Saturday, May 17, 2003


sunny afternoon

perhaps few things in life are as relaxing as sitting in the golden sunlight pouring through the large windows of one's brooklyn living room, listening to arto lindsay singing to himself in brazilian portuguese on o corpo sutil while reading about coffee.

it's just a day to be surrounded by books and sumatra. not only the sumatra lintong in the gillies espresso blend from yesterday, but also in the 2 kilos of sumatra blue batak sitting in my closet.

it's a disparate mix for a day both warm and cool, depending on how the clouds come over you. on the left, swami lakshmanjoo's kashmir shaivism:the secret supreme arrived in the mail.

this is so much less than i hoped: yet another indic collection of the 20 supposed states of various consciousness, tattvas by the dozen, the 7 processes of the 7 preceivers; really, it's like reading aristotle all over again. after a while i feel trapped in these endless categories of being.

nowhere there is the beauty of actually walking into the nelson-atkins gallery of fine art and standing before the glorious bronze shiva nataraja that so fascinated me in my youth.

on the right, lingle's coffee cuppers' handbook, another book of lists and categories: 12 secondary tastes, 4 combinations with bitter.

in the middle i'm sitting with a cup of lukewarm espresso. "sometimes you just make up your mind," arto murmurs.

or as the father of yoga teacher ori munson whispered laughingly to me, taking my hand as we walked down the restaurant tabla's slate steps, "all you need is yourself."

but then again, i'm partial to what lingle says when he writes: that which neither evaporates nor dissolves we can feel only with our mouths.

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