260801: Beiser's Flat
The living room is full of earth tones, stained wood, worn-in leather. Visually, it presents a plausible simulacrum of the mid-20th century. A wood desk. A few antiques, their corners rounded by use. Bookshelves filled with old-fashioned books.
But stepping into the kitchen and bathroom are like stepping into a frigid and colorless Now. Greyscale surfaces gleam: The white countertops and cabinets, the black and silver stove and fridge. The perfect paper napkins, bubbled plastic motion sensor handsoap. Silver sink and silver faucets. The cookbooks bound in charcoal-colored linen. The black and white Vermicular Musui-Kamado cast iron induction cooker.
This is where the brain of the house lives, a head and a mouth seated on a shelf. Waves of information wash upon it, and radiate from it, communing with the satellites, with the moving stars.
Themes from the bookshelves: China, cognitive science, typefaces, social machines, post-psychoanalytic screeds, and obscure French philosophers. Names jump out: James, Mao, Dewey, Weil, Kraus, Calvino, Toyota, Abundance, Hacker, Intelligence, Uncertainty, Design, Agrarian Reform, Capitalist Realism, Discourse Network, Art And Illusion, Energy Flash, Deep Work.
When I’m in Beiser’s flat I feel like I’m in California, and that’s part of what makes it feel like future.
Like I am stationed at the far outpost of the European project. The West spread westward til it reached the Pacific, and then it stopped.
And this is its borderland. Landing-point for so many Chinese immigrants. There is an ongoing cultural exchange, and that is part of what the 21st century feeling of the apartment is about. The cardigans and button-ups hanging in the closet are Western imports of Eastern interpretations of Western garb.
The pantry is the pantry of a Chinese tourist slow-traveling across Italy. Ample varieties of looseleaf oolongs, a stack of tinned fish, Eastern and Western vinegars. Two hanging wine glasses and a saki set. A pot for pasta, and a shallow wok that serves as a frying pan.
He owns 4 knives, attached by magnet to the wall:
- a serrated bread knife
- a thick-spined Western chef’s knife
- a push-cut Santoku knife
- a Damascus-patterned Japanese petty knife for precision work