breakfast & dinner

Last month for M's birthday we celebrated with two very different meals, both fabulous. We started the gray Sunday morning with German beer and pancakes in Hayes Valley, and ended the evening with California style Eastern European cuisine in the Mission.

Suppenkuche: We have been meaning to go here for a long time, but dissuaded by crowds. A friend of ours works there on Sunday mornings and gave us the tip that this is the best time to go. It started filling up very quickly after opening, so getting there right at 10 AM was key, and it also feels like a pretty luxurious time to start drinking. Luckily our friend and server dispelled any slight guilt we might have felt about Sunday morning beer by introducing us to a breakfast beer. It was light and refreshing in the way of a mimosa but grounded in the way of all beers. Then we had two varieties of Helles beers whose names I don't remember now, alongside potato pancakes sweetened with applesauce and pretzels with a mustard sauce and some sort of dark berry sauce. Starches, sugars, and alcohol--tastes that are innately comforting and familiar, and the wooden, boxy restaurant encased their warmth perfectly, especially as it drizzled outside.

Bar Tartine: After resting our stomachs the rest of the day, we ventured out again for dinner. In contrast to the communal table we had at Suppenkuche, we had a cozy corner by the window looking out onto the street, which felt both intimate and open. Here we experienced combinations of flavors we'd never had before, and I'm always really impressed by how people can make the unfamiliar so palatable. It's kind of a random comparison, but the food reminded me of Bjork's music--incredibly creative mixes that are unusual and somehow so good, and make you think, how did someone know to do that? We had the smoked potatoes with black garlic (the smokiness felt like another layer of potato), potato flatbread with garlic and sour cream (the dill and green onion really made this one), and cheese dumpling with nettle sauce (where I learned that nettle is an herb but now forget the taste except to know it was distinctive). For dessert I chose the black sesame pot de crème with brown butter. The intensity of the indulgent flavor was everywhere, from the thin toasted sesame cracker to the smooth cream floating in butter.

It was one of those days punctuated by the very human pleasure of savoring meals. When eating can sometimes fly by as part of a daily routine, I feel lucky to sit, enjoy it, and enjoy it with someone who absorbs it. It felt special to celebrate with two meals out; one in the beginning, one in the end; the bookends seem to fit.

howl

My full day clinic yesterday was punctuated by the howls of three very different patients: a middle aged man with schizophrenia who screamed for me to remove the micro-chips that have been causing his entire body pain for years; a young woman anxious about her first gynecological exam after recently losing her virginity; a tall man with low back pain upset with me about his disability forms. A couple of weeks ago, we walked around North Beach, looking at books at City Lights and remembering when we watched the movie Howl and envisioning what the atmosphere was like when Ginsberg read aloud. So many days I'm reminded of how each of us expresses our voice. There is a lot of complexity in hearing and processing what comes from others, especially for me as a quiet person who tends to write more than I say, but I try to read how people use their speech in the way I might write. In this way medicine is a pool in which to collect the textures, sounds and tones of these voices. While the volume sometimes overwhelms my capacity to contain them, I feel the ease and effort of stretching myself, in the way we're taught in yoga. It hurts to be pushed, but the next day when you can reach farther, the consciousness of being limber is amazing.

open

We drove down to Southern California during a four day weekend I had this past week, to some lesser known beach cities north of Los Angeles. On the drive down I brought old CDs of mine from the days when I bought CDs by the dozens. They took me back to a time when music was very important to me, to when I felt like albums were my best friends. Most can relate to certain music framing periods of their lives, and it was so easy to return to former versions of me through listening to these albums. A core love of mine is things that occupy long lengths of time--long drives, long runs, full albums. It takes me awhile to settle, and then I really love settling in. The end of medical school began my drift from music, and residency cemented it. Gone are long stretches of time searching for new music, and the long stretches of time it requires to really savor albums. After our drive, I decided to return--in the same way as this blog, without strict guidelines for frequency, just with the intention to return when the inclination arises.

So today while doing taxes I listened to Rhye's "Woman" and quickly fell for the first song, "Open." I don't tend to be curious about the lives of musicians (M looks up everyone whose art/work/thoughts he enjoys or respects, to get a feel for their development and histories) but I wanted to remember how I came across this album in the first place. In reading about Rhye, I found out that the song "Open" was a debut single. I also found out that the singer is a man, and that I'm not alone in mistaking him for a woman. His voice is gentle and sultry, and classicly feminine. Apparently the duo has also been very secretive about their identities in general. All of this information made me appreciate the music even more. In the way that we sometimes interpret others' art to suit our own perspectives, I saw this song as a sentiment to an openness to each person's spectrum of being.

Something else I think we do as people is create narratives from the little things that happen to us, and I find it suiting that this was the first album and song that I discovered on my return to music. In addition to inspiring me to seek out music, our trip to Southern California made me more open to that place. I feel very open to most places--I love cities, countryside, the coasts and the middle of nowhere, desert and forest. But in the midst of the North versus South debate, I lie closer north--I have more ties here, and am generally weary of the excess, and laxity that comes with it, associated with SoCal. While M loves the Bay Area and appreciates the liberal mindset and diversity here, he's also naturally drawn to the ocean and sun of SoCal. But, as M reminds me, there is depth to most things, including superficiality. Thanks to him I've found a lot of fullness in Southern California. Living in La Jolla is a very happy memory for me, of running beneath trees with the sprawling branches that became Dr. Seuss images and in the scent of jasmine along the coast, of living blocks from the beach and having blue ocean and orange sun and white sand cliffs at our toetips. Driving down to SoCal for a long weekend feels like a real escape. It made me happy to watch him surf along long waves whose discreet beauty has been unveiled to me by him. The expanse of everything there (the blue, the water, the coastal drive) is a natural openness that makes me push for my own.