finding the sweet in the hereafter

i find myself in the library tonight hammering away on a paper for my film class.  it was actually due about a month ago, but damn my procrastination and asinine work ethic.  so i am finally writing now.  it's on atom egoyan's adaptation of russell bank's novel the sweet hereafter.  an stimulating read, and a dull, boring film.  what do you expect from a canadian film maker though.. be offended, reader, i don't care, i'll stand by it: canadians can't direct.  (well, aside from sarah polley, but that's only because she can't act).

anyhow, the quiet floor of the library closes at midnight, so now i find myself amongst the giggling and gossiping beasts on the main floor.  it's wicked annoying, but i write more quickly here, upright in unflattering florescent lighting, than in my dim comfy bedroom with its kitty and tv.  damn, i wish i were home.  but here i am in a chair too short for this desk, sitting on a sleeping foot, with a travel mug of mate.  i'm about two thirds done with it at the moment.  i'll probably be out of here by 1:30am.  not bad, but way past my bedtime.

tomorrow brings with it another paper due at 6pm, on peter bogdonavich (love him, but can't spell the man's name).  it's my last class of semester, which is a beautiful thing.  it will be followed by "coffee" with steve.  don't analyze the quotations, reader.  needless to say, i look forward to whatever coffee may be merely because it doesn't involve me bullshitting film analysis (though it is a treasured past time) for a grade.  it will be my own personal sweet hereafter.  one step at a time though.  don't get ahead of yourself, girl.  back to the sweet hereafter.

a folked up morning

i woke up sweet and early to put my butter back on the stove.  i want to let it simmer for a few more hours so it will be nice and green for sunday.  i don't have to work until noon, giving me ample time to sit in this lovely grassy oat smell spilling out of my butter simmering on the stove and sip sip some jasmine oolong to the tunes of joe purdy.  damn i love mornings like this: placid and slowly unfolding like a metaphor in a good book.  the sun is peaking through the stained glass of the front window scattering little rainbows all about the room with it's soft early yellow.  there's something about morning that makes everything seem all encompassing.  my butter doesn't just smell good, the scent effortlessly fills the entire room infusing even my hair, thick and warm and wonderful.  my tea doesn't just taste good, its flowery soaks into my tastes buds as if i'm absorbing it as opposed to ingesting it.  and the music, this sweet, supple music, is floating around through my apartment with serpentine grace as it sparkles in the sun spots on the walls.  folk music really exemplifies the morning with its sure hand plucking acoustic and simple poetry. mmm. i've been so heavy with the snooze button i've been ignoring the morning lately.  it's really the best part of the day, new and fresh.. before the weight of daily responsibilities encumbers you.  it's gonna be in the 70s and beautiful today, and all of that mmmness is condensed into the day's early hours like petals in a flower bud.  who care's if i'll be at work for most of it (noon-10pm), i still got this morning.  and here i be, encompassed in folk music and the earthy scent of my butter, feeling hot jasmine tea slide down my throat into my round belly.  it's so fucking beautiful.

ooooooooolong

after we closed the store tonight mark, jay, and i threw ourselves a little tea party.  we garnished ourselves with audacity and broke into the imperial tea collection tins, not once, but twice!  (excuse my explicit tea geekness)  we brewed it fittingly in a cast iron pot, first the jasmine phoenix eye, then qing xiang oolong.  the jasmine eye was damn good, sweeter and lighter than the jasmine pearl.  but then the oolong.. oooooooolong. oh my god. exquisite! the most superior tea i've ever tasted.  i exclaimed a reflex "oh" of delight at first sip.  incredible! formidable! (throw in your own rhyming synonym, reader, please do!)  the flavor has so much depth to it, so many layers, it soaks into your palate.  to describe it frankly, it's so good that i can't put my pajamas on yet because i feel like i should be dressed as nice as it tastes.  (ok, reader, well i may not be dolled up enough to match the flavor, but you get the idea)  

mark and i split the leaves, which will be good for several more brews through tomorrow.  but damn, it's so flippin' good it's practically carnal.  tasting this tea, though it has been previously implied, has cemented me as a tea geek.  i now have two phases of my life: pre-qing xiang and post-qing xiang.  well, maybe that's extreme, but this is some serious shit here.  this tea has the power to sift away all the crap in life; separate my egg whites from the yolks and whip them into a soft fluffy meringue.  something like that.

mmm.. what an ideal situation i find myself in: sitting against my plump, soft pillows, in the dim luminescence of my green-walled bedroom, listening to the subtle whispers of late night npr jazz over the rhythmic snoring of my cat, reveling in my qing xiang.  this is one of those 'shut your eyes and just exist in it' moments.  hell yeah.

jesuits and geology

i'm at work at the archives at the moment, more and more i am beginning to disdain this job. i used to love it, i'm a geek like that, and researching random facts and thumbing through kitchy artifacts was completely delightful. now, perhaps it's merely the grant i'm working on, it's damn boring. i'm organizing information and doing research on the Canisius College Seismograph Station; it's one of the oldest in the country, and one of four Jesuit stations that remains active. I shan't continue to describe seismology in detail, not that i think i would bore you, reader, but because it simply bores myself.
i'm having communication problems with my boss; she's on vacation all week, and was in conferences all last week. i feel like i'm continually hitting dead ends sorting through a mess of papers of dead priests. a dead end is where i'm at right now, so, alone in the office, i've decided to end my frustration, and merely get paid for writing a blog.
going to a Jesuit school, i'm fairly immersed in this sort of thing, and it doesn't seem odd typically, but the paradox suddenly struck me just now of being a priest and a scientist. how can two worlds, science and religion, that are so at odds with one another contain simultaneous truth for a person? yet here i am, for a few months now, going through the personal papers of Father Ruddick and Father McTigue, two men who devoted their lives to the pursuit of both religion and science. granted, they were Jesuits, the often liberal renegades of the Catholic Church, and geology isn't the most controversial of sciences, but i can't stop wondering, that when push came to shove, which doctrine won out over the other. i'm not saying that an intellectual can not believe in God, nothing of the sort. I myself, almost definitely, believe that a God exists. additionally, i'll be so bold but to label myself an intellectual. the thing is, yes i believe in God, but certainly not religion. i certainly don't think that religion is a bad thing, and it's a helpful tool for many who try to appreciate the spiritual aspect of live. however, one can't deny the fact that religion is in fact man made. one's faith can be a beautiful thing, but it is just that, their faith, not their religion. and yes, reader, it's a grey line that exists between the two; where does one's faith end and one's religion begin? that's all relative. one thing i do know is there are two poles in the world: science and religion, and each is often debunking the other. each views the other as delusional. i grew up in what i always joke as a "cult church", i was a Pentecostal kiddie before i reached my jaded teens. my parents are hippies turned gun-ho evangelicals, which still causes a fair share of conflict in our relationship. my mother started crying when i explained to her that i was pro-choice. my father is convinced that global warming is a secular myth. and i won't even begin to describe our unpleasant conversations on the topic of evolution. this may seem extreme to you, reader, you're probably thinking that my parents are a pair of crazy holy rollers. the thing is, they're not. they're normal, average people. they just happen to view the world through a lens of religion. i view the world through science. both of our perspectives seem completely absurd to the other. ("you think we come from monkeys?" vs. "you think the world happened in 6 days?")
this brings everything back to me sitting at the archives in the upstairs corner of the library, and how i've been sitting here for months, reading the letters and the notes of two men who found a way for the worlds of science and religion to co-exist. it baffles me. and of course, they're both long dead, so, reader, there goes that.

genmaichamazing!

i bought sister's birthday present today.. the lovely teavana gift set and i filled up the tins it comes with with four of my favorites, including genmaicha (green tea with toasted and popped rice).. it's what i'm drinking right now, damn good stuff. i wanna come up with a good fish recipe involving genmaicha. maybe with halibut or tilapia. oh! or smoked salmon. i wish i could visualize (or tasteualize?) different fish in my head to come up with the right flavor combination. i'll come up with something this weekend. it will be genmaichamazing!

i want to start cooking sunday dinners for the kiddies. it will give me a variety of different palates to test my recipes out on. last sunday (despite it being just steve, me, and my hookah) i cooked one of the best dishes of my life and featured silver needle. (sauteed chicken breast in olive oil, honey, and lemon zest, with an avocado white tea sauce, served with white tea candied carrots, and sweet rice) did the entire thing while high as a kite too, which, in my humble opinion, is very impressive.

this is just a lark, but i think i wanna try to write a cookbook for cooking with tea. no such book exists yet, and there is a sure market for one with health food in vogue and all that jazz. i don't know.. it seems like such a lofty idea, but i've been throwing it around my head for a week or so now, and i think if i collaborated with my fellow tea snobs and cooking buddies we could come up with a brilliant collection. plus i live with a very talented graphic design major who would have the know how for putting everything together. and yes, reader, i know i know, i'm getting a little ahead of myself, this could easily just be another evanescent fancy of mine. who knows.

maybe typing it out will make me stick to it. (could it be that blogging will be the best thing that has ever happened to me?) or maybe you'll steal my idea, reader, and end up poaching fish in genmaicha with regis philbmin on the tele as you promote your million dollar making cooking with tea book. you better not be no bitch, reader. i'm fully capable of shaking my fist, making empty threats, and complaining. so yeah, don't mess.

a little procrastination situation

it seems i've invented merely another way to shuck off responsibility and spin a more convoluted web of procrastination with this here little blog. i really should be addressing the laundry situation that is usurping every open piece of floor in my room, spilling outward into the hallway. my bedroom is a war zone filled with land mines of dark, bright, and white loads, stacks of books, and empty wine bottles. i'm forced to weave through a labyrinth of shit on tippy toes just to make it from the door to the mattress. disgusting, eh reader?

but alas, my bed is clear, aside from my snoring cat. and this messy little room is still a little haven from the responsibility that lies just beyond the front door of my apartment: the phantom noises in my gas guzzling car (which sound eerily like shit brakes), how behind i am at job number two, not getting paid enough at job number one, forms in need of filing, the list goes on far far, but typing it stresses me out. blah.

and i know, i know.. one task at a time, deep breaths, and big picture nonsense. that's what momu would say. why not solve this little procrastination situation once and for all with a strong cup of mate and some perspective. i gotta slay the scarlet o'hare in me.

of course this mattress is damn comfy, milo sleeps cute, and i've got brokedown palace on the stereo... and all this makes for contentment.. so maybe just a 15 minute nap.. then the rest of it all.

nothing good happens after 2 am

and it seems i have stripped away all the blog-adverse notions in my body to heed mark's advice against all of my better judgment. so here i am slicing myself up onto a silver platter in this interweb buffet, and plating has never been my forte, but here goes.

i'm reminded of the honest cliche: "nothing good happens after 2 am". yet here i am, mac on lap, clicking away on this silly little keyboard while each minute that passes holds with it greater reason to why i should just go to sleep. but that's the thing about advice, we're full of it, yet we seldom take it. we all got those post-2 am stories involving too much of this and not enough that. they too often end with vomit, a tow truck, or a chair smashing your living room window. well, reader, this one involves me starting a blog. and maybe the term "selling out my soul" is a bit dramatic, this is the twenty-first century after all, everybody's doing it. so, here's me giving into the peer pressure, pretending that my asinine (which really would be more fitting if spelled with two 's') thoughts make a shit when paraded around the internet. the commencement of an experiment: my blogging era. all of this happening one ill-fated night after 2 am.

so, reader, shall we see how this one ends?