German Bratwurst do's and don'ts

     On my way home from Europe earlier this month, I had a one hour layover at Frankfurt airport.  I was hungry when I walked off the plane, so I immediately went searching for food.  Right outside the gate, I looked up and to my great joy saw a German sausage stand.  I thought that would be perfect to have a sausage and a beer in Germany, since I was technically in Germany, so I bought this one pictured above.  I know it generally looks strange and comical to Americans to see a dog served up in this way, with a bun that seems much too small for the size of the dog.  We are used to our buns being the same size as the weiner.  The Swedes serve their "korvs" as the Germans do, but with a longer, thinner sausage, and an even more meager bun.  It really looks cartoonish.  But both forms suited me just fine coming off of a long flight.  So after buying the above sausage, a went to the ketchup dispenser and pressed down its pump, thinking that the ketchup stream would be slow and easy.  

     To my utter dismay, the ketchup shot out like water from a garden hose set on jet, and splattered all over my hand as well as on the dog.  Unacceptable.  Totally unacceptable, I thought.  Why in the world would you need that kind of pressure for dispensing ketchup?  I turned on my heels and walked to the nearest seat, shaking my head and really questioning the legendary German rationality praised by philosophers of old.  I sat down and commenced eating my bludgeoned dog.  After a few bites (in which I took in all dog and no bread, mind you), I looked over to my left and noticed a woman sitting and eating the same kind of sausage.  She looked calm, reserved, and respectably dressed.  I believe she was German.  I watched her eat her dog.  In one hand, wrapped in a napkin, she held just the sausage, and in the other hand she held just the bread.  On a plate before her I saw a serving of ketchup and a serving of mustard.  She first dipped the end of her sausage into the ketchup followed by the mustard, bit into it, then lifted the bread up and bit into that.  Dual hand usage.  All very neat and clean.  All utterly rational.

The fellow who bogarted my tax shelter

     I shot this JPG this morning through the western window of Walter Street-the window facing the street.  You can see a pile of donations on the curbside along with a kick stood kid size bicycle.   A computer tower, a cast iron fajita pan, two plastic garbage bags, one filled with old clothes and the other filled with old kitchen items.  Also, a deflated soccer ball that I am certain can no longer hold air.   The old clothes were once worn by myself, and the used kitchen items were once used by both myself and Julie.  The bicycle, on the other hand, is owned by the a stranger who, it turns out, came along through Walter Street to bogart all of the donated items that he thought was of value for himself.  Through no timing of my own, I was able to see him do this and to take JPGs of the said bogarting.

     Who is this man?  Why is he a stranger?  What will he do with all the stuff he's bogarting on Walter Street?  I watch him through our western facing window.  I stand in the shadow of our black out drapes, watching him quietly, thoughtlessly.  I watch events unfold.  What I know is that I do not know this man.  What I know is that he was born of mother.  What is know is not what I am thinking about, however, as I watch him return to grab my bag of donations.  I was thinking about all of the pants and shirts that I had stuffed into that bag.  I had to choose each article from among the rest of my clothes hanging in the closet.  The oldest were the ones to go, of course, and I thought about how long I had owned each one, where and when I had first purchased them, the time I had spent in them, the life I had lived.  Memories, really.  Each article of owned clothing has shared a certain segment of my life, holds a specific amount of my own personal history in its thread and weave.  If I were to take each pant, shirt, jacket, sock, belt, t-shirt, boxer short, set it before me and think about each one, I would be able to lay out a map out my adult life in cloth form.  I wonder what kind of pattern that would create.  

    

     I don't think this fellow has any idea what individual history he bogarts with that white plastic bag he so nonchalantly picked off the curb and wheeled away with.  Or does he?  Does he know more than that?  He could be someone who understands himself as a salvager of forgotten memories, someone who trades lives in the same way that people trade cards, or hats, or ferns.  I don't know him.  But even with that, I like to think that he is taking the History of Roland in that white plastic garbage bag and reincarnating it into another perhaps higher, more exalted state of existence.  I like to think that the lives my frayed and holy pants and shirts will soon be revived on the backs of kings.

three plain colors

     I was riding up Fulton Street on the sidewalk when I turned and saw these three apartment buildings on the left side of the street.  They caught my attention because, I think, of the colors with which they were painted.  I don't know why.  My eye took a little bit of its pleasure from looking at them, like Pantone color swatches, standing beside one another. Providing mutual support, in a way.  Keeping each other's structure intact, the colors true and defined.  I don't really know what colors they are.  The gray of the sky influences both the seen color and the way my camera records the light being reflected off of the objects.  Yet I dismounted, set my bike against a wall, walked a few steps to center the composition, and made the picture.  I like looking at the buildings together.  They are so plain and undistinguished, the middle one in particular, realizing that towns like Tijuana of maybe towns in Cuba may also have apartment buildings very similar to this one.  I don't really know, to be honest.  
     If you take a stroll or bike into certain neighborhoods here - the Richmond district, the Sunset district, for example, or near the sea - you might see that buildings like these three, with facades lacking in flourish or ornamentation, are quite common, even more common than, say, Victorians like those found around Alamo square.  Or those found on our Walter Street, even.  They are so square and uninteresting there on Fulton Street.  I'm surprised by my interest, that I chose to dismount and compose and photograph them.  These three friends of different colors standing together, keeping each other company, leaning on each other, day after cloudy summer day.

Dough boy

     

     I bought this big blue bowl for two dollars on Page Street between Scott and Divisadero, specifically for dough mixing and rising.  I've used it several times now since discovering it, and it has been magnificent.  Here I have made a jpeg where the bowl cradles a ball of pizza dough.  Julie and I are visiting the Sueys and the new boy Hunter Harvey this afternoon.  Pizza seems right for the occasion.  I'm rising this dough, above, in order to make two rounds of about one foot in diameter.  It is not yet clear what they will be topped with.  Ideas are smoked mozzarella, pepperonis, mushroom, ground pork knots, and tomato sauce.  The possibility of introducing shrimp ceviche has surfaced as well, for we have here at least three lemons that have been previously zested for dressings.

     There they are.  I often and always wonder what to do with them.  I should stick googly eyes on them and punt them into Duboce dog park half a block from my front door.  If anyone knows what to do with a trio of zested lemons, it's a pampered urban maltipoo and his friends pug and sheba inu.

     I have taken the recipe for my dough from Alice's magnificent book The Art of Simple Food.  Alice is my niggie.  I think this book is magnificent and recommend it to the earth.  Come two pm, the dough exits the refrigerator and gets set on a table to warm to room temperature, two hours,  before shaping into flat discs one foot in diameter.  Here is a jpeg of an orchid bud in our sun room.  The bud is opening:

     Find below also three jpegs of our resident ferns.  We joined the local fern kick only recently.  Neighbors in the surrounding Victorians I suspect joined this kick long ago.  We are just now discovering the simple beauty of the local fern.  These three fern came from Cole Hardware store, in Cole Valley.  Aside from ferns, this store vends portable grills and screws of various shapes, sizes, and metals.  Do not forget to think of them after your next Ikea run.

Sunnyside Street

    

      Is it the second, or third, day of my unemployment?  Sit quietly, try to remember.  It has been a mysterious week.  [Moving forward]  A puzzling week-not because I have a puzzle of objectivity set before me and am unable to solve it.  I am within the puzzle, suddenly.  So early this week, on the first of a month, in a morning on the sixth floor of a glass and steel pediment, before a crackerjack woman bejewelled in as seen pure precious metals, whose pauses are emptying, stretched out in time, enigmatic, with silence that is not eloquent, not morose.  I did not blink, and then at once see that I am in Caracas, or atop Mt. Apu, or in a Polanski film, or in a buried coffin.  My objective view did not change.  I blinked, observed the formalities set down neatly on a table, signed, signed, initialed, signed.  She rose and led me down a naked hall to the elevator, would not shake my hand I had a cold, and I was swallowed up and descending.  The world remained the same, continued with its day, and that Roland continued with it. I shall never discover what will become of him. Puzzle entered.  Puzzle has made his bed in my apartment today while I wasn't looking, while I turn pages on the sinking couch, my toes pawing the threads of our woven oval rug.  I am  five again, but i my little hands this church organ has been broken into much more than five thousand pieces.  It's pipes are played in pillow buns, the breath shallow, even, inaudible.

2 June 2011

     The view through windows of our apartment on Walter St. facing the cottage out back.  I like this view.

     Morning tea in my favorite mug that was made by my cousin Lester in Chicago.  
    

Oil

Here is very useful information for those who deep fry with cooking oil.  Wonder what to do with all that used oil and grease?  Recycle it, it's a radical act, dude! >>

http://sfwater.org/detail.cfm/MC_ID/17/MSC_ID/401/MTO_ID/NULL/C_ID/4894