Wednesday

For anyone who was interested enough to view my National Zoo pictures,* here is a movie I made of the coatis playing in their wheel (and thanks to Angstor for the use of her channel). You may note that there are other, similar spinning coati wheel movies available. Apparently I've been by no means original, but at least my movie incorporates an informative plaque. Tonight we ate Vietnamese food at the compelling Eden Center again. Huong Viet* is my third Center restaurant, and tonight's food was marvelous (crab and asparagus soup, bean curd and shrimp hot egg noodle). The conversation was also very interesting. As we rounded the corner away from Oakwood, Sunshine began speaking in tonal syllables ("kwaa, kwaah, koo-ah, koo-ah..."). This always happens, and is occasionally punctuated by my questions or her own happily spontaneous translation of various words plucked from signs,* fliers, and newspapers. Learning a new language is a willful regression into the earliest stages of formulation, and can come across like some strange autism. It's cute to watch, but terrifying to do: the act of restarting along first stages of learning is tantamount to mining the very bottom of a developed intellect to build a new one. This is real ego stuff: managing a fledgling intellect from the remove of another, mature one. It is part infantilism and part performance. How utterly frustrating it was to be a child the first time, when there was little of the shame that comes attached to adult intellectual labor. Anyway, this was our conversation tonight as we rounded the corner back from Eden Center. Probably somewhat over-thought and a little armchair-analyst too; but while this endeavor renders us stupider than we really feel, it's important that we compensate by acting smarter than we really are, too. [Cavin]