I Love You, No Discussion.

No, it isn’t a deranged proclamation of undying love; it is actually an item from a menu of “Pure Lotus”,a very atmospheric vegetarian restaurant in Beijing. (I unearthed it today while sorting through some boxes.) It had a picturesque decor with grottoes, cascading curtains, tables made from ancient beds and absolutely unique presentation which at times made actual process of eating slightly challenging. The food there was excellent but the menu titles were out of this world:

• Birth No Death (konnyaku and kelp slices)


• The Sea of Sensation Has No Limits (soy protein vegetarian duck)


• A Little More Love, A Little Less Misfortune (tomatoes and cauliflower stir-fried in clear sauce)


• The Wind Stirs between Heaven and Earth, But There is No Coming or Going, No is There Rest (wild yam in coconut milk)


• Contemplating The Inner Self (spinach with herb sauce)


• I Shall Absorb Whatever Comes My Way (eggplant or pumpkin casserole with black beans and shitake mushrooms)


• Imperial Kitchen Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (brown mushrooms, day lily flowers, vegetarian protein strips, cabbage, corn)


• I Love You, No Discussion (Deep Friend Eggplant cake in sweet and sour sauce)
  

What would your rather try World of Azure or Mustard Greens and Taro?

Preparing to Move

15 days till our pack out.

We have been frightfully organized this year; we even used the Memorial Day to drag down all the boxes from the attic. I should not say “we” of course because it was my husband who precariously balanced on the top of the narrow ladder, trying to maneuver boxes, one by one, down to the floor of our tiny laundry room. As each box descended, he had to fold the ladder up in order to move a box from the laundry room to a hall. Then he had to unfold the ladder and climb back up. Total of 36 times, not counting those rare occasions when the objects were thin enough to be squeezed between the side of the ladder and the cabinet. Add to this the joy shaking off the spiders that were disturbed by all the commotion, and no wonder that by the end of the ordeal my husband was slightly cranky.

Now the boxes are stored in the kids' rooms, and our house starts to look like a place embracing itself for a move.


Meanwhile the weather was beautiful today and on my walk I discovered that purple carpet of nootka lupin (isl.lúpina ) covered previously barren hills. I read that this plant was introduced in Iceland for soil fertilization, so it isn’t only pretty but functional.

Useless Knowledge

Think about vast amount of knowledge we collect each and every day from the moment of our birth. Some of it has practical purpose; some of it is being used once in a while and some is just lurking way in the background never being recalled. Is there such a thing as useless knowledge? It seems like knowledge that doesn’t have any practical purpose or doesn’t bring pleasure can be easily dumped in that category. Easy, no? My husband’s example of useless knowledge was a telephone number of one of the places he once rented. He still remembers it but cannot recall even location of the apartment. My older son came up with, “The memory span of gold fish is three minutes.” The younger one insisted that every bits of knowledge were useful given the right circumstances. I also appeared to be having the hardest time to file any knowledge as useless mostly because odd facts delight me. For example, this little bit about a gold fish is amusing to me. And, if someone does decide to teach a gold fish new tricks he can save himself a lot of trouble by knowing it. So, aside from the junk that media feeds to people (honestly, even if you don’t pay much attention, some of it still sinks in), I am still searching for my piece of useless knowledge. But while I am searching I succeeded in creating a perfectly impractical post and acquired a new odd piece of new information.

Did you know that after spending a night in the water dried fruits bounce back to their normal size?

I'll Carry It in my Heart

We have only four weeks left in Iceland. Soon my walks along the sea will turn into distant memories but images and sounds of my favourite places I will carry with me.

Elegant Solution

A geometry problem called for finding an unknown angle EOD. My son approached it steadily and safely:

< AOC = <AOB – <COB = 180° -125° = 55°
<EOD = <AOB – (<AOE + <DOB) = 180° – (40° + 55°) = 85°

I asked him to look for another way of solving this problem. This time after finding angle AOC he came up with 360° – 125° – 40° - 55°X2 = 85° , which essentially is a variation on the first method.

“Try something different”, I kept insisting.

After a bit of hesitation he found it.

<COB and <AOD are vertically opposite angles and therefore
125° – 40° will give us the answer!!

Only after he wrote it down I realized how graceful and succinct this solution is - the epitome of elegance.

<EOD = <AOD – <AOE = 125° – 40° = 85°

What a beauty!

*Why doesn't blogger support the symbol for angles? I had to substitude with "<" instead, which looks slightly odd.

On Writing

Today after three long years my husband has finished his first book. He had the idea for it for more than 20 years and started writing it down back in Beijing. I remember how interesting it was to hear him talking about its plot. The amount of details he had been carrying around and able to recall at his fingertips was astounding. Twists and turns of the plot, appearances and quirks of the character, he had it all. The only thing he lacked was time to unload all this on paper consistently. I cannot really tell what finally did the trick – bad weather of Iceland, darkness, or my nagging, but somewhere in January he really gave it a go. Evening after evening coming from work he secluded himself in his office and wrote. His ability to concentrate and steel-will when it comes to studying, be it exams or chess tournaments always impresses me and his approach to writing wasn’t much different.
Somewhere in March he read to us his first chapters, and reading new ones in the evening became the favourite family entertainment. The kids have been so excited – under false pretenses they love to wander into his room and glance on the screen and then run out whispering, “He is writing the battle scene now” or “He kill this guy, can you imagine.”

Now we finally will discover how it will all end!

New Discoveries

I am sitting in the sun room – rain is rustling on the roof, the kids are playing with their friends. My eyes keep lingering on the cover of the book on Japonisme, "The Japanese influence on Western art since 1858." This book has been the source of my interminable interest for several months now. Theoretical, broad knowledge about influence of oriental culture on the West exists in my head for a long time. But seeing side by side illustrations that demonstrate these influences in great details, forged much deeper understanding of it. It helped me to see how a single pose, a small gesture, unexpected colour combination was borrowed, processed and weaved into the paintings of western artists. It also made me realize how liberating, exciting, and inspirational it must have been to discover such alien world of art for the western artists. Our modern eyes are conditioned to see and accept as natural variety of artistic styles while in the second part of the 19th century the rules of what considered to be a proper painting were still rigid. How exuberant it must have been to see new ways of organizing the picture plain, discover new range of subject matter, new techniques, new colour palette, new artistic devices. No wonder that so many artists, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse – Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, to name a few, were mesmerized and heavily influenced by Japanese art.

It is also utterly fascinating that the moment when Japonisme became possible is so clearly defined in history. March of 1854, the treaty of Kanagawa, the end of 216 years of Japanese isolation. Isn’t it interesting that the signing of the political document had such an enormous influence on European and American art? The treaty had allowed Japanese artifacts and handicraft articles to be brought in Europe where in no time they became all the rage. Shops selling kimonos, antiquities, fans, and woodblock prints appeared one after another. Exhibitions showed Japanese art objects to the public. Artists inspired by new forms found new ways of expressing themselves. How extraordinary and at the same time logical.

Below are the most telling examples of japonisme (the term was coined by French art critic Philippe Burty to describe the craze for all things Japanese):

Claude Monet, Madame Monet in a kimono, 1876

Kitagawa Utamaro, Japanese woman (detail); Joseph Wacherle, Lady of fashion, 1907

Edgar Dega, Nude woman, standing (detail), 1886; Katsushika Hokusai, Sumo wrestler, 1814-78, from Manga

Edgar Dega, Dancer tying her ribbons, c.1880; Katsushika Hokusai, Sparrow dance, 1814-78, From Manga

Katsushika Hokusai, Man washing, 1814-78, From Manga; Edgar Dega, The bath-tub, 1886

Ando Hiroshige, Ohashi bridge in the rain, 1856-58, from 100 Views of Famous Places in Edo; Vincent van Gogh, Japonaiserie: the bridge, 1886-88, copy after Hiroshige