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Exaltation — It's a stately word often reserved for kings and queens, but not a word to be tossed around by peasants like us. Tradition has reserved this word for those elite few with enormous wealth and far-reaching power, but for some of us, there comes a time when tradition must be broken. Exaltation of the self occurs when one has reached a state of intense well-being yielded by his or her own noble efforts, not by gaining power, nor by inheriting a fortune from the deceased, nor by buying a flashy overpriced home in an expensive city.
 Needs Water Daily  | | Kiss me in my Garden | This exaltation of the self is happening to me, and I cannot hold it in any longer! As my month of May progressed, I began to realize just how rapturous and content I was feeling. I began to reach this kind of happiness sometime toward the end of last year, and I can truly declare that I feel more enriched than ever before. This state of being is mostly a product of my several passions— classical music, true-to-life friends, flying, writing, and above all else, a very healthy lifestyle.
I have spent the last seven years in San Francisco like a fish out of water, rejecting the shallow status-based culture which abounds in most world-class cities. I rejected the premise that one must own an expensive house and a nice car to "fit in" with the affluent gay scene. Many, if not most, San Franciscans are wound up in this thirst for status, especially in the gay scene. I only needed to dig a little deeper into these easily-unraveled social circles to realize just how phony and ridiculous they really were.
I found that drug abuse and personal turmoil was so prevalent that I could hardly meet anyone who wasn't connected to that morbid trio of clubbing, drugs, and less-than-safe sex. Even so-called physicians, attorneys, and grad students were part of this self-destructive culture, which was just surreal to me. I tossed these lost souls aside and slowly discovered a very endearing network of genuine people who now make my life complete.
I have remained true to myself through my entire thirty-six years on this Earth, and for that, I have finally been rewarded. As I have stated many times in the past, it is now my duty to carry others through tumultuous times, to help them discover their true selves, and to help them learn how to love the world around them.
I hope that I have helped to lift a few spirits over the years, and you can be well-set that I will always have something inspiring for you with each visit! Now that I've either totally enthralled you (or completely bored you), here's what happened last weekend, and what's supposed to happen this weekend...
Last weekend, my good friend, the composer John Bilotta took several of us to the premier of another one of his recent works. It's always refreshing to hear a piece of music brought to life for the first time... few other experiences measure up to it! Afterward, we celebrated with tea and coffee cake. I spent most of Sunday tending to my garden, and I figured I would share a few photos of our lush little hideaway. And to keep that anticipation dragging on and on (from that last post), I had a very fun and rather messy encounter, which you'll just have to read about in a protected entry on Monday. 
This weekend, I am going to attend a concert at the San Francisco Symphony, of course! This week's guest musicians are the Labeque sisters, a piano duo from Paris, and all concerts this weekend are sold-out. John (my composer friend) kindly gave me two tickets for the best seats in the hall so that I wouldn't miss them. I offered the second seat to a recent acquaintance, but he will be stuck working at Zuni Cafe through the evening, which just begs the next question...
 | Twenty Fingers
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The Labeque Sisters and the San Francisco Symphony
Haydn Symphony No. 98
Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos
Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos
Ravel La Valse
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | See the 1 comment | comment here)
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When I lived in Ashbury Heights, just a stone's throw away from the famous Haight/Ashbury neighborhood, I peered toward the ocean one evening from my balcony and realized that I shouldn't let such a sweeping vista go to waste. Every evening, I was treated to a unique and spectacular display of colors at dusk, and I decided to embark on a photo study of an entire year of sunsets. I took many photos each dusk with different cameras, and I produced one good photo for each sunset. I was on quite a roll for a few months.
And then, the fog arrived. Project terminated.
Tonight, we were treated to another stunning sunset, one that drew quite a bit of attention in my neighborhood. As I walked to the end of my street to capture it, I noticed several other amateur shutterbugs like me, trying to grab the same scene before we lost those pretty hues.
Here is my result. There was no photo-retouching or enhancement, other than one brightness nudge in photoshop (the photo was slightly underexposed). Did any one else catch this sunset tonight?
 | | YASP (Yet Another Sunset Photo) |
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | See the 1 comment | comment here)
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It seems as though spring arrived just weeks ago, but here we are already halfway to summer. The Irish even have a holiday to celebrate mid-spring, called Beltane. So, Happy Beltane to those who celebrate it! I thought I'd celebrate by ambulating around the city with a bubbly friend, critiquing two restaurants and laying siege to the two Macy's stores downtown. Yes, here we go again. I also managed to find the time to squeeze in a viewing of the very divisive movie Silent Hill. I will only report on the two restaurants we visited, since Silent Hill is already old news, though it is definitely a splendid work of art. My challenge for today is to capture the food reviews without photos, as any effective writer should be able to do, right?
Basil: Le Herb Royale
First up, my friend and I hand-picked a restaurant among thousands where we had not yet dined. That was a prerequisite, since I was in a critiquing mode this weekend. The restaurant we chose was Basil, located in San Francisco's SOMA district. The dreamy midnight-blue bar and wall-to-wall precision lighting seemed to be its signature items, but luckily we discovered the food to be the restaurant's real savior. That was good news to me, as it breaks the heart to see yet another visually stunning Thai space go belly-up and shut its doors.
We ordered a near-perfect sumptuous beef and cilantro salad, a dish with angry prawns and snow peas, and of course a lamb dish with coconut red curry sauce. It just so happens that we picked the best wine in the house for these dishes: a Ravenswood 2003 Shiraz from South Eastern Australia. It was surprisingly one of the best pairings we have managed all year— strange because this wine is not well-received by critics. Whenever grapes leave their home and start traveling halfway around the globe for processing (for instance, to California), wine critics do nothing more than take a swig of the yield and spit it out.
The waitress was cute and humble, and she was all the more clever. While we were enjoying our appetizer, she delivered the prawn delight and so gracefully verified with my friend that he wanted red curry with his lamb dish. It came out four minutes later, most likely because they botched the original order. Oops! We gave her a generous tip just for her sneaky finesse! As we left, we realized that the owners, the chefs, and the staff choreographed a total experience, so we concurred that this was now one of the best Thai restaurants in the city.
Another Flavor of the Cha-Cha
Our destination for Sunday dinner was a Tapas bar in San Francisco's Mission District called Cha Cha Cha. This has become one of the more successful Tapas joints in the neighborhood, mostly because the menu accommodates any size of appetite. Their tagline is "Sangria!!! Share some with an enemy!" This is an awfully strange motto, but very fitting since we both walked into the restaurant and bumped right into a former date of mine that went sour way back in 2003 (we'll call him Toddy again). The way he scoffed at me would suggest that we are mortal enemies, but such is not the case, since I have no enemies! He may have just tied himself in knots by thinking that my friend was my date for the evening (which he wasn't).
Anyway, we chose one tapas dish, two entrées, and of course a pitcher of Cha Cha Cha's sangria. My friend suggested that I share some of it with the "enemy" now seated to our left. I declined, as it tasted too damned good! In almost no time, we could smell our tapas dish emerging from the kitchen, and when it arrived, we faced a large piquant bed of steamed black mussels and salsa that just swirled our senses silly! It was the best treatment of pungent mussels that my aging brain can recall.
My burger then arrived on an oversized ciabatta bun, alongside a mountain-sized spring mix salad. The burger was phenomenal, not at all greasy, and the ciabatta bun fought back the juices very well (as opposed to soaking and sagging). However, the spring salad is actually what stole the show. The pile of arugula, shredded carrots, crinkle-cut cabbage, thinly-sliced radishes, and crumbled queso cotija were all tossed in what I swear was a coconut vinaigrette. I had to research for hours to uncover what these people put in this Mexican delight. This is salad art, and I savored it even more than the burger! In fact, it was so easy on the palate, I gobbled the whole mound, which probably explains why I didn't finish my burger.
I knew nothing of this delectable destination until my friend dragged me here. It's so typical that a tapas bar as good as Cha Cha Cha doesn't get enough attention. Well, luckily for us foodophiles in San Francisco, there are two. And, lucky them… I'm a blogger!
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | See the 1 comment | comment here)
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 | | The Moon and Mars |
In the photo to the upper right, you can see the beautiful waxing crescent moon, along with its earthshine, flanked to the right by Mars. The reddish-orange tint of Mars didn't come through in my photo, but again, human eyes are always the best observers of the night sky.
I then decided to capture the moon at intervals as it set over lovely Twin Peaks. I was very fortunate that I the scene wasn't obscured by the usual thick blanket of fog. The next two photos show the moon in its slow procession below the horizon.
Finally, I captured an interesting little effect— some trees on Twin Peaks cradling the moon in its farewell for the evening (below). Not bad for a Nikon Coolpix, but I obviously need a much more sophisticated camera if I'm going to try my hand at "landscape noir." And forget trying to immortalize the upcoming meteor showers with substandard equipment like this. I really need a better camera, and like all hobbies, that comes with quite a spicy price tag.
 | | Moon in a Cradle |
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | See the 1 comment | comment here)
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Gone are the winter rains and ruins from our land,
Only to be replaced by...
 | | Twin Peaks Smothered by Fog |
Let me take you on a photo journey in the coming months
through the many facets of California's beauty.
Inspired by Junshien's heart-stopping photography.
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | No comments yet | comment here)
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