12/31/2005

Time Passages

Well, it’s just hours until 2006 and I am listening to It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry. Damn, I love this song. Timeless on a night all about time and its passing.

I try to not get so bogged down with my own intensity, but I revisited Einstein’s Dreams today, and it is even more magical than the ten times before now when my imagination contemplated time in regards to the fictional vignettes thought up by physicist and author, Alan Lightman.

As much as time intrigues me and nostalgia grips me, as I grow older, it is Space that I long for. Paradoxically, I feel too far away from my center here in these Southern parts, but have more open space than I can remember. Maybe I am truly a city dwellar, after all. Little bit country, lot bit Rock-n-Roll.

Which brings me, quite cheesily, to that 70’s song that had me daydreaming out of the back of my parents Hurst Oldsmobile, complete with a T-top, fog-horn, and tinted windows, a la Starsky and Hutch. Ahhh, the good ol’ 70’s…


It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All ’round the day was going down slow
Night, like a river, beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into

Time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well, I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these

Time passages
There’s something back there that you left behind
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel that there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play

Well, the picture is changing, now you’re part of a crowd
They’re laughing at something, the music’s loud
A girl comes toward you you once used to know
You reach out your hand, but you’re all alone in those

Time passages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

-Al Stewart

My resolution in 2006 is to live in the moment. Happy New Year!

* Filed by darby at 10:58 pm under General
* 3 Comments

12/3/2005

The Resurgence of Wormwood

“What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?”
-Oscar Wilde

Native N’awlins microbiologist, Ted Breaux, has been working on debunking the bad reputation of Absinthe, as well as producing the best tasting, authentic Absinthe made in a century, one molecule at a time. Absinthe, long suspected as the cause of “criminal dementia” due to its key ingredient, bitter leaves of Artemisia absinthium, or Wormwood, may not be so bad after all. Plus, its lovely green hue and anise flavorings are romantically alluring, and help even the most mundane feel artsy and sophisticated.

From Wired:

Breaux begins to prepare it in the traditional French manner, a process as intricate as a tea ceremony. First he decants a couple of ounces into two widemouthed glasses specially made for the drink. A strong licorice aroma wafts across the table. Then he adds 5 or 6 ounces of ice-cold water, letting it trickle through a silver dripper into the glass. “Pour it slowly,” he says. “That’s the secret to making it taste good. If the water’s too warm, it will taste like donkey piss.”
The drink turns milky, and a condensate floats to the top. This is called the louche, a word that’s come to mean “disreputable.” Breaux hands it to me and tells me there’s no need to stir away the louche or add sugar to an absinthe this fine. I take a sip. The flavor is subtle, dry, complex. It makes my tongue feel a little numb. “It’s like an herbal speedball,” he says. “Some of the compounds are excitatory, some are sedative. That’s the real reason artists liked it. Drink two or three glasses and you can feel the effects of the alcohol, but your mind stays clear – you can still work.”

* Filed by darby at 12:47 pm under Docu Potent, raves
* 1 Comment