14 Aug 2000 
 
I believe I have written in this journal only a few times since I started 
my livejournal.  Can't say that I've been writing in my livejournal that 
often while at Mathcamp, but hey.  In any case, there was something I 
wanted to say about Vancouver, and decided I wanted a little more 
permanent record than lj, and besides, here you can't get people talking 
back (I mean, you can email me) about what I wrote right there -- in 
judging what I have to say, you can only look at what I wrote and not 
other people's reactions to it. 
 
Vancouver is a deeply alive place -- every time I walk outdoors, I see 
something that makes "i thank you god for most this amazing" (e.e. 
cummings) leap up.  Food is the root of most of these experiences - 
blackberries basking in the sun, ripe and ready to squirt staining juice 
on the tips of your fingers when you pick them -- cherries bought from a 
corner produce shop, cherries the size of golf balls and a deeper red than 
blood, cherries that stain your fingers and lips and tongue and teeth 
purple (The best fruit leaves its mark on you)-- sushi so fresh and soft 
than a non-fish-eater delights in it (ah, tojo's tuna).  I bite into these 
things and feel like I'm discovering a new sense.  Someone used to eating 
Kraft mac & cheese (I =like= the cheese powder) and Chef Boyardee and 
cottage cheese with worcestershire sauce is not prepared for the depth of 
food in Vancouver. 
 
Which takes me to the first (long) aside.  I have experienced many 
categories of food while here.  There is just plain food.  Kind of like 
cereal, I suppose.  It just is.  Doesn't inspire you to anything in 
particular, tastes good, fills your belly.  Then there's 'food', a kind of 
step below food, good-tasting fast food falls into this category.  "Food" 
is, of course, what UBC Food Services (should've been "Food" Services, but 
whatever) tormented us with - I could barely get through 2 pieces of toast 
at breakfast.  I would say the category "'food'" is McDonald's -- nothing 
redeeming about it, and, in addition, it makes you sick.  You see, this 
centrality of food in Vancouver caused some Mathcampers to come up with 
food theory, involving fasches and fooshes and foooshes.  Let's see if I 
remember all this correctly - a fasch is something not entirely unlike a 
set.  A foosh is a fasch of food.  A fooosh is the fasch of all fooshes, I 
believe - the power-foosh, if you will. They never defined what food is; I 
think it's an axiom, just like "A point is that which hath no part".  I 
never got that far (Fooosh, that is), because we were trying to decide if 
taste is a vector space (nope - non-linear!) or a metric space (hmmm, 
maybe), etc.  I'm thinking perhaps it's a measure space, and the measure 
of the foosh of cafeteria "food" is zero. 
 
Next aside - went rock-climbing today.  The rocks beat me up.  Nothing 
more to say about that.  What I will say is that our group (Aytek, Dustin, 
Mira, Madeeha and I) went insane buying fruit on the way back - apricots, 
blueberries, raspberries, apples, and cherries (oh my!)  We also ravaged 
all the blackberry bushes we came across.  Oh my lord. 
 
So, I find that there must be some sort of spirit to a place that I love 
and would be willing to live in.  Columbia, MD was totally ersatz spirit - 
naming streets after poetry, making their little village centers, plunking 
a planned community in the middle of cow pastures so that old hippies can 
feel good about working for the NSA.  Thumbs down.  Savannah has a spirit, 
but I think it's too creepy for me.  Atlanta's spirit is a little too 
brassy for me (perhaps it should be burnt down again?  Drive the Yankees 
out this time...)  Raleigh, downtown that is, has a nice Southern spirit, 
a very comfy place.  Vancouver's spirit I've seen only in the summer, and 
it is a gorgeous thing.  To me, it's not the people that make Vancouver, 
but the locality, fruit, food, textures, etc.   
 
Of course, that leaves New York City.  I feel NYC's spirit is totally 
composed of people.  There's not much in the way of natural beauty -- 
almost all of Central Park was manufactured, boulders moved from one 
section to another to give the landscape the "proper look".  But people 
have built beautiful things in New York, and people are mixing it up every 
day.  It's sad to think of a person in New York who hasn't found their 
little cubbyhole, their little microcosm of the restaurant they always go 
to, the homeless guy they always see, the performer they always tip a 
quarter or two to... 
 
Anyway, it would really be cool to live in Vancouver, in the summer at 
least.  I have no idea what the winters are like, and besides I find New 
York always so neat in the winter.  Even in dismal February, the one time 
NYC does =not= shine, there is opera, there is sitting in the bed, wrapped 
up in a comforter, watching my MST3K, eating my ramen noodles (ah, tojo's 
tuna, where hast thou gone?), and tweaking my nose with my 
blankie.  Ah.  I pity the adults who have given up their blankies for some 
image of "maturity".  You're as good as dead. 
 
Anyway, here's the e.e. cummings poem I mentioned earlier: 
 
 
i thank You god for most this amazing 
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything 
which is natural which is infinite which is yes 
 
(i who have died am alive again today, 
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth 
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay 
great happening illimitably earth) 
 
how should tasting touching hearing seeing 
breathing any-lifted from the no 
of all nothing-human merely being 
doubt unimaginably You? 
 
(now the ears of my ears awake and 
now the eyes of my eyes are opened) 
-e. e. cummings