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“REMAINS” A poem in fragments

By Jesús Castillo - Purple & Gray 4.4.2010

“This is a test.” A set of margins created for company. For waiting in train stations or asking a stranger the time. You’re allowed to freak out this much only. There’s a green car parked outside, by the curb, near the bike racks. An old man is asking people to put change in his plastic cup and I remember my name contains both my father’s and grandfather’s stories. The table I’m sitting at is made of steel and marble. It’s cold and it’s spring. In the song on the radio, a noise

Carmen. Do you remember Carmen? My cousin, who married young, to a man twice her age and

with little means. Back in San Luis. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the farm, I remember. The pond, overgrown with stalks and moss. Where I’d catch dragonflies by the tail. Their wings almost metallic in the gilded, orange noon. Carmen, still 15 and a virgin, sang in the straw-roofed kitchen hut, where she helped my grandmother cook, steaming the tripe, and grinding the corn into mush.

At some point, air support was requested. It was mostly children. But the claims were exaggerated.

140 casualties, in this instance, is an acceptable mode of living. The captain hacked and spit like an old

engine on a cold morning. When it rains, the homeless will sit under the shelter of bus stops for hours, sometimes even long after it’s cleared. I know I call in a time of brittle language. I know the dams are gathering fuel. Fearsome dissidents wait outside the glass gates. Is the comfort of laughter enough? Or what is it, exactly, that we’re saving from the flood?

Is this Chopin? To see the valleys and the flowery graves. Insistent string. Mountain ridges opening

up to reveal cloud formations breaking. A sudden layer of thin blue film. Before train stations.

Music as a gesture towards heaven or a vague suspicion of what we were. I say this now as my body, which appears young, shows the first signs of time drained. I say this as a breath rising up to the wooden beams of the restaurant ceiling. A rhythm like glass pellets raining on tile. Days like passages from a Russian novel, where love is a distant fracture we can hear from the hill.

The collision, the paused rain, the small delays between breaths, the pebble rolling down, the slope

of a hip, the skylight, the glare, the tedium of age, the building full of children, the repetitive mechanism,

the idle company, the phone call, the place, the evening walk’s end, the minute space between two things touching, the loss of meaning, the boundary’s approach, the rendering of limbs, the edge of the skin behind.

It rained for four whole years. The crops gorged and died. We drew portraits of the city. Our monuments, half-hidden in clouds. Many banded together for survival. Our elders wrote love letters to God. God remained curious as an ancient child. Much like today, we pondered by windows. The pipes rusted. What happened afterwards, I’m not quite sure. We were put on earth to dream. A child told us, Go forth, life is waiting at the bottom of the steps, to your left. You will know it by its seriousness. You will know it by its reflective carnival mask.

#Jésus Castillo #Poem

APHRODISIACS

By Courtney Wilson - Purple & Gray

5.4.2010

Sex has been everything from celebrated to shameful throughout history and between the many cultures on this earth. I myself am a proponent of celebrating sexuality, though often times it can go untended in the garden of our busy lives. If life is taking the fun out of the bedroom, some herbal allies can put it back in. More frequent, more passionate, and hotter sex is something everyone can enjoy. Because sexual appetite has physical, emotional and spiritual facets, it requires a multifaceted approach. Herbs can’t rearrange your time to make time for sex, but they can cue your body into making it more of a priority.

According to the Kama Sutra, awakening the five senses is the key to heightening sexual pleasure.

(Read the Rest Here)

#Courtney Wilson #Aphrodesiacs

Oakland

#Kwame Wade,

A: “I feel like Zombies ate my brains...” B: “So they’re still hungry then?”

Overheard Conversations, Issue 4

#Overhead

“POPULAR MECHANICS”

By Jesús Castillo - Purple & Gray 4.4.2010

the story of a deer yawning.

a man in front of a television set

drinking coffee.

how we got to the other end of Oregon

or across the big river.

a dead fish sinking somewhere.

the time we just drove in silence.

the time you came upstairs naked with the noise

of a celebration behind you

and locked the door.

the language we have for that minute

after you realize you’re in love

with another living thing

that might potentially understand

the noises coming out of your mouth.

balconies and small nostalgia.

going to some new year’s thing. vomit

on a sidewalk.

a wife refusing to be kissed.

that man who just passed by, who might have

been, at one point, her lover.

a bird of paradise building its nest.

a monkey falling.

a piece of meat on a conveyor belt.

the death we wish for.

the death that’s waiting. many

fine days of sitting by windows.

every time she takes a bite of chocolate,

she closes her eyes, tilts her head,

and lets out a barely audible moan.

#Jésus Castillo #Poem

THIS EMAIL BROUGHT TO YOU BY NIPPLE CREAM

By Jessi Hamel - Purple & Gray

4.1.2010

A few years ago, I used my Gmail account to write an email to a compassionate friend after a boy broke my heart. The ads the email thread generated were surprising. One was for a doctor specializing in heart disease. Another was for a pill to treat heartburn. Nice try Google, I thought. If only mending a broken heart was that easy.

I wondered if any of my friends and fellow Gmail users had experienced similar Google ad fails. One recounted the story of a contentious email thread between him and his girlfriend. What started out as a friendly exchange quickly devolved into a relationship squabble. And the ad alongside the messages? It was for nipple cream.

His story brought up a lot more questions than it answered. How did this come up without the word “nipple” appearing anywhere in the emails? Do men even use nipple cream? Was it the erotic kind that comes in various flavors? Because hey, maybe it wasn't so bad of an ad after all. You could use it to spice up your relationship, maybe help you avoid emails like that again.

After the heartburn ads showed up, I started paying more attention to the ads in my mailbox. Each email received offered a new puzzle: what words in the email might have prompted the specific ads? And every time the ad-generating algorithm got it completely wrong, by say, reading a metaphor literally, it was strangely gratifying. Stupid Google. Ha!

So I was disappointed to find out that starting early this year, Google stopped posting links based on the content of individual emails. Suddenly the triggers for certain ads became more difficult to pin down. Now Gmail—according to their website—chooses ads “based on another recent message on the same page of your inbox.”

This sounds like an improvement. And if you want to watch Google engineer Alan explain this while confirming all of your stereotypes about computer engineers, it is well worth a look. But this new policy doesn’t seem to have upped the accuracy of the ads. A definitely un-pregnant friend of mine who has no love for kids has ads for maternity wear in her inbox. And the ads popping up next to her recent emails—"Car Wrapping Companies", "Looking for Penelope?"—are so unrelated to anything she has written about, that it’s as if Google is throwing ads against the wall just to see what sticks.

✴Savvier people I know have installed ad-blocker extensions to their Firefox or Chrome browsers, but I’m holding out. I figure that with all their money, and all their smart, nerdy, bad hairstyled engineers like Alan, one day the Gmail team is going to get it right and be able to tell me where to buy exactly what I want. I’ll see ads that say “Eco-friendly, Quad 6’2” Surfboards”, or—even better—“Where to Purchase That Blue Shirt You Liked on that Girl Walking down Pacific the Other Day.” And that's when I’ll buy heartburn medication if they suggest it. Or nipple cream. Because if it’s listed, I must want it.

#Jessi Hamil #Google

DICTIONARY A Love Letter

By Richard Chiem - Purple & Gray

5.4.2010

The following is a creative non-fiction piece, a love note, and it's real. This was my actual love note I used a year ago, to court my now ex-girlfriend and afterward, we shared a wonderful relationship together. Before this note, we were only strangers.

Rebecca reid farnsworth// noun// archaic// friendship takes time to overcome and the planet is playing favorites again. Affection is sinking like a stone somewhere not an ocean and the boy closes his eyes for you. Man is young again. The earth is thinking. A girl is taking off all of her clothes and swimming in the great lake where there is simplicity: silver cedars and white moon and no one is watching, but giraffes in the dark, just like in the Jack Gilbert poem, the forgotten dialect of the heart, his favorite poem. Giraffes in the boy’s head and surrounding the general vicinity. The earth is thinking. White poppies. Becca is good and gradual and gorgeous, and she likes to wear yellow. She likes being human. Why can’t they all be like her? The boy is thinking. The earth is asking this question softly, and the scientists are answering, plate tectonics. The science of how the earth behaves, when she is in our lake, and the quiet there is hard to describe. But listen. Birds glow. Becca is swimming.

Synonyms for rebecca reid farnsworth// Stella. Abednego. Honey. Circumference. To know what it is to know. To be honest. To see the ocean at night. Thank you. To have heartburn and like it. What is your favorite color?

2nd definition:

Today I am going to the museum of contemporary arts and no one can stop me. Today I am in my bedroom and enjoying how the light is, my shadows like fish on the walls and the man who calls himself Julian Casablanca is singing under control. His voice lifts memories of the 80s television show, The Wonder Years and Becca is jamming and dancing with herself. You remind me of drums, and drums are awesome. This is all your fault. The beautiful city is all your fault and for you I am going bananas. Both the fruit and behavior. The split and the word, how I choose to begin. Cheers.

If the ocean could speak I would say,

We should do this again sometime.

#Richard Chiem #Poem

MISSION CHAPEL, ITALY

By Patrick Kiley - Purple & Gray

02.15. 2010

The way sent past a slaughterhouse,

On a bright plain before the alpine arc.

Cornhusks in rows were snowfall streaked,

Surveillance cameras eyed an empty park.

Glowing birches, a clearing, a stream.

I crossed the bridge unseen.

Then the chapel set in a field

Like a photograph, remote, cloaked

In light, and real. A plaque explained,

The locked door refused. A window

Showed what the room contained

(An altar and broom, pews).

I returned the way that I had come –

A plague of finches burst from the birches

To the brilliant mountains’ diadem –

Riding the chapel road in rare evening

Clarity, remembering that foreigner who

Sweated through fog; a poet, a missionary.

#Patrick Kiley #Poem

PUTTING HISTORY TO REST IN THE HALLWAY TO THE RESTROOMS :

The Bay Street Shopping Center’s Memorial of Erasure

By Emily Roehl - Purple & Gray

02.19.2010

On weekend afternoons, for no justifiable reason, I often go to Ikea. Understand: I hate Ikea, and by “hate” I mean “feel guilty about loving.” My shamefaced enjoyment of the soulless warehouse has a short fuse, however, and I often take advantage of my free spot in Ikea’s towering parking structure to sneak over to the Bay Street shopping center and resist consumer temptation (and by “resist” I mean “willfully place myself in temptation’s way”), in spite of the ominous signage threatening automotive seizure for such transgressions. I usually reward my misbehavior with a guilt-free spin around Sephora and a trip to Bay Street’s well-manicured public restroom.

(Read the Rest Here)

#Emilie Roehl

EXCERPT FROM “KYOTO EXPRESS”

By Charles Kalish - Purple & Gray

02.18.2010

“Slowmoving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth…”

(“Slowmoving,” a line taken from Whitman’s “To Think of Time,” a short poem)

“Slowmoving”. Indeed they are, though sometimes we may feel them moving faster than other times. My friend says by the time you’re sixty the years flash by like lightning. Nevertheless, night makes its way East to West, just as the day does, always and forever at the same pace, moving as the Earth rotates around the sun, spinning on its axle like a top. This evening while walking back from the train station through the alleyways, back to Ryoko’s house, I looked up at the sky where I could make out the dark figures of clouds and vast expanses of space, studded with familiar constellations and the familiar moon shining. I pulled Ryoko close to me, and gave her a kiss. I told her that I had had a wonderful day, and thanked her. She kissed me back. My heart was beating, so was hers. Life followed us as we walked up to the front door, which we opened and entered with night and the street and the alleys and the dark-dampened light of the street lamps and the dog who sleeps on the neighbor’s steps but wasn’t there and the trains and the alley cats and the people riding their bicycles, all behind us. The black lines continued to go ceaselessly over the earth, slowmoving and silent, but for now, night pours over us and great millenia bounding time moves with small steps.

#Charles Kalish #Poem

FENUGREEK: THE DELICIOUS MEDICINAL

By Courtney Wilson - Purple & Gray

02.07.2010

This month has been about fenugreek for me. I put in a few too many fenugreek seeds in a curry several weeks ago and was picking them out individually - plumped by the moisture and spices - savoring each adorable, irregularly shaped seed. Fenugreek seeds have a very special flavor - described by some as alkaline, phenolic, or bitter. It’s a very distinguished flavor. After my excessive fenugreek curry, I began adding too much fenugreek on purpose, until my partner caught me and asked me to stop…(he doesn’t always enjoy the bitter foods I indulge in.) So I accidentallydiscovered sprouted fenugreek. I wanted to plump up the seeds in water to sprinkle on top of my food, but left them too long and voila—baby sprouts. Later I found out that these are a common (middle eastern) way to enjoy fenugreek fresh in salads!

You may be familiar with fenugreek as a powdered seed for Indian curries, though it has been enjoyed in many other ways throughout history. It has been used as a warming winter tea in Egyptian coffee shops, (sweetened of course), a hair conditioner in India is made from mixing yoghurt and fenugreek seed powder, and even a traditional fenugreek cake called Helba. There’s even a traditional fenugreek cake called Helba. It was at one time used as cattle fodder along with clover and vetch - which are all from the pea family. The leaves and sprouts can be eaten in salads and to flavor other dishes. In the United States, fenugreek is used to flavor imitation maple syrups.

This special plant has been used medicinally for increasing milk flow for the new mother as well as for dyspepsia, gas, anorexia, diarrhea, chronic cough, bronchitis, fever, sore throat, mouth ulcers, skin irritations, and for more modern ailments such as diabetes and high cholesterol.

Fenugreek seeds are high in the polysaccharide galactomannan, (similar to guar gum and used for improving textures of ice cream or cream cheese) saponins (substances that foam), and also contain mucilage, volatile oils, and alkaloids like gentianine, carpaine, and trigonelline. They also contain fiber, 4-hydroxyisoleucine and fenugreekine, which is a constituent that may play a role in its hypoglycemic action. How do these things make fenugreek the useful medicine that it is? It is thought that these and other compounds found in the seeds of fenugreek help digest your food more slowly, inhibit the transport of glucose, and slow carbohydrate absorption, which could assuage the blood sugar spikes and falls characteristic of someone with glucose regulation issues, like hypoglycemics and diabetics. The number of insulin receptors in red blood cells have been thought to increase with fenugreek treatment, as well as improving glucose utilization in the extremities—something that could save our diabetic loved one’s toes and fingers from ulcers or amputation.

Many studies have been done in India on the effect of fenugreek seeds on diabetes and blood sugar levels. The studies, though small, were positive, and a few also showed lowered cholesterol levels, triglycerides, and LDL levels in diabetic subjects. In European studies that have been conducted on fenugreek and diabetes, significant drops in fasting glucose levels (after an 8 to 10 hour fast) were observed in both type I and type II diabetics, from 272 to 196 in type I and from 151 to 112 in type II. These and other clinical tests have used between 50 and 100grams of fenugreek powder per day, though the recommended dosage is between 1 and 6 grams 3 times a day.

Fenugreek has obviously been around the block, from cattle to curries to cakes, and it didn’t take long for us to find medicinal uses for this potent herb as well. My suggestion? In honor of this great healing and flavorful herb, try the fenugreek cake if you’re shy on bitters, and if not, try a roasted fenugreek tea as a coffee substitute to get your liver working in the morning. If you happen to be unapologetically tame, we can all agree on curry.

A young woman from Jordan, Huda Abu Hamdia, shares her recipe for Helba on lifestylefood (.) com, which she explains is a cake historically given to new mothers after delivery, probably due to its ability to increase lactation.

Helba

2 tablespoons fenugreek seeds

3 cups semolina flour (smeed)

1½ cup flour

1 tablespoons anise (powder or crushed seeds)

2 teaspoons cinnamon powder

½ cup sugar

½ cup coconut flakes

4 teaspoons baking powder

¼ cup oil

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 ½ teaspoons yeast, plus 1 teaspoon sugar, plus ½ cup warm water (37degree warm); mix, cover and set aside to froth

Sugar syrup (2 cups sugar, plus 1 cup hot water, plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice, plus 1 cinnamon stick)

Wash the fenugreek seed, put in sauce pan, add 1 cup hot water and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce and simmer for 10 minutes.

Prepare the yeast mixture (as mentioned in the ingredients list).

Meanwhile, mix semolina flour, all purpose flour, sugar, coconut flakes, baking powder, cinnamon, and anise.

Add oil and olive oil to the flour mixture. Mix well to combine by rubbing the mixture with your hands.

Add yeast mixture. Important point to make sure the water you’re mixing the yeast with is not hot, just warm.

Drain fenugreek seeds. don’t throw the water away. Add the seeds to the flours mixture and mix then add some of the reserved water to the dough and work it out till it’s not dry and not very sticky.

Transfer dough to a greased round 15inch baking tray. Press to fill the tray. Level with palm of your hand. Cut into diamond shaped pieces. Cover and leave to rest in warm place for at least 1 hour.

Meanwhile, prepare sugar syrup by mixing ingredients together. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10minutes. Set aside to cool.

Bake Helba in medium 400F° (200C°) preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes or until golden.

Take out of the oven and pour syrup all over, and leave aside to absorb all syrup. Cut and serve.

Courtney’s Review of Helba

I couldn’t wait to try out this recipe, and it turned out as a lovely, rustic cake, which pairs perfectly with a cup of hot chai for an extra warming effect. I actually quartered the amount of sugar (as I am apt to do), and it was just right, tasting like a french toast made of homemade bread, and soaked in maple syrup. Now I understand why the chemical plants in New Jersey favor this seed for their imitation maple syrups! It’s very believable. I’m not sure how much the sugar called for in the recipe is balanced by the glucose regulating function of the fenugreek seeds, but if you’re simply looking for increased milk flow for your little one—let loose and add the sugar if you prefer it that way

#Herbs #Courtney Wilson

#Walter Green

I have names for my boyfriend’s x’s; his fiancé I call ‘Tricky Tracy’

Overheard Conversations, Issue 4

#Overhead

LOOKING FOR AMERICANA IN THE BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA

Fisherman’s Wharf, Le Musée Mécanique, Woodhouse Fish Co., & Levi’s Jeans

By G. Walker - Purple & Gray

02. 20.2010

“Objects of nostalgia and a sense of Western, wayward adventure” sums up the descriptions that can be found for the term “Americana” - though this doesn’t truly conjure up my own sentiments. Growing up in a bohemian, new-age, Jewish American household I associated the term “Americana” with jingoistic kitsch, artifacts of a communal past that didn’t really fill me with a sense of pride. Now however I find Americana to be at the very least interesting if not undeniable and, therefore, embraceable.

American culture is best described by its absence and so it is exhibited in San Francisco, which upon closer inspection, delivers much of what Americana professes to embody. Levi Strauss & Co., for example, is a native San Francisco legend and point of American pride.

(Read the Rest Here)

#Genevieve Walker #San Francisco

DAY FIVE: SALT FLATS

The first installment in

a non-sequential series on westering

and U.S. exceptionalism

By Emily Roehl - Purple & Gray

02.19.2010

We drove for nine days. We camped in cheap tents. We visited cemeteries. We viewed the stuffed remains of a family of foxes. We walked through an airplane hangar filled with circus wagons and stagecoaches and looked inside a Conestoga wagon and explored a one-room schoolhouse and treaded aisle after aisle of dioramas featuring home interiors decorated to correspond with decades in American history. We saw a collection of nine hundred dolls. We ate at an “Eating House.” We traveled west.

(Read the Rest Here)

#Emilie Roehl #Travel

THE WORLD IS POOR: AN ODE TO THOMAS FRIEDMAN Hampi, India

by Jacob Matilsky - Purple & Gray

02.27.2010

Surrounded by bright red boulder fields, and built throughout the remains of Vijayanagara (City of Victory), Hampi attracts droves of tourists—Indian, foreign alike. During the high season, between October and March, the street pulses with throngs of temple viewers, rock climbers, and spaced-out dreadlock-sporting party-goers. The main city lies on the southern bank of the Tungabhadra River, and many dwellings are built into the old ruins that stretch, literally, for miles in all directions. Some of the ruins have been gated off and cost 5 dollars to enter, but with a bicycle or by hiking around, one can explore the remnants of this ancient city on rock outcroppings or surrounded by banana groves. While the south side of the river caters to Indian and foreign tourists, cross the river and Hampi takes on a different life. Here, all the shops are either guesthouses, restaurants, or internet cafes, with the occasional stand selling water, cigarettes, and Herbal Essence shampoo. The clientele appears to be 95+ percent foreign, and the menus offer a standard array of "Chinese, Mexican, Continental, Indian, Israeli, Italian food" and encourage tourists to "come in and feel at home in Hampi”

Cont., Essays

#Jacob Matilsky #Essay

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