If I remember correctly, it was during spring break of my first year of grad school that one of my closest friends made "the prophecy." It was one of those whirlwind New York trips I used to take in those days: trips to the theater, an evening dancing at Beauty Bar, enough sugar in two…
Greetings from the land of the sick. Although I'm not the kind to go to the doctor--a fear of being poked and prodded makes me more than a little reluctant--this time I started to sense that something wasn't quite right: no decongestants were working, too many tissues had been used and, although I had done…
On a blustery day back in early December, a friend and I went into the hills for a lecture on masala chai (literally, spice tea) at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. While chai may seem fairly self-explanatory, I was intrigued because the lecture included a tasting of a few different kinds of chai, information about its…
I asked the apple merchant for another,jaunty as Cezanne's still-life reds and yellows, having more life than stillness, telling us, uncut, unpeeled, they are not for the feastbut for themselves, and building strength to flyat any moment, leap from a skewed bowl,whirl in the air and roll off a tilted table. -Grace Shulman ("Apples")After weeks of teasing…
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” -Helen Keller"It's life," she said. These were the words my dissertation adviser offered me when, in our final meeting of the semester (of my…
Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. -Rumi I recently watched the documentary, Oma and Bella, which tells the story of two widowed Holocaust survivors who live together in Berlin and spend most of their days cooking. Food seems to be one of the only things that eases the burden of their…
To die your while life. Despite the morbidity, I can't think of a better definition of the writing life. There's something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat has to be accomplished without severing the vital connection to the world, and to…
Sometimes, my Thursdays look like a cookie sheet full of freshly baked cookies. Given my various commitments, this doesn't always make much sense, but let's just call it my way of powering through the madness. Weekday baking is also something that I try to reserve for special occasions, like when friends come from out of…
During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was a hand, for others a femur, yet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations…
If I had to pick my favorite muffin flavor, it would undoubtedly be something fruity, or maybe even with a cream cheese filling. In my carefree college days when I would find myself at Nussbaum and Wu for an afternoon snack, I would choose either blueberry or pumpkin/chocolate cheese, always turning my nose up at…
Dining with Dostoevsky 