Moules Frites

We tried the new Belgian place and it turned out the sommelier didn’t know how many glasses is a bottle, the waiters were very young bodybuilders maybe wearing a little touch of mascara, the owner a little awkward, customers almost all lawyers, food was passable, beers good, nice decor in general, cosy table.

Fortunately, we were all in a good mood and enjoyed commenting on everything. Maybe all the giggling was not very ladylike, but half of us were actually lawyers and I support Kim Clijsters, so we had all the right to be there and comment.

Now I can’t stop listening to Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye. Tomorrow I plan to read a book by Amelie Nothomb.

And It’s Legal

I bought some organic catnip seeds at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. I prefer regular seeds to the starter kits I normally find in Europe, so this bag was exactly what I was looking for. The weather has been extremely hot during the past month, so my catnip is already quite tall and fragrant, despite the half-sun position. I hope it will survive the sudden cold that is supposed to hit next weekend. Instructions said to sow as late as two months before first fall frost.

The cat seems to like this catnip as much as he likes parsley and flowers, that is to say he likes it a lot, but no weird behaviours so far.

Amber Tambly Reads Jack and Tyke

On Saturday I went to the cinema to see Once Fast move or I’m Gone – Kerouac’s Big Sur. I was very tired, because we had just finished painting two rooms yellow in a very hot day, and the cinema was not air-conditioned, so all poetry and those beloved faces and the pleasant yet incoherent photography, not to mention the epic but slightly boring rhythm, made me feel a little drunk in the end.

Feeling a little drunk, I could not help smiling, while they were showing Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore in North Beach San Francisco, where I spent more than two hours once because they had an extremely interesting selection of books indeed, but also because they had this very warm and cosy basement, to protect me from to the cold and foggy San Francisco night. There I re-read chapters of Eating Animals by Safran Foer, and thinking about that the smile immediately disappeared from my drunk face.

But then again, feeling a little drunk, when Patti Smith was talking about Kerouac stream of consciousness and she was so inspired and touched and sweet, I could not help smiling, thinking about And He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, when Noah Taylor in his Nick Cave hairstyle and Kerouac myth always insists that he needs to write on teletype paper because pages impose an artificial structure on my stream of consciousness.

- Pages, uh, tend to impose an artificial structure on my stream of consciousness.
– They don’t make teletype paper anymore.

Outside in the streets, in the lovely cool air, it was fun walking while a little drunk.

Phở in the Rain

My mother gave me a Chan Luu wrap bracelet for my birthday just while I was reading Ru by Kim Thúy. It’s a multistone bracelet and I am able to tell the name of only a few of the semi-precious stones in it. Chan Luu left Vietnam to study economics in Boston, and then became a fashion designer in LA. Kim Thúy left Saigon as a child with her family, they were boat people, they spent some time as refugees in Malaysia, and then settled in Montreal. I left Saigon because I had to go back to the office, the next summer I spent some time in Malaysia then back to office, and Montreal the same one year later.
We are all are going to find a different Vietnam, next time we visit.

I’m always surprised, how we can share places and food and words and wrap bracelets.

Moderate-Sized Wednesday

A few years ago I went all the way to South Africa, to find myself barefoot in the water, on the crushed shells of Jeffryes Bay, my eyes fixed on the rolling perfection of Supertubes.

I body-boarded in Mexico and in Vietnam since, and each time I found a new piece of information. I’ve never been in search of enlightenment, just information. For my brain-muscle communication.
This actually can bring you to enlightenment eventually, but it’s the fun of the process that attracts me.

So this summer I was lucky and stubborn enough to go to Hawaii. I was in Brenneke Beach in Kauai (that was scary). I tried small shorebreaks at Waliea in Maui. I couldn’t stop looking at the Ocean in Baldwin Beach Park. I spent hours in the water at Walls in Waikiki.

Well what I learnt is that good waves come in groups and there’s always someone out there with you.
Between two groups of good waves time is warped, time is different, as it is in travel or narration, and you float and you wait and wait and you get to talk. Maybe someone gives you advice and it works great right from the next wave. Maybe someone tells you a story. And when you get out of the water you’re bruised and you limp just a little.

If that’s not enlightenment to you, then I really don’t know what it is.

Canal St. Cross Section

Today I feel like I was an inhabitant of Alan Wolfston’s NY miniatures.

Canal St. Cross-Section, lower subway lever – view into left side window.

Lisa Simpson as Connie Appleseed

During my stay in San Francisco a sea lion with gunshot wounds was rescued in the Monterey Area, only to be euthanized when the wounds were discovered to be too serious. A female sea lion found in a muddy creek in Palo Alto also died a few days after being rescued. And a whale died for unknown reason after two months spent in a river in north California near the Oregon border with her calf (who apparently found its way back to Ocean).

I was told Pier39 is for tourists only, locals don’t go there but you have to go once, so I went once. I had a look around and read all the panels about the problems sea lions face because of Ocean trash, in particular ending up entangled in fishing lines and nets and eventually dying. I turned around and immediately saw this poor guy here, clearly strangled. No one seemed to notice, in fact all the tourists there were apparently having a great time.

Later I went online, only to find out that the local Marine Mammal Center based in Sausalito is actually trying to capture my entangled sea lion as well as another one with the same problem, to cut the nets and save them, but the two guys keep on evading capture. Trapping a sea lion resting on a dock is quite a challenge, because it will quickly disappear in the water, while anesthetics are not an option because the animal will feel the shot and again disappear in the water, eventually drowning as soon as the drug takes effect.

Now. The next day in Union Square there was a chick sparrow fallen from its nest.
Last time I went to London, in June, the bees were dying.

Ok, at home I can go around equipped with leashes and sheets in the trunk and emergency numbers to be called both for domestic and wild animals.
But is there a place on Earth where I can go on holiday without having to worry all the time about individuals of endangered species dying right in front of my camera?

Actually, I have to say in Hawai’i things went slightly better. Protected areas seemed to me small and trapped between highways and tourists, but at least tourists were not too loud and the highways not too busy, and there were protected areas to begin with. The animal shelters also looked fine.
In addition, on Kauai they have these cool wild chickens that seem to be doing quite fine. I live in the countryside because I enjoy seeing chickens outside the window. Well, Kauai brings this to the next level, as you have wild chickens outside your window.

Ohana

While driving around Kauai and Maui this summer I was struck by how good the animal shelters looked. They seemed very large and clean and green, and they carried the reassuring sign of the Humane Society.

After all, the place where Lilo adopted Stitch was an animal shelter in Kauai!

The Raw Truth

While in San Francisco I took the occasion to visit a couple of pet food stores. I am always curious about the different approaches to processed food for animals, particularly for cats, being the cat an obliged carnivore, while the dog is an omnivore, just as we humans are.

In Italy cats have been served leftovers since forever, but this has started to become a problem over the past couple of decades, as cats are increasingly being kept indoors (and therefore are not longer able to hunt to supplement their diets properly with preys) and families are becoming smaller and smaller (which means less trips to the local butcher’s, local butchers actually closing their shops, more processed food, and less leftovers a cat can reasonably eat).  As a consequence, people have started to buy commercial food for their cats. Commercial food for cats in Europe, especially dry food, is mainly grain-based. Grains are less expensive than meat while still providing proteins through gluten, in addition some vets believe that cutting on animal proteins also helps protecting urinary-tract problems, the main health problem for aging cats – considering that cats kept indoors tend to live longer, with a life expectancy of 15 years, against the usual 5-10 years of a cat free to roam among fast cars and neighbours prone to poisoning, beating or shooting anything alive. Detractors believe that grain-based commercial food is profitable for those producing and selling it, but is no proper food for an obliged carnivore such as the cat, leading to a number of problems, from food allergies to urinary-tract problems (again).

Trendy alternatives to grain-based commercial food are grain-free commercial food (mainly produced in North America), or raw feeding, which can consist either of whole preys such as quails or chicks, or a diet of raw meat, bones and organs – also called BARF diet. These alternatives are big in North America, which is in fact the place from where Europe imports grain-free food.

All that said, my expectations about pet food stores were quite big, but they were definitely exceeded by a particular chain, Pet food Express*, where not only I was able to find a large number of brands producing grain-free food, not only they had a huge freezer full of BARF-patties ready for BARF-fans to serve to their cats, but they also had and impressive assortment of… frozen mice. In tetra bricks.

Maybe they were originally meant for reptile-pets, but what a revolutionary idea, feeding cats with… mice! A couple of brands on the market also guarantee that the mice are killed humanely, and they can ship the frozen product directly to your home.

Yet another example of how trying to restore natural order in an anthropized world can be complicated and frustrating. In order to allow a cat to feed on its natural prey you need facilities, logistics, freezers, you face a number of ethical problems, and the cat will still miss the psychological benefit of the hunt.

* An additional reason why I’m now a fan of Pet Food Express is that they do not sell any animals, they have an adoption policy instead, collaborating with humane shelters.

Japantown

While in San Francisco, and in Japantown in particular, I discovered a couple of manga series I didn’t know. The first is Chi’s Sweet Home, about a stray cat who finds home with a family, and the second is Yotsuba&!, about the everyday life of a young girl. They are both set in contemporary Japan, in very ordinary urban neighbourhoods, and both stand out on the shelf thanks to the distinctive style of their respective authors.

During my trip to Japan last year I found myself fascinated by the everyday life in small neighbourhoods. I was staying in Yanaka, which really has an old Shitamachi charm, and I loved to stroll and watch the small perfect gardens, the shaded temples, the hidden sento, the little saucers left outside the door with some food for stray cats. And I loved people watching,  the old ladies admiring cherry blossoms, the local koban with the impassible policeman, the salary-men and office ladies coming home chatting and carrying a take-away dinner,  .
It was all at the same time familiar and exotic. Once I came home, I started to notice that these are exactly the details in the background of manga series, sometimes even fantasy series (think of the contemporary subplot of Inuyasha). That’s probably why I was so familiar with them. Now when I read manga I always pay a lot of attention to this background I came to know and enjoy as a reader and a traveller.