THE TASTE NW

We visited The Taste NW and "got our food on." My evening ended up having a Korean flavor to it, literally, and that was an absolute delight.



My appetizer was a Korean Cheese Dog from Puffle Up. I had the OG Cheese Dog which is a deep fried mozzarella cheese "dog" coated with sugar, ketchup, and mustard. The sweet of the sugar matches so well with the acidity of the mustard and ketchup. This is essentially a heart attack on a stick, but so worth it.



My entrée was an excellent Bulgogi Bowl from Seoul Bowl. The Korean-barbecued beef and rice were topped with sweet Asian salad, kimchi, and sweet chili sauce on top. There were other toppings available, but this was a good mix—once again balancing sweet with acidic, as well as spicy heat with cool umami.

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Sampled by at least one of us during our evening: 

• Korean Cheese Dogs.
• Korean Bulgogi Bowl.
• Pork Bao.
• Po Boy Sandwich and Fries.
• Pineapple Dole Whip.
• Critical Hit "Bugbear" Soda.
• Tanghulu Sugar-Glazed Fruit Kabobs.

SUNRISE on the REAPING

Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) by Suzanne Collins is the fifth book in the series of Hunger Games novels, and the second prequel to the original trilogy. The story is that of Haymitch Abernathy and his turn as tribute in the Second Quarter Quell of games, twenty-five years prior to those featuring Katniss Everdeen. Collins does an excellent job of adding further texture to her world of Panem and highlighting the tension between the Capitol and the Districts. The presence of President Coriolanus Snow is felt more than seen, but he is a malignant and manipulative force. There are a multitude of "cameos" that provide motivations for how characters act in the original trilogy. And the games and arena encounterd here are in an intermediary stage between those of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and The Hunger Games.

I liked this installment; I just hope this series and its world-building avoids the Star Wars "trap" of tying everything back to the legacy storyline if it continues to grow.

FLOWERS

"Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread."

—Dogen, from "Genjō Kōan" ("Actualizing the Fundamental Point")

translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi

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"Therefore flowers fall even though we love them; weeds grow even through we dislike them."

—Dogen, from "Genjōkōan" ("to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity")

translated by Shohaku Okamura

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Tonight, during zazen with South Sound Zen, my mind kept wandering back to the flowers on the altar—amidst the scent of Japanese incense, the incessant barking of my body, the wrestling of robes by one of our leaders, and the sounds of the city through the open windows.

There is effort to arrange the flowers. There is effort to place the flowers on the altar. And then they "disappear" while we sit. For that matter, they "disappear" even once we end sitting; most of us, most of the time, don't think about them again. But tonight, I did. And tonight, the line above (the Okamura translation) was referenced by our leader, which made those flowers on the altar bloom all over again for me. Attachment? Perhaps. Beauty and engagement? Yes. And of the (present) moment.

LE SLEESTAK STEVE

Le Sleestak Steve, paper cut cardboard, paper cut copy paper, and Sharpie marker on copy paper, 2025.

An homage mashup to both Instagram shenanigan Le Poisson Steve and the zombie-like reptilian humanoids that inhabit Lost City in live-action kid's show Land of the Lost.

ESCAPE ROOM

We almost made it out of an escape room in time. (The photograph is of the lobby, not of the nautical-themed escape room.)

We had an hour to get out, but we probably needed another ten minutes to escape on our own. There were five of us. We were allowed three clues and we used them all at the end. Two were minor things we were overlooking, but would have likely figured out. One was a major miscalculation, but I likewise think we would have got it with extra time.

Ultimately, we did get to open the vault and make it to the treasure. However, we should have instead been forced to walk the plank. All in all, it was fun. (Other than the clock on the wall in constant countdown mode reminding us of our impending doom and failure!)

THE SINGING NAIL

Mystical moment of mowing the yard...

I started hearing a low ringing tone to the left of my head. When I pulled my ear protection back or removed my left hand from the running lawnmower, the tone would cease. When I replaced both, then the tone returned. It occurred throughout mowing the front yard.

I took a pause for some Internet research before mowing the backyard. The tone disappeared during the break and didn't return again.

It wasn't like "normal" ringing in the ears. It didn't seem to be an aural hallucination. I'm wondering if the vibration of the lawnmower provided a frequency that resonated with and activated my humeral nail. The tone was close to that of one of my singing bowls (pictured), but quieter and sustained. And knowing it had a point in space relative to my head and shoulder makes me think it is likely circumstances were "just right" at that moment to manifest and feed such a "song."

SHOULDER the PAIN

The beauty of a broken body. Using sword work to move through pain.

For the past couple of days, I've been experiencing issues with my broken arm, my shoulder, and my hardware. Then, tonight, my main neurological symptoms increasingly "turned on" and are now much more noticeable. So the former provided me a foretaste of what was to come.

Now it's time to lie on my Shakti Mat and then endure a couple days of waiting for symptoms to turn off.

LAN SU CHINESE GARDEN

As the temperatures in Portland moved from the low- to mid-70s of the morning and afternoon to the low-80s of the late afternoon, we sought relief at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland's Chinatown. (And this garden provided such relief. It felt a few degrees cooler than the sidewalks and streets outside its perimeter.) We really just kind of stumbled upon it last minute, so we didn't know what to anticipate. We could see that it was contained within one square block, so my expectations were low.



This garden was radically different in architecture, atmosphere, and tone from the Japanese gardens. Where the Japanese gardens were subtle and understated, this Chinese garden was ornate and overstated. Buildings and structures of the residence of a Ming-era Confucian scholar, his family, and attendants surrounded a small lake at their center. Like the daimyo who would have owned the property at the Japanese garden, this Confucian scholar would have been part of the governing elite of his society.



Stone, water, and plants were the foundations for this garden, just as they were for the Japanese gardens, but the structures really added an element of their own. Wooden posts and pillars, gates and doors and panels, curved stone tile roofs all lent themselves to making this one square block a world of its own. The rest of the city, pressing in all around the garden, "disappeared" in many ways. The noise diminished and unless one looked up and saw the surrounding skyscrapers, one could imaging one's self in 16th century China.



I was fascinated by the way that this garden was claimed and tamed by the human, in a way that felt more overt than the Japanese garden. Chinese hanzi characters spoke from stones, panels, pillars, and carved wooden signs hanging over entryways. Language helped to "speak" form to this space (and time). Stones were large and bold. Shapes and structure were built into paved stone walkways, windows in walls, and ornamental tiles. It was fascinating and a time to see how Confucianism and Taoism played into the architecture of the garden and buildings of this Chinese garden in the same way the Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism sculpted the gardens layouts of the Japanese garden.

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Both gardens provided me with plenty of things to continue to mull over and reflect upon, even as I leave the physical spaces behind in Portland.

PORTLAND JAPANESE GARDEN

We visited Portland Japanese Garden, which is really five "collected" styles of Japanese garden, housed on the former grounds of the Portland Zoo in Washington Park. We took a public tour and our guide was one of the directors of the board. She had us hold two Japanese concepts in mind while we explored the gardens: 間 / ma, which means something like "a pause in time" or "empty space" or "negative space;" and 見立絵 / mitate-e, which means something like "look and compare pictures" or "to liken to something else" or even "to see with one's own eyes." These two concepts provided us a framework to interpret the gardens and their elements of stone, water, and plants through our own lenses and worldviews. 

So this visit was much different than the last time we were there. It was June rather than May. It was warm rather than cool. It was bright and sunny rather than overcast and gray. It was dry rather than misty and or lightly raining. The gardens were filled with a lot of people rather than being sparsely populated.

But here were the things I noticed in the five gardens this time, with a couple of framing devices and a different set of circumstances to guide my attention.



Flat Garden. The flat garden is the "yard" of a large pavilion, the latter having been built in a traditional Japanese architectural style of the Tokugawa shogunate. The railing and the roof of the pavilion porch provide a frame for the picture of the yard. The landscaping of this garden represents the four seasons—a cherry tree representing spring; black pine trees representing summer; Japanese maple trees representing autumn; and the raked gravel representing summer, as well as water (essentially a dry, stone lake). 

Tea Garden. This garden features a tea house and the garden that surrounds it. But I was especially enamored by the canopy of small green maple leaves. I kept looking up. Last time I visited, the history of the tea house and tea ceremony was highlighted, so my attention wandered elsewhere this time. The colors and forms, swaying in a light breeze, were intriguing.



Strolling Pond Garden. This garden is about water and the shore that surrounds it. There is one elongated pond that feels as though it is two ponds, one significantly larger than the other and bisected by Moon Bridge and its lotus finials on the four posts. There is a waterfall and its accompanying large stones. But I was fascinated by the koi and watching them slowly swim along the water's edge searching for algae and insects.



Natural Garden. This "wild" garden is just as intricately planned as the others but feels as though it contains more, even cluttered, when compared to the relative sparseness of the other gardens. Our guide told us to look for moon imagery scattered throughout this garden and once suggested I noticed it everywhere. The gate to this garden has asymmetrical doors, the wider door representing a full moon, the narrower door representing a new or quarter moon. Stones had full and quarter moons carved into them or differently-colored tiles inlaid. And this lantern had a full moon on one side and a quarter moon on its opposite.



Sand and Stone Garden. This is my favorite garden of the five. It has seven stones that "face" a "Buddha stone." The garden illustrates a story of Shakyamani Buddha sacrificing himself to feed seven tiger cubs that are trapped in a valley or large depression. He offers his body as food to sustain them, knowing that he will be reborn to continue his work of awakening. Strangely enough, the story feels very eucharistic.

As in the Flat Garden, the raked gravel represents water. Each "tiger" stone appears to be an island with ripples emanating out from it. Or a head poking up from beneath the surface of a pond or lake. (In some versions of the story, other animals are saved—bears or crocodiles or dolphins. But the truth of the story remains the same.)