beauty & a blog

Since I mentioned two of my own favourite things the day before yesterday, today I'm going to note two favourite things from the list.

First: beauty. Suzy's favourite painting: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, circa 1555 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Second: a blog. Ted's favourite blog is: http://www.kottke.org/

This blog has the added bonus of noting its own favourite things in the "About" section: "My favorite font right now is Whitney by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. . . . One of my favorite things is that, for a moment after you dip your toe in, you can't tell the difference between really hot water and really cold water." (I assume that this is the font he likes.)

vinyl cafe (and public radio) & the dead

Today's favourite thing: listening to Vinyl Cafe on the radio as I made my lunch. It made me laugh out loud. It also reminded me of how returning home after visiting another country is so often captured by listening to favourite radio shows and hearing the announcer's familiar voice. (I should note that most people I know are not as enthusiastic about Vinyl Cafe as I am--I don't think they know what they're missing. But if you're tempted to listen, you can get the show as a podcast here--it's called "Razor's Edge.")

Another pleasure of returning home was waking up this morning to a light snowfall. And this reminded me of one of Peter's T's favourite things: James Joyce's "The Dead." Here is the conclusion to that story (which is even more powerful if you've read what comes before needless to say): "A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

lamb and flag passage & kazbar

Favourite thing today: (I'm resisting the desire to name a fat volume entitled 29 pamphlets as my favourite thing today [not to mention yesterday's two(!) volumes of pamphlets (tied together with a string; bound with marbled paper and leather) in the British library]) and instead noting Lamb and Flag Passage for the Britishness of it (Lamb and Flag? a passage that emerged almost out of nowhere and took me exactly where I wanted to go). Here's a picture:

I'm departing from my usual practice of consulting the list for a second favourite thing and instead giving another of my own: Kazbar restaurant. I mentioned this back in the fall when I listed my five favourite restaurants little knowing that I would actually go to this restaurant this year. It lived up to my expectations. It's a tapas place with very vegetarian friendly tapas, a great atmosphere, and good drinks. I went with Richard and Luisa and Daniel (who fell asleep about 15 minutes after arriving) and it was wonderful and relaxing and indulgent to eat, drink wine, and talk after an intensive work week.

And, last but not least: hearing Michal's voice on my cellphone tonight.

music & crossing bridges

Favourite thing today: stepping into a church on my walk from Paddington Station to the British Library and hearing music. A pianist and violinist were practicing at the front of the church for a concert that was happening later that day. I was all alone. The church was large but not too large. And their music filled it in a melancholy, moving way that was very beautiful.

And today I almost did something from the five-favourite things list. Here's the description of the favourite thing from Richard T: "Crossing bridges, especially over rivers in major cities. Always makes my heart take a little leap, no matter how many times I have done it. Crossing the Seine, Hudson, Thames, or even the St. Laurent connects me in a tranquil way to a hectic/crazy city. Brings out the beauty, accentuates the architecture, and is a link to a by-gone age, where the river was the raison-d'etre of why the city was established there. It also connects to a wider theme of connections, moving from one place in life to another, and bringing different people together. My favourite bridges are the Hungerford, between Charing Cross and Waterloo Stations, and the Millennium Bridge between the Tate Modern and St. Paul's. The views in all directions from both bridges are very special indeed. Plus, there are no cars!"

Last night I looked at a map and realized that, given time constraints, I wouldn't be able to visit either of these bridges (or the Tate, the second item on Richard T's list). But then the day was so tantalizing when I took my lunch break--there was SUN!, there were cherry blossoms!--and I decided to see how I could get. I got as far as Blackfriar's Bridge (and crossed it, just to cross a bridge--I love this category of favourite thing-- and will never see bridges in quite the same way again). Blackfriars's Bridge was beautiful; there's a wide wide sidewalk and an alarming low low railing and, alas, cars. Now I need to return to London sometime soon to experience those pedestrian bridges.

ghosts and (undrunk) beer

Favourite things today: "ghost trees" and "shelley's ghost." I stumbled upon the former when I went for a walk on my lunch break. On the front lawn of a museum there were several massive trunks of trees. Upon going closer I discovered that this was an exhibit by Angela Palmer entitled "Ghost Trees." Here's what the placard, in part, said: "They are intended as 'ambassadors' for all rainforest trees, and highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources. Today a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds." The trunks themselves were very beautiful and expressive and, as it happens, haunting.

Shelley's Ghosts is an exhibit of letters, books, and things from the Shelleys and Godwins at the Bodleian. After Percy Shelley's boating death, Mary Shelley began a diary that she entitled "Journal of Sorrow." It was touching. The exhibit itself felt misnamed but I'm too tired

now to describe why.

And from the list, I thought I should consult English things. There are quite a few. Here's one from an unnamed source that I was hoping to try (even though I don't like beer!) but today resigned myself to the fact that I won't. But I can at least pass it on so others will know about it:

"next time you are in the UK drink a cask conditioned ale. It's like tasting Queen Victoria." Does he really mean a cask? An entire cask? Isn't that huge? Anyway, you can imagine how weird these amazon tree trunks would look if I had drunk the beer.

friends with menu & hallelujah (again)

I'm going to bypass the many minor miracles of being in Oxford (the snowdrops and crocuses and daffodils now blooming, the winding roads, the stained glass windows everywhere, the tea, the bookstores, the moss on low stone walls, the high stone walls with spikes and twigs on top, and so on) to move straight to food. And, specifically, food prepared by Luisa and Richard. They are both amazing cooks. Here's the menu from the last few days (a morphed favourite thing, then, capturing the pleasure of eating and catching up with friends).

Day One: Luisa made (as we talked, I hardly even noticed) a delicious leek and potato soup for lunch; for dinner Luisa and Richard made canneloni with spinach and walnuts from Field of Greens.

Day Two: Richard made another amazing soup that I don't know the name of.

Day Three (today): Luisa made pasta with broccoli and capers and garlic and onions and finely grated parmesan. This sounds simple (and she says it was easy but, who knows, she's Italian and many things that are easy for her no doubt are not for me) but its flavour is complex and surprisingly rich (in a good way).

And there was also salad and some sort of finely sliced celeriac root with oil and lemon. And other things too. I realize this isn't a menu exactly (like those offered in one of my favourite cookbooks, Molly Katzen's Still Life with Menu) but rather just a list of highlights.

Reading the Guardian today I came across a reference to yet another version of Cohen's Hallelujah. It's by Alexandra Burke and you should be able to hear it here.

16 pamphlets & libraries

On my walk to the library (down a narrow cobblestone street), I looked through a rod iron fence and saw this statue of a woman reading.

Favourite thing today: entering the Bodleian library (already high on my personal list of life favourites), getting the stack of books I had ordered (also way up there on my favourites list), and finding a book entitled 16 Pamphlets. I had ordered one of these pamphlets but, luckily for me, it had been bound together with fifteen other pamphlets that were entirely unknown to me. It felt like opening some sort of treasure box. The pamphlets were all sizes and shapes, all from the nineteenth century, and all stitched together in one volume.

This pleasure in libraries prompted me to look for libraries on the favourite things list and, in another strange omission (right up there with the omission of favourite things in Toronto), there was nothing. I love libraries. University libraries, public libraries, private libraries, cottage libraries (all those detective novels and How to Stay Alive in the Woods and bird books!), hotel libraries (the quirky things that are left there), bedside libraries. All of them. But the Bodleian is probably my favourite: the courtyard, the crunch of gravel on the ground as one approaches, the leaded windows, the view out the windows across the spires of Oxford, the smell of books, the silent sound of people reading, the long wooden desks, and, of course, the old books with their frayed bindings, uncut pages, soft leather, strings that tie them together, or, as with the 16 Pamphlets today, fragile pamphlets stitched together to form a single solid volume.

meditation & meditation

Favourite thing today: being able to attend the Friday night mediation with the Ottawa Buddhist Society. Ajahn Viradhammo led the meditation and he is truly remarkable: wise and witty and world-changing.

(If I had not been able to go to the meditation my favourite thing would have been much more banal: the way the sunlight glinted off a row of cars in the parking lot at Carleton. They caught my eye for a moment. And then the sun shifted and the moment was gone. Kind of like that plastic bag blowing in an alley in the movie American Beauty. Beauty in an unexpected place.)

Two people noted meditation places in the list of favourite things. Here they are:

"Favorite Meditation Retreat: The women’s retreat taught by Christina Feldman and Narayan Liebenson Grady at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA." (see this link)

And Steve L recommended chanting and meditation in Ottawa at a weekly Sunday event beside the Green Door from 6 to 8pm (see this link).

And here's a link to the Ottawa Buddhist society (click here).

Bonus favourite thing: a perfect full moon over the pond tonight.

unstructured time

Favourite thing today (briefly): unstructured time. After three intense days of very structured work time it was blissful to have an entire day--an entire day!--to work in the way that I wanted rather than according to a predetermined schedule.

skating on the canal & brecht

Favourite thing yesterday: I left work to walk home at 7:30pm. I was walking along a lonely stretch of the canal and saw a man, gracefully, buoyantly, joyfully, skating backwards. He seemed so alive and there seemed to be such delight in his movements. His skating was like a dance but also purposeful; he had a backpack on and was probably skating home. It reminded me of how much I love the canal and would probably have, on my list of ten all-time favourite things, skating on the canal. There is the magical world of the canal on which you see all sorts of people: men and women commuting with briefcases and tailored coats; kids with their classes from school; visitors with awkward looking parkas; speed-skaters; families; and, until recently (I haven't seen them this year) a group of five or six nuns in flowing inky-blue outfits and habits skating all in row together. I also love the sound of skates on the ice. And I sometimes wonder if I love it so much because mom once told me that she wanted to be a figure skater when she was young. Can one inherit such things? A love of ice?

Okay, the next item is a real stretch. I thought I'd search the list to see if anyone mentions the canal and, remarkably, no one did. BUT one person did note a poem by Bertolt Brecht with the word "canalizing" in it and so I thought, close enough! Plus, it never hurts to include a poem. Here it is:

On the Critical Attitude

The critical attitude

Strikes many people as unfruitful

That is because they find the state

Impervious to their criticism

But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude

Is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms

And states can be demolished by it.

Canalising a river

Grafting a fruit tree

Educating a person

Transforming a state

These are instances of fruitful criticism

And at the same time instances of art.

absinthe & restaurants in ottawa

The other night we went to Absinthe for dinner (work-related alas!) and it was delicious. A favourite moment in a hectic day was sitting down and suddenly being "served" by someone and feeling as if I'd entered some sort of heaven: I sat there, the waiter asked what I wanted, filled and refilled my water and wine glasses, and brought one spectacular dish after another. (I know, this makes it sound like I've never been to a restaurant before! But it was one of those evenings where the whole experience felt novel and indulgent.) Absinthe had one of the best vegetarian--actually vegan--entrees that I've had in a restaurant in a long time.

This favourite thing prompted me to consult the favourite things list for restaurants in Ottawa. There are surprisingly few noted. Here they are:

1) the Manx pub (an entry noted by at least three people)

2) the Whalesbone (I've never been but hope to sometime soon)

3) Zen Kitchen (this restaurant is also amazing; it was selected as the best new restaurant in Ottawa [open category] last year even though it's vegan. And so it was competing with all sorts of fancy meat places and yet still was considered "the best." Which it is.)

the kooky things kid's say

The last few days are a blur of work but there were a few "favourite things" that stood out nevertheless. Here's something Andre sent that made me smile and happily took me out of my work world for a few minutes.

"So, here's the scene. I'm going to pick up Karuna at the skating rink with Ben and Sarah in the back. Somehow we get talking about yesterday's incident wherein Sarah is left behind at home - and both mom and dad didn't notice that she wasn't in the car. They kind of get that Dad would be clueless... but Mom?

Ben: So, do you like your mom more than your dad [Sarah had in previous conversations confessed as much].

Sarah: Yeah, I guess so.

Ben: Yeah, Dads are kind of random aren't they?

Andre: What do you mean RANDOM?

Ben: Well, your mom is kind of necessary, but dads... well, your mom just went and picked up some random guy and he becamse your dad.

Sarah: Yeah, you can be born without a dad but you can't be born without a mom."

ice wine & still more chocolate

Favourite thing today: sipping ice wine in front of the fire. Joel and I bought the ice wine on our bike trip this summer and managed to save it until now. It is delicious and a reminder that ice wine—which we have rarely—is one of my favourite drinks.

Lots of people mentioned chocolate. In addition to the chocolate mentioned on previous days here are (almost) all of the remaining items that involve chocolate on the five-favourite-things list.

1. Aunt Judie’s favorite food (her favourite food!) is “chocolate batter pudding”; I’m not even sure what this is. I’ll have to ask her for the recipe.

2. Maddy’s “Favorite Quick and Easy Desert”:

Fresh or Frozen Mangos in chunks (thawed if frozen)

Unsweetened Shredded Coconut

Grated Dark Chocolate

Put mangoes on the bottom, sprinkle on coconut and then chocolate. Eat and be happy!

3. One of Laura’s favourite things is: Pure Gelato for Chocolate Marsala ice cream in Ottawa.

4. And still in the category of ice cream but moving to Rome, here are Luisa’s comments: “Favourite ice cream: I am afraid this takes us to Rome. The best ice-cream place is San Crispino, via della Panetteria 42: its fruit sorbets make people laugh with joy; otherwise my favourite combination would be dark chocolate, walnut, and coffee, which is best eaten at Giolitti in via Settembrini, or Giolitti al Parlamento.”

5. And Micheline and Fraser recommend: Sea-salt chocolate.

6. And from Mira the most unusual (of course!) chocolate combo and commentary: “Favourite thing to bake to connect to the Ashkenazi Jewish people: chocolate chip "komish broit" with coconut.”

7. From Michal: Molten chocolate cake with runny inside (which I’m hoping we’ll have tonight for Valentine’s Day if I get home before 7pm). [We did make this cake and it was delicious—we have a surprisingly easy recipe from Photini and George.]

There are also Ariadne’s chocolate chip cookies which I mentioned back in the fall.

Interesting sociological observation: all the references to chocolate—the 7 here and the 4 mentioned on previous days (with the exception of Micheline and Fraser but that could be really Micheline’s observation—who knows?) come from women.

the new yorker & more chocolate

My favourite thing over the past few days has been reading this week's New Yorker (which happens to be the anniversary Valentine's Day issue). I started reading the fascinating, slightly gossipy, slightly jaw-dropping, article on Paul Haggis and scientology a few nights ago. Typically I start reading an article and finish it at the same time. But this time I kept reading and reading and reading and not finishing. The article is long! Joel wanted to read the New Yorker as well and so I had to rip out articles for him (as we often do, alas, to avoid fighting). The next day I finished this article in a rare half-hour on a Saturday afternoon when I was alone (where was everyone? I can't even remember), drinking hot tea, the sun pouring into our bedroom, icicles hanging from the eaves outside the window (which they aren't supposed to do but which were pretty nevertheless). It was blissful. (And it was also close to one of Annie's favourite things: "Reading inside wrapped in a blanket drinking tea on a rainy day.")

As we approach Valentine's Day I thought I'd collect together references to chocolate. Today: favourite chocolate in general. Bethany's is: Godiva dark chocolate truffles - especially the dark chocolate cherries. Marla's is: chocolove with dried cherries and chili. Tomorrow I'll note all the other references to chocolate that came up in the favourite things list.

chickadee & chocolate

Favourite thing today: walking outside the front door this morning and seeing the snow on the trees and, hidden deep in the branches, a pair of chickadees singing. You can see one of them in this photo:

Another thing: an Einstein quotation cited by someone in a documentary we saw tonight on the G20 summit. Einstein said (apparently) that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

And here's one of Rachel's favourite things: "Best Chocolate That’s Good For You: Adora Chocolate Calcium Supplements. Really."

hot chocolate

Favourite thing yesterday: after the kids told me, leadingly, that they have friends who get money for grades on their report cards ($10 for A, $5 or B etc--can this really be??), I told them that they could each have a hot chocolate from Truffle Treasures "for their report cards" (whatever that means). But it turned out to be a doubly good thing: their happiness when they came home from school to find the hot chocolate of their choice waiting for them (chocolate and banana is what they both requested); and I got myself a hot chocolate as well (aztec--basically, spicy) which was delicious. And it reminded me of the first time I had one of those thick thick dark hot chocolates at an outdoor cafe in Venice and I couldn't believe that something so amazing existed in the world and it had taken me so long to discover it (I was seventeen). Many years later (20!), Joel made me hot chocolate in San Francisco from Mexican chocolate and spices that was whipped up in a blender. Also a new discovery, also delicious.

Today there are no favourite things. It was one of those days filled with many many many infuriating things. I could tally up these things and determine which was the most infuriating of them all but that would be a different blog.

poop & reading & stephen harper

Favourite thing from yesterday: Ben's delight when he discovered that some playdough we'd made looked exactly like poop and he could plant some in Michal's room to trick her. He spent many thrilled moments determining exactly where--on her pillow? on her bean bag? on the rug?-- it would have the most dramatic effect.

(The playdough, btw, is made from 1 cup of ground coffee, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water and is supposed to look like "antique stone" but Ben's right that it does bear a remarkable resemblance to poop when wet. That said, it's fun to play with if anyone is looking for an alternative playdough recipe.)

Favourite thing today: "Family reading" by the fire this evening. In an effort to address Ben's reading difficulties we've begun "family reading" (which I know sounds very Victorian! Unlike the Victorians, however, we don't read out loud). We sit together quietly for half an hour and read on our own. The only rules are: no talking, no computers (thus, no reading on the computer). It's remarkable how rarely this quietly-reading-together happened in our family (possibly never, in fact) before we installed "family reading" as one of our evening activities.

My last thing is neither from my day nor from the favourite thing list but seemed appropriate nevertheless. Louise and Peter recently sent me a link to Yann Martels's website on which he lists the books and letters he sent to Stephen Harper. I don't love all the books (and haven't read a lot of them) but there are a lot of books on his list that I do love (Marilynne Robinson's Gilead [although I liked Home better], Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Ann Carson's Autobiography of Red, lots of others) and I liked the letters he sent with the books (the few I've read thus far at any rate). And so I thought I'd pass this on too: What is Stephen Harper Reading?

cheese & hallelujah

Favourite thing today: there were so many but I am going to pare it down to one: stopping by Rob and Cathy's, talking, drinking wine, and eating some delicious cheese that Rob got from Taste of Quebec (a cheese shop that, ironically, one might expect on someone's favourites-of-Toronto list). This visit wasn't planned and its very unexpectedness is part of what made it so perfect. And the crumbly melt-in-your-mouth cheese. And catching up with friends.

(One more thing: stepping out into the lovely hush of snow falling on a Toronto side street at night.)

And from the list: I'm going to return to Sandra's recommendation of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah that I noted the other day. Steve has since shown me how to post links more easily than I was before (and less messily) and so this gives me the opportunity to add two other versions of Hallelujah: K.D. Lang's (click here) and Rufus Wainwright's (click here). Ted reminded me of K.D. Lang's version and I have always loved Rufus Wainwright's version (Shrek notwithstanding). I find each one of these versions (can Cohen's be called a version?) moving in different ways. They do that thing that good music always does (for me, anyway): a grab/tug/shake in some deep part of one that can neither be located nor defined. Galvanizing and gentle at once.

family & toronto

Favourite thing today: prosaically, generically, happily: spending time with family. This topic, not surprisingly, was on a lot of people’s lists when they opted for the general as opposed to the specific. For me today, it was not spending time with Joel and the kids but rather spending time with my parents, my aunt, and my brothers. There are different types of family pleasures. For instance, the pleasure of hearing about weird little tidbits that I didn’t know before: like the fact that my grandfather shut himself in the bathroom for a year and didn’t come out because he was so distressed by his financial losses on the stock market and the way in which this made impossible so many things he and his family had once enjoyed. Like so many family stories this one seems full of exaggerations (that bathroom? really? he didn’t come out? for a year?) and omissions. This what-to-call-it-exactly? breakdown? retreat? was when he had to move his family (mom was three or four) from their grand house in Rockcliffe to a modest house in the Glebe--which happens to be less than two blocks from where we live now. And so in one of those strange twists of family history, just as my grandfather moved down to live where I do now, I have moved up to live here. And we probably made our shifts (his down, mine up) at around exactly the same age.

I love how every single time we get together weird little (or not so little) things like this emerge and yet, if I weren’t recording them as I am now, they would get acknowledged and then just absorbed into the fabric of our lives. At any rate, this recollection of past family events is one of the categories of pleasure (there are so many—as well as categories of displeasure, needless to say) of family get togethers. (And the food, and the funny-only-to-family jokes, and all the things that go without saying, and all the things that are so familiar like my mom’s blue tea mug with the white birds etc.).

Since I’m in Toronto now I thought I’d look at the favourite things list to see what things people had recommended to do/see/visit here and, remarkably, there is: nothing! Or rather, almost nothing. I think that at least a third of the people who sent in “favourite things” are familiar with Toronto and good number live in Toronto but with the exception of dad’s comment on the ravines, and Nadia’s on flying trapeze courses (flying trapeze courses!), and Melissa’s mention of a jewelry store (Made You Look), there is nothing. Restaurants, cafes, museums, galleries, walks, sculptures, and shops are mentioned in lots of other cities but in Toronto next to nothing. Poor Toronto.

ice cliffs on lake ontario

Today's favourite thing: massive snow and ice structures that have spontaneously formed over the last 36 hours or so from some combination of the winter storm and waves on the shore outside mom and dad's apartment in Toronto. When Ted and I arrived, dad told us there was something we must see and we all headed outside. The huge mounds--mountains really!--of snow and ice are right at the shoreline: you can walk quite far out (and up) until you balance perilously on the edge of the water (which is far far below). It was the way one would imagine the moon if the moon were icy cold and windy.

Favourite comment: Mom telling me that after walking out on these snow cliffs this morning dad later met with their coffee group and tinged his glass, stood up, and said, "I have just the thing to do today for anyone under 80." This is hilarious. It is a precarious walk for anyone, even the most fit, I would think.

Additional favourite thing (I'm cheating a bit since it's a fragment of a poem cited in one of my student's essays. But I liked it and thought it worth passing on). In the Prelude, Wordsworth writes of his walk through the streets of revolutionary Paris: "I looked for something which I could not find” (63-71). And then he finds what he seeks in a painting:
A single picture merely, hunted out
Among other sights, the Madgalene of Le Brun,
A beauty exquisitely wrought, fair face
And rueful, with its ever flowing tears. (76a-79)

And last, but not least, a favourite thing from your list: "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen (here's a link to it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTiXoMCppw

snow!

Today's favourite thing: the snow! the beauty and the drama of it.

Favourite thing missing from five-favourite-things list: snow! I'm surprised. Lots of people mentioned general things (swimming, biking, etc) but no one mentioned snowstorms. And yet they are so stunning. And also win-win: if you're inside (as I was today) then you can sit and sip tea and feel cozy as the storm rages outside; and if you're outside (as I also was today) than you can feel the immediacy of the world so intensely. The sting of the snow, the cold, the wind, the whiteness.

"people's path" and "the boy on the moon"

My favourite thing today: stumbling on a "people's path" as I walked home from my dentist's appointment (the anti-favourite part of my day!) this afternoon. People's paths--paths made by people simply walking--crop up all over the place in winter: diagonals in the snow across fields, lawns, even the tiny diagonals on street corners when walkers cut across the right angle. This afternoon I noticed stamped-down snow between a few trees by the Museum of Nature and it was a people's path defining a short cut for my route home as well as a different way to walk. I like these paths because they're efficient, unexpected, and usually break the rules in some small way, charting out, as they do, where one isn't really supposed to go. You see them all the time in summer too: flattened grass from people's passing feet or shallow grooves etched in the dirt to make a path.

The best thing I've read on such paths is from a passage cited in a book, Postmodernism and Japan. The essay's author, Naoki Sakai, cites Lu Xun as follows: "As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung from a deep blue sky. I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men [or women] pass one way, a road is made" (121).

And here's an item from the favourite things list: Ian Brown's memoir, The Boy on the Moon. I haven't read this book yet but I read many excerpts from it in the G&B a few years ago and it was truly amazing. It made me think entirely differently about mental and physical disabilities in the same way that an earlier book, Expecting Adam, by Martha Beck, made me think entirely differently about down syndrome.