On Tea & Japan

“Tea is the ultimate mental and medical remedy and has the ability to make one’s life more full and complete.”

~Rinzai Zen Priest Eisai (1141-1215)⁷

Originally brought to Japan from China in the early ninth century by Buddhist priests, tea – specifically green tea – was first used as a form of medicine and as a stimulant for monks who needed to stay awake during long hours of prayer. “Ancient recordings indicate the first batch of tea seeds were brought by a priest named Saicho in 805 and then by another named Kukai in 806.” Tea became the beverage of the religious and royal classes, but by the mid ninth century the practice declined along with many other aspects of Chinese culture imported since the late sixth century.

Tea drinking saw a revival during the Kamakura shogunate. Eisai (1141-1215), the founder of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, reintroduced tea to Kyoto as medicine when he returned from studying in China in 1191.

The tea seeds Eisai brought back made their way to priest Myoe Shonin, and Uji tea was born. Otherwise known as Gyokuro, or Pearl Dew, the tea grown around Uji was very delicate and sweet. The leaves were rolled and dried, then steamed to brew the tea. Also from the same plant came tencha and matcha teas. Tencha was dried without rolling the leaves. The leaves were them broken and ground into powder for matcha.

Around that time, Shogun Sanetomo Minamoto became ill, asking Eisai for advice. In addition to prayer, Eisai prescribed tea as a remedy. With the Shogun’s recovery, tea’s popularity in Japan was once again on the rise, especially among the samurai classes.²

By the early 13^th century, “green tea became a staple among cultured people in Japan -- a brew for the gentry and the Buddhist priesthood alike. Production grew and tea became increasingly accessible, though still a privilege enjoyed mostly by the upper classes.”⁷

A process of roasting tea leaves was introduced to Japan, and the most prized varieties of tea were grown at Toganoo, in the mountains to the north west of Kyoto. “Early forms of the tea ceremony were largely occasions for the ostentatious display of precious utensils in grand halls, or noisy parties in which the participants guessed the origins of different teas.”³ The samurai elite held competitions in identifying which regions certain teas came from by taste, similar to a modern wine tasting. They had a passion for collecting Chinese objects for display during these early tea gatherings. In addition, tea gatherings were an opportunity to discuss poetry, calligraphy, painting, and philosophy.

“Finally through the influence of Zen Buddhist masters, the procedures for serving tea in front of guests were developed in the 14th and 15th century into the spiritually uplifting form in which millions of students practice the Tea Ceremony in different schools today.”¹ Chanoyu, or the tea ceremony, evolved, including the rules for tea preparation, serving, consumption, and setting.

The chashitsu, or tea room, also developed. It was a self-contained, one-room world of tea, originally based on the shoin style of living room. The space was at least six to eight tatami mats in size (each woven mat measured approximately 3’ by 6’), and the mats covered the floor entirely. A shoin desk, shelves, and alcove was built into the room, in a style based on the study chambers of Zen priests. Only Chinese utensils were used to prepare tea at this time.

Murata Juko (1422-1502) broke with this style to hold a tea ritual in a humble four and a half tatami mat room, known as the souan style. The mats were arranged in a chase-around type layout, with the half mat at the center. Originally a Zen Buddhist monk, Juko was regarded as the founder of Japanese tea drinking. He said there was no social hierarchy in tea and took the ceremony out of the shoin style study room and into its own freestanding tea hut. With the standardization of the hut’s décor, Juko brought tea from an expensive Chinese style into a definitively Japanese style, choosing simple local elements over fine imported items.⁴

The son of a wealthy merchant, Sen no Rikyuu (1522-1591), considered the first sage of tea, took Juko’s refinements one step further. Rikyuu’s “background brought him into contact with the tea ceremonies of the rich, but he became more interested in the way priests approached the tea ritual as an embodiment of Zen principles for appreciating the sacred in the everyday. Taking a cue from Juko's example, and seeking to join Zen and tea drinking, Rikyu stripped everything non-essential from the tearoom and the style of preparation, and developed a tea ritual in which there was no wasted movement and no object that was superfluous.”¹

Instead of expensive imported utensils and lavish surroundings, Rikyuu made tea in a thatch hut with an iron kettle, bamboo utensils, and a rice bowl for drinking. Most of the implements he designed himself and crafted from bamboo and other simple materials. “The only decoration in a Rikyuu-style tearoom was a hanging scroll or a vase of flowers placed in the alcove. Owing to the very lack of decoration, participants become more aware of details and are awakened to the simple beauty around them and to themselves.”³

Rikyuu’s ideal space consisted of only two tatami mats and could fit no more than two to three people. In addition, Rikyuu pioneered the use of nijiriguchi, or crawling-in doors. A small, low entrance to the tea hut brought every guest to the same level. Reportedly, Rikyuu was intrigued by a small wharf entrance near his home and appropriated the idea for his tea hut.

Rikyuu introduced raku ware to the tea ceremony in the late 16^th century. He was said to be inspired by roofing tiles made by Choujiro, and commissioned the artisan to create the spare, rustic, and imperfect simple pottery items. Raku ware was not turned on a pottery wheel but handmade, and roughly, emphasizing a “quiet, simple, and unassuming aesthetic.” This style was in line with the wabi aesthetic. Wabi, literally “desolation,” said that beauty was to be found in things humble and poverty-stricken, or “specifically, it was an appreciation for the imperfect and irregular aspects of nature.” ⁶

Rikyuu became tea master to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), considered one of the most significant figures in Japanese history. “Although Rikyū had been one of Hideyoshi's closest confidants, because of crucial differences of opinion and other reasons which remain uncertain, Hideyoshi ordered him to commit ritual suicide.”⁴

By the end of the 16^th century, green tea, and the unpretentious ceremony perfected by Rikyuu, was available to the masses. It became Japan’s most popular beverage. In 1740, another form of tea was developed: sencha. Soen Nagatani developed this unfermented process of tea preparation, in which dried, crumbled leaves are used instead of the powdered matcha. This loose leaf preparation is now a mainstay in Japan. ⁵

At the end of the Meiji period, in the late 19^th century, the warrior class was abolished, making women the primary practitioners of the tea ceremony. In addition, machine manufacturing began replacing handmade teas. By the 20^th century, tea processing had become completely automated, but Japanese green teas are still considered the finest on the market. The roasted teas are not very common, but powdered matcha teas are still used in ceremonial fashion.

Rikyuu’s great-grandsons founded two of the largest tea schools of today, Urasenke and Omotesenke, and the tea ceremony is now being taught worldwide to both men and women.⁷

"Chado, the Way of Tea, is based upon the simple act of boiling water, making tea, offering it to others, and drinking of it ourselves. Served with a respectful heart and received with gratitude, a bowl of tea satisfies both physical and spiritual thirst.”

~Sen Soshitsu, Ura Senke Grand Tea Master⁶

Works Cited

1. Embassy of Japan, Nepal. 10 May 2006 .

2. "Green Tea." Japanese Food 101. 20 Jan. 2006. 20 May 2006 .

3. "History of the Tea Ceremony and Wabi-Cha." Japan Fact Sheet. 1 June 2006 .

4. "Japanese Design, Culture in the Age of Civil Wars." Sengoku Expo. 25 May 2006 .

5. "Japanese Tea Ceremony." Wikipedia. 18 May 2006 .

6. Neighbour Parent, Mary, comp. JAANUS - Teminology of Japanese Architecture and Art History. 2003. 25 May 2006 .

7. "Tea History." Green Tea Lovers. 15 May 2006 .

Take Back the Night

It was chilly and gray at 6:00p.m. that Thursday. One hundred, maybe 200 people were gathered at the bottom of the Aztec Center Free Speech Steps on April 27. They were mostly students and the vast majority were women.

Clumps of women in sorority sweatshirts dotted the crowd, as did an equal number of women in purple T-shirts that read “Let’s Talk About Sex,” and “Break the Silence, Stop the Violence.” Two uniformed campus police officers stood by their truck at the base of the steps, watching the proceedings.

A podium at the top of the stairs stood like a pulpit in front of the speaker, and the crowd listened in respectful silence until it was appropriate to laugh or cheer. A large blank projection screen was set up behind her, but the wind knocked it over mid-sentence.

“I guess that’s intermission,” she said. “That’s good, because I was starting to get a little choked up.”

The crowd laughed a little, and Tracy Johnson from the San Diego Rape Crisis Center went on speaking.

“Aren’t you all here to raise awareness? Aren’t you all here to show other students, your faculty, administration, and public safety group that you’re serious about sexual violence on campus, and you want them to be too?” shouted Johnson, and the crowd cheered. “Let’s increase community awareness… and help change the culture of sexual violence!”

It was the annual Take Back the Night rally at San Diego State University.

“Take Back the Night has been going on for 28 years in the US,” Johnson said into the microphone, competing with the wind again. “Let’s put that into perspective: that’s almost three decades of Take Back the Night.

“On the one hand, I want to celebrate – and I do celebrate each and every one of you for taking the time to care and wanting to put an end to this silent epidemic. On the other hand I’m distressed, as you can imagine – 28 years of Take Back the Nights and they still have to exist?”

According to Johnson, one in three women has been or will be assaulted in her lifetime. One in twelve men will share the same fate.

“The American Medical Association has declared sexual assault an epidemic in our society,” she said. “This is more than Take Back the Night tonight. This is Take Back Our Rights – our right to walk home…, our right to run in the evening after a long day of classes, our right to go to the bar for a drink, or for many drinks, and not fear that someone will hurt us, or violate us, and the right to go out… and be safe!”

Johnson stepped down from the podium and the women staffing the even passed out glow sticks, picket signs, and chant sheets printed on squares of pink paper. The march portion of the evening had begun, and the crowd flowed between the columns of Aztec Center and over the footbridge. Their path took them between the residence halls, down Montezuma Ave., and up Campanile Rd. where the throng held up traffic for a good five minutes.

“Our bodies, our minds, our right to decide!” yelled the marchers, along with some other more colorful slogans.

Car horns honked as they chanted their way down either side of Fraternity Row before heading back toward Love Library. The officers drove behind the marchers to discourage onlookers from causing trouble.

One resident on Hardy Ave., Jake Kobernick, was standing outside his house watching the procession.

“What they’re saying obviously I agree with,” he said. “I think everyone does. I don’t know what protesting is going to do down these streets though. It is nice to see that they’re standing up and that they’re doing something. For sure, it’ll raise awareness. I’m sure there are people down these streets who don’t even think about [violence against women]”

Once back at the Free Speech Steps, white candles were distributed and lit, although it wasn’t quite dark yet. The flames sputtered and dipped against the weather but most kept from going out. Poet and performer Kimberly Dark, the other featured speaker of the night, stepped up to the podium. A PowerPoint presentation displaying various facts about sexual violence churned on the big screen behind her.

“First of all, I need to liberate myself from this podium!” she said as she pulled the microphone from its stand. A few of the women cheered. She recited a poem about discovering the broken and bloody victim of incest in a public bathroom one night after work. The crowd didn’t make any sound over the noise of the wind and Dark’s words hung heavy for a moment.

“Thought becomes word becomes deed becomes habit becomes culture,” she said. “So what you all have done here this evening in marching and getting together is you have turned stories into action. And that is a very powerful thing.”

It was time for testimonials. A few dozen of the remaining crowd, maybe a third its original size, approached the microphone, and, one by one, they shared their own quiet tragedies of sexual violence and abuse. Hugs and tears flowed freely, and the evening began to draw to a close.

“As you leave tonight remember the reality is that most of the violence against women is not perpetrated in public places,” Johnson had said earlier in the night. “Most of the violence against women happens in our own homes, in our personal relationships.”

Take Back the Night has been hosted by the Women’s Resource Center at SDSU every spring for the last several years, but this year’s rally was different. It was a protest against sexual violence just like in past years, but this time the WRC was joined by the SDSU chapter of the National Organization for Women, several Sorority houses, and Fraternity Men Against Negative Environments and Rape Situations, or ‘Frat Manners’.

“If we work together we’ll be even stronger,” said Christina Gonzalez, co-president of the campus chapter of NOW. NOW has been a supporting organization behind Take Back the Night, which is hosted by the WRC, for three years, but just this year the two organizations began coordinating their efforts to create Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which ran from April 10-27. T-shirts that read “I ♥ Consensual Sex” were sold, and then back-ordered. The second annual Love Your Body Festival was held on April 14.

“I think it’s great,” said Manny Konedeng of Frat Manners, who also spoke briefly before the march. “It’s a great turnout.”
Frat Manners has been on campus for over three years, and they got involved with Take Back the Night after some fraternity men were caught throwing things at the marchers one year, said Konedeng. The men of Frat Manners decided to get involved and take action.

“Sexual assault prevention starts with a sense of responsibility for your actions,” Konedeng said, “and it begins with respect for women.”

The same incident with the fraternities was cited as a reason for the campus police’s presence as well. Lea Dennis, an alumnus who participated in the march several years ago, said there were also problems with men following women into the restrooms during the event, but campus police could not confirm or deny the report.

Officer Ruben Luna, on duty during the march, said that though he was relatively new to the force, he had heard about fraternity men exposing themselves to the marchers and throwing eggs. Overall, though, he said Take Back the Night was a very positive event.

Corporal Josh Mays patrolled the rally last year, one of two officers assigned to the march, and though he cited the reason for police presence as a request by event organizers, he too saw the rally as a positive measure on campus.

“As with any type of issue or event,” said Mays, “you raise awareness and awareness is power. When you have an event with media and police presence people are going to take notice. In that sense I think it was a successful event.”

The number of sexual assaults on campus since the introduction of Take Back the Night has fluctuated some, but Mays could not confirm any direct correlation between the event and the crime rates – there are simply too many factors to consider, he said. More detailed information on campus crime rates and bulletins is available at www.dps.sdsu.edu.

“Take Back the Night and RAD (the Rape Aggression Defense program offered to women on campus) are the most prominent programs on campus,” said Mays.

And while the number of assaults dropped significantly between 2004 and 2005, there was an increase in forcible sexual assaults this year, from 11 to 16, but Mays said the participants in these programs were not likely the victims. Even so, the majority of attacks on campus were perpetrated by acquaintances. According to Mays, only three of the attacks listed in the department’s statistics from recent years were stranger rapes.

Just how prominent are these campus programs for women’s safety, though? While there was a significant turnout of sorority members at Take Back the Night, not one of the women interviewed from Alpha Phi or Sigma Alpha Zeta had ever heard of the event before the Pan-Hellenic Council made the announcement this year and encouraged them to attend. Even Kobernick, who lives along the route that the march has taken for the last several years, had never heard of the event until it strolled through his front yard.

Unlike in previous years, the march wasn’t listed in the campus e-Newsletter. NOW and the WRC manned a table in the Aztec Center, selling T-shirts and passing out purple fliers all that week, but there was no big announcement on campus to let the approximately 40 thousand students know about it.

Associated Students President Chris Manigault spoke during the rally, with ideas to make sexual assault an even more prominent issue on campus.

“Let’s march during orientation,” he said. Incoming freshman especially need to be made aware, said Manigault.

“These are things people think about but never say,” said event participant Jennifer Cesena. “We need to be out here more than once a year.”

Observations

The walls are a splotchy yellow. They feel unfinished, hastily painted maybe, but inviting in a way. They host a patchwork of paintings. Some rest in heavy, ornate gold frames; some have naked canvas edges. It is a roughly even mix of skillfully and amateurishly executed art, not one likely designed to be hung adjacent to its neighbor. Seemingly random pillars and doorframes dissect the space, a skeletal version of the quaint Craftsman house it may have once been.

In the front room is a large counter with a cash register and a whirring espresso machine at one end and a glass display of decadent desserts at the other. Next to the register sits a glass vase, half full of crumpled bills. A handwritten index card taped to the vase says “401K.” In the opposite corner sits a squat table with a built in screen, a rather dated Pac-Man console.

A hodgepodge of armchairs and couches, and wooden tables with mismatched wooden chairs is unevenly distributed throughout the shop, atop oriental rugs and hardwood floors. Most of the seats are taken tonight. In any direction, half a dozen laptop computers can be seen, open and glowing amidst a clutter of large hardbound books, binders, papers, plates of half-eaten food, and mugs likely full of caffeinated liquids.

One laptop is open but doesn’t appear to be turned on. Two men and a woman are seated around the old table. One of the men talks animatedly about his latest idea. He’s thinks they should use a Norplant-like system to deliver Ritalin to school children, he says. His red tennis shoes match his backpack. The woman scribbles absently on the open newspaper in front of her. The men go back to their reading and the computer screen remains dark.

A ceiling fan turns steadily overhead, creating a strobe effect as each blade passes under the light fixture in the ceiling. There is a steady whine from the espresso machine in the distance.

A group of six or seven women have pulled chairs from some of the tables and congregated in a circle at the back of the shop. They are intent in their discussion and don’t seem to notice their surroundings. One woman in a pink and black striped shirt is doing most of the talking, occasionally wrinkling her forehead intently. She and her companions are significantly older than the rest of the shop’s patrons.

Across the room two women sit by themselves at a table that could probably hold six. Both have computers in front of them, but only one is paying attention to hers, the screen reflected dully in her glasses. The other woman talks on her cellular phone, her eyelashes fluttering every time she speaks. She stares at the ceiling while the other party buzzes in her ear.

A man with his baseball cap turned backwards stares at the wall instead of at his open notebook. He sighs and adjusts his glasses on his nose, absently turning a page as though he had read it. He begins fiddling with a stray lock of his dark hair that’s stuck out from under his cap. A heavily worn paperback book rests on his small table – the spine says Organic Chemistry. The book is turned toward the other chair, currently occupied by a rumpled backpack.

One table seems shoved into a corner of the back room. A woman in a striped red headscarf sits facing the room, using her lap instead of the table as a writing surface. She seems hunched, huddled there under the yellow light of the table lamp, her bare feet up on the adjacent armchair. She blows her nose noisily and resumes her work.

The man with the red shoes discusses polygamy and the Church of Latter Day Saints with the other man at the table. The woman twirls her platinum blonde hair absently. Not long after the two of them leave and the other man is left alone at the big table. He fidgets and tries to concentrate, repeatedly taking a highlighter to the pages in front of him.

A large, five-paneled bay window reveals the patio outside, and the busy street beyond. White orbs of light seem to float on the bushes, their lampposts hidden by overgrowth. A marquee for the mortuary across the way glows obscenely in the darkness. Near the window is a large painting, an abstract mess of color that seems an attempt at impressionism. Beneath the painting sit two women, their books spread out on the table in front of them. They talk intently with one another and the books are forgotten. One woman absently holds a pen in one hand, but it is nowhere near her paper.

Loud voices erupt over the dull murmur of the shop, growing to a cackle and subsiding just as quickly. The circle of women have finished their discussion and turned to gossip.

A man in a leather jacket walks into the back section of the shop, scanning the room for an empty seat. He sees the woman in the headscarf and walks toward her. She looks up and smiles. He sits across from her and they begin speaking in another language.

In the wide door frame that opens to the center section, another man sits with his computer. He carefully lifts the teabag from his cup, squeezes it, and sets it in a waiting smaller cup. He laces his fingers behind his head and stretches briefly before returning his attention to the screen.

The man with the backwards hat brings his backpack from the chair to the floor next to him and begins to rifle through it. He pulls several small objects from the pack and drops them into a waiting plastic cup. He sighs again and begins flipping through his book, again twirling the lock of hair on his forehead.

A woman in the middle section of the shop begins to pack up her belongings. Two newcomers circle her table like vultures over a carcass. She busses her own dishes and leaves, several bags in tow.

The man in the leather jacket moves to the table where the man with the highlighter sits, but he talks across the room to the woman in the headscarf in their strange, rapid-fire tongue. She takes a sip of a drink the same color as her scarf and looks down at her books.

If Only LA Had a Soul, by Craig Svonkin

I found this while browsing the online version of CRATE journal (www.crate.ucr.edu/home.html) and decided it was worthy of sharing. Craig, thank you for reminding me how much I treasure language.


Paris has any number of them. From the Cathedral of Notre Dame to Saint Chapelle, from the Louvre to the Luxembourg Gardens, the problem in Paris is finding spaces lacking wonder, spaces that cry out "I am common." Likewise, New York has the observation deck of the Empire State Building, the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, Central Park, and perhaps one day soon the Ground Zero Memorial at Daniel Libeskind's new World Trade Center. Jerusalem has the Old City, with its Western Wall for Jews, Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, and Dome of the Rock for Muslims. San Francisco, our Paris to the north, has many sites of wonder and sublimity, but what about Los Angeles? Where is L.A.'s Golden Gate Bridge, barely visible above a fog bank? Where is our Coit Tower or City Lights Bookstore? Where are our sacred spaces? Does Los Angeles have a soul?
The rap against LA., endlessly replayed in story, song and film from Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard to Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One to the Eagle's "Hotel California" to Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle," is that L.A. is a soulless vampire ever ready to devour another starry-eyed, fresh-faced ingenue. L.A. is commonly depicted as circus or cemetery, carnival or simulacrum, as always self-ironizing but never souled. The metanarrative of Los Angeles seems fairly consistent--a chimeric patina of fairy faux-Land just barely hiding the bleak reality of noir-Land beneath its surface. And while there are plenty of simulated, macabre sites of hopelessness and despair in the Southland, as any lucky visitor to the jaw-dropping Forest Lawn Cemetery and Theme Park in Glendale already knows, L.A. is also more of a spiritual place than the sum of its movie-engendered cliches would have us believe. Of course, I am biased, having grown up wandering the used bookstores of Hollywood, visiting the revival movie theaters scattered across town, and urban exploring the back alleys of downtown L.A. Reading lists can be stultifying, but for the novice here are some of my favorite spaces of wonder, joy, or the sacred with which to begin an investigation into spiritual Los Angeles: the Bradbury Building, the Movie Palaces of Broadway, Huntington Gardens on a rainy day, the Chinese Theater for a matinee, Ferndale, Union Station, the view of all of Los Angeles from the Getty Center on a clear afternoon, the Japanese Pavilion at LACMA, Frank Gehry's Disney Hall, the Watts Towers, and a double bill at the Silent Movie Theatre followed by a late night bowl of matzah-ball soup at Canter's Deli. But for me, one place outshines all of these other potential contenders for the title of L.A.'s spiritual center: David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology (MOJT).
The MOJT, created and curated by David Wilson, is, at 9341 Venice Boulevard, a jewel hidden behind a nondescript storefront in a culturally hybridized section of Culver City, surrounded to the west by an Indian Sweets and Spices (great for delicious and cheap vegetarian lunches) and to the east by a Thai Restaurant (good for a Thai iced coffee break) and an ever-crowded In-N-Out Burger, with the cool neighborhood bar "Carbon" across the street. This meta-museum is something of a tribute to the museums of our youth, as well as to those Ur-museums, the Wunderkammern or Cabinets of Curiosities, which predated the Cartesian scientific museums of the Modern era.
The Wunderkammern, as Barbara Maria Stafford explains, were "Encyclopedic collections of fantastic and useful objects--minerals, shells, bizarre animal specimens, marvels of human art and science, clever machines, amazing toys--assembled in overflowing rooms [...] and teeming cabinets [... , and] constituted a luxurious diversion for the European elite of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries"(6). Yet while the Wunderkammern were the predecessors to the Modern scientific and natural history museums, they were also decidedly anti-Cartesian and anti-Enlightenment spaces. As Descartes himself made clear, the Cabinets of Curiosity were threats to rationality, for they brought about astonishment, and "[w]hat we commonly call being astonished [...] is an excess of wonder which can never be otherwise than bad"(qtd. in Weschler 89). As Lawrence Weschler, author of the preeminent book on Wilson's MOJT, points out, this sense of wonder associated with the Wunderkammern thus "afforded a steady undertow to any simple, straightforward advances in positivist certainty"(89). In one of the thematically central exhibits of the MOJT, Wilson emphasizes the threat that the MOJT, as a modern reincarnation of the Wunderkammern, presents to scientific, rational thought. In a case reading "Out of order," an unidentified scientific apparatus hovers over a turntable with five glass dishes, each heaping with a colored powder. The dishes are captioned "POSSESSION," "DELUSION," "PARANOIA," "SCHIZOPHRENIA," and "REASON," but the apparatus has shattered the dish marked "REASON," leaving behind a scatter of glass shards and powder.
Entering the MOJT, it takes time to adjust to the darkness and hushed, strange sounds of the museum, but once one's eyes adjust to the distinctly dim light, the motto of the museum clearly situates it in the stream of the Wunderkammern: "The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar; guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life." But if that were not enough, the strangeness, diversity, and sheer eclecticism of the collection of exhibits hidden throughout the darkened, moody, labyrinthine museum is enough to convince me that the MOJT is a tribute to the half-remembered and half-created dream museums of our childhood, spaces more about the experience of transcendence and wonder than objective scientific inquiry or enlightenment.
On display in the MOJT is an amazing variety of items bridging the aesthetic gap from the absurd to the uncanny, from the macabre to the wonderful, a range of exhibits truly fitting for a city of Los Angeles' amazing variety: a model of Noah's Ark mounted on two moving pistons (the Ark being the world's first museum of natural history); an exhibit entitled "Garden of Eden on Wheels," including beautiful models of Los Angeles area mobile homes and trailer parks; a group of horns and antlers, with a horn possibly taken from the head of Mary Davis of Saughall; a fruitstone carving, supposedly depicting an intricate miniature landscape invisible to the naked eye; microminiature sculptures on the heads of needles created by one Hagop Sandaldjian; magician Ricky Jay's collection of decaying dice; an exhibit of beautiful vitrines depicting folk remedies entitled "Tell the Bees . . . Belief, Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition"; a jewel-like theatre and Russian tea room, serving tea from a samovar along with tea cookies; and so on.
One of the key exhibits of the MOJT, and one of my favorites, depicts the lifecycle of the Cameroonian Stink Ant (Megaloponera foetens), which on occasion is infected by inhaling a microscopic spore from a fungus. It is subsequently driven by the growth of the fungus to climb to the top of the rain forest, grip its plant, and then die. The fungus breaks through the ant's head, in a horn-like spike, eventually raining down spores on other unsuspecting ants, which, infected, repeat the cycle. When asked about the stink ant, Wilson pointed out that the exhibit could be read in two ways--as imparting pure information, and as metaphor. After all, one of the mottoes of the museum is "Ut Translatio Natura"--Nature as Metaphor. As Wilson explains, "[T]here've been times in my own life when I felt exactly like that ant--impelled, as if possessed, to do things that defy all common sense"(qtd. in Weschler 63). And if Wilson, like the Cameroonian Stink Ant, was impelled by some mysterious fungus to give up his life to build his improbable museum, perhaps he hopes that his museum can likewise infect us, his visitors, impelling us to pursue our own personal quixotic quests.
Like Wilson, I too was infected by some strange spore during my childhood trips to museums, those secular cathedrals of my youth. I can relate to his love of museums, which perhaps accounts for the waves of love and awe I felt during my first visit to the MOJT. Just as I loved my childhood trips to the Natural History Museum more for the mystery of those darkened, labyrinthine rooms than for any sense that I was gaining knowledge, entering the moody light of the MOJT recreated the sacred feelings I felt in those childhood museums, or that I felt when I entered the dim stained-glass light of Notre Dame or St. Chapelle. Entering the MOJT felt like a psychic return to the womb, working on me like a magical Proustian madeleine cookie, returning me to my earliest childhood memories of trips to the museums, used book stores, gem shops, movie theatres, and antique shops of L.A.
It seems no coincidence, then, that Proust's madeleine cookies are on display at the MOJT. Next to an exhibit documenting Geoffrey Sonnabend's arcane theory of memory and forgetting is a small exhibit of madeleine cookies that can be smelled through a tube, alongside text from Proust's famous novel, Remembrance of Things Past, that novel of memories spurred by the accidental recreation of a childhood sensory experience, the eating of a madeleine soaked in tea. And so, just as that cookie brought back memories for Proust's alter-ego, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, with its moody lighting, with its strange hushed sounds and musty smells, brought back spiritual memories of childhood for me, and perhaps for many others. In this sense, the MOJT is something like L.A.'s tribute to memory while simultaneously being our central memento mori, or reminder of death and forgetting. It is thus a fitting tribute to L.A., the land that both collects the past (what is L.A., if not a freakish collection of past styles, fads, and rituals) and constantly attempts to forget or erase it.
Walter Benjamin, in "Unpacking My Library," argues that collecting is not essentially about organized, logical thought, but rather is an emotional, irrational attempt to ward off the loss of forgetting, the loss of death: "Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories"(60). Like Benjamin's collector, David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology is a chaotic place that seems to develop its own alternative logic and order upon return visits. This is perhaps because it is a pre-Enlightenment space. Like Los Angeles itself, it has not been designed in a logical manner, but rather has grown in an organic and random way. This is as it should be. On my last visit to the museum, I entered a room I had entered a dozen times before, when suddenly I realized that there was a new doorway. Imagine my sense of wonder and joy as I entered that doorway, only to find two beautiful new exhibits, made all the more wonderful because I just happened onto them. This is a microcosm of my experience of Los Angeles, a space that is always changing and, for the openhearted wanderer, a place that is always off ering the gift of surprise.

E85 Ethanol Fuels

You may have already seen the commercials for the new Go Yellow, Live Green campaign. E85, or ethanol-based fuel made from fermented corn, sugar beets, and other common crops is the latest attempt to find an alternative to the U.S.’s petroleum dependency. Is it just another short-lived solution, like the all-electric car and the accompanying visions of a giant extension cord, or is E85 something the public – and the automobile industry – could actually get behind?

According to www.goyellowlivegreen.com, “E85 is an alcohol fuel mixture of 85% ethanol (grain alcohol) and 15% gasoline (petrol) that can be used in new Flex Fuel Vehicles. It is clean-burning, domestically produced, renewable fuel that contributes to decreased dependence on imported oil… [These FFVs] are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol up to 85% ethanol by volume.”

And if there isn’t an E85 pump nearby? No problem, said the website – you can put gasoline into an FFV even if you’ve been running on ethanol, and vice versa. The fuel injection computer can account for the different levels of each fuel and the car will run accordingly. For a list of the E85 stations currently in operation, visit www.e85fuel.com/database/search.php.

A new study cited by the website, conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, found that “even in the most critical eye, ethanol’s energy balance is positive and its environmental benefits clear. Ethanol is an efficient fuel made through an efficient process, and it pulls more than its own weight in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

The cost of this new fuel can vary, according to the website, but it can be “as much as 40 to 50 cents per gallon cheaper than gasoline.”

In addition, “all vehicles in the U.S. are ‘ethanol-capable’ and can use up to a 10% blend of renewable fuel. The majority of ethanol in America is retailed as E10, [and] this 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline blend is covered by the warranty for all vehicles,” according to the website.

So why haven’t we seen these new cars around, you may ask? You probably have.

Ford and GM have been producing these FFVs for several years, but since there are no E85 pumps here on the West Coast as of yet there hasn’t been too much talk about them. For a list of the vehicles currently available, go to www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/afv/models.html.

Ethanol does seem to be taking off in the Midwest, however, with 95 plants already in operation and upwards of 30 more under construction or in the planning stages, more than half of which are, or will be, owned by the local farmers and investors involved in corn production. That’s a far cry from the petroleum industry, which is controlled by only a handful of giant corporations.

The U.S. is not the only nation to be working on using ethanol as an alternative fuel source. The technology is also not as new as it seems. Brazil is the world’s number one nation using bio-fuels, or fuels made from organic renewable compounds. More than half of Brazil’s road fuel needs have been supplied by sugar beet derived ethanol for decades now, according to an article in The Scotsman. European countries have started to get on the bandwagon as well – the first E85 station opened this week in Norwich, England.

If and when E85 does reach California, however, Dave Curtis, a retired Navy engineer, automobile enthusiast, and hobby mechanic, is skeptical.

The problem with alcohol-based fuels, he said, is that our vehicles’ engines require twice as much pure alcohol as gasoline to travel the same distance because these fuels burn at different rates. Older fuel-injected vehicles could be made to accept ethanol because the cars’ computers can measure and compensate for the different types of fuels and the amounts needed.

The problem, he said, arises at higher speeds – the older injectors may simply not be able to push enough fuel through the system to satisfy the engine’s needs. Ethanol is also highly corrosive, and the newer vehicles, the FFVs, have been fitted with a fuel system made of stainless steel and lined with Teflon – a modification that would be quite costly for a pre-FFV.

“Yes, [ethanol] might be cleaner burning,” Curtis said, “but a cost to mile-per-gallon comparison is necessary to see whether it’s actually a better value. I don’t think it’s the end-all, be-all solution.”

Older, carbureted engines would be unable to make the conversion, he said. The fuel systems on classics from the 1970s and earlier put out a steady flow of fuel and they couldn’t be easily made to compensate for the amount needed to keep and engine running on E85. There go all the old Mustangs and pink Cadillacs that Americans are so fond of, to name a few.

The other issue worrying Curtis is the fact that E85 is made from crops that would normally be produced for food.

“I’m concerned because I don’t see it as an endless supply,” said Curtis. “How much land can I put into corn production [for fuel] before I start cutting into the food supply?”

Rather than alternative fuels at this point, Curtis would rather see the vehicles we already own be able to run more efficiently.

In Los Angeles alone, he said, if all the vehicles were able to run at the posted speeds – at the speed limits rather than the slow crawl they normally manage – all those engines would be running more efficiently and that would save almost 1 billion gallons of gas per year. And that’s just Los Angeles.

Yes, that would require widening the roads to accommodate the current populations, said Curtis, but if each major metropolitan city could boast that kind of savings it could make quite a difference.