Treasure Island

The local grocery store is called Treasure Island. Tagline: Arrrrrrrr! If only. The real tag line is "America's most European supermarket." The only that could've made that tag line more pretentious? Replace "supermarket" with "grocer."

So, whenever anyone in the house needs something last-minute, they will say something like this: "I'm going to swing by Treasure Island on my way out to the Point. Anyone need anything?"

Which always makes me want to say "A talking parrot! A peg leg! A ship, please!"

I'm sure the novelty and hilarity will wear off, but for now, hearing about Treasure Island is amusing to no end.

ALSO: To a Pennsylvanian, Treasure Island seems very European indeed, what with the selling of wine and beer in the grocery store.

More Market

So here, at last, is our room, all painted and (mostly) arranged. We still have some stuff to arrange, most notably my huge sack of ironing, but the house iron was located during our 7-hour workday on Saturday.

We all went to town on the common area / basement, transforming it from a dungeon for cardboard boxes into a livable (if not quite all-the-way painted) basement dining room, food storage area, and meeting space for our co-op.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of co-op-ing, but it is safe to say that co-op and intentional community designate two different approaches to "lots of hippies people living in the same house."

Whereas the intentional community derives its common living scenario from an intent, the co-op makes the common living experience its focus.

For example, we had a dinner guest who was, in the near future, moving to an intentional community. "It's a group of people who want to live together to discuss spirituality," he said, "and since I'm an atheist, I found that really interesting and wanted to live there."

Such a cognitive dissonance would not occur at Haymarket House. While this co-op has its own culture/style (more on that in later posts, perhaps) it does not have a mission beyond providing a livable, co-governed, safe space for people.

Granted, such things as vegetarian cooking and consensus/vote based decision making will self-select for people with certain commonalities, but those commonalities do not constitute a mission.

Anyway, I've taken on the chore of inventorying and ordering our bulk food, which I am learning from one of the house members. I was also informed (at what was an otherwise-serious meeting) that I must select (or be selected as) a nemesis. I am keeping my guard up.

Read & Discuss: Order Muppet / Chaos Muppet

First, read this. It was written by Slate's judicial reporter, hence the fascination with the Supreme Court. In the spirit of this Slate series, this post will probably take the concept a little too far. But go ahead, read the article.

Pretty great, right? Not without the flaws of other unified theories of personality (namely, people do not always behave consistently with their type), but still, a great way to work the Muppets into something applicable to everyday life.

So, here's the discussion question: Which kind of muppet is The Count?

Sure, at first glance he seems clearly in the order camp (he, by his own admission, loves to count, a clear sign of orderliness).

But there are two arguments for his inclusion in the Chaos camp.

Indulging his Order tendencies
against the Ur-Chaos-Muppet

First, the Count is scary. Of course, there are plenty of things that are both orderly and scary (the DMV comes to mind, as does the Galactic Empire). The Count's scariness (at least in earlier, less sanitized versions of Sesame Street) is in spite of his order-qualities, not because of it. The thunder, the caped entrance, the music; all of these things distract from counting.

On its own, this would seem to argue for the Count's inclusion in the order camp. After all, counting is his identity. Scariness is ancillary.

But watch the video below, and tell me that it is not the portrait of someone in the chaos camp. Particularly at 2:10 onward, the Count outs himself as a Chaos Muppet: "I wrote these letters myself... Oh, I'm not going to read them. I'm going to count them!... Ahahahaha!"

His need to count overwhelms any sense of orderliness about the very act of counting. The Count is crazy about counting! Thus, by overindulging his order-quality, the Count transforms himself into a Chaos muppet.

To discuss:
Which other muppets blur the line?
Are you an Order Muppet or a Chaos Muppet? Which particular muppet are you?

Sushi

Nigiri, left. California Roll, right

Yesterday was International Sushi Day. Heather and I celebrated at The Sit Down, one of many sushi places in Hyde Park. We only found out it was International Sushi Day an hour or so before we left our house, wiped out from unpacking, mustering the strength to walk one whole block to 53rd Street. This is why I did not post yesterday morning, alerting you of International Sushi Day.


When I told the waitress that I had ordered the sushi special with the Asian salad, not the one with the Miso soup, she was quick to apologize. She even offered to let me eat the Miso soup that she had mistakenly brought. It was 93 degrees Fahrenheit, so I politely declined. 

Hyde Park Roll (& Heather)

The sushi was as good as the service -- better, even, as it did not mistakenly bring the wrong thing before correcting its error. It brought the right thing right up front. The tempura-battered Hyde Park Roll was crispy without being oily. The nigiri were simple and delicate (a delicious reminder of the sushi-purist documentary that Heather and I saw, Jiro Dreams of Sushi). Delicious as these two were, the California Roll spoke most clearly of The Sit Down's excellence.


California Roll is our go-to sushi. Stacked with veggies, California Roll is hard to screw up, making it a safe bet at any establishment. But this California Roll reminded us that a great, fresh, full-flavored, roll can be so much more than a safe bet. The California Roll (sorry Fuji-Do!) might have been the best sushi that I've yet eaten.

Painting: After

Here it is, the room in the "after" stage, with Heather, demonstrating her joy at being finally done painting. We're still tracking down furniture (bed and dresser mostly) so that we can pull all of our stuff out of duffels and boxes, but now, at last, we can arrange the room as we see fit.

Also, as promised, Django the banana-eating cat. This morning, he joined Heather and myself at the kitchen island on his own bar stool, glancing over at our cereal with banana-envy in his eyes.

He is one of four house animals: Another cat (William? Gandalf? I forget his name), a small dog (named Socket, for the unkempt fur that makes her look as if she stuck her nose in one), and Bean (name origin unknown).

I have never lived in a house with indoor animals (aside from my sister's parakeet), so this is new for me. Right now, the animals are hilarious and novel. I hope it stays that way.

Haymarket

Heather and I are settling in to our new home: Chicago. Or, more specifically, Hyde Park. Or, more specifically, Haymarket House.

The house is named for the Haymarket Massacre, the event that sparked the recognizance of May Day as a pro-worker holiday.

Our Haymarket House sign bears two pine trees (not sure the significance) and a bomb (commemorating the massacre).

The bomb is not an incitement to violence. The bomb that triggered the massacre was never proven to have originated with the protestors, so the bomb on our sign is more of a reminder of how The Man screws us over.

But enough of that; house life is not that revolutionary, at least not in the way that the Haymarket protestors were.


This post is mostly here to give you two photos. This one is our room. The pile underneath the window is the stack of camping pads and blankets that comprises our nomadic bed until we can find a mattress (hopefully a free one, cast off by a departing UChicago student). We are in the midst of painting the room, and soon, I will be able to post the "after" picture to this "before." 




This photo. is the basement kitchen, featuring an industrial range (complete with built-in fry griddle and newly-refurbished range hood) and a large central island for food prep for fifteen.


More photos of the house will follow, but these two spaces are where we are spending most of our time at Haymarket House.


Coming soon: Painting "After" pictures, and Django, the banana-eating cat.

Life of Pi: Wrapup

A better cover.

I have since finished "Life of Pi." I finished it before we left for Chicago, it was that compelling. Also, this review contains spoilers. I really tried not to give away too much, but the book is crafted such that it's very hard not to spoil it. Even the cover is a bit of a spoiler. The reveal that there is a tiger in the boat is done so artfully that it is a shame to put a tiger in the boat on the cover. Ah well.

"Life of Pi" was well worth the read, well worth getting over any anti-book-club snobbery that you may be harboring (I am currently reading another book that contains a "readers' discussion guide" at the end; more on that to follow).

My one critique of "Life of Pi" is, in fact, so snobby that I hate to relate it. It does, however, reveal one of my favorite things about the book, so I will move forward, gritting my teeth at myself, and hoping that Andrew, who loves this book dearly, does not think ill of me for it.

What I didn't like about "Life of Pi" was that it wore its postmodern literary identity on its sleeve. Its questioning of the [REALLY, THERE ARE HUGE SPOILERS COMING UP. CEASE AND DESIST IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS BOOK] reality of Pi's story plays out way too openly. The story is already unbelievable enough, what with the carnivorous island and all. By the end, the reader should already be guessing that Pi, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, recounting his story to an unnamed writer (remember the short chapters in italics?) late in his (Pi's) life should be considered an unreliable narrator. To use the Japanese shipping agents to call his story into question is a little too heart-on-the-sleeve for me.

That said, I am glad that "Life of Pi" makes itself a book about reliability, memory, stories, etc. in such an unpalatably up-front way, because it prevents us from hanging ourselves up on that aspect. Once the literature snob says "Well of course it can't be a book about that; it says it too obviously!" s/he goes hunting for what the book is really about.

Without repeated readings, I might not have gotten here with "Life of Pi." Content at my own intelligent reading, I would have said "Aha! It's about the (un)reliability of memory, the line between fiction and non-fiction, classic territory for sea literature."

But since Yann Martel did all that digging for me, I could start deeper. I kept digging, and found a heroic/religious story. An Odyssey, a Gilgamesh, a Noah's Ark, even a John-Bunyan-esque allegory tale (but is the tiger God or Satan? Discuss).

[END SPOILERS. SORRY FOR CUTTING OUT THE MEAT OF THE POST, BUT Y'ALL WILL JUST HAVE TO READ THE BOOK. SEE BELOW]

In short, I can't gripe about my least favorite thing about "Life of Pi," because even as I was annoyed by it, it enabled me to appreciate the book so much more. Please, just get over your snobbishness about Oprah's book club and read this book.

From The Road: Ohio

Jack Kerouac

Heather and I spent last night in Cleveland, where I composed this post. I'm a day behind, what with the move and all.

The trip across the west of the east was uneventful, except for some town names we saw in Ohio: Ravenna and Ashtabula.

Yes, Ashtabula gets a mention in Jack Kerouac's poem "Home I'll Never Be," transformed into a song by both Tom Waits and the Low Anthem (Wait's version replaces Ashtabula with Opelousas). 

Ravenna, though a city and province in Italy, is also a town in Ohio, and I believe it is the one mentioned in the Dinner Belles' "Runnin' to Ravenna." 

These tunes ran through my head as we drove. They did not run through the truck's speaker system, since the truck did not have an audio jack.

"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon?" - Life of Pi

When Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" was first populating bestseller lists and book club discussions, I paid it no mind; or rather, I avoided it because it was talked-about, or because I perceived it as a "book-club book," the sort that wore its themes on its sleeve, asking to be parsed by such questions as "How did Pi's re-naming of himself make you feel? In what ways do you re-name yourself?"

Nonetheless, Mann Booker trumped Oprah, and I pulled "Life of Pi" from the discount rack at the bookstore on my second-to-last day at work. It will be my reading material for the weird limbo of a furniture-less apartment here in Harrisburg, the interstitial U-Haul journey, and probably the first few days in Chicago.

It is a book about a move that goes drastically awry (so I hear; I'm still in the first few chapters). In the realm of omens and totems, perhaps it is a poor choice, but I press on, because the quote that opens this post continues:

 "The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life."

More "More Tracks"

http://www.tugboatprintshop.com/

After a long hiatus, I am returning to this blog.

Heather and I are about to move to Chicago, and I want to chronicle the adventure of exploring a new city. Also, leaving allows me to tell some of the stories that, in a small city like Harrisburg, would be a little too close to home.

Some of my friends have huge life news that they are processing and sharing right now. Aside from the move, not much in my life has changed. I'm still really into coffee. I just finished up at the bookstore, the only job I had throughout my time here in Harrisburg. Heather and I are still married.

We've sold or given away most of our things, and we have a Uhaul truck lined up for Wednesday morning, when we'll set off. I hope to post here at least once more before then.

Welcome back, and thanks for reading!