Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Kabul restaurant on Chestnut Street

I discovered something when I went to the gym this morning. I realized that I'm two or three times as strong as most of the other women who go there.

Now, I've known for awhile that I've been moving the peg up whenever I sit down at a machine another woman had just been using, but this time I took note of what the difference was.

For example, on a machine which works your quads, I moved it up from 30 to 90. Or on another machine, from 125 to 255. Cool.

I'm going to keep today's Musing relatively brief, since I have a lot I'd like to get done today. I'll just write a little about this past weekend.

The Gryphon and I finally had a weekend where we had nothing scheduled, so we decided to take in a couple movies. On Saturday we saw Finding Neverland, starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. It was a period piece, about the author of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie.

In it, Barrie (Johnny Depp) befriends the Llewelyn Davis family, which consists of a mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet) and four boys. Barrie becomes a surrogate father for the boys, encouraging them to use their imaginations and helping them get over the grief of losing their father. In turn, he is inspired to write his master work.

This was a quieter sort of movie, with subtle performances. It gets into complicated issues about family and social propriety, which make for an interesting subtext. The bland every day scenes are contrasted with bright colored fantasy sequences as Barrie and the boys enter their imaginations. Truly a lovely movie, though it has its share of tears, as well.

Saturday evening, The Gryphon cooked for us. He wanted to try out a dish which he's going to make on Christmas day for my family, chicken with lemon, sage and vegetables. After we tried it, we critiqued it and he resolved to try again later. He made some improvements and tried it again on Monday, with great success. I'm sure it will be a hit.

He also found a way to make low fat German apple pancakes, which we had both Saturday and Sunday morning. They were light and tasty, more like a pastry than a pancake. He joked that he had probably inadvertently triggered a paradox which could destroy the universe: cooking low-fat German food.

On Sunday, we saw House of Flying Daggers, starring Ziyi Zhang as a blind martial artist. Many people will remember her from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where she had some memorable fight scenes involving flying. In this movie, the fighting is a bit more grounded, though nevertheless poetic and dramatic.

The movie starts out as a political film, almost, about the government versus a small band of thieves. But it becomes a very intimate movie about relationships and trust.

Ziyi Zhang is captured by the police, suspected of being a member of the revolutionary bandits, the House of Flying Daggers. A police officer, Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) rescues her and helps her escape, but it's really only part of a plot to have her lead them to the secretive group. Along the way, the movie becomes emotionally complicated as emotions take hold.

As in Hero, House of Flying Daggers uses lush colors, landscapes and costuming to convey emotion and add to the poetry of the fighting scenes. A feast for the eyes and for the heart, as well.

Afterwards, we complained about a couple who had sat behind us, laughing in the dramatic moments. I suppose some people still believe that a martial arts film is only ever about the fighting. They're way behind the times if they believe that.

We didn't know exactly what we wanted for dinner, but we knew there were a number of restaurants nearby on Chestnut Street, so we took a walk. It was rainy and cold, and we didn't hesitate too long before selecting Kabul, an Afghan restaurant.

The menu had a nice selection of vegetarian dishes as well as meat dishes. I opted for a pumpkin dish, served with rice, which was delicious. We both also had hot chai. I knew I ought to be reasonable, because we were stopping in at the Beatlemaniac's house to give her some chocolate as a reward for watching Una awhile ago. We knew she'd been baking cookies all day and expected her to offer us some.

The temptation was worse than I'd anticipated: she put two of every type of cookie on a plate and handed it to us to select our picks. I ate more cookies than I'd planned to, but I figure if I'm good the rest of the week, I should be fine.

Right now, for example, I'm eating chicken broth and a salad for lunch, to save up for the belly dancing holiday party tonight. As soon as I finish my usual afternoon assignment, I'm going to make the Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats I got from a Weight Watcher recipe.

Who says you can't indulge sensibly? Life is good.

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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