canyon in the region of Montecito. This beautiful trail snakes along a creek and lush canyon, and ends up at a gorgeous 60-foot fall. Below find some photos from the excursion:



Cheers, Dr. Kowawa

Learning Chinese / What's in a Name?

Xiǎo Mǎ

I have recently re-started learning Chinese with Sweewawa, a little each weekend. Just yesterday learned enough to understand that my wife has been calling me the nickname "little horse" (xiǎo mǎ) among her family and friends for years . . . which was a little unsettling but not completely random -- as my american name "Mark" sounds kind of similar to "mǎ". This discovery piqued my interest in researching online about what else these syllables could translate into. Chinese is a fascinating language in that simple syllables can mean vastly different things depending on how you pronounce them. Also, even the same pronunciation can yield different words (as with many English words).

With sometimes subtle differences in tone and accent, "xiao" can translate into: little, young, laugh, military officer, miserable, Chinese mugwort, dawn, night, dwarf bamboo, pan pipes, heaven, sound of rain and wind, easy-going, bombastic, cheerful, elf, roar of a tiger, or long-legged spider.

And the simple two-letter syllable "ma" can translate into:

horse, morphine, mother, hemp, leprosy, headboard, toad, ant, grasshopper, dragonfly, (interrogative final particle), (exclamatory final particle), (pause)

Which got me thinking about the endless combinations. What does my Chinese name really mean? Let's see:

Cheerful leprosy
Miserable headboard
Dwarf bamboo ant
Elf morphine
Easy-going dragonfly
Young toad
Night hemp
Bombastic mother
Roar of a tiger!
Long-legged spider?
Sound of rain and wind . . .

And last but not least . . . Little horse

Chinese is quite the language! I look forward to learning more, and here's to hoping that this "xiǎo mǎ" doesn't make a "faux pas".

Below are some links to great resources I'm using. The first is a amazon link to the text I'm starting with, which is excellent:



I've found this to be an excellent online Chinese / pinyin dictionary:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

And of course Google translate:

http://translate.google.com/#

And finally a link to some flashcards I'm making:

http://www.flashcardexchange.com/mycards/view/1605019

Cheers, Dr. Kowawa

Drug Commercial / John Lajoie

Ellwood Butterfly Preserve

Butterfly

Cold keeps Eucalyptus awake

all night.

Silent giants crowded in their own shadows, waiting for

lazy morn to wake up, for her

fingers of sunrays warm and hum of breeze low

to put them at last to

sleep,

where clouds

form islands afar, ocean befogs

the mountain and leaves scatter into butterflies, all

in a gust of dream.

Yawn-borne dreams of Spring swirl as Carmen

once did. How

the edge of her skirt loud with

red and yellow sheds such

muted allure

no one awake knows.

So they swirl through many a past

life and life to come in me.

Streams of worlds bloom and fade at the

flutter of their wings.

Here's a movie I put together of the experience. Enjoy!



And a couple of more beautiful videos from youtubers with better video equipment than I have :) . . .

Journey on the Big Sur

Journey on the Big Sur

-- Sesameboat

This December has been wet. When the five day shower finally came to an end, a mini pond has formed around our house. Tomato plants lay blackened and drowned in the front garden; our cats spent their days crowded motionlessly in the half soaked bed, casting long gazes on the back yard walls, which seemed to be shedding colors in the rain. The whole Santa Barbara blurred up as a painting tarnishes in water. The sky grew leady, the ocean grew pale; the redness of the roof tiles, the greenness of the roadside shrubs, together with countless other hues slowly oozed into one another, making the town look even darker. It is only towards the end of the month when the weather finally started clearing up. Having been stuck at home all this time, a brief traveling seemed to us the best way to welcome the New Year.

And so we did. On the brink of the New Year, we hopped in our car and headed north along Highway 1. The trip took around five hours each way. Our destination was Carmel-by-the-Sea, a tiny town tucked between the rocky peaks and the wavy coastline of El Sur Grande – the Big Sur.

Elephant Seal Beach

One of the first attractions along this route was the Elephant Seal Beach near the town of San Simeon. Early spring to late summer is the breeding time for elephant seals. During this period, they are more likely to stay ashore nursing the babies than fishing in the sea, and we were just lucky enough to bump into the scene: hundreds of these huge sea mammals scatter on the soft sand. Male elephant seals looked rather like beach rocks with their dark wet skin and rotund bodies. The females, though, had quite a different appearance. Ivory-silver colored and much smaller in size, they looked like youngsters at a first glance. Watching them nap on the sand was quite funny – it reminded me of our cats, for they, too, slept with tummy facing upward and whiskers twitching in dreams.

The real elephant seal babies, wrinkled, black and helplessly cumbersome, snuggled up and cried to mom for milk from time to time. As I stood there watching the heart softening scene, I noticed a faint odor mixed in the salty sea breeze. It got stronger so it seemed, when we walked up along the shore.

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of a gull pecking the small body of an elephant seal. It was a dead baby, from starvation or illness we don’t know. There amidst the nursing moms and the gulping newborns, the dead baby seal itself was the feast of another species. The subtly repugnant smell probably came from the slow decay, as the weather was chilly here in San Simeon. I tried to locate the mom – just feet away all the seals were busy feeding or resting, nobody seemed any different.

In his masterpiece Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Paul Gauguin had made the everlasting quest on life and death by putting the newborn, the youth and the old woman, crying or brooding, excited or confused together on one scroll of heavy colored painting. I had a flashback of th

is piece, and couldn’t help feeling that even a genuinely talented artist like Gauguin came across pitiable when compared to Nature herself.

Nature paints the scroll of life and death every day with such beauty, cruelty and ease. Creatures such as seals don’t quest. Embodied with the rich vigor of life, they fit unawares in our world as Gauguin’s flat figures on his canvas.

Waterfall House

The road got curvier shortly after the Elephant Seal Beach. Hence we entered among the peaks of Santa Lucia Mountains. Mark and I started looking for a word that could rightly describe this territory -- “Stately” seemed too pretentious; “Magnificent” seemed too vague; “Lofty” failed to capture the masculinity, while saying they are merely “masculine” would have missed a very important point: these mountains were solemn and imposing: Cliff lines that plunge deep into the ocean were half veiled in a transparent mist, and valleys so shadowed by dark pine trees close in on the narrow highway at times, before abruptly retreating, revealing the vast open sea over the next turn. Santa Lucia Mountains did not come across as a hiking friendly place – not merely for safety concerns, but more because of a feeling – as if doing so is to intrude, to disturb, as if these mountains deserve more respect than that.

Even the reeds looked different. They were much tougher here than the ones growing on wet land or by ponds. Instead of bending and waving in the winds, these reeds thrust up towards the sky like disarrayed arrows and swords. They gave us a weird feeling of having stumbled upon a deserted battlefield – the blood once shed long darkened, the roar once resonated long faded, the cause once died for long forgotten, leaving behind only millions of arrows on the lonesome cliffs. Santa Lucia was, in that sense, a forlorn place. The occasional electric poles by the cliff side were the only thing that reminded us of modern inhabitation.

I’ve always wondered about those pioneers who, driven by the Homestead Acts, first ventured into this daunting wildness. What was it like to live on the cliff along the coastline, greeted by the Pacific Ocean every morning, threatened by rock slides every night? What was it like to set up ranches at a place without roads, without power, and over years hoping to prove to the state government that the land you lived on was “improved”? How many people succeeded, and how many failed?

Somewhere along the way stood a sign called Waterfall Vista, and it was here we decided to take our first stop for a walk. The trail ran parallel with a quiet creek, curving its way amidst the thick redwood forest. Then it led to a short tunnel that went underneath the highway we just drove on. At the end of the tunnel, all of a sudden, we found ourselves standing on the outside of a cliff, directly facing the ocean and the beach.

And what a beach.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, even to the eyes which had been accustomed to the grand scenes of Big Sur. Here the ocean adopted a crystal green hue, as emerald held in the sun. Huge surrounding rocks with leaning cypress and pines defined a small patch of silver sand, which gently dipped into the green water like a child’s palm. Right at one corner, an eighty feet waterfall flew down the cliff and smashed onto the beach, creating a mist that was joined, from time to time, by the foaming high tides.

The Waterfall Beach looked unworldly and delicate, as Eden looked in Paradise Lost. Right underneath the fall, I see Eve rinsing her long flowing hair, and naked Adam sunbathing by the rock at ease. If there were a place that made you forget all the mundane worries, it would be right here, on the Waterfall Beach. We stood there long at lost, on the trail that hangs on the cliff, looking down at the silver sand. The beach was inaccessible, as such an unworldly place should be.

The trail led to a platform with a couple wooden benches, and, oddly enough, the base of some piled-rock walls. The view here was splendid, with Waterfall Beach to its left, Santa Lucia valleys as its backyard, and the vast green Pacific at the doorstep. On a small peninsula now overtaken by wild cypress, I could see layers of pebbles that outlined what seemed once to be a huge garden.

Here indeed, once stood a mansion, owned by a former congressman and his wealthy wife, donated to the State of California upon his death -- for she had hoped to turn it into a museum of Indian relic -- and eventually torn down after her death.

Who is not to feel a bit empty, roaming on such a ruin? -- “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Carmel-by-the-Sea – a Nouveau Riche’s Bohemia

I have always been a fan of the Bohemian artists. Among them my favorite one is Modigliani, a young Italian painter who suffered from lung illnesses since childhood, thus forced away from his beloved sculpturing into oil painting. Throughout his life, Modigliani rarely ventured into landscape. His most famous pieces are mostly portraits.

It might have been a warm afternoon, more than ten years ago, in the huge and dusty library in Peking University. I sat there slowly flipping pages through Modigliani’s biography and portraits, greeted from time to time by necks long and thin, faces stretched and pale, eyes narrowed and yearning. The unique distortion bares resemblance to sculpturing, revealing, I thought, the painter’s own distorted yearning for the art of sculpturing.

That thought gave me a sharp sense of pain, for it reminded me of the lonely and odd life I was living. As a physics student, I never quite understood my own field, and never quite fit in scientists. What excites them always bores me deeply. For years I’ve yearned to be a writer, gulping down novels and poems at the expense of studying.

I didn’t belong to the aggressive group of overachievers of course, neither did I belong to the cool group of slackers – while they were busy partying, I was buried in the Humanity section of the library, working harder than a literature major – for nothing. Left in between the cracks of Arts and Science, I may have appeared weirder to my classmates than the distorted faces in Modigliani’s portraits.

Thus the word “Bohemian” found its way into a soft spot in my heart. I felt intimate to the concept – being a Bohemian is not about walking down a crowded street with wild hair and weird costume just so you’d appear avant-garde. Rather it’s about being different, ignored, and lonely.

Without that piercing loneliness, there wouldn’t be such a thing as Bohemian. Art is a most personal belief; it drives one into the abyss of individuality. Things that may appear crucial to others – acknowledgments, companionship and even the sense of social dignity all seem dispensable when, fortunately or unfortunately, the nymph of Art casts her gentle spell on you.

Bohemian as a trend is a ridicule to the word itself. It grew into the worst nightmare when the so-called Bohemian legacy was left among the wealthy – in a country untouched by aristocracy, where the short roots of wealth trace back to no other groups than businessmen and celebrities.

Carmel-by-the-Sea might once have been a paradise for artists with true talents; nevertheless it is a very different town now. It is one of the most expensive as well as ostentatious towns in U.S. – a Bohemia according to the nouveau riche.

Everything about Carmel was so quaint and classy: layers of gray wooden roofs dance in the arms of the redwood forest dense; numerous art galleries turned Ocean Avenue into an exquisite necklace. Along the seventeen-mile-drive lie the world’s most luxurious golf courses, while neighborhoods with dreamy backyards lead to the dog friendly beach.

Such appearance did remind me of a small European town, take Genoa for example – reclusive, subdued yet rich with history, it’s the kind of place where outcasts lead their own slow lifestyle. But then I thought of the vast golf course by the sea, and couldn’t help noticing that land here is ridiculously expensive, even to the California standard, driving hotel prices sky high and making a local store that doesn’t sell Jewels or Art impossible to afford its rent.

And that is not European at all, nor is it truly subdued and quiet. One of my favorite things in Genoa is to roam along the narrow alleys at night, watching doves resting on the long clothesline, and shirts and skirts waving in the soft lamplight. Deep down the alleys there often was a mixed smell of sweet climbing rose, salty fish net with a faint trace of cat pee. Those bumpy Genoa alleys connect cheap restaurants offering fresh pesto and porcini, tiny markets with local olive oil and salami before joining into Piazza de Ferrari, a grand square with more than a thousand years of history. Deep culture and vital tradition, rather than expensiveness backed up the charm of Genoa.

So, back to Carmel. How is a local artist supposed to afford living here, unless he or she has been tremendously successful already? The retired investment bankers love decorating their social life with well known artists, same way as Carmel ladies like to wear huge diamonds – in a Bohemian style that is.

Happy Birthday Sweewawa!

Celebrated Sweewawa's 28th birthday today with some home-prepared Surf & Turf. It turned out quite well. Below are some photos of the feast as well as links to the two recipes I used, which I would certainly recommend.







Filet Mignon with Rich Balsamic Glaze

Broiled Lobster Tails

New Word

Today I made up a new word. The word describes an acquaintance who is friendly but rather cold. This person is a "nicicle" :)

New Year's Eve at Big Sur

We had a wonderful trip up the Central Coast to Big Sur to celebrate New Year's Eve. Here's a short video I shot: