Wednesday, January 30, 2019

When Beardies Awaken

I like to say during the winter that I have a sleeping dragon at home. A bearded dragon, that is, and she is not so fierce or mythological as the name dragon would suggest. Still, the phrase remains fun.

Though it's still winter, she is easing awake now. Some fresh food that I gave her disappeared not on the first day but on the second. And what I gave her today she ate right away. Now she's back in her spot looking fairly still, but that's the bearded dragon way, after all. Stillness. She's waking; I can tell.

While the rest of the country is in the extreme cold temperatures, today has been one of those beautiful, almost warm winter days. No wonder the dragon has awakened.

Her eyes peer at me, like she knows who I am but is still sort of getting to know me again after the long sleep. Still reminding herself that she's comfortable around me.

Her eyes gleam in black and gold. Maybe she isn't so non-mythological after all: there seem to be deep secrets in her eyes. Maybe she learned them while sleeping, and now she has awakened to take on the world with her new knowledge.

Monday, January 28, 2019

La Traviata

What an interesting journey into the world of opera this has been. It began with Don Giovanni at Santa Fe Opera and then I started in on Arizona Opera two years ago with Madama Butterfly, which has remained one of my favorites. That piece broke my heart. So two years later, I found myself watching another story of love and tragedy, Verdi's La Traviata.

It's funny. The difference in story between the two was likely quite fitting a difference for me two years ago and today. So siting watching La Traviata this weekend was like swimming in a strange blur where everything in me was blending with everything in the opera. I thought it was just me until I read all of the material in the program that comments on Verdi's way of reaching the audience with relatable, real life themes. I felt it.


In my observations over the past two years, I have observed that I like Puccini much and Rossini not as much. So I've definitely started in on what style of music I prefer. Verdi was different from both, though I would say more like Puccini than like Rossini. I kept on noticing (again, with my unmusical perspective) how the singing would come to a climax that was then matched by the orchestra. It was very theatrical, the way that the two matched like that. Emotion plus, well, louder volume.

I always like to say that the sets and costumes were pretty--this time I couldn't even pay much attention to them. I was just reading the lyrics and listening to the music . . . and yet I can't even remember much of the music now. (Though I think I will maybe look up a recorded version to listen to again.) Yet still it caught me up in that strange blur of emotion. Sara Gartland as Violetta led it all; I feel like I was watching an ode to her life and her final discovery of love and her acceptance of that love at whatever cost, even the cost of pain and heartbreak. David Blalock as Alfredo did also bring in some sweet, sweet tones that helped to create that feeling of love.

I was expecting more tragedy to the story, I admit. Maybe because I was expecting more, this didn't feel "that bad," even though of course in real life it would be. I think this is because the main effect, for me, was Violetta's choice to take this love that she has with Alfredo at whatever cost. So everything else kind of fades away because their love was the point and even any tragedy that accompanied it somehow only made it sweeter. But I guess that perspective is the perspective of a literature student who finds beauty in the painful things, too.

So very lovely, definitely one of my favorites.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Astronaut Foods: Choc-o-saurus

Now for something even more different than just a little different from the norm. This is not only stretching my chocolate standards but also stretching what exactly we mean by chocolate. Which I suppose is fine given that I've also talked about chocolate candles and lip balm and notebooks. Today's unusual item is the Choc-o-saurus Freeze-Dried Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Chips from Astronaut Foods. Dinosaurs and chocolate, I mean, I couldn't resist.


I've never had freeze-dried anything, except for things like strawberries that don't entirely count because freeze-drying them is just a specific way of drying them versus freeze-drying an entire processed food. So this was an entirely new thing to try. Inside the pouch is another pouch of paper. The packaging explains that there are slits in the paper "to facilitate processing" and that the product will naturally be slightly broken. Wasn't too broken, though. A bit but not much.


What took me by surprise (although I suppose it shouldn't have) was how much it smells like chocolate ice cream. Specifically partly melted chocolate ice cream. It looks like ice cream, too, which also shouldn't be surprising given that, well, it is ice cream, just dried. The drying process does give it kind of that honeycomb look with the slight air bubbles (by honeycomb I of course mean the toffee-like honeycomb, not the honeycomb made by bees). It feels light and weightless in the hand.


There are two ways to eat such a food. You can leave it in your mouth to melt. In this way, it will legitimately become like ice cream except that it isn't cold and it almost feels a little stickier somehow. It's strange. Or you can chew it a little. With this method, it will somewhat at first like a malt ball except that it's softer and melts more and then does also become much like ice cream. It's a very creamy, chocolatey type of ice cream. I at first forgot about the whole chocolate chips thing, maybe because I had small pieces on the outside that didn't have any chips or maybe because they're small enough chips that they kind of just blend into the whole effect. When I did notice them on their own, well, they were nice as chocolate chips but in truth they are terribly cheap chocolate. Which is entirely to be expected, so that's all I'll say on that.

So this is just one of those products that's very weird but also kind of cool and fun. It's a novelty product and a gift shop product. It isn't something you'd buy all the time. But I would recommend getting it once if you come across it. Because chocolate and dinosaurs--why not?

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Little House Life

I was thinking about Little House on the Prairie. It's the story you can describe as being all heartwarming and fuzzy and family and faith and whatnot. But their life was hard. When you talk about everything that happened, it can seem like nothing went right for them. Life is tough--and it will never stop being tough.

Sure, there are phases where you can say that things are going well and there are times when you just have to say that it's going rough. But there will always be obstacles and they will never stop confronting you. So you kind of just have to go along with that and accept that. This world is filled with things trying to attack and bring us down. So if you know that going in, then it can be somewhat easier to still create in your life that heartwarming, Little House tone even through it all.

I guess I'm just so used to thinking of that duality. Sometimes a little too much, even. Sometimes I'll find the dark moments too appealing because of their literary-ness and symbolic-ness. Sometimes things appear too striking to me, too poetic. But even then, I love that image of the darkness and the light. The light stamps out the dark. The light vanquishes the dark.

In Little House, when Pa is so broken down that he just shouts at the air, you'd think that would be the end. They can never get out of that moment. And yet they do and they still stick together as a strong and loving family and they make it in the end. They spent a whole winter starving, sharing one ever-smaller loaf of bread per day among six people in a space that was so cold that they literally woke up at least once to snow covering them in bed. Darkness . . . and light. Spring came eventually. It came late but it came. With it came warmth and the train and finally, supplies.

This world is dark . . . and that's why you reach your head and your hands out of this world into the light of eternity. Hope. Hope keeps us alive. The hope and the knowledge that all that is bad here will end and all that is good here is but a taste of what is to come.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Entering the VR

I'm not a techie person. I'm not into all the new things that come out. I don't play video games. But you know, when virtual reality became reality, I was excited for that one. Sci-fi had genuinely come to life. I'd like to say the Holodeck had come to life, but in actuality VR is more like (that which even has the exact same name) VR in Earth 2 (I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, too, but that's the one that comes to mind for me). I remember when I watched that show a few years ago and I said that VR was cooler than the Holodeck--and then VR became real.

And yet I didn't even try VR until yesterday. I don't know. I guess it's one of those things where I wasn't going to buy it myself and I never got around to trying it anywhere else. So yesterday.

The first game felt a little more like Tetris in a way. When I used to play Tetris on my Razor (a slim cellphone from back in the day for any who are unfamiliar), that tiny screen became my whole vision because I was so focused on the game (I was pretty great at Tetris, a skill that comes in handy when you're packing groceries into your shopping bags or stuffing the trunk of your car or packing a suitcase). So that first game felt kind of like that. The game was all I saw but that's kind of how it is when you play a screen game, anyways. It was cool, though, because you're using your hands and arms more than just your fingers.

The second game was a set of them. I just tried a few here and there, the carnival games that I'm terrible at, anyway, so of course was pretty bad at in the game. I probably had more fun on the home pages of this one, looking around at all the scenes around me. You turn your head and there are more things over there. You look up or down and there are things to look at. If someone's standing next to you in reality, you know they're there but they're not really there because they're not what you see next to you. It's crazy.

The last game I tried within this set was a little more interactive in the way that only VR can be. It was climbing. You're climbing across ropes and against walls/cliffs. So you're changing scenery. And you look down and you see down and it's amazing, even though it was animated style imagery. When you fell, you would "die" and the world would fall around you. I kept saying, I like dying, that's fun. Just seeing everything fall was so cool. And then in the end when you finish the course, there's a crown that you grab and if you waved it, there were stars. So I was just waving my crown and watching the stars fall. It's weird because there's something tangible in your hand and yet there isn't.

I can see how people get addicted to things like VR. They're really cool, no mistake. But I'll stick to it as just a novelty, something for every so often and not for every day or every week. It's amazing to enter another world but I also want to keep living in this one.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Roses Walking

There are roses walking across the earth,
Their blood is dripping red.

Petals scatter,
Thorns fall.

Brambles take hold,
Tearing and trembling.

Roots rip the ground,
Seedlings spring up.

Roses rise up in beauty,
and then shrivel.

The dried rose petals are the most exquisite of all.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

The Winter Thaws for a Pause

January tends to be the coldest time in Arizona. Even in the Phoenix area, there is that week or so where the lows go into thirties and the highs stay at the fifties or forties. We've just moved out of that spell. Now we're in a warm spell.

The jackets (and umbrellas) are gone. Now everyone is outside riding bikes and enjoying the weather. It got to 70 today--even though the high a week ago was 25 degrees lower.

There are desert marigolds blooming all around, as if it's spring. A little girl gave one to me at work the other day.

Where there were clouds covering the sky, the sun is beaming out. Even my bearded dragon awakened and flopped onto her sand, only to end up back in the same spot where she's been sleeping for the last couple months.

And that will be it, won't it? The warm spell will end. The rain will return and the cooler temperatures will come back, too. Maybe we've had the lowest of them, but we'll at least have cause to bring the jackets out again. Spring isn't here yet.

While such weather can be odd or even a hassle, I love the bipolarity of it. Ups and downs. One thing and then the opposite. Something you like and then something you don't and then you don't even know which you prefer because they keep interchanging.

Ups and downs and interchanging. So much that you don't even know which you prefer. A kaleidoscope. Life as a kaleidoscope. Always changing, always the same. Good or bad? Negative or neutral? Neither, in a way: you and your own perspective can be the constant, the thing that holds it all together.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Eclat Chocolate: Coffee & Cardamom

After all these years of chocolate reviewing and making up categories of chocolate (candy, confections, novelty, artisan, etc.), I've decided to add a new one: fine foods chocolate.


This Coffee & Cardamom bar from Eclat Chocolate is one of the chocolates that kind of breaks my rules about going for the more ethically-sourced cocoa products. It isn't even organic. It's so far apart from the usual chocolate style going around that it has no info about cocoa origin or the flavor notes of the chocolate or any of that, just a mention of the cocoa percentages. This one is a combination (not a mix) of 54% dark chocolate and 33% milk chocolate. The packaging gives that sleek, fine foods style rather than particularly the fine chocolate style. While it's very pretty packaging, it just looks different. Even the little window that lets you look in at the chocolate (which is honestly pretty convenient) is more reminiscent of crackers and cookies and things like that than chocolate.


Look at that bar design, too. I appreciate its singularity. The alternating stripes of milk and dark chocolate and the cocoa pods and leaves are quite striking. Sometimes when a chocolate is more of a food than a chocolate, the bar's design ends up being fairly plain or commonplace.


The aroma is fragrant. The effect here is that the fragrance comes from the chocolate's own flavor notes rather than necessarily added flavor. Though of course you know that it's all coming from the added cardamom and coffee.

I tried to break off a piece that included both types of chocolate. I got some of that warm cardamom taste and then started crunching on coffee. Coffee comes across the strongest by the time the chocolate is mostly gone. For the second piece, I tried to get a bigger one and in this way was able to taste more of the milk chocolate, this time paired closely with the taste of the cardamom. I would call this a standard fine foods milk chocolate, nothing particularly noteworthy on its own but not bad. I'm not seeming to be able to pick up the dark chocolate specifically. It's too low of a cocoa percentage to distinguish from the milk chocolate right next to it. So the milk chocolate naturally ends up registering more.


I keep on chewing this chocolate more than letting it melt, both because I'm trying to get all the flavors mixed in and because it has those coffee bean pieces. So definitely a munching chocolate.

It's good. There is a good balance on the cardamom, which is present but not overwhelmingly strong. The cardamom also makes the coffee, which is quite the common flavor combination with chocolate, more interesting. Chocolate like this is meant to be shared with strong flavors like these; otherwise, it would have no interest. So it's definitely a fine foods chocolate (since the focus is on the added flavors and not on the chocolate), but it's a good fine foods chocolate.

Monday, January 7, 2019

Do You Return?

Do you return to the same book again and again? I had been reading Jane Eyre about every four years. The exact same copy that I started with in middle school--even though I now own many, many copies of that book. I underline and I write things in the margins and I look back at what I noticed before. And each time, I brought with me a new perspective and so the book grew and developed with me.

It's now been five or six years since I read it. I'm not reading much these days, so there are plenty of other books I should probably spend my time on. But I'm feeling very much overdue for another reading of this book that has begun to feel like my soul.

What will I bring with me this time?

In middle school, I liked the dark, Gothic elements. In high school, I liked the fairy tale quality. In college, I liked Jane's growth as a person. Whatever age I was and whatever I was learning, I could take with me into this book.

It's funny, maybe now I'm going to really get into the whole Bertha thing. My perspective on Bertha is that she is, figuratively, Jane. She is what Jane would be if she stayed with Rochester at that point in their relationship. That's why Jane had to leave; she couldn't become Bertha. Later, things changed for both Jane and for Rochester and they were able to come together on better, healthier, equal terms. But at that point, Bertha was the thing within Jane that she had to beat and destroy. And I've been really into that concept of beating down things that you know try to destroy you.

And . . . maybe more. We'll see. I don't know, I think this book that is so familiar will be like it's fresh and brand new this time. The book that grows with me.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

The Thirteenth Doctor

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't yet watched the New Year's episode of Doctor Who, but I have watched all the other new episodes.

The idea of this character being female for the first time sparked, well, lots of conversation. Strong opinions. While I didn't exactly feel the necessity for introducing a female Doctor, I didn't want to feel too deeply about it either way and in any case, I thought it would be better to just wait and see how it all went. After all, I wasn't the biggest fan of the twelfth Doctor, so I was probably already okay with the idea of liking some of them and others not so much.

When I started watching the show, though, it was like we just had another Doctor. They don't try to make much of the fact that she's female and that's the point: it's still the same character. And Jodie Whittaker also just approaches playing the character; she doesn't try to infuse the character with femininity on purpose or anything. She just is and that was the best way to go about it. So anything female about her is just a natural part of it all.

There are, of course, the moments when it does come in to the plot. If they're in historical places, then of course it makes a difference for the Doctor to be a woman than a man; the believability would go down otherwise (I mean, we all know this is fiction, but you know what I mean). Still, even when it needed to be an aspect of the plot, I appreciated that the plot never revolved around this.

Thirteen's companions are more reminiscent of the First Doctor's posse. Not just one companion to flirt with aka. Rose and Ten (though I did love them) or Amy Pond and Eleven. A group. The Doctor is great when he has a whole group, not just one companion. That also gives more space for the plot of each episode; you have more material to work with.

There was something fresh about the whole feeling of this season. Getting a new writer in obviously reworks the whole tone. It was great to have episodes that were just adventures, like before. Everything can't be a facing-the-end-of-the-universe thing because that gets old, as does having the same character die multiple times. It's fun at first and then it's draining and then it has so much weight that it has no weight. So it's better with such a long-lived show as this to go back to that lighter weight. To have the peril within the episode and that's it. To have the fun skittering over to the past or a new planet or whatever.

They also had a good mix of settings. Historical, present, future, Earth, not Earth, space, land, aliens, no aliens (or kind of no aliens). That's the fun and imaginative element of the show.

So I was pleasantly surprised by this new season. I liked the Doctor again, was entertained once more by that character. And I enjoyed just going along for the adventure of each episode, just a fun hour of exploration.