Savoring my birthday

Every birthday seems to have its own special flavor. When I was 16, the flavor was coconut rum by a campfire in Pender Harbour. At 19 it was roasted chicken and mash potatoes in Boston after a performance by the Blue Man Group. When I was 21 it was my first taste of homemade tagliatelle at a tiny Italian restaurant in Quetzaltenago, Guatemala. Upon turning 24 it was the taste of potluck on West 7th ave in Vancouver (mixed with the laughter of being on the receiving end of the infamous "Cat Song Prank"). At 25 it was cold zarasoba (buckwheat noodles) with tamari and green onions from the corner store in Tokyo. When I turned 27 it was the cold Blanche de Chambly on tap and world cup soccer in Montreal. At 29 it was the taste of brunch lovingly made by my friends and my roommate Ali. At 30 there was blueberry cheesecake, and a month long hunt for the 30 things a girl needs in life, ending up in the Yukon eating caribou and drinking Yukon Gold. At 32 the taste is definitively smokey, strong, blackened, grilled, slow-cooked, sizzling... mmmmm... three little letters to describe the year ahead? BBQ. You're invited.

Thanks to all the awesome people who chipped in for this amazing gift! And to those who provided the wheels, the thoughtfulness behind the gift, and the eagerness to go shopping at the butchers. xoxoxo

Progress

A math museum is a funny place to find yourself on a sunny day, but in Bonn the decision to spend your afternoon in the presence of adding machines has a special logic. Bonn is the museum capital of Germany, which itself has the reputation for knowing how to organize and order things, and the museums and galleries I’ve been to in Germany do a fantastic job of curating and exhibiting almost anything you can imagine.

Starting on the 4th floor of an architecturally outstanding building, I found myself diving into the history of Mesopotamian clay tablets, jade Chinese abaci, and wooden Japanese soroban. Using any one of these early rendering devices required more skill than I had first thought, but I wanted to prove to myself that I am not a product of convenient technology and could, if asked to, calculate without a calculator. By the time I reached the 3rd floor (the exhibit descends) I was fascinated by what I imagined was my new favourite combination of things- adding machines and geometric art from the 1930’s. I could see myself dazzling friends at dinner with my knowledge of how the ‘ten’s carry’ came about in the 17th Century, how the growth in interest in adding machine technology reached a fevered pitch in the 1920s in North America just before the stock market crash and how Italians were the masters of creating flow in geometric form by using the right array of colour.

An hour later I found myself on the first floor, punching numbers into a 20th century adding machine and marveling how, with only 5 minutes of instructions, I could easily multiply 43 by 1145. Then it hit me- I hadn’t seen a device between ancient Mesopotamia and New York in the 1920s that allowed me to do more than basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In the 800 years of tinkering with math machines, the innovations hadn’t really changed how much I had to use my brain- I still had to understand math. But in the last 80 years math machines went electric, found silicon, became early computers, and then the complex internal logic of the thing I’m typing on now. The Philosopher/Mathmaticians Alfred North Whitehead once said, “Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas” and as I googled that quote on my smart phone in the exhibit on early computers, I marveled that the evolution from abacus to computer had been such a dull trajectory for so long, only to become the catharsis for our modern age.

Coming and going

I arrived back in Bonn in shirt sleeves and panting from the weight of missed hours and the burden of bad packing. 6 weeks of travel brought me full circle around the world and a halfway again- only to be yanked back towards the dullness of a deciduous forest in winter and a swollen, menacing river. The waterfront of the Rhine was a series of lampposts jutting out of the murky brown, marking the garrisoned lines that the river had marched effortlessly past. The cradle built to carry the river to the sea was broken. The violence of this act was itself submerged beneath the gentle lapping of the river’s knife-edge on sodden grass and the backs of park benches. I wanted the river to win more ground just to see how the built landscape of the city would react. But just a silent as it came; the flood receded back into its bed like a shadow shirking the light of the sun.

Bonn is boring today

I know I've been crap at posting things lately and I'm still not really writing anything now. I got my wallet stolen yesterday and I'm bummed out. But to keep the faithful interested, here are a few things I found on the internet. enjoy!

Art of Luke Cheuh, especially this one

Bizarre and wonderful Les Rita Mitsouko

eschew the predictable pumpkin jack-o-lantern

Hokusai in plastic- an poignant statement on the state of the oceans (click through the slide show). The same amount of plastic it took to create this piece is dumped into the ocean every hour.

never forget the periodic table of elements

Drunk History

Lady Gaga in plaid shorts and a polo shirt

and if by now you are still clicking through these links: superpoop

I've been playing with some of my images from past trips to Haida Gwaii, Yukon, Japan, and other places, creating whimsical re-rememberings of places that are near to my heart.

a bike ride

I ride my bike along the Rhine to work everyday. The route is like the sea wall except instead of an ocean there is a big, fast flowing river snaking along beside you. The path is leafy green and flat. The river boats fight the current upstream with bellies lying low to the water and heavy with commodity. The Rhine is a thoroughfare for boats and bikers, who can both enjoy about 650km of navigation in and along its watery path from Switzerland to Rotterdam's maze at the mouth of the Rhine and the edge of the North Sea.

I bike against the current in the morning, feeling that endless and massive flow of water working against me, trying to turn me around and take me with it. All that water, every second, every curl and eddy, is constantly leaving that river. Nothing that defines the river is ever contained in it for very long. Every answer a river whispers to you is a question contained in narrow parentheses, scarring the landscape with meandering meanings that slack and slick and disappear. This is different than living on the edge of the Pacific, which will out outlive us all by countless millennia, perched between our knowing and the unreachable horizon, pooling energy into a wordless om.

In the evening I flow with the river, handsfree on my bike and something really good on my ipod. Rain or shine the joggers jog, the river rolls us all along back into downtown Bonn and tips me out near the bridge, back into the limits of blocks and buildings and grocery stores already packing in their wares for the evening. I weave through town on streets seemingly too narrow to hold the traffic they contain. At the central station I duck under train tracks that rattle with the expresses and regionals clanking progress towards tightly timed stops. When I emerge from the underpass the path is a long expanse of green hemmed in with apartment blocks elegantly attired in chiseled garlands and stony cherubs. This is the Poppelsdorfer: a line of green grass stretching from the university to the east all the way to the buttery yellow western palace. Halfway along this long narrow park Baumschulallee cuts through with a sudden expanse of tired pavement. Just off this corner is my apartment building. I can see the entry way where I imagine I will shortly park my bike and climb the flights of stairs to my house. But I have been stuck between the fleeting freedom of this new river and my desire for the heavy permanence of the Pacific all day and I'm having a hard time figuring out where home is. So I keep riding around, letting my bike ride stretch further and further into the evening until I am back beside the Rhine watching it slide past me in dark slicks of curled water.

Loving the infographics...