send mail to: my new pad, cambridge, MA 02139
the first dwindling glimmer of dusk, late spring, inspiring humidity, central square 4th floor walkup, cambridge, MA 02139. the common room is still a wasteland, but my room is now tolerable, except that the wooden floorboards have exceptionally generous fissures that collect debris as soon as you mop/sweep/vacuum across it. after squatting and wiping for two hours and finding about $0.63 in spare change in assorted crevices, i inaugurate the kitchen (generous northern exposure) with roasted pumpkin and eggplant, pork sausage, romaine and parsley salad with figs and garlic, toasted ciabatta, and a salvaged almost-full bottle of shiraz. the nifty thing about sublets being that usually one chances upon and is given permission to pounce on the stragglers-on, a half consumed tin of swedish lumpfish caviar, a quarter-stump of lap cheong, a tupperware of petrified gnocchi and disintegrated pesto.
yesterday, my first actual first-hand baudrillardian excursion into suburban connecticut, en route to steve's house in the "armpit" of that state, we stop for lunch midafternoon in 85F heat and step gratefully into the shaded postmodern glade of a gutted gas station now turned into sino-american chow-outpost. the usual color scheme of red and green, imperialist furnishings, rosewood gloss and all the rest of it. owing to mounting cholesterol, steve can only permit himself one deepfried chicken wing, but i try even the crab rangoon and promptly feel the beginnings of a rumble in my aorta. i try explaning that cantonese food is not in fact all fried, in fact, i tell steve, it is meant to be the most equilibrated of foods, authentically differentiated, light, even bland, depending on your native palate. we fight a losing battle in this country trying to convince americans that chinese food is not exclusively the "authentic" immigrant experience of slapdash permutational cuisine (the sort where the chef prepares four meats - and one tofu - seven vegetables and eight sauces, and systematically generates a menu based on the combinations therein) - but rather, a distinguished one of only three high cuisines. as an analogical exercise it would be enriching to argue for the relative culinary-national lownesses on the other end of the scale.
we also make a pitstop at mohegan sun, a gleaming spire of a casino-resort-mall-hotel complex, towering like shards of blue glass along the thames river. the indian chiefs that occupied the reservation on which it now stands entered into a pact with a south african casino developer on the understanding that the cultural integrity and local context would be preserved. the committed modernist, i was expecting...well, what one normally expects of these things, and i was pleasantly surprised. not just the finely wrought infrastructural junkspace that one only comes to expect in asia, and in singapore and hongkong specifically, but the various "ethnic" symbolisms were no cheap patina, but rather elaborate colored glass and tasseled woodwork and fractured mosaic and rich italian marble. i begin to think if i in fact would not mind visiting las vegas. maybe it's that i'm afraid of seeing in it, and settling in nicely into, what is essentially the same design-by-fiat ordered wonderland that is singapore.
yesterday, my first actual first-hand baudrillardian excursion into suburban connecticut, en route to steve's house in the "armpit" of that state, we stop for lunch midafternoon in 85F heat and step gratefully into the shaded postmodern glade of a gutted gas station now turned into sino-american chow-outpost. the usual color scheme of red and green, imperialist furnishings, rosewood gloss and all the rest of it. owing to mounting cholesterol, steve can only permit himself one deepfried chicken wing, but i try even the crab rangoon and promptly feel the beginnings of a rumble in my aorta. i try explaning that cantonese food is not in fact all fried, in fact, i tell steve, it is meant to be the most equilibrated of foods, authentically differentiated, light, even bland, depending on your native palate. we fight a losing battle in this country trying to convince americans that chinese food is not exclusively the "authentic" immigrant experience of slapdash permutational cuisine (the sort where the chef prepares four meats - and one tofu - seven vegetables and eight sauces, and systematically generates a menu based on the combinations therein) - but rather, a distinguished one of only three high cuisines. as an analogical exercise it would be enriching to argue for the relative culinary-national lownesses on the other end of the scale.
we also make a pitstop at mohegan sun, a gleaming spire of a casino-resort-mall-hotel complex, towering like shards of blue glass along the thames river. the indian chiefs that occupied the reservation on which it now stands entered into a pact with a south african casino developer on the understanding that the cultural integrity and local context would be preserved. the committed modernist, i was expecting...well, what one normally expects of these things, and i was pleasantly surprised. not just the finely wrought infrastructural junkspace that one only comes to expect in asia, and in singapore and hongkong specifically, but the various "ethnic" symbolisms were no cheap patina, but rather elaborate colored glass and tasseled woodwork and fractured mosaic and rich italian marble. i begin to think if i in fact would not mind visiting las vegas. maybe it's that i'm afraid of seeing in it, and settling in nicely into, what is essentially the same design-by-fiat ordered wonderland that is singapore.
posted by D at 19:50
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