Hot Peppers

I am now beginning to get excited about my friend Ruihua coming back from China at the end of this week. She will have been gone over a month, and I've been house sitting, but now words we exchanged before she left may bear fruit if she brings back some pepper. Plus, I miss her; and she always is so happy after being with her parents and sister that I feel happy for her too... and sad I guess since tears come when one has to go to the airport. One more argument to fund research on transporters, I say.


But pepper! From Sichuan! Yes, yes, yesss! That is what I asked for when she wanted to know what she could bring back for me from China. Just simple pepper from her home town. And salt...yes I did ask for that too. She thought I was nuts. But the Chinese have been drilling for salt using very deep holes in the ground to bring up the saline water for a long time and Sichuan is supposed to have awesome salt. I guess it is just, um, dirty. That is supposed to be what the flavor comes from: impurities. Salt and pepper. I tried to make it easy because she was adamant she must bring some gift back for me. But I have worried; what if I have caused her to run around in a now-changed Sichuan that no longer has easily bought salt and pepper? What if the airport people or customs people make trouble about it?


If so, I have a fall back position. If she brings me some funky mushroom things or dried fishes or black bean spicy paste with stern looking woman's portrait on the label, or a book about Pandas I will reassure myself that I can get peppers from Melindas. Not Sichuan, sadly. But still, amazing stuff; the XXXXtra reserve and the chipolte are beyond belief good. And after all, central America was the source of the other hot peppers (not Sichuan) long long ago when trade was in effect via pre-Columbian boats between Mexico, et al and China, et al.

Avatar in 3D

Given the religious and mythological cosmologies I'm familiar with, especially native American, I have come away from my three viewings of Avatar pondering the impact this film might have - globally speaking. On the one hand, it is just a film: plastic layers coated with metallic patterns of digital information, dependent on a fragile combination of technologies that project a tale and a setting that, like the human characters it portrays - breathing canned air on an alien world, cannot survive outside the special confines of the theater. It can't even be viewed by most of our own worlds' population, which lacks access to, among other things more crucial, modern cinema. But then, they are not the ones trashing and shooting up the planet.

From those who are able to attend this film, what tangible, lasting effect will there be for planet Earth and the life it sustains? Will there be a halo effect perhaps, that tends towards illumination of the sacred within the lives we lead, or, like Frost's path that diverged in the woods, a shift in direction away from the unpromising path we, as humanity's elite members (pawns?) of techno-industrial-military culture, now tread? Will Avatar fly beyond the the reach of the devices and interests which tended its birth and incarnate where most needed, move freely in our world, and show the impact of its primal truth by virtue of a shift not only in the attitude and actions of individuals but of governments? A shift towards sanity (per Mo'at)?

"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road—the one "less traveled by"—offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth." Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

Let me explain, in case you have not seen this gorgeous film (And if not, please see it now rather than let me spill the beans), that it bears no simple category, no resemblance to any one "type" of story, cannot be anticipated even by viewing the trailers. Yes, it is a love story; yes, a science fiction tale; yes, comparable to, yet uncontained by, the mythic genre Joseph Campbell explored in,"Hero with a Thousand Faces"; and yes, an emotionally powerful political statement - at once reflecting other potent stories of literature and film, self referential of James Cameron's other films, and mimicking actual world history by using eerily familiar camera techniques, contextual clues and artifacts. Yet transcendence of categories, of what is material, mortal, trapped in any particular time or any particular location, ties Avatar's beginning to its end the way Ariadne's string led Theseus through the labyrinth. A focus on spirit carries the film beyond the ordinary, cheap, manipulative, cliche, and proscriptive consumerist (racist, ageist, misogynist...) agenda found in Hollywood films, even while reflecting them, as an authentic artistic choice. The astounding 3D experience - akin I must guess to that of viewing the first rock mural, first oil painting, or first moving picture - helps with this. But only, perhaps, if you believe; if you fully enter the film.

There are video games, t-shirts, action figures, and the like associated with this movie just as with the typical pap of big studios. The male lead (Jake) is a paraplegic by virtue of his service as a Marine; none of the reviews I have read have mentioned the basic fact that he happens to be a Marine (as in USMC) who takes his code of ethics as a Marine to heart and acts on it. This is in stark contrast to the other soldiers portrayed, reminiscent of the "Blackwater" mercenaries of Iraq, who are involved for not very good reasons. His ethics, his spirit, hold up regardless of material circumstances - even that of his inhabiting another material body than his original. 


Avatar holds up a magic mirror to many films, including Oliver Stone's, "Born on the Fourth of July". The unforgivably poor treatment of real life disabled vets is
clearly a part of the scathing indictment articulated by Cameron of the imperialist and corrupt system that honors Wall Street Executives more than members of the armed forces. Yet even this - what Cameron calls and I agree is patriotic symbolism - is subsumed by the larger message of the film, and does not distract. What seems at one level of consideration a use of what is iconic, of stock characters set in dualistic rigor mortis, of myth lacking diversity, and of the trivia, gadgetry, and unhelpful stereotypes, is upended not least by choosing a disabled person to portray the one who can articulate the message crucial for others to hear. He has attained insight by virtue of his disability experience - not only as a para and a bilingual-bicultural inhabitant of an alien body disabled by his human upbringing, but as his own twin who has no time for pity - this is part of what delivers a message beyond the confines of all cultural trappings, the story that escapes film to lodge in the heart, that we know immediately as essential truth. It is he who sees clearly, upon whom words that are chosen to manipulate and paint a false image have little effect. He is the outsider who can reconcile what seems beyond reconciliation; balance the forces by embodying the bits of light and dark within themselves, bridge the space age and neolithic races, the scientific and pagan, and is the only one in a position to appreciate the fact that over and above myth, legend, and "reality", all really is one. A vision he has whilst imbibing some sort of concoction of insects - in the script but edited out of the film, probably due to concerns of it being misunderstood as endorsing drug use - clues him in to how he
will do this.

The Na'vi, the native population with whom he eventually identifies, whom he is destined to help, have lost a key element of what it is they continue to practice culturally, spiritually, yet by rote, until Jake, seeing what they cannot with his fresh eyes, recovers it for them. And yet, there is an independent individual, a Na'vi named Neytiri, who sees that he sees, and who apparently has been seeking such vision on her own, and probably would have found it had he not arrived. Her sister had been shot by the invading force after she sabotaged a bulldozer involved in clear cutting. Neytiri seeks a separate path. She senses Jake's decency, honesty, and brave heart. All of his potential to perform his outsider role would be lost, except that she recognizes it. She saves him, not for the first time, and on orders from her mom, the shaman, who recognizes the meaning of what her daughter has seen, Neytiri trains him in the ways of the people. She "sees" him, as he "sees" her due to mutually shared qualities including a great heart; they are - in fact - both individuals and part of a whole.

The Na'vi look and move like cats, Neytiri rides a tigress, and so resembles the Hindu goddess Durga, one of many resemblances to be found in Avatar,

Of the word "avatar" itself: avatar |ˈavəˌtär| noun chiefly Hinduism,

* a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.

* an incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea : The Sanskrit noun avatāra is derived from the verbal root tṝ "to cross over", combined with the prefix ava "off , away , down".

* Computing a movable icon representing a person in cyberspace or virtual reality graphics.

ORIGIN from Sanskrit avatāra ‘descent,’ from ava ‘down’ + tar- ‘to cross.’

And Jake indeed does turn out to be an avatar - though I see this in the second sense, above, mainly, due to his manifesting the energy of the mother goddess, Ewya, who is the total of consciousness related to the entire planet and it's organisms. It is through his contact with Ewya, balance and peace are restored.
Or, is the film merely an example of the third sense above, a result of computing, only - alas - virtual? I know what I believe.


(Deaf? hard of hearing? see http://www.captionfish.com/ to find a theater with captions.)

Better than a Michelin star

Consistently excellent? I'm highly critical of my work as a chef. Even as I regularly receive excellent informal reviews from guests who come to the kitchen to say, "fantastic! thanks!", or find another way to comment on a particular thing or the overall meal, by telling the servers or sending an email -  I also rate myself by guides to cuisine, like Michelin's guide. It's similar to keeping score in miniature golf; it only makes sense to score yourself accurately, even if you are ten over par. Having worked and trained under several old school(European), hard core, master chefs, I know when they would smile or frown at me. 

Compliments are tentative, I remind myself, and what about those who say nothing? I discount raves somewhat because I believe they originate from those things I cooked and baked that might have earned a Michelin star - might have - if only done consistently and not as isolated highlights. Though grateful for compliments and a good reputation, and surprised invitations have actually been sought in part due to my food, I reckon less than 30% of what I create meets a one star rating but would not get that anyway due to lack of consistency. Lucky shots look skillful to others, and if I spend more time on, say, dessert, I have less time to make the rice or main course swing. Sometimes I serve a truly amazing dish that is generally ignored, while some other - to my mind mediocre - option is wildly popular. Baffling. (my definition of amazing is based first on the quality of the product, without which there is nothing, and second on factors related to preparing and finishing that interpret it truly, though truth is relative- not a very good definition, I know).  

Anyway, it's highly unlikely Michelin may consider my work. Sure, I earn my salt, relentlessly act to do justice to the food I'm entrusted to prepare, have it ready and in place in a timely manner and avoid woeful errors. But a lot of my work has both built-in and random obstacles to consistency and excellence. Take soup for example (and, interestingly, Michelin considers soup unworthy of comment - which, as any grandmother in Szechuan, Nova Scotia, or Lebanon will tell you, is just plain silly.) I have to modify soups in ways I would rather not but must to avoid excluding people. I at times offer soups made with meat and labeled as such (e.g. turkey barley) as an option but vegan soup is the default. I cannot use chicken stock in potato leek soup, salt pork in fish or corn chowder (darn!), or simmer a ham bone in pea soup. 

Random strange things related to family style service used at lunches include ladling of broth from the top of the soup, leaving behind half a tureen of non-liquid ingredients, accompanied by a request for, "more soup" when I am already on to getting the next course out. That occurs enough that I tend to do blended soups more often. Mostly though, it is the built-in obstacles that diminish what could be. Say I poach about ten pounds of salmon filet, as seen here, get it onto hot platters, cover with bechamel sauce, and garnish with dill. The first person to serve themselves is going to have a very different experience than the sixteenth: wether the lemon wedges get passed or not is, sadly, iffy, some will get hot potatoes and cold fish, others hot fish and cold potatoes. So even something amazing can reach someone's plate and palate too late to fully enjoy. 

A perennial challenge: to minimize, get around such drawbacks. Obstacles over and above my own very real limitations accumulate; I pause to re-think what it means to be consistent. I don't know if twenty, forty or more diners will come on a given day, people come late, staff are often clueless about food, people are now growing up on fast food (no broccoli with sesame oil and garlic at McDonalds!), the global economic downturn causes cuts and my cooking is interrupted by service issues... I forgive myself more often. Slowly, with three steps forward and one back, Consistency may be achieved by adapting to conditions, editing to be in touch with the scale of my work and what people want, being like water. Hmm. 

There has been one thing I do that is consistent, but does not contribute to Michelin stars. Through all the goof ups, cliff's edge chaos, or major train wrecks that threaten, or more than threaten, to undo my art and science, there is sincerity in my aim, spirit in my touch, and what I do is understood and received as a kind of love. People have told me over the years that what I did had meaning for them - a bit for some, more for others. This I value above any number of Michelin stars; this is my guide. One of the more recent examples of this was a hug - a woman appeared after dessert from among the thirty or so diners, asked if I was the one who had cooked all that, and (((hugged))) me when I said yes. A non verbal thank you for, I suppose, taking care of her daughter - who graduated mid year -  and gave me this a few days earlier, this that is better than a Michelin star:

No guts in Copenhagen

Another great speech by Mr. Obama as he accepted his Nobel peace prize in Oslo. And yet, something is so glaringly odd about this (besides that he is a "war" president getting a peace prize) made even odder by the BBC et al glossing right over it. A big fermata of analysis. That is if he is, as he says, practically compelled to wage a "just war", to protect America, and if he is, as he says, determined to do so unilaterally if need be, if he can use his office to initiate war, why then is he not able to likewise use his office to sign the treaty on global warming? Is it not also a war against a force that America needs protection from? What more of a "just" cause can there be than doing everything possible to stop further damage to the earth's atmosphere? But he needs the votes of the senate to do this?

Clearly, we cannot wait for them, Obama, whomever, to act. It would probably really help if we had a kind of rationing program, like the U.S.A. had in World War II. People respond to structure and working together towards a goal. So we are left to find self imposed ways of rationing ourselves. Not easy, as we are enmeshed in a system that encourages wasteful and shortsighted acts, but can be a fun challenge to do whatever small thing we can control to reduce carbon emissions.