Saki

Saki.  I remembered her name. Saki! Now why does a lively-minded Chinese-American girl studying at Berkeley choose a Japanese alcoholic beverage for her nickname? And why not? Maybe precisely because of her lively mind! It was the Songs & Places class, perhaps 2012--I don't remember the project--the song, that is, but Saki came in with this flock of pigeons. Flock of handmade pigeons--each one carefully sewn and stuffed in a precise and well-crafted manner. That was Saki--she wore her intelligence this way--a garment, of sorts--which she'd make into a reality.

She also liked letters. Type, I mean. Had the mind and the eye for it--a sense of precise detail, and a wide-ranging curiosity--so that she cared about the history--say Jan Tschichold, his Asymmetric Typography, from 1967--a book I loaned her at one point, along with several others. Very few of the students wanted to take things this far--the weekly projects kept them too involved in the now--and in any case, they were more absorbed in their own questions of creativity. But Saki would go the extra mile--she had that kind of mind--and a lyric imagination, where all her skill and precision was able to flower in the unexpected, the strangely useless--which was of course another important well of meaning...

And really, a good cloth pigeon is never useless. Look, it's sitting right here, on my desk, so that I see it everyday. Saki gave it to me, later that evening, after class--one from her own flock...


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And the beautiful small bottle of Nardini grappa, brought from Italy by Stefano Schiavon--a present we will one day share together!


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