pikolint

Alán and I like to discover new restaurants to try–especially great hole-in-the-wall joints. Although pizza isn’t always our first meal of choice, we sometimes run into powerful pizza cravings. The Globe offers suggestions for those times.

I couldn’t resist picking up a “cute cake” (that’s what they were labeled!) from Bao Bao Bakery. Because, of course, sucker that I am, like every other sentimental fool, I projected Alán and me onto these plump figures made of frosting.

Only thing is that it becomes a little disturbing to eat these sweet little beings.

But they sure tasted good.

I ordered an item online and the box arrived with what looked like a poem scribbled on it with a black ballpoint pen:

I’ve gone to Lukin’s
I’ve got a spot at Lukin’s
I’m going to Lukin’s
Open the fridge Never thought
life would be this way.

At first I was delighted to have some sort of mysterious verse penned on my box.  I imagined some unknown poet somewhere sending off impromptu fragments inscribed on cardboard to unknown recipients.  But then I poked around a bit and found these cryptic lines turn out to be lyrics from a Pearl Jam song, which gives me the creeps since the last lines read:

I find my wife. I call the cops. This day’s work’s never done.
The last I heard the freak was purchasing a fucking gun.

Yikes.  Bored worker jotting down lyrics on packaging materials in a warehouse, iPod buds in ears?  Disgruntled UPS worker?  Odd neighbor scribbling on boxes in the mailroom?  My imagination goes haywire.

A curator of African art from the Menil Collection in Houston led a session in the Peabody Museum yesterday, and I found the experience to be both enchanting and odd. We encountered beautiful, delicate artifacts: an intricately beaded and painted painted Kuba mask, an oiled funeral reliquary, a decorative cup, and a figure of a woman carrying a child upon her back — items presented to students around a seminar table as a camera man and a teaching fellow politely interrupted intermittently to remind us to pass around a microphone, or to request that the curator repeat herself.  The session was being filmed for distance learning.  Carefully balancing each piece in their gloved hands, the archaeologists held them up for our view.

The introduction to basic concepts of curating made me far more conscious of the careful thought invested in the positioning of artifacts in space to create an encounter between a museum goer and the selected objects, of creating relationships between pieces through distance, angle, framing, and modes of presentation.  The museum and its curators lovingly seek to craft our experience of these objects.  The video camera made me recognize that the impulse to increase accessibility and potential reach — an effort to share unique experiences and to move beyond limited resources of space and time  — sometimes comes at the expense of more fluidity.  We are both freed and confined more and more by mediated experiences.

While university museums matter, they are still disconcerting.   These monuments perpetuate and perform power imbalances.  It was the oddest feeling to wander through the Pacific Islands gallery — located on the floor just above the Native American and Latin American exhibition halls — and to experience its eerie resemblance to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in its physical layout and its glass and wooden display cases.  Is it the missionary influence or a shared museum culture that creates such striking similarity?  To see “candlenut” and feather leis, kahili, fishing hooks, and tapa on display, objects sheltered from the bitter cold of Cambridge and completely displaced in space and time, saddened me even as I heard children exclaiming with excitement “Wow!” as they scurried from case to case.  That sense of wonder and discovery is what museums evoke, these built edifices holy to the muses and devoted to study and learning.  In such institutions labeled repeatedly with recognized names like Bishop and Peabody, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s conserved and what’s lost.

Haruki Murakami, who spoke recently in Jerusalem to accept a literary prize, says, “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Within their walls, perhaps museums, like novelists such as Murakami, no matter how distanced or mediated continue a parallel effort of “concocting fictions with utter seriousness,” in an attempt to stand on the side of the egg, to preserve a fragile humanity and its artifacts without inadvertently crushing them.

Barack Obama to his daughters:

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me-about how I’d make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn’t seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn’t count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours [...]

I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you’ve had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much-although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

These are the things I want for you-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have.

It’s not about “Me First,” nor the cringe-worthy “Country First,” but the well-being of all people from every part of the world. Although this open letter to his daughters is part public relations, it’s still refreshing to see the difference in tone from other administrations.

Filtering through my old closet back in my childhood home is an archaeological dig into a personal history. Some artifacts are completely inexplicable and puzzling. Take this bit of text printed in an elegant italicized font on light blue paper:

A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports “The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs.”

- Audubon Magazine

I probably saved this piece of paper as a girl because the image struck me as funny then. Now, I wonder why the RAF pilots needed to be stationed there in the first place. It’s an expensive game to be toying with the local penguin colonies for imperialistic amusement. But I also feel some affection for that self who treasured this offbeat detail enough to save it with such care. To sift through an archive created by one’s younger self is an exercise that oscillates weirdly between alienation and familiarity.

And then again, I guess I haven’t changed all that much. I still love oddities:

Woman 1: I’m sorry I couldn’t come to hear your paper.
Woman 2: Yeah, that’s what a lot of people say.
Woman 1: No, really. I wanted to come, but I was asleep.
Woman 2: Oh, that’s even better.

~

Woman: (walking down a hall and then abruptly turning) I think I’m disoriented.
Man behind her: (who also turns and laughs) Well, that should teach me. I’m following you thinking you know where you’re going.

It’s easy to lose oneself in the labyrinth of streets surrounding Stephansdom plaza. Alán and I found welcoming nooks, narrow alleys lit with lanterns, and even an incredible toy store stocked with such an assortment of model kits, intricate train sets, board games, and toys for experimentation or construction of every kind–a selection unlike anything on offer in stores in the US.

While getting a sense of Vienna’s unique vibe, we also happened upon a car bearing a familiar sign:

This stylish design fuses the body with the bicycle. Out of curiosity, I dropped a line to Bikeschuppen, the bike shop that incorporates the “shaka” in its logo design, and I just received a very cordial response from Robert, who also surfs, about why he created this particular design:

i started with a bikeshop here in vienna, where i mainly concentrate on freeriding – which means biking everywhere, down the hills, jumping, having fun and – very important – afterwards hanging loose and chilling out (the feeling after having done this sport is almost the same like after having rocked the waves for hours, or, me, drinking sea water.. ;o), i integrated the `shaka` sign in my bikeshop logo…..

Shaka recognition is that flash of the familiar in an unexpected place: a shared spirited appreciation for a life of freedom, exhilaration and good will. May Bikeschuppen continue to thrive!

Viennese coffee houses serve wonderfully decadent concoctions, and the desserts on display in konditoreien were constant temptations. Sachertorte and Apfelstrudel seemed on offer at every other street corner.

We found Austrian meals to be tasty but heavy. Undaunted by the calories, we made sure to have our fill of Wiener Schnitzel during our short stay.

For our first meal at Café Weimar, before we were at all acclimated to the city, we had some kind of knödel (dumplings), which our waiter translated for us as “dumplings of fat.” Served with a heaping portion of sauerkraut, they were far more delicious than suggested by translation. The meal, taken at a leisurely pace (a pace we’re not entirely used to in the middle of the day!), finally gave Alán a chance to glance at his email after our battles through multiple airports.

Another food highlight was dinner at Flein, a French restaurant tucked off of Boltzmanngasse. We indulged our craving for paté, and I especially liked my pumpkin quiche! A quiet, sweet dinner to savor.

We also happened upon a lively Russian restaurant, not far from a movie theater showing films in English. While a singer belted out a mix of tunes in various languages accompanied by some kind of karaoke-like sound system, we watched a guy selling roses from table to table without much luck — until a well-dressed man bought almost all of the enormous bunch for his date. This gent made an extravagant show of selecting which flowers he wanted with a bored finger-point to each bloom. The waiter then produced a vase from the kitchen area, and his companion accepted the enormous bouquet as a matter of course, without much of a reaction at all. The other men in the restaurant gamely followed suit, perhaps out of guilt, to purchase single roses for their dinner partners. Alán and I also took great pleasure in watching a group of young guys flirting with a table of young women seated on the other side of the restaurant. Alan evaluated their various strategies, as they pulled the women onto the dance floor to dance, sent roses over to their table, posed for photos, and joked with them until one guy succeeded in getting a phone number. Courting rituals over music, food and drink seemed fairly similar to what we’ve seen on the other side of the Atlantic. From open-air kebab stands to tiny neighborhood establishments, we loved the variety on offer in the city.