Lunch! Again!

Yesterday I have lunch with tzoq, at an interesting sushi place in the theater district. The interior of the restaurant is arranged around a kind of garden, with the booths looking out over a stone path and waterfall. This garden is built inside a sort of courtyard, with a skylight reaching to the roof of the building, so the restaurant is partially overlooked by office windows.

You know, it seems like I write often about having lunch with people. This is because I often have lunch with people! And take pictures of them, to prove that I'm not making them up.

Me: "So, I had lunch with this woman with blue hair, who pretends to be a skunk on the Internet."
Audience: "Uh huh. Sure you did."
Me: "And then I had lunch with this guy who works at a company that plants grass on factory roofs in Michigan."
Audience: "Let me guess - and then you had lunch with a singing Californian Eskimo?"
Me: "Well, no, I don't meet snobahr until June."

So, pictures.


This is tzoq's bike. It is recumbent!



This is the restaurant, looking back from our table to the entrance.


This, of course, is tzoq .

And that is all, except to note that I have a cold, and my car is getting its front brakes redone. Sigh.

Happy May Day!

Never forget the True Meaning of the May Day - parading military hardware through Red Square!

More seriously in the spirit of the day...

Folk singer Billy Bragg's modernized and santized verison of The Internationale bothers me. Whereas the orginal is all blood and thunder, his version is all about extending-a-hand and isn't-freedom-nice-when-we-all-share. Those are legitimate feelings, of course, but it is important to remember the time and the spirit that inspired the orginal.

Shall we compare?

The Orignal (Lit. English)
Stand up, wretched of the earth
Stand up, galley slaves of hunger
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us wipe the slate clean
Masses, slaves, arise, arise
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all


Billy Bragg Version
Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.

I don't know. To me, "Reason thunders in its volcano" is a lot more exciting than "Don't cling so hard to your possessions." And then in the second verse, he's replaced "There are no supreme saviours / Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune" with "Let no one build walls to divide us / Walls of hatred nor walls of stone."

I realize the new version is rather more inclusive and less violent, but... hey, I like my anthems full of old-school blood and guts. Except the Canadian one, which is required by law and tradition to be as bland as possible.

Walk(...ing the Pattern..) in the Rain

Thursday nights I take Elizabeth to a music class in Burlington. I usually take the hour she is in class to sit in the library, walk, or eat a foot long hotdog at Easterbrooks, a locally famous restaurant. As the weather improves I've been doing more walking through the nearby Central Park. This park contains, among other things, a labyrinth. This particular one is an 11-turn labyrinth, based on the one at Chartres Cathedral. On my previous visit, it was teeming with children running back and forth.

Today, it was raining and cold, and I had it to myself, as it were. Given the date - significant for Pagans and early Christians - I decided to take a turn through the labyrinth. It was a curiously ruminative experience. It seemed to take a very long time indeed to get to the centre of the pattern, and the route twisted back and forth on itself, bringing me to unexpected quadrants of the greater circle. The route, outlined in salmon-coloured stone, reminded me variously of the nestled windings of an intestine (eew), the convulted strand of a knotted rope, or a path through a hedge. Coming to the centre at last generated a thrill of achievement, but upon arrival I also found myself very relaxed. Focusing on the task of wending through the maze sort of concentrated my attention, and I could see how doing this in the long term might create a kind of quiet trance state.

Reaching the centre, I also suddenly realized that the only way out was back in. So, out I went again. And, for several minutes afterward I was in a sort of quietly content and reflective state of mind. Upon emerging, I found it had taken a full 15 minutes to traverse the pattern, even though the circle itself is only 25 feet wide.