Eli’s Top Fifty

(At the request of a loved one, and in no real particular order :-)

1. Quiet contemplation (priceless)
2. Wailing away into the night on the guitar (guitar $150, years of practice: 4)
3. Making soup (variable)
4. Letting the fingers flash across the keyboard (macbook: $1500, time)
5. Porch conversations that last well into the night (time and a companion)
6. Writing letters using pen and paper to those you love far away (pen: 1.00—or more—paper: cheap to expensive)
7. Throwing the disc in Prospect Park with loved ones (disc: 12.00)
8. Free reggae festivals in New York’s Central Park (Free)
9. Watching Mary Poppins in my underwear and drinking a martini at 9am (gin: 20.00, olives: 3.00, Mary Poppins: free as a gift)
10. Making tortillas from scratch (flour, water, pan)
11. A nighttime run around Ochang Public Park (shoes, sweats, living in Ochang, South Korea)
12. Clipping your fingernails AND filing them for better guitar action (fingernail clippers and file: 6.00)
13. A perfectly prepared martini (gin, olives, ice, cocktail shaker, cocktail glass)
14. A perfectly prepared Manhatta (whisky, maraschino cherries, ice, cocktail shaker, cocktail glass)
15. Catfishing (rod, reel, stink bate, weights, time)
16. Discovering anything (a sense of danger)
17. Ulysses (19.95 for the Gabler Edition)
18. The Annotated Ulysses (29.95)
19. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book: 13.95, movie: 19.95)
20. Literary criticism (gray matter restructuring)
21. The “Weight” of a philosophy tome (Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”:  18.00, five pounds… roughly)
22. The burden of existence (hmmmm)
23. Long hair (time)
24. Writing simultaneously in five different notebooks (variable from 3.00-18.00)
25. May All Beings Be Happy (12000 SKWon)
26. Experiencing something for myself (fear)
27. “Actions reveal subconscious desires” (the ability to see in superficialities)
28. Wagner’s Ring Cycle (75.00)
29. Receiving baked goods in the mail in Korea from various parts of the world (friendship)
30. Maintaining three blogs (time and thoughts)
31. Consciousness (who’s to say)
32. Consciousness (of) consciousness (lots)
33. Shisha, food and beer in a Moroccan place in Seoul with a Moroccan, and Irish, and another American (45000)
34. The blank look on the faces of Korean middle schoolers when we play hangman and the words are: Phenomenological ontology (priceless)
35. Simply Calphalon 3qt. Saute Pan (85.00)
36. Simply Calphalon omelet pan (45.00)
37. A good 8” Chef’s knife (30.00 and up)
38. Wandering (the fear of being lost)
39. Exhaustion (work)
40. Spooning (companion)
41. Driving down backroads a little bit lost (car: 1500, untamed roads)
42. The shape of the female hip (what price could be placed on a curve like that)
43. Nalgene bottles (8-12.00)
44. A good walking stick (found, as in, the former branch of a tree)
45. Wool socks (Merino, from New Zealand: 12.00/pr)
46. The Keyser Quick change capo (14.95)
47. The ease of reading and difficulty of understanding of Hangul (time and practice)
48. The Nichomachean Ethics (12.00)
49. Skype (free download)
50. The internet (Thanks Al Gore… I know you didn’t invent it, but thanks for the help)