Monday, May 31, 2010

Asian American Chicken

Chinese and Southerners alike love their fried chicken, not surprisingly, then, I keep a list of the best. In the under $20 set, definitely the Chicken Bento at Teaism ranks high. As my friend Rene said, it’s a better class of chicken nugget, and so if the moment finds you daunted by the nutritional wallop packed by fried chicken, the Chicken Bento is the more healthful choice. The chicken meat is good, not skimpy, the breading crispy and flavorful, not greasy. The saltiness of the main compliments the stickiness of the white rice with seaweed sprinkles, the tang of the vinegary cucumber saucy, and the honeyed sweet potato salad. Where is Asia, where is America? Joined here in the Chicken Bento Box.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Stele this post

There is in the National Gallery a blank brown metal slab called Stele. Pigeons have pooped upon it. In Harvard Yard in Cambridge there are also steles – these are stone tablets sitting atop tortoises. From my college years I remember these as blank. Years ago, I visited China, somewhere in the countryside of Xian I recollect visiting a stele of Empress Wu. Unlike other emperors who had scrupulously recorded their achievements, she had left hers blank. Others had filled it in. Still others had scratched out the text and filled in more. “Stele, revised” as it turned out was more visited than “Stele, preserved as a pickle.” I was at the Brooklyn Museum at a fashion exhibit recently, every dress had an extensive write up. At the companion exhibit at the Met, not only were there labels, but there was film documentation of the dresses worn, and an audio guide with color reporting on context, design, and status. Then, I recalled the rows of mummy sarcophagi at the Cairo Museum in Egypt. They each were covered in meaning, glyphs of different colors, images and design, matched by a short paper label, typed, leaving the modern mystified. Who knows really?

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Making a difference

A man standing by the fare machine spoke to us rushers-by. Can anyone spare 20 cents? Another who had walked past, paused, digging into the bottom of his old leather satchel, full of the day’s work and tomorrow’s tasks. I admired him for it as I slid past into the train. An hour later, I returned from my errand, and the first man was still there. In his red shirt and black cap, asking for more from others, fulfilling for the time being his job of presenting us with the opportunity to give, to be generous, to offer of ourselves even in the hope of making a difference which is slim to none.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Monkey well

In a city that rewards climbing ever higher, the sculpture of Xu Bing draws you downward, sinking further into the earth, layer by layer, into the quiet treasure rooms of the Sackler Gallery. Strung from the skylit ceiling, the steel monkeys link arm-by-arm, tail-by-tail in a column of text, down into the well. Each is the word monkey, in a different script – Chinese, Persian, Arabic. Monkey refers to chaos, to the disregard of human rules, to freedom from courtesy and politeness, but with intelligence and cleverness, loudly, raucously, in the quietest of all the Mall’s museums, the one most self-conscious of religion and identity, conflict and war, the long breaths of history. In the cacophony of this verticalized troupe, I hear the morning calls of the howlers at the National Zoo at dawn, the monkey who led Buddha on his journey, the organ grinder’s companion, the chap who made away with my sunglasses in Bali, or stole my sandwich in Gibralter. Deepening into the light. Laughing into the quiet.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Errors rampant

We’ve found the cure for the common cold – that these two pills and you will be well by morning. Every once in awhile such a claim will cross my desk; in this case it was repeated in my chief’s speeches and his chief’s speeches, and then by the chiefs of other division chiefs, and other countries’ chiefs… like a bad rumor, news of the panacea spread. I had a look at the underlying numbers and my gut wrenched. An old canard in new guise. Now we must walk it back, never speak of the numbers again, retreat to the general principle – washing your hands is good for preventing colds – but it is always hard to retrieve a rumor than to let it loose.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

An elegant bean

Ellsworth Kelly’s portrait of a beanstalk is composed of single lines of pencil. The stalk hangs in mid-space, suspended in garden fresh air. The leaves are thick at the ground, thinner at the top. Each leaf is just a slip of vegetation, triangular, pulled both by gravity downward the earth and upward the sun. The figure is simultaneously monumental – stretching past my own tallness to the ceiling – and light – transparent, unladen with shadow or shading or color.