The Creation of the Birds by Remedios Varo

The imperfect mirror

if you make something perfectly symmetrical and then give it a small fracture you have an almost-symmetry. The nature of these things is that whereas in symmetry the focus is on the whole, now the focus is on the fracture.

Because we are all different, we are fascinated and consumed by different problems. Sometimes our individual obsessions may even define us. We are a unique accumulation of obsessions. One of my obsessions has always been the imperfect mirror.

The first place I discovered imperfect mirrors was in physics. Our universe is riddled with slightly fractured mirrors and yet physicists generally do not make a big deal of this.

Take for example, reversal in time. Forget all that entropy stuff you have been fed. The truth is that even particle processes are not reversible in time. Well, actually, most processes are with the exception so far .. of one! "Only the weak nuclear force appears to violate this symmetry, and this so far only in the behavior of the neutral kaon."

This is a good example of a fractured mirror. The same is true with actual mirror symmetry. If you held up a huge mirror to the universe, all physics you see happening in the mirror (objects falling under gravity etc) would be physics that happens here too. Well, once again with the exception of just one sort of interaction "Mirror image of a charged weak process has never been observed."

I have always understood, I think, that only imperfect mirrors can exist. Unbroken symmetry is an ideal only, a construction of our minds. For us to know left from right, light from dark, past from future, a transgressor must exist who by crossing the boundaries of the mirror brings the whole thing into definition. We can only tell light from dark because of the shadows.

On the 11 hour Virgin flight, I kept listening to Junior Senior's move your feet. I have found that it is difficult to dance in your seat.

They also had 50 movies you could watch. This is Chavela Vargas' la Llorona , a haunting song, from the movie Frida.

I have been back now for several days but feel as if I am still settling back into my life in san francisco. It feels as if I am still waking up, as if I have emerged from a dream.

(For no particular reason I mention that the spanish word for dream is sueño (pronounced 'swen-yo') So, to say 'she dreams' I would say 'sueña' (swen-ya))

Orginally, I was going to visit old college friends. First, Dan in Heidelberg who works as an astronomer for the Max Planck Institut. Then Ian and Jessica in London. As it turned out, I spent most of my trip, 10 days, in Hamburg or traveling around Northern Germany with Mina.

First was Berlin which I mentioned below. Then Hamburg where we played scrabble in cafes and walked along the Reeperbahn and I learned about Barbapapas. Then Kiel, where we sailed on the Baltic sea and saw fireworks on the Bay and I saw Blandine again who seemed to be tailing us everywhere.

I also spent some time in odd cafes where we ordered two spezzi and yet paid 30 euros. I recommend you check the bill if this happens to you.

The Hamburg Harbor was magnificent. It was an enormous labyrinth of machines and shipyards and cranes and even water-filled residential byways. After taking a boat through the harbor we took an elevator down to an old beautiful tunnel still used by cars which are lifted up and down and then creep slowly beneath the waters along narrow lanes that were originally meant for horses. Walking along these tunnels was both strange and wonderful.

The whole trip was composed of moments like that. Short but timeless episodes.

These last few weeks have been amazing. It was more than a dream because it was real. When we wake up and we long to return to our dreams it is because we miss that sense of being in the present, of acting out something beautiful. In our dreams we can imagine and feel happiness (just as in our nightmares we can imagine horror) But that happiness is also real, as real as anything else. It is not imagined.

London Town
(posted from an internet cafe in Trafalgar Square)

Waiting to meet up with Roderick then later Ian and Jessica.

I will post a lot more soon. This is a marker. I need to write about Kiel and Sailing and The Reeperbahn and barbarabar and about my adventures with M. and Blandine and Thorsten and Ricarda. Theres a lot more but I cant write about it all.

Mini-golfing in Berlin
(posted from Hamburg)

When you visit a city and stay with locals, a different side of the city presents itself to you. Locals know the best bars, the best cafes and the usually hidden parts of the city. The inverse of this is that they are blissfully unconcerned with the aspects of the city usually laid out for tourists.

The best example of this was when walking near the city center with Mina and Sophie and Mizha. I was walking next to Mizha and he points out, as a side comment, an afterthought, ' Oh. This wall here is part of the Berlin wall, you know.'

The funny thing is that we had been by here before but nobody had bothered to point this out before. The wall was not a destination or a thing to be ogled at but had been part of our travels all along, interwoven with our walks throughout the city.

The entire visit was like that, full of impromptu moments:
- We found what I am convinced is the best and cheapest pizza in Berlin.
- We watched Sophie's womans chorus belt out folk songs at a club in East Berlin, with their teeth blacked out and dressed in garish clothes.
- We stayed in a flat in East Berlin thick with artists and heavy smokers
- Walking near a children's park, we stumble upon a strange, spinning contraption that looks like it violates every safety law one could think up and is surely illegal in every other country in the world. The five of us spend the next hour jumping on it and laughing and narrowly avoiding death.
- We played miniature golf in a small park teeming with locals. Sophie bests us all. My own scorecard is full of too many funfs and siebens.