Um viagem lindo (A beautiful trip)

Here’s some creative writing that I did for a contest for Trazzler, a travel website that relies on readers to describe their experiences at various places around the world. Entries for the contest were supposed to be less than 120 words and written in the “Trazzler style.” I chose to write about Coffeehouse Northwest. The entry didn’t win anything, but it was still fun to write. Thought I’d share it with you.

Dreaming of Brazil in Portland, Oregon 

Looking for relief from the gray Portland winter, I slip in the back door at Coffeehouse Northwest.

What cure for the blues do you have on grind? I ask, knowing that the ever-changing espresso lineup always offers something sublime.

A Brazilian coffee from Serra Negra, the barista replies—a  “black saw” to cut through the doldrums. I order a double. It has hints of strawberries and summer sun.

Sip by sip, my spirits rise. Over the speakers, the Girl from Ipanema is swaying down to the sea, and my escape to Rio is complete. Refreshed, I slip out the back door, ready to face the gray once more.

Art, Meaning and the CPDX Logo

Any art or design enthusiasts reading today? Today’s post is about art and how artists include symbolism in what they create. I took a class on art history when I lived in Boston and was fascinated by the Italian Renaissance. I enjoyed learning how artists like Brunelleschi, Uccello and Rafaello (my favorite) created beautiful art while subtly placing symbols in their work. Here is Rafaello’s School of Athens:

 

The fresco is a celebration of knowledge and wisdom. Raphael filled the scene with  many important artists and philosophers (he placed his rival Michelangelo front and center), and even slipped his self-portrait in along the right edge. (You can see a larger image if you click here, and Wikipedia has a good description of who some of the characters in the painting are here.)

Staying with the symbolism theme, I thought I’d share a little bit about what the Caffeinated PDX logo stands for. If you are a fan of art or  “symbology” (the fictitious discipline that Robert Langdon studies in The Da Vinci Code), you might enjoy hearing about it. The logo is more than just a bunch of lines on a page and has at least five layers of meaning in it (though I’m not trying to say it compares to anything that the Renaissance masters have done). Hopefully, when you look at the logo from now on, you will think of what it stands for and remember that there can be a lot of meaning hidden inside simple things.

Before I describe it, though, I’d like you to study the logo for a minute and think about what you might see in it. Then when you’re done thinking, jump below to peer inside the mind of the artist.

The first meaning is all about the coffee. You can see a wisp of vapor rising above the rim of a coffee cup. This is a warm, comforting sight when you grab a cup of coffee on a cold day. You might also see that the steam looks like the profile of someone’s face, someone who could be taking a sip from the cup. Or you might see that the steam looks like a winding path. This represents wandering, something I’ve done quite a bit. In addition, the steam looks similar to a quarter note rest on a musical score written backwards, reflecting my interest in music.

Finally, if you take another look at the rim of the cup on the bottom part of the logo, you can see how it looks like a subtle smile. This represents the little pick-me-up that people get from their coffee or, hopefully, from reading this blog ;). That’s our goal here at Caffeinated PDX—to bring you that subtle smile every time you come by for a visit. 

Artists Hit the Right Notes

It was a beautiful crisp fall day here in Portland yesterday. After rushing to get a week’s worth of laundry done, I needed to get out of the house and go look for stories (and of course, some good coffee). When I walked outside, I noticed two things: First, it was much cooler outside than the day before—fall is here—and I was glad I had elected to wear my fleece. Second, I could hear an outdoor concert taking place at the PSU campus. That piqued my interest, and I decided to go listen for a while.

It’s pretty common to have lunchtime concerts at PSU. They usually take place once a week, weather permitting. I’m not sure who decides what group gets to play on stage in the commons, but the concert series is a great opportunity to perform and be heard by anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand people. Up and coming bands who are looking for exposure can put their music out into the public eye (ear, rather) and see what kind of reaction they get. As you can imagine, the talent level and quality of the music varies greatly from week to week.

I have listened to many of these concerts over the past two years, and I like to watch how the crowd reacts to each band. Most of the time, people sit down for a couple minutes and then move on (if they even stop in the first place). Once in a while the band is good enough that the crowd grows over the hour, but most of the time the people don’t stay around for long. They’ve got too much to do, and the music is not compelling enough to keep them around (Hmm. . . sounds kind of like blogging). Sometimes you can tell that a band has brought a core group of followers—they stand up close to the stage and dance or applaud wildly after each piece.

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Killer Music

What does an artist have to do to capture a listener’s attention? To give you an example of what captures my attention, I have embedded the video of The Killers singing “Spaceman” on Saturday Night Live in 2008 (it might take the video a while to load—sorry, it was about the only site I could find that had this performance).

I happened to be watching SNL that night, and it was the first time I paid attention to the Killers. Watching Brandon Flowers, the lead singer, I could not to take my eyes off of him. He was wrapped up in the moment. Watch his eyes as he sings. They are intense. You can tell that he’s giving himself to the music and the audience. He starts out a little slow and builds up to the chorus. Around the 1:00 mark, he is hitting his stride and the music has taken over his body. Flowers has great range, and he sweeps through the high tones with flair. I don’t know if the band would say this was one of their best performances, but it was enough to make me a fan.

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The Petra of China

On the second leg of our trip to Inner Mongolia, we went to Datong, in Shanxi province. Datong is a very important city in China because it is the center of a very large coal-producing region. The abundance of coal has allowed the city to prosper, and it was obvious while we were there that the small town of three million (small by China’s standards, at least) was changing fast. According to our guide, the Chinese government is worried that the coal in the region, which they have been mining for thousands of years (that’s what he said), is going to run out soon, so the city is trying to transition from a resource-based economy to a tourism-based economy. The city is razing huge swaths of the town in order to construct a massive stone wall that surrounds the city, in hopes that the spectacle will bring tourists in. We watched a set of excavators tearing apart a large, aging apartment complex and I expect that a set of new apartment buildings will replace it. All over the city, new high-rises were being built, and I could easily see why some economists are worried about a property bubble in China. Who is going to live in all of these massive, expensive new lodgings?

When we pulled up next to the hotel at Datong, I don’t know if I have ever seen a happier group of travelers. After sleeping poorly in a bunch of cold yurts, facing the stomach-wrenching odors of the filthy bathrooms, riding horses for two hours on the wind-blown prairie and spending four hours on a bus, seeing that we were going to stay at four-star hotel was the sweetest sight any of us could have asked for. All we wanted to do was grab a shower and take a rest before heading out for a group dinner of traditional hot pot. The shower was splendid and the bed was comfortable. Our bathroom even had a western toilet, still the only one I’ve seen since I arrived in China. It’s the small things in life that make it tolerable. . .

Happy travelers waiting for the bus in Datong

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