i've also enjoyed reading sweet fine day.

and this book, though it didn't turn me into a vegetarian.

cocoon (with foam)

everyone tells me it's the weather, but i just haven't been able to get enough sleep lately!  and it's not because i've been staying up late...i've been going to sleep several minutes shy of 9 every night, and i still wince when my morning radio clicks at 6.  it makes me a little nervous about moving to nyc because nj seems to be the perfect place to hibernate for awhile.

i saw this incredible cocoon in my japanese maple today.  it had taken me nearly an hour to get home today because of a water main break on route one, and when i took a "wily" shortcut, some traffic detours turned it into an interminable longcut.  my legs felt a little jelly-like when i finally emerged from the car. 

normally, i walk right past my tree, but this time, it nearly poked me in the eye.  that was a pretty clear indication to me that it was time to prune it.  my friend, who gave me the tree for my birthday one year, is an avid gardener, and told me that i should stem all the sucker growth - basically the small branches that grow near the base of the tree because they inhibit the tree from growing more fully at the top.  it was while i was meditating life analogies and pruning the tree that i noticed a rather unsightly cocoon around the other side.

i can't actually look at the picture for very long because even though the cocoon is a nice honey color, the shape is a little grotesque.  i couldn't help but notice the foaming substance towards the bottom of the cocoon, and though i got very close to it to take some macro shots, i never thought once about touching it.

my greatest curiosity, of course, is wondering what's inside.  again, life analogies spill into my mind...in fact, i was just spouting them earlier in the afternoon when a friend and i were talking about processes being just as important as end results. 

still, most life analogies with cocoons deal with the waiting and then the struggle to get out, but how many of them talk about how nice it is just to sit and chill for awhile?  i suppose that's because metamorphosis is never a calming process.  i can't imagine what it's like to change into a completely different form.  i think what i'm trying to do these days is just sit and chill for awhile...not necessarily transform...but then again, change doesn't always come from within.  sometimes it comes from outside.

unfortunately, i'm in no mood to pontificate, and this is getting longer than i intended it, too.  normally, i would edit, but my bear cave beckons again...i promise to write more "meaningful" things again when i emerge.

i love going to visit my grandma m.  even though she never fails to mention how frail and weak she is, she's always spry and lively when i go to visit her.  she's still living on her own on the upper west side, though she only ventures out when the sidewalks are absolutely pristine. 

she's not actually my grandma, but we've just come to adopt her as our own.  she used to freelance with my mom a long time ago when scarf designers still painted with brushes.  she's a quarter scandinavian, and three quarters russian, but her family moved to argentina during the russian revolution, so her family lives in buenos aires when they're not taking care of their ranch near the border with brazil.  she's also a classically trained opera singer so, get your fingers out, she can speak, russian, french, italian, spanish and english fluently, not to mention the other languages she "dabbles" in.  when i go to visit her, she and i always chat in french, though she's intent on me learning spanish.  when my mom comes, she readily flips between english and french.  and since i've started bringing r, she speaks french, english, and a bit of spanish and german.  yes, i love visiting her.

one thing i love are her stories.  she's never once repeated a story to me.  every time we visit her, there is a completely new repetoire she reels through as she, in true grandmotherly fashion, manages to feed us a full lunch, homemade cakes, cookies, tea, ice cream and coca-cola. 

yesterday, we were talking about brazil, and she shuddered a bit. 

"it's just that i do not like rio de janeiro!  they do not speak spanish there!"

when we asked her why, she began to tell us the story of a trip she took with her parents over 80 years ago!  she says she remembers very little of this period in her life, but she remembers every exact detail of this trip.  her family took a cruise to rio from buenos aires.  while the boat was docked, there were able to walk ashore and enjoy a bit of shopping and site-seeing.  towards the end of their day, they found themselves in the sea-front stalls examining various knick-knacks for sale.  she was with her father, while her sister was with her mother.  she remembers looking at one toy, and then reaching up to grab her father's attention, except, he wasn't there.  when she swiveled around, she could find no one in her family.  she ran out of the store and began frantically looking from store to store, but no family was to be seen.

at this point, she grew frantic and began to cry.  not too long afterwards, a brazilian woman came and talked to her...in portuguese.  she could not understand one word and her tears grew even more severe.  when it was clear that the woman could not be understood, she grabbed her hand and began dragging m away.  though she was young, she knew that the boat was to the left, but this woman was pulling her to the right.  she grew even more frantic when they walked right past a policeman, and onto the main avenue into town.  people were everywhere and m was hysterical.

later, she found out that her father had slipped over to the other store to see how his wife and older daughter were doing, and when his wife asked him where m was, he replied, "i thought she was with you."  when he ran back to the store, m was already gone, and he began to run frantically from store to store.  to add more drama to the story, this was a time when many young blond headed children were disappearing from the streets because they could be sold for a fair sum.  the fact that the lady leading m walked right past a police officer led credence to this practice.

m's father frantically ran towards the main avenue, and saw a swarm of people...dressed in black, as was the fashion in those days, and from a distance, he could barely make out a distinct red hat.  m was the only person wearing a red hat and a red cape.  he quickly ran to her, and scooped her into his arms as she cried, "daddy!  daddy!"  the woman disappeared into the crowd.

as if this story weren't interesting enough, everything about this incident dissolved into a haze until it came back into clear focus decades later when m's father passed away.  she was nearly forty when he passed away, and when sifting through his possessions, she found...the red hat she had not seen since she was a little girl.  her father had secretly kept it among his things to remember both the worst and best day of his life...and amazingly, four score later, a little korean girl and a boy from iowa were privy to this amazing story.

just wanted to share a slice with you...

a Merry little Christmas day...

Children played during Christmas celebrations in Manger Square, the said birthplace of Jesus, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

i'm trying to gather my thoughts after watching danny boyle's slumdog millionaire last night.  though i attribute some of it to the latte i had at dinner before the movie, i have to say that i left this movie tense and exhausted.  i turned to m after the film to ask her what she thought, and i think she put it best..."how do you classify a movie like that?"  there were many times when i jumped, squeezed r's hand, and gasped in desperation and relief.  yes, if you ever want a dolby audience, take me along with you to the movies.

slumdog was shot in danny boyle's typical mtv epileptic style, the one that made trainspotting an international hit, and though that meant that there were many intense shots and graphic images, his capacity for capturing the beauty of a moment in a slow, deliberate, but non-laborious way, made the movie hold my heart in its hands, squeezing it and releasing it at the right times.  were i to try and explain the movie, i'd sound like hyper child because the movie was everything all rolled into one.  when i tried to sell it to my friends, i said it was a love story about a boy named jamal who goes on india's version of "who wants to be a millionaire" in order to find a girl he loves...but after watching the film, that is most undoubtedly an understatement.

the beginnings of the film have the graphic undertones of syriana-like torture, and i cringed through every minute of it...also fearful that my friends would hate me for duping them into coming to see a "love story."  but then it turned into a social commentary on the street children of mumbai, à la mira nair's salaam bombay!.  though the tiny indian children are adorable, their life conditions are deplorable.  they navigate the streets of their slums with the aplomb of middle-aged men and women and are forced to bypass a "proper youth."  when jamal and his brother salim are found sleeping in a tent atop a heap of garbage, you're actually seeing them at a "high point" in their belabored childhood existence.

perhaps that is not totally fair as there is an idyllic sequence where the brothers are able to escape the slums by riding on the roof of an indian train, think wes anderson's the darjeeling limited.  a train which transports them to agra where they have a small stint as "tour guides," but this is only a slight respite before the next wave of drama.

much suspense and drama ensues.  chase scenes.  violence.  a spiral to the netherworld, and even a nod to zana briski's born into brothels.  but what ultimately ties the story together is the romance.  perhaps this is why it was sold to me in this way.  if you roladex through the beginning of the film, you see a darkness and a grimness that you are hard-pressed to embrace, but jamal's capacity for undying love propels the film to the nirvana land of hollywood blockbuster...or shall i say bollywood?  yes, for those who stayed through the credits, there was even a bollywood dance sequence to cap off the epic viewing experience.

[spoiler alert] in the tenderness of a final reunion, jamal kisses latika's scar, and all is healed.  in this simple gesture, danny boyle gives us the salve to stomach his film - an intense caterwaul through the streets of mumbai which leaves you exhausted and exhilarated as you somehow end up washed up on the shores of love.

***i have to also plug the soundtrack...AR Rahman mixes M.I.A., Suzanne, and Suhkvinder Singh all in the same breath with a unifying yet diverse deftness.  basically, it's good.  p.s. don't let the trailer fool you...no sigur ros on the soundtrack.