How to Relax: Tutorial

In this excessively future-oriented society, true relaxation has become a skill that some have forgotten or even intentionally ignored. These are some of the things I do to deflate, destress, and forget about everything even if it’s for a couple minutes. Some of them are DC specific, but they can be adjusted accordingly to any location in the entire universe. This blog, you see, has become a sorta-kinda-roundabout how-to manual for how I believe I should conduct my life, so I think listing some ways to successfully ward off stress is valuable and necessary. Depending on the day, these are also great procrastination techniques which could deter the desired effect. Oh well.

1) Clean your computer!  It’s so gratifying! As you can see, I’m overdue.

2) Indulge. Grapefruit sorbetto is my choice indulgence.

3) Go somewhere pleasant, even if it’s for a short while. I like to go to the Eastern Market. Here, I’m in cahoots with the Cheese Man who gives me especially large samples of every cheese, even though I always walk away with aged gruyere.

4) Celebrate a birthday. If no one has a birthday approaching, find something to celebrate anyway with a luscious cake. If it hadn’t been my sister’s birthday, I would have celebrated that JCrew discount I’d taken advantage of the day before. (30% off clearance items!!!)

5) Acquire a baby and make her laugh. Note: you don’t have to go through the whole process of traditionally acquiring a baby. Once a week, I help out some distant relatives in Adams Morgan who have a 3-year old boy and a 6-month old girl. I am thoroughly in love with them. Then afterwards, the two-mile night walk home is often the most relaxing 40 minutes of my week!

6) Sit in a coffee shop, drink a coffee, read, listen to music, write, whatever you want. Coffee time is synonymous with sudoku time. I’m not addicted to caffeine but I am addicted to number-placement puzzles.

7) Then there is always vodka.

The Best Things

I wish I could build a library and call it “The Best of Everything that is Wonderful Home for Books”. I’d fill it with manuscripts, endless collections of thoughts about everything in the world that is the best: garden gnomes, when babies try lemon for the first time, snow forts, blanket forts, paintball forts, forts of any kind, talented street performers, the window seat on aeroplanes, aeroplanes, people who’ve good grammar, pizza with extra cheese and a slightly burnt crust, South African accents, and so, so, so much more. This list can go on forever, and in my mind, it does go on forever. I have many notebooks filled front-to-back with all the wondrous details in life that make living so unbelievably cool. The following is this list continued, but with photo counterparts.

Bars/establishments/anyone with a sense of humor.

When things just line up.

[Caption unnecessary]

Cats with a sunny disposition. (sarcasm)

Getting dirty.

Going shoeless.

The unknown.

People you meet on the road.

Street food…anywhere.

Poprocks. In bulk.

Curiosity.

Garlic.

Warm summer nights.

Adrenaline.

Storytellers. People who’ve been to hell and back and can still smile. People who are kind, people who are intelligent but not arrogantly so, people who can laugh at themselves, people who have a conscious, people who know it’s ok to spoil themselves, people who give, people who have their priorities in order, people who are low-maintenance, people who love food and travel, people who are happy with themselves. People in general, but only some people. The guy who flipped me off today is excluded from the list for good! So there.

Two-Percents

“Two-percent moments”. They’re the moments that would make it in a story told about someone long after they’re gone, the moments of a person’s life that define them, complete them, definitively alter their path, and flash before their eyes upon death. The moments that make living so extraordinary. A collective aggregate of important, beautiful, and calamitous events and occurrences and moments that would amount to two-percent of your entire life. Not the monotonous hours spent completing trivial tasks and empty formalities, but the most joyous and tragic occasions of a person’s life that they can’t and won’t forget; the stories your grandchildren will be hearing about before bedtime, wide-eyed, curious, and patiently awaiting another adventure, another momentous tale about their rogue ancestor (“Our grandma was a robot????”).

What are my “two-percents”? I’m not sure, and I won’t be sure until the end, but I feel one of them would have to be this moment overlooking an Uruguayan sunset, an hour outside of Tacuarembo, captured by my sister. We were making a loop around southern South America; from Buenos Aires down the coast to the sacred Land of Fire, traversing Patagonia on cold local buses and weaving our way up north through Chile and eastern Argentina. From northern Chile, a hop to Salta, a quick dash to Iguazu, and then to the mysterious, wholly underrated land known as Uruguay, where we would travel inland to gaucho country. It was the first time the trip really registered – that I was doing what I loved most, that there’s a whole world to see and I was seeing it; it was on that trip I realized how little it takes to make me happy, and I’ve felt as free and open to possibility as that infinite horizon ever since. The best feeling in the world is knowing you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. That you’re in the exact place you’re supposed to be at the exact time you’re supposed to be there. Nothing could be changed to improve on it. Life, chance, God, fate, whatever you believe in, presents you with a matchless moment, not even a blip on the continuum of time and history and the world, but a perfect miniscule snapshot of what life can be like on the only planet in our galaxy – that we know of – to enigmatically and incidentally support life.

I didn’t want to turn back. I would be perfectly content just standing in that spot, absorbing an Uruguayan winter while sniffing the delicious smell of wood burning from a kilometer away, staring at the horizon until darkness fell, and then I would be just as happy staring at the stars until morning. I hadn’t showered for days, my hair had developed unintentional dreads, I was sore from sheep-herding all afternoon, our finances were worryingly questionable (the moments I was on the road with less than a dollar in my pocket have been some of the best of my life), and my mind was dizzy with calm uncertainty for over two months. I was certain of one thing, however, and it’s that the breeze I felt at this moment I will feel again, in my two-percents.

Najpyszniejsze Pierogi

2012 Bucket List Update: learn how to make pierogi

I’ve taken pierogi for granted my whole life simply because they came so easily and abundantly. I would ask my grandma for some and a few days later, they would appear on the table in a greasy metal bowl, like out of thin air. Then I would indulge. But gone are the days of magic pierogi. My poor grandma’s hands have been stricken with arthritis, making it difficult, time-consuming, and painful to pinch the lips of each and every pierog. And I wouldn’t dare ask. You grow up and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around your pierogi needs.

So I added it to my bucket list of 2012, to learn how to make pierogi in the name of self-sufficiency.  But when describing how much of each ingredient is needed, my aunt seemed content to leave me with “some flour” and “just enough water”. There is no recipe. Just hunches, experience, and second nature. And I’ve no idea how to achieve any of the other aspects of quality pierogi: thin dough that melts in your mouth, the perfect savory-bitter potato and cheese filling, and so much more. Thus far, I’m left without a clue as to how to master these doughy enigmas. I am a master at eating them, however.

Afternoon Delight

Behold. The American Hamburger.

Making the perfect burger is a God-given concern. And by perfect, I mean it should be absolutely imperfect thereby confirming its perfection.

Condiments (ketchup, mustard, mayo, obviously) oozing and spurting from one side, a grease-laden bun that shines in the sunlight and blinds passers-by, and two malformed steaming beef patties that drip with juicy grease. The buns should act like soft sponges effectively soaking up the last drop of juice. Heavy on the pickles, light on the attitude, this burger – and every good burger – screams: “This is me. Take me as I am or leave me for my flavors to marry until some other deserving individual picks me up and appreciates every bite.”

While I’m not one to deny the pleasures of a Big Mac, fast food chains offer a certain deceptive treachery that threaten the quality and standards of hamburgers everywhere. Think of any fast food commercial. Not only do all their burgers look exactly alike, but not one sesame seed is out of place. I cannot believe that there are people who individually glue them onto the bun with tweezers. Impudent trickery, I call it! And they expect to be compensated generously for their toils. But any respectable person knows that this is nothing but a cheap ploy; any awesome person would wait for the real thing at the price of a little inconvenience. A real burger should be made with real ingredients, a good hamburger should look sloppy, unassuming, unique, and of genuine effort. And of course, if you must unhinge your jaw to clamp down on the whole thing, you know that that is a burger worth Skyping home about.

Just like how the people who accept and celebrate their flaws are the people worth getting to know, the perfect burger worth getting to know is sure to be an ugly-beautiful mess that spurts liquids all over my blouse, like a delectable Jackson Pollock. My burger theory: any decent person can spot and appreciate a decent burger. This hasn’t failed me yet! And a very cool person indulges at least once a week. Let’s call it basic life maintenance.

Devotion

Moscow, Former USSR, Russian Federation

The Grapefruit

*Written on January 6th, 2012 in Charlotteville, Tobago*

These four old Americans have been discussing grapefruit for thirty straight minutes – I shit you not. Every time I think they’ve exhausted the subject, someone pipes up with a tidbit about citrus more disinteresting than the last: “At our local grocery you can get five ripe beauties for two dollars!”, the others become wide-eyed in disbelief. One bitter old man adds in the most matter-of-fact way I’ve ever heard someone discuss fruit: “Now, listen here, I used to have such a hankering for grapefruit, but the quality just isn’t the same anymore. It just isn’t the same”, as his wife and friends solemnly nod in agreement. When they finally move on from grapefruit, they turn to the next most dull topic imaginable: the mechanism in your refrigerator that turns off the indoor lights when the door is closed. Don’t ask about the segue; for all I know, they’ve had a ‘hankering’ to discuss this for quite a while.

I bring this up because the world is a strange place, but your small world, your own world is even stranger. As I’m sitting there in this fenced-in local restaurant, amusement quickly turning into boredom and disdain for these people who have nothing else to talk about except grapefruit, a tiny little girl runs along the street outside, trips on a crack in the weather-beaten tarmac, and falls on her frail body. She begins to wail fiercely, the kind of unsettling cry of a small child who is in incredible pain and there is nothing an outside party can do about it. I run out to see if she’s okay. Her legs are cut up and bleeding lightly, her palms have large abrasions on them and her delicate chin is cut up as well. Her big watering eyes look up at me in between cries that shake her whole body. I kneel down and ask her where she lives. Lips quivering and wiping her runny nose with her forearm, she feebly points up the hill. I pick her up and run up the hill giving her a bouncy piggy back ride, carefully trying to avoid aggravating her wounds. She stops crying and I think I hear a small laugh in there. Children are resilient like that. Either that, or people just hear what they want to hear.

So I drop her off at her grandmother’s house and quickly inform her what happened. Her grandma affectionately scolds her for being so clumsy. I think about how clumsiness – and awkwardness, its social counterpart – isn’t something you necessarily grow out of – I’m living proof of this. Before I go, her grandmother thanks me and hands me three ripe grapefruits.

I know when I’m being mocked.

Old Town Warsaw

A Day in Food

An exercise in speculative thought: what do our diets say about us? If one were to document everything they consumed in one day, how much would you know about that person once midnight rolls around? Could you tell how much money they make in year? If they lie on the extreme end of the spectrum, very possibly. A dish donning russian caviar would arouse immeasurably different assumptions compared to a tray supporting a Taco Bell burrito and a Cherry Coke. You might also be able to ascertain where a person lives, their ethnicity or nationality, whether they’re single or married, how old they are, whether they’re incredibly obese or wholly malnourished, healthy or unhealthy, their likes and dislikes, and even how open-minded they are.

The other side of it: snapshots in the grand scheme of things are just that – individual moments of the bigger picture that aren’t necessarily representative of the whole. From simply looking at everything I ate on February 9th, 2012, one might assume that I’m dehydrated, I have a severe vitamin deficiency, and that I’m trying to lose weight. None of these are the case; it just happened to be a busy day where I didn’t have time to indulge in healthy foods. Then again, I could have done a lot worse. The fact is, very few of us eat exactly what we should. I’ve never met or heard of anyone who lets the government-issued food pyramid dictate their lives right down to every meal. Life, money, and general tastes get in the way.

Food for thought. HA.

DC via Instagram: Dupont//Adams Morgan

DC is a diverse place but the metro brings us all together.

Dupont: The tantalizing Krispy Kreme glow catches your eyes before it catches your nose.

Wet benches border the Eye of Dupont. I used to come to these seats to read and to breathe, but all benches, not just these, are uninhabitable for a person on the run. Grass is softer and nicer anyway.

Coffee time.

Adams Morgan: I grab my books and my music and I come here for triple shot cappuccinos with latte art.

Rush hour lights weave through Rock Creek Park. Everyone has somewhere to be.

The secret Krispy Kreme glazing process is visible from the store’s window. I stand there hours at a time, hoping to unravel the secrets that allow perfectly glazed rings of fried dough.

The Capital Bikeshare system relieves a city teeming with traffic.

It’s late. The end of my day. Time to go home.