Blue Bottle Coffee is okay, I guess

When I first started tasting wine, more than 15 years ago, my tastes were in the full-flavored, full-bodied reds. I didn't get the point of Pinot Noir. Now, of course, I like my pinots delicate and elegant, and scorn those made by producers in more or less the same style in which they make Cabernet Sauvignon.

I think my taste in coffee is undergoing a similar evolution. At first, I really liked the hard-roasted style of Cole Coffee, which still isn't bad. Their coffee comes out with less acid, which can give it a more mellow style than Peet's. Now, however, the medium roasts of Blue Bottle now seem just about right. The problem described in the last entry was, to some extent, due to a half pound of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe I bought from them which was awful: strong bitter vegetal flavor, like artichoke stem. Recently, though, I have bought two other half pounds which have been fabulous: Yemeni Mattari and Ethiopian Wotona. The irony of the latter is that even though it is very fine coffee, I'm not sure I like its flavors. What disagrees with me is the Merlot-like "sour tar"-ish flavor, which many people don't like (in Merlot). (Tonight I drank a 1999 Beringer Napa Valley Merlot, delicate and delicious, aged to perfection.) I guess I will have to suffer through it as an intellectual exercise. :)

The catalyst for this shift in coffee palate was the coffee I had at Ritual. Their coffees, if anything, have even lighter roasts than Blue Bottles', and they really emphasize delicacy and complexity. It's quite a contrast from Cole. So, try the single-origin Blue Bottle coffees. Try the Clover coffee at Ritual. Then see what you think of Cole, or Peet's for that matter.

Consultant Zen Mind

My usual habit of work, if you can call it that, is to focus on the next task ahead of me and try to get it exactly right. I can fret for hours about something which, in the larger project, is relatively minor. This was fine as a grad student, and maybe as a post-doc, but it is completely counter-productive as a consultant. In contrast to grad school's dragging on for years, consulting projects should have been done yesterday, and, better yet, last week. The trade offs between time spent and results generated must always be weighed and acted upon ruthlessly. I have to shed my attachments to ways of doing things which, although elegant and thorough, are unnecessary.

As always, though, zen is in the mind, not in the habit. A friend who had been a consultant for years recently got a job with the East Bay Municipal Utility District. She said that her co-workers don't share her zeal for getting things done, and that she still hasn't been able to figure out what they do all day.

Fall

Well, first: literally. About a month ago, I fell off my bicycle and pretty much all of me landed on my chin. Not a scratch anywhere else. My first thought after hitting the pavement was that I probably broke my jaw. After some kind passers by helped me to the sidewalk and then to a chair at a cafe, I locked up my bike and took a cab to St. Mary's emergency room. There they stitched up the gash in my chin and x-rayed my jaw. Not broken, but very sore for weeks afterwards. The stitches came out after five days and the gash has healed up well, although shaving there is still a little awkward.

The next day, J started day care in the same building where L works. Because I had a follow up appointment with a specialist around noon, I didn't go in to work, and got to hang out with J on his first day, morning and afternoon. He seems to have adjusted well and to like the place. However, he has, as everyone warned us he would, brought us plenty of colds from the other kids. I'm still getting over my second cold in a month. (J fortunately doesn't seem all that bothered by the colds. He gets a runny nose, but still crawls all over and eats well.) Between the accident and the colds, I haven't felt much like riding my bike, and have been taking MUNI a lot. Booooring.

Still, despite how fast the summer is flying by, there are already the stirrings of autumn. The desert beckons (not that I'm going). The fungi whisper that they will soon be fruiting. (The staff at day care have noted to L that J crawls around picking up little bits of stuff from the floor and eating them, as we see him do at home. L informed them that he gets the foraging gene from his father.) If I can just get through the summer of falls and colds...

Iraq as the Central Front of the War on Terror

For a long time, it puzzled and infuriated me that the president and vice-president would continue to link the war in Iraq to the "War on Terror." After all, none of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, Hussein had no working relationship with Islamicist terrorists threatening the US, etc. - the usual rebuttals. There didn't even seem to be such a thing as the War on Terror (except as a rhetorical tool to bash domestic political "opposition"), just a bunch of separate conflicts only distantly related.

But after reading John Perkins' books Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Secret History of the American Empire (actually, I'm in the middle of the latter), I think I'm beginning to understand stories like this. A central aim of US foreign policy has been to secure natural resources from other countries as cheaply as possible, using extortion, bribery, covert operations to overthrow or assassinate uncooperative foreign leaders, funding opposition forces, and, as a last resort, sending in US armed forces. These efforts naturally inspire some resistance from people whom we label "terrorists" and whom we fight under the rubric "War on Terror." They all have their own political, cultural and religious contexts and reasons for using terrorism, the tactic of the weak, but to us they're all the same: people who try to stand in the way of our taking their property.

Thus when GWB talks of Iraq as the "central front of the war on terror," he is actually speaking truthfully. The most important resource to control is oil. Iraq is central territory in oil country; if you control Iraq, you can project power throughout the region. Thus, Iraq is the central front of the US battle to maintain control over other people's resources, i.e., the War on Terror.

A couple travel blogs

A German friend of L's who happened to be in town for our wedding is now traveling around the world with her husband. They have a blog. (I have linked the English version.)

Another couple, Canadians who lived near us in North Beach, departed recently to travel the Silk Road. Their blog is here.

Clipless Bike Pedals and Fountain Pens

For my commute down to Silicon Valley, I bought a new bicycle. It's a lower mid-range road bike. Last weekend, I got clipless pedals and bike shoes - the kind that snap into and out of the pedals. They have taken a little getting used to in terms of snapping in and out of the pedals, but I love them! I get more power out of each stroke, and I feel so much more connected to the bike. (Yes, I know that's because I am so much more connected to the bike, literally.) The sensation of riding with them reminds me of the smoothness and connection to the paper and process of writing one gets with a good fountain pen.

Science and Meditation

Some of you have probably been muttering to yourselves, "Why the hell is he going on about visions in the desert and such nonsense? He studied physics at a decent school and didn't even advance as far as Brian Josephson before he lost it." Hmm, well, yes, right you are. Here I attempt to explain my views on the reconciliation of these two traditions.

Science examines the world around us, taking concepts that our minds can comprehend, from, say igneous rock to adenosine triphosphate to differential manifolds, and examining their properties and how they relate to other parts of our conceptual library. Science purports to explain how the observable and logical worlds work, and has done so convincingly well. Its goal is objective truth.

What science does not convey is quality or subjectivity. What is the nature of our experiences, or, as my teacher put it once, what's it like to be alive? You could start investigating this by asking questions like: I feel happy (or whatever) now. Why am I happy? Who decided that I am happy? Is the quality of happiness consistent if I examine it closely? Who is the "I" that thinks it is happy? What is the process in which it becomes happy? Is there something fundamental to this process or is it kind of arbitrary? These are the kinds of questions which meditation, a close, uninterrupted observation of one's experience, seeks to answer. They lead to the kinds of observations about the basic nature of our existence about which I have written.

There is some overlap between objectivity and subjectivity, as shown by the increasing neurological and psychological studies of meditation these days, or, I suppose, by attempts to study the psychology of happiness. But even if someday, there is a precise characterization of the brain activity of someone who is enlightened, graduate students or professors studying this characterization will not become enlightened. At a lower level, scientists have a pretty good description at the cellular level of what pain is, but does that convey the experience of pain?

Work

I've now been working for three whole weeks. What of it?

I still like the company and the other people in it. It's small, friendly and cozy. There's lots to be interested in, lots to learn, and helpful people around me.

After driving there, about an hour each way, I bought a new bicycle (Trek 1500) and am riding it to and from the Caltrain station on both ends. It's nice to be riding again, although I can't say I relish riding in San Francisco traffic the way I used to in Berkeley or, heh, Woods Hole. The flat, smooth roads of Silicon Valley are much more pleasant than the hilly, pothole-strewn roads of San Francisco (especially Chinatown, which is fortunately not very busy when I ride through in the morning), but I still don't feel like I get much of a ride before I have to stop at a traffic signal.

There are, as ever, issues about coffee. When I started, the office coffee was Folger's Gourmet Supreme. This was not good coffee, but I had to admit that it wasn't excruciatingly awful either. The current canister, however, is regular Folger's. This is spit-it-out awful. Caffeine withdrawal was more pleasant. Apparently, I would be reimbursed for any Peet's I buy and bring in, but we still have that big bin of Folger's to go through. In the meantime, I brought in my small coffee maker and will brewing my own supply.

Death, too, is not what it seems

While I've had a number of interesting experiences related to my meditation practice, two stand out in my mind. I've already described the view of the Nature of Mind. The other happened when I was in Eritrea.

First, a little preamble. In the months before I went to Eritrea, I had been seeing things "in a larger context". I particularly noticed it one night as I was falling asleep. Metaphorically described, it was if I were walking through a path in the woods. The path was clear and the weather sunny, so I could see where I was going quite well, and there was lots of interesting stuff to see, etc. However, past the edge of the path, the woods became quite dense, and I couldn't see into them at all. I would, mentally, go to the edge of the path and try to peer into the thicket of woods, but I could not even mentally go there, much less see anything. I was nonetheless somehow aware that beyond this sunny path stretched an infinite darkness, that beyond the world which forms our daily existence was this "something infinite." It was starting to see the thoughts or feelings of my daily existence within the realm of this "something infinite" which was the "seeing them in the larger context." Within that context, even things which were initially quite disturbing seemed quite minor. It was as if you were watching something unfold in front of you which you found very gripping, but in the larger context, the image you were watching somehow became kind of two-dimensional and turned on its side, so that, while still there, it became much less significant or troubling than it had originally seemed.

After a week or two in Eritrea, I got the usual sort of traveler's distress (except that it didn't seem responsive to antibiotics, so it might have been stomach flu or food poisoning), and even after having my GI tract cleared thoroughly, didn't eat much for a few days. Towards the end of that time, I was lying in bed in my weakened state and, at some point, came to view my weakened state in that larger context. My weakened self was a small opaque fleck in a large, shimmering sea of golden light, and I saw that this small fleck could vanish entirely and nothing would really change or be lost.

I interpret this as revealing, as the other vision showed, that we are not these isolated, limited individuals we appear to be, but actually that we are something larger, indivisible, and unchanging. Even as anger, fear, delight, apathy, etc., are not what they seem, neither is death.
After this, the Christian ideas of life after death began to make more sense to me. However, it's not really continued life after death in the literal way in which people seem to think of it. Rather, when we come to see ourselves within this larger context, to see what we truly are, what we truly are does not die. Rather than "larger contexts" and "shimmering seas of light," the Christian metaphors would be something about not dying because you have become close to God, or being reunited with God upon your death, if you have been "good" enough.

Interviews

I had a couple interviews last week. The first was at a company in the southish bay which models electricity generation, distribution and sale in wholesale electricity markets. In a loosely structured format, I talked with one person and then another, took an Excel spreadsheet test and a writing test, and chatted with other people who happened to be around. I loved the work environment and the main drawback would be the commute. The second was at a regional agency in charge of air quality. I thought from the job description (and this was pretty much confirmed in the interview) that they wanted someone more senior than I, but I thought I'd at least go there, see what it's like, meet people, get my name known, etc. No such luck. Here the interview process was tightly controlled by HR: a 40-minute writing test followed by a 40-minute interview with three people asking six prewritten questions. I got no chance to meet people, find out what working there is like, whether there may be other positions opening up more suited to me, etc. Everyone was friendly enough, but there wasn't much point to my going there. Perhaps the only positive aspect of it is that I know I can expect my rejection in about three weeks, whereas at the first place there was only a vague "yeah, you should come in and meet the president, who's at home today dealing with a burst sewer, and let us know what your salary requirements are". But, still, I hope it comes through.

Revisiting

A few months ago, I wrote the following draft for a post, after a series of visits to Berkeley and Oakland.

Whispering Ghosts

I spent summers age four to twenty one in a small Cape Cod town. By the time I spent my last summer there, now many years ago, the collective weight of memories made there felt stifling. I felt some mix of anger, resentment, and pain about the place in which I had, over the years, had so much fun. Maybe it's that, by that last summer, I had so far reached the bitter end of summer life there, after most of my friends had left to do other things, I was mourning the lost childhood idyll. At the time, however, it felt like the ghosts of the past were gibbering ever louder in my ears, clouding conversations with people actually present. Every place I in which I found myself was a place I had been hundreds of times before, with many different people or alone, making the air dense with personal history. I don't think I ever psychically escaped so much as I physically stopped going there.

Recently, I have noticed having similar feelings while making trips to the East Bay. I cannot pass anywhere, it seems, without remembering something, often many things, which happened there some number of years ago. A group of friends, a girlfriend or crush, a restaurant which used to be there, an academic triumph or failure. All these things come to mind and crowd out my actually being there at the time, although perhaps in a subjective sense my memories help make the place and time what it really is. These memories are not ghosts; they are I, and I will listen this time.

On subsequent visits, I tried that - the listening, that is. Suddenly, those voices whispering from behind my ears, just out of view, fell silent. Once engaged, they vanished, and I was left not alone exactly, but more fully there.

J turns 0.5 years old

J had a couple new experiences today, his six-month birthday. He went into the North Beach swimming pool, continually held by L, of course. And we gave him a little bit of "solid" food. The pool he seemed a little nonplussed by, as he was already a bit tired. On the walk home, he completely conked out. The "solid" is in quotes because it was rather liquid rice cereal. He's been really eager to have some of whatever we're having for a while, but we'd been told to wait at least until he was six months old. He liked the rice cereal, but the spoon was confusing and frustrating for him. Not bad for a first try, though.

Fountain Pens

In part just to be able to write with my fountain pen, I used to write long letters to friends in different parts of the country. Then email came along, and I mostly used my fountain pen to take lab notes in grad school and to do derivations of formulae. Now I use it to write in my daily planner or to make margin notes on post-its in the books I read. I love how the slipping friction of the nib feels on paper, but I don't have much use for pens at all anymore. I don't have lab notes or need to derive formulae, and I don't have that much to write to anyone anymore.

Rationalizing my Addiction

Part of my problem in developing a coffee habit was simply practical. Coffee doesn't seem to make me a happy "coffee achiever" unless it's delicious and strong. My description of this is that coffee takes my mood and runs (leaps! sprints! gallops!) with it, so if I'm cranky that the coffee tastes bad, then I won't be able to work afterwards, caffeine or no. Thus to have the chance of a productive coffee buzz, I need to hand pour the coffee through grounds in just the right way, etc., at least twice a day. You can see this is risky. Now, however, I make enough coffee for the whole day and pour out enough for morning, afternoon, and evening at the time I need some. The larger batch reduces the fluctuations in quality and the coffee keeps pretty well in a jar in the fridge all day. Why, this could even work if I actually got a job or something.

The other part of the problem, though, is why I even need a coffee habit, or, rather, want one. The real answer is that I don't and probably shouldn't have one at all. But that is of the same vein in which I should probably stop drinking alcohol, too, and I am not ready to do that. This gets into all sorts of zen issues about how "I" will never be ready to give these things up, that that is not the nature of the small self. However, at the moment, it feels (illusory, I know at some level) like I need these things to keep myself going through the job search process. I tell myself that I can, and may actually need to, give these things up after I have a stable job. We'll see, I hope.

J takes to the bottle

So... a few weeks ago, my mother S arrived to spend a few months with us as L goes back to work. This has invovled a bit of re-training for everyone involved. While J was fed first from bottle and was taking it eagerly as late as early November, he apparently got a bit rusty feeding only from breast. S, of course, hasn't taken care of a baby in nearly forty years, and I'm informed that my temperament was a bit different from J's. But they both seem to be getting the hang of it. J was a bit unhappy at first without L around most of the day, but after a couple good bottle feeds today, we hope he's over the worst of it. However, J has often shown us the danger of making statements like this. Baby and mother-in-law logistics aside, L is enjoying being back at work, so I guess that part didn't involve too much re-training. And of course I'm relieved to have the help with J so I can pursue the job hunt. If I'm ever successful, that's really going to involve recalling some old habits.

And in a non-sequiter, was Jim Webb great last night or what?