Today, I was rumbling through some ephemera from my time spent in Japan and I ran across three toilet paper covers. That's right, the printed tissue paper wrapped around a roll. One of them is a strange mix of East and West. It depicts the story of the tortoise and the hare, to my knowledge a Western fable, in a distinctively Eastern aesthetic. The hexagonal pattern on the shell gives the ethnicity of the turle away...

The other toilet paper cover is fully Japanese. It shows a little cartoon rabbit with a roll around his belly. He looks as if he's giving a speech and formed after a revered figure—confident, just and respected. Perhaps the bowtie persuades me.

Black Jar Tops

Anyone who knows my mom recognizes that she has an intricate system of color perception. She is attracted to bright, bold hues, which is apparent upon meeting her. However, her love of color is uphemmed by a set of complex rules that must be abided by, or you'll hear about it. Her latest color related request made me laugh and sigh, because it couldn't have come from anyone else, but it also meant hard work for me. When I had asked her if she wanted anything special for Mother's Day, she replied with this email message:

Don't send anything for mother's day, as want you to
spend money on yourself, getting things you need etc. however,
one thing i would love if you could bring to Sante Fe (save on pos
tage) is a jar of Napa mustard-bought some last year and was won
derful-just not a black colored top, white or other looks so spring/
summer-like. Will talk to you soon...

So here you go everybody. I'm not lying. My mother has an aversion to colored lids on items kept in the fridge that don't go with the season or are too "dark" or "wintery" looking. She'll change out wrongly colored lids, even if it's with replacements that don't fit. I grew up with lots of rotten milk because of this, and plenty of spills in the fridge. But, I found a mustard that worked. I think more important than it being Napa made, I nailed one with a yellow top.

Pomegranates

Jordan and I just learned that a tree in our backyard will yield pomegranates in the fall. The vibrant red-orange blossoms are soft in a tough bud, and once fallen, look as if a Star of David had some yellow seedlings in its center. Bifoe, our neighbor, says that he usually doesn't harvest much fruit from the tree, but that he's never seen as many blossoms as this year. Incidentally, a few days ago an old German architect told me that pomegranates thrive in the hot San Fernando Valley, but won't bear fruit here in the moist microclimate of Silver Lake. So, we'll have to wait and see.

My first memory of pomegranates was well into our third or fourth year of living in New Mexico. A tree was across the street from our house and I frequented it because I loved the fruit's taste and construction. My father had known about the tree and strange fruit all along, but failed to mention it because he considered the tree a weed. In Australia, where he grew up, I guess no one ate them.

The tree seems to grow all over the world in warm climates. In China, the fruit symbolizes abundance and fertility. The word for its many seeds is a play on the word for children. A halved pomegranate revealing its seeds signifies 'one hundred seeds, one hundred children.' The symbol is a popular motif, found in many other parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa and Europe, with similar meanings.

Strangely, this tree growing just below my window, answers a question which has lingered since my return from New Mexico just a few weeks ago. It so happens that the pomegranate's stylized crown laid under an inverted cresent is the shape of the base of an iconic necklace made by Navajos and Zuni tribes. The necklace is called a Squash Blossom, made of silver and turquoise, which is worn by proud Native women and art-obsessed New York tourists throughout New Mexico. I had always thought that the name came from the squash blossom flower, which matches the shape of the long trumpeted flutes that stem outwards from six to eight of the key beads on the jewelry. But the motif comes from decorative silver horse ornaments worn by the Mexicans in the 1800s, brought over by the Spanish conquistadors. The Spanish had adopted this tradition from the Moors of Southern Spain. On a side note, one center of Moorish culture was Granada, Spain, which very name means pomegranate. The Moors brought the symbol of the pomegranate with them from the Middle East with the belief that that the pomegranate, together with an inverted cresent, would protect their horses and themselves from the 'evil eye'. In New Mexico, this stylized cresent and pomegranate is called a 'naja'.

This year, we're hoping for a big harvest. Or at least a delicious one, with some protection for our horses.