Young Woman, Old Soul, Big World

Sexual Orientation: Multiple Choice

2012-02-14T16:01:00.001-05:00

The other day I signed a petition to encourage the repeal of the law commonly referred to as the "Defense of Marriage Act," or DOMA, which defines "marriage" as being between one man and one woman, requiring that no state must uphold a same-sex marriage/union initiated in another state. Additionally, "Section 3 of DOMA codifies the non-recognition of same-sex marriage for all federal purposes, including insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors' benefits, and the filing of joint tax returns," according to Wikipiedia. What exactly does that mean? It means that the husband of a man or wife of another woman is not entitled to the same legal benefits regarding their spouse as a straight/heterosexual couple. For example, if a married, homosexual (federal) government worker were to die, their spouse would not receive government pension/Social Security survivor benefits, even if they were married and live in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage; yet if the same thing happened to a married, heterosexual government worker, their spouse would receive their benefits.

Of course, I think this is just absolutely absurd and WRONG.

But what really interested me about signing the petition was the question concerning my sexual orientation. (I assume they want to know who, in terms of sexual orientation, cares about this issue, to provide lawmakers with the knowledge that it is not only gay/homosexual couples that find this issue important, but also heterosexual persons who are not directly affected by the law.) Traditionally when this question is asked, there are three, possibly four, options: straight/heterosexual, gay/homosexual, bisexual, and sometimes (to make the distinction between same-sex female and same-sex male couples), lesbian. However, on this particular questionnaire there were more choices than I have ever seen or been given, including the four just mentioned: straight/heterosexual, gay, bisexual, queer, homosexual, lesbian, transgender--male to female with male partner, transgender--male to female with female partner, transgender--female to male with female partner, transgender--female to male with male partner, other, and prefer not to disclose. Holy canoli! This thorough list allows for people to pick the title/description that best suits how they identify them selves, a growing issue in today's society.

This really got me thinking: What about just having the option for "sexual," as in, "I'm a being who enjoys sexual activity."

Personally, I marked "other," because I believe that most closely matches how I see myself: as a sexual being who doesn't fit any one label, not heterosexual (though when I think about the future and my life partner I know I want to be with a man), nor bisexual (despite having had intimate relations with females). When people ask me about my "sexual orientation" in person, I like to choose the term "openly sexual." I am open to the idea of being intimate with people, regardless of their gender, race, physique, etcetera. When I am attracted to someone, I am attracted to them as a person, demographic issues aside.

Some might leap to the conclusion that this then makes me either "bisexual" or going through that "college roommate phase" that "most girls go through." But I disagree. I will always be sexually attracted to attractive people of both genders, so the college roommate phase is out. But I also don't consider that to mean I'm bisexual. Even if/when I choose to get married to that special someone (whom I believe in my heart will be a man, though if I met the right woman I would not dismiss her based upon her sex), I will still find other people, both men and women, attractive. (Sorry, future hubby! Hey, it's not like I expect that you will never be sexually attracted to another woman again just because you're married to me.) At that point, I will be in a loving, committed heterosexual relationship, but does that then make me heterosexual? I don't think so. Your "sexual orientation" is about sex, the way in which you orient yourself in terms of your general sexual preference, not about the person you choose to spend the rest of your life with. But just because I might continue to feel sexually attracted to other women I also don't think that makes me bisexual.

I respect anyone's decision to use this as their own personal label for their sexuality, but it doesn't fit me. I just cannot claim it as my own.

I've Gone Insane

2012-02-12T00:33:00.001-05:00

After going strong for one week last year in the Insanity program, I have started up again with full intentions of completing it in its entirety. Starting Thursday, I will be done on April 12, sixty-three days total.

Why am I doing this? Because I believe that we do not know how strong we are mentally until we push ourselves physically. I don't think I've ever reached, let alone passed, my true breaking point. You can't improve one aspect of your life without improving all other aspects. Yes, I plan to have a ROCKING beach body for swimsuit season when all is said and done, but I am also certain that I will be stronger mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Of course, the only thing left to do now is share with you my before picture, so here it is:

37 Days

2012-02-09T00:30:00.000-05:00

I think it's unfair that true living is reserved for the dying.

There have been several times in the last few years when I have wished I was dying. Not because I wished to be dead, but because I wanted to truly live, live in that way that seems acceptable only if you have a received a death sentence--call everybody up you know and tell them what they have meant in your life, how much you love them; quit your job and travel across the country, living out of your car; call up the love of your life and tell them that you have thought of them every single day since you walked away, or just show up on their doorstep like that scene from Love Actually, even when you know they are lovingly in a relationship with someone else. I want to LIVE in that sort of scream-from-the-rooftops-how-good-it-is-to-be-alive sort of way.

And sometimes, in a sick and twisted way that I can't understand and am ashamed to admit, I wish I were dying so that people would treat me differently, with the kind of...care and concern that we give to those with cancer or kidney failure or AIDS. Not everybody. But certain people. There are times when I'm interacting with certain people, desperately trying to connect with them, to show them I love them and care about them, that I can't help but think If I were dying, I bet they'd treat me differently or They'll be sorry when I'm dead.

So I imagine it. I fantasize about being dying (note: NOT being dead, but dying, the process of, the in between, the gerund). Almost always I have cancer of some sort. I refuse chemo and radiation, as they are against my beliefs. I try to heal myself naturally, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work--and I know this in my daydreams--beause I don't want it to, because deep down there is a part of me that wants the "to be dying" more than it wants to live. But only because only when we are dying do we actually get to live.

Please understand: I am NOT suicidal. I do not wish to die. What I really want is to live like I am dying, just like the song.

Why am I thinking and writing about this now? I'll tell you.

On New Year's Day, I found out that one of my favorite and most beloved aunts has stage 2 colorectal cancer. Nobody that close to me has ever had cancer. In fact, I have only really known one person close to me that has died: my soul friend Lindsay. It's like I'm paralyzed. I don't know what to do or say. My aunt has cancer and all I want to do is tell her that I love her and that she's one of the most beautiful women I have ever known in my whole life and please, please fight this because I don't want to lose you--but she knows the first two things, and the last one, well, it seems selfish to ask her, essentially, "not to die" for my sake.

A few days ago I started reading a book that has been on my Amazon Wish List now for literally years. It's called Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. The author was inspired to write it after her stepfather died of lung cancer. He was diagnosed, and 37 days later, he was dead. Makes ya stop and think, doesn't it? "At some point in your life, you'll only have thirty-seven days to live. Maybe that day is today. Maybe not," the author writes. Maybe that day was yesterday, or two weeks ago, I think to myself. "If I had thirty-seven days left, would I spend my time cleaning the attic, purging computer files, or attending committee meetings? Would I have passed on my stories to my children and friends, or would I spend those days regretting not having time to do so? Am I living fully now, or am I waiting until after the kids leave for college or my annuity matures or the Colts move back to Baltimore? It will be too late then....What would I be doing today if I only had thirty-seven days to live?"

My answer to that is simple: Like the author says, it's not about the big things, checking off those items left on our "bucket list," but rather, it's about the little things, the ways in which we live our everyday lives. Because we just never know when it's our 37 days. But if I did know? I'd tell the people I love that I love them; I'd be present with my friends in family, and by that I mean truly present, not just being around them; I would forgive quickly and say I'm sorry even faster; I would write the letters I've been meaning to write (to Lindsay's mom, Coach Porter, my (ex-) stepdad Brad, Dan, his mom, Robert); I would have more coffee talks with Beth; I would stay up late to watch that movie, and I would go dancing on the weekends; and I would finally sing karaoke. These are the things that make me happy, the things that make my heart swell with love, that make me "smile in my liver," the things that vibrate with so much energy that they hum a song that tells me I am alive.

Yesterday was a monumental day for me. It was not an anniversary or birthday or holiday of any sort. No, it was one of those ordinary, everyday sort of days that changes your life forever. Like April 23, 2005 (the day of our house fire). Or July 26, 2009 (the day I became vegan). These are the sort of days that "blindside you at 4p.m. on some ideal Tuesday," (Baz Luhrman), the days when you're slapped in the face with a knowing that your life will never be the same.

You see, yesterday was 37 days since I found out that my aunt has cancer. And it was the first time I called her...

From now on, I want to live not only as though I have only 37 days left, but as though everyone I know and love has the same. Because when you look through 37 days-tinted glasses, the world looks vastly different...

AFI's #84

2012-02-08T16:14:00.001-05:00

Fargo

I have had this movie sitting on my desk for about a week now, ready to watch, but I kept putting it off because, in all honesty, I was scared. I'm a total chickenshit anymore when it comes to movies, and because the cover pictured a bloodied-snow field with a dead body and is "based on actual events," I was afraid of watching it alone that I might be upset by it. So I talked my friend into going to rent it and watching it with me, long-distance.

Turns out the movie is not only actually pretty good (I didn't realize it was a Cohen Brothers film or I would have guessed it), but it wasn't scary. In fact, it was actually sort of humorous in a dark comedy sort of way. Not that the murders that actually happened should be made light of, but instead of playing it out in the style of today's gruesome horror films, they give you the story in a way that is disconnected, somewhat unrealistic.

The worst part of the movie for me wasn't the killing gore but rather the god-awful North Dakota accent. Proof? Picture a Chinese man, very obviously raised here but with a first language of Chinese, speaking English with a North Dakota accent over the lingering Chinese. Awful.

Workout Review: Jillian Michaels' 6 Week Six-Pack, Level 2

2012-02-07T16:15:00.001-05:00

Because "you can't spot eliminate fat," this workout again incorporates cardio to "get that heart rate up" by working "as many muscle groups as possible at the same time" for "maximum calorie burn" (Jillian's words, not mine).

The biggest difference between Level 1 and Level 2 of this same video is that Level 2 has a lot more standing moves, which allows for more of what's called "compensatory work," working the back muscles to compensate for the work that we do on the front core (a crucial fitness component that too many people overlook when trying to get those "six-pack abs"). By doing ab moves in a standing position, you're able to get a fuller range of motion and thus more compensatory work. Additionally, she works in more legs by using squat moves, etc. And because most of the moves use a light handweight that you hold for most of the workout, you get resistance from the added way, toning those arms as you go along as well.

I certainly felt this workout more in my back and legs than in my core, but I know I was burning fat because I was SWEATING like a pig in July, which means I really was getting that flat tummy in the process.

The workout itself breaks down like this:

Warm-Up (about 30 seconds each)
squat round-reaches (like a standing cat/cow)
high knees
alternating lunges w/overhead side stretch
skaters (closed arm)
up-downs (burpees without the jump at the top)

Work-Out (standing unless otherwise indicated; about 30 seconds each; weight in hand for all standing exercises unless otherwise indicated)
"chops" in lunge (similar to a canoe row) on the right
oblique crunch on the right
jumping jack knives
chops in lunge on the left
oblique crunch on the left
low-to-highs (squatting low to one side to touch the ground then twisting through the core and reaching up to the sky on the other side) on side 1; HOLD
knee lifts
plank twists
low-to-highs side 2; HOLD
knee lifts
rotation pass-throughs (lunge forward and twist towards front leg; lunge back on same leg and pass weight underneath and through this now front leg, crunching into it) side 1
lighthouse (standing and twisting through the core, arms extended, side-to-side like a lighthouse) side 1
bicycles (on the ground)
rotation pass-throughs on side 2
moguls in plank (like skiing side-to-side in plank position, jumping abs side, center, side)
rotating T-kick stands
double crunch
pilates V-hold (lying)
mountain climbers in plank
REPEAT the entire circuit
And that means we step it up another notch: cardio moves double-time, lunges deeper, fuller range of motion on all other strength moves.

Workout Review: Maximize--Back in Action

2012-02-05T14:50:00.001-05:00

From Jillian Michael's The Biggest Winner workouts series comes her double-dose of intensity with Maximize--Back in Action. Although I haven't done the original Back in Action yet, I'm sure it's just as good. As Jillian says in the beginning, "We're doing the same thing, but with a whole new set of exercises."

This workout is INTENSE, but it's only about 25 minutes, so if you can push yourself HARD for those 25 minutes, you'll get an amazing workout in in no time. Designed to hit the back of the body (glutes, hamstrings, back, triceps, and abs), it consists of a dynamic warm-up followed by two different circuits, each of which are repeated for a total of two run-throughs each, before you cool it down with some nice static stretching and encouraging (nice!) Jillian.

It breaks down like this:

Warm-Up (30 each of:)
butt kicks
high knees
side-to-sides (lateral jumps, feet together)
jumping jacks
REPEAT

Circuit 1 (10 each unless otherwise indicated)
morning glories (my new favorite move)
jumping lunges (weights in hand for more advanced people, held at 90-degrees anteriorly)
over-the-box jumps (again, weights in hand)
plank twists
wide-grip row in stork stance on the left leg
" on the right leg
(20) step-up cross-overs (w/weights)
(30 seconds of) quick football feet (weights in hand)
double crunches
(20) side lunges & bicep curls
reverse plank leg lifts (10 on each side)
burpees
REPEAT

Circuit 2 (again, 10 each unless indicated)
dumbbell pullovers w/crunch
pelvic thrusts on the right
" on the left
donkey kicks right
" left
(30) mountain climbers in plank
(20) box alternating lunges & hammer curls
medium-grip row in chair-squat
side plank raises right
" left
REPEAT

"God Says Yes to Me"

2012-02-03T01:31:00.000-05:00

I came across this poem in a book that I started reading tonight called Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. I wanted to share with you, because I felt it was a genius poem:

"God Says yes to Me"
by: Kaylin Haught
from The Palm of Your Hand

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Workout Review: Jillian Michaels' No More Trouble Zones

2012-01-30T19:35:00.001-05:00

This isn't the first time I've popped in the No More Trouble Zones workout, but this is the first time I'll be giving it a full review.

Approximately 50 minutes total, this workout is specifically designed to help those "problem areas" such as triceps, inner thigh, glutes, shoulders, chest, "love handles," and core. We begin with a warm-up, followed by seven circuits, each with five different removes that we repeat twice, then we cool it down with static stretching. Let me just tell you that if you do this work out, you will never have to worry about "trouble zones" again! Man, is my whole body sore, especially my triceps, shoulders, and core! After yesterday's workout, my abs were SCREAMING at me. The video does get your heart rate up and keep it up because you are working so hard, but unlike most of her other videos, there are no actual "cardio intervals," which would be my one criticism. It's great for toning, but if you're looking for a more complete workout, I would stick with her 30 Day Shred.

The workout breaks down like this:

Warm-Up (approximately 30 seconds each move)
march in place
jump rope
forward windmills
skaters
jumping jacks
REPEAT (this time picking up the place, of course)

Shoulders & Legs (approximately 12 reps of each set of moves)
squat and shoulder press
backwards lunge and T-raise (side 1)
backwards lunge and T-raise (side 2)
chair squat & anterior raise
press-outs
REPEAT

Chest & Abs (~12 reps each)
chest press and crunch
chest fly and lower pike lift
bicycle crunches
squirms
push-ups (At this point, your abs pretty much feel like death.)
REPEAT

Biceps & Butt (~12 each)
dead lifts and hammer curls
static squat and concentration curl (side 1) [You wait to do side 2 on this move until the repeat.]
forward lunge and wide-grip curl (side 1)
forward lunge and wide-grip curl (side 2)
side lunge and forward bicep curls
REPEAT

Thighs & Triceps (~12 reps each)
chair squat and tricep kickbacks
sumo squat and overhead triceps extension
surrenders (F my life these things SUCK.)
crescent lunge and triceps pushbacks (side 1 on the leg)
crescent lunge and triceps pushbacks (side 2 on the leg) [At this point, your triceps are dying, and yet you have...]
REPEAT

Core (~12 reps each)
double crunch
twisting planks
plank toe taps (side 1)
plank toe taps (side 2)
windshield wipers
REPEAT

Upper-Body & Core (~12 each)
plank rows
supermans
scissor kicks
pelvic thrusts, one leg crossed over the other knee (side 1)
pelvic thrusts (side 2)
REPEAT

Lower-Body & Core (~12 each)
side plank oblique lifts (side 1)
forward leg lifts (side 1)
inner thigh leg lifts (side 1)
side plank oblique lifts (side 2)
forward leg lifts (side 2)
inner thigh leg lifts (side 2)
donkey kicks (side 1)
donkey kicks (side 2)
fire-hydrant kicks (side 1)
fire-hydrant kicks (side 2)
REPEAT
(And by the end of it, your glutes are cramping up so bad that once you get that leg lifted, it's work to get it to come down it's so locked in place.)

Something Old, Something New

2012-01-30T01:53:00.000-05:00

I have wanted a yoga mat bag ever since I first got my yoga mat--a year ago for Christmas. But because I am cheap, I would never put down the money for one.

But there's also another reason why I haven't bought one yet: several months ago, while I was visiting my friend Bonnie in her hippie mountain town of Manitou Springs, we came across a fabulous vintage storage that sold "repurposed" or "upcycled" clothing items, for example a t-shirt made into a halter-top. One such item in the store was a yoga mat bag made out of an old jeans pants' leg. The pattern was simple: sew the bottom together inside-out, sew a hem on the top opening hole, add a strap (an old belt, a tie, etc.), decorate, and voila! A yoga mat bag! I was then determined to make instead of buy a yoga mat bag.

A couple of weeks later, my friend Lia ripped a hole in the crotch of her favorite pants (again), this time beyond repair. Due to the nature and location of the tear, she was going to throw the pants away when I asked her if I could have them, explaining what I planned to do with them. Of course she willingly agreed. This was at least nine months ago.

Finally though, over the last month or so, I have slowly but surely been working on making my bag, and I have finally finished. I left it rather undecorated because I'm thinking I'll be able to find some pretty stellar patches which I can sew/iron on at record shops, hippie boutiques, random conferences, head shops, and the like which reflect the ideals of a yoga practice: peace; balance; harmony; sense of purpose and place; oneness; unity of mind, body, and spirit; connection with others and the Earth, etc. I'll add them as I aquire them.

But for now, here is the "finished" product:

Front View

Back View

Side View

Workout Review: Jillian Michaels' 6 Week Six-Pack, Level 1

2012-01-29T18:05:00.001-05:00

Now this video is more like the Jillian Michaels I have postered as my "fitness idol," incorporating the H.I.I.T. (High-Intensity Interval Training) methodology for working out, working, not just abs, but as many muscle groups as possible simultaneously and throwing in some high-energy cardio bursts to get that heart rate up and keeping it there to stay in the fat-burning zone.

Filmed in the same studio and using the same assistants as her Yoga Meltdown DVD, the workout begins, as always, with a dynamic warm-up consisting (approximately 30 seconds each) of: army marches, squat Xs, jack knife, prisoner lunges, and oblique rotations (optional weight).

Beginners again watch Maddie and advanced viewers follow Bashira, using a weight for added resistance during several of the moves, including the beginning half of the circuit which utilizes standing core work (approximately 30 seconds of each move): standing knee crunches (optional weight overhead), backwards lunge with backbend (optional weight overhead), burpees, squat rotations (optional weight), and side lunge with an oblique lean (optional weight overhead).

At this point we hit the mat for (again, about 30 seconds of each move): long lever crunch (side 1), supermans with back extension (up, hold, pull arms back like a lat pull-down), plank jacks (here's our cardio while still targeting and working those abs), long lever crunch (side 2), double leg stretch (from Pilates), side crunch (side 1), diagonal get-ups (side 1), catepillars, side crunch (2), diagonal get-ups (2), side plank knees raises (side 1; this is a GREAT exercise for those inner thighs as well as abs and shoulders), spider planks (advanced people drop it down into a half-crow push-up), mountain climbers in plank (another cardio targeting those abs), side plank knee raises (2), and bridge kicks.

Now, if you get to this point, and you hear Jillian say, "Okay, now from the top, we're going to repeat," you might think, Wow. I didn't know there were so many different ab moves that I've never heard of or done before! But I'm feeling pretty good, I think I can do this whole set again, and you start back with the standing core work. But, ah, in true Jillian style, "you know the moves now, so let's take it up another knotch," meaning same moves but double time. So now you're shredding that core, but your heart rate is also way up there. Jillian puts it best when she says she wants "your heart to be gargeling in your throat."

By the time you're finished, your whole body is worn out--quads, shoulders, chest, abs, inner and outer thighs--and you are ready for the nice, gentle, static stretching that follows. More so than in any of her other videos that I have used yet though, Jillian takes this cool-down time to really get you to focus on re-training your mind as well as your body: "If you can't take the time celebrate the hard work you've just done and feel proud of yourself, then what's the point?" And that is so true. This is something that I really try to bring in to my own classes--the importance of rewiring our brains to think like strong, fit, beautiful bodies. In order to change our bodies, we have to first change our thoughts and, as a result, the habits and behaviors that come from those thoughts regarding working out, eating right, and being fit. If we don't ever change our thoughts first, our bodies will never change.

Awesome, awesome workout. If you're going to invest in a workout video for your post-New Year's Resolution to get in shape slump, then this one would be it!

(Did I mention that all of this happens in less than 30 minutes?!)

AFI's #85

2012-01-29T15:04:00.000-05:00

Duck Soup

Opening shot: 4 live ducks swimming in a large black iron kettle over an outdoor fire (presumably one duck each to represent the four Marx brothers who star in the film); the only reference at all in the entire movie to "duck soup." But the whole film is like that--random, unconnected, humorously out-of-place. It's a political satire characteristic of the slapstick silent films and staged theater productions common of its era. Just over an hour, this has actually been my favorite AFI Top 100 since Pulp Fiction at #95. Worth watching just for the unexpected puns which remind me a bit of Arrested Development, how the entire script is a genius building of one perfect double-entendre line after another.

Fuck Oysters

2012-01-27T23:03:00.001-05:00

Blues is my aphrodisiac of choice.

Workout Review: Jillian Michaels for Beginners--Backside

2012-01-27T00:03:00.001-05:00

Again, like it's Frontside counterpart, this workout is definitely made for beginners. It has the same cast of characters and is formatted much the same as the Frontside workout, only the circuits tend to run a bit longer, anywhere from 7-13 minutes for some of the circuits. The key, as always, to her workout is peripheral cardio work, meaning going from lower to upper body in each circuit with the strength moves, focusing the heart to change emphasis of location and working harder.

There were, however, a couple of good moves that I had never done before, which I really liked and want to incorporate into my own regimen in the future (see links for explanations and/or videos from other sites): morning glories, an extended dead-lift (calves raised against a box in a stretch to work the hamstring muscles harder), and a resistance crunch (pulling your knees up into a 90-degree tabletop position, then using your hands to press your legs away while still holding them there in that position; you shouldn't feel it in your hip flexors, it should be all abs).

For anyone interested, the circuits break down like this (30 seconds for the cardio interval at the beginning, followed by 10 reps of each strength exercise on each side if it is a unilateral movement, except abs where she has you do 20; repeat each circuit 3 times total):

Circuit 1
butt kicks
wide-grip row in a chair squat
static lunge (each side)

Circuit 2
step-ups (using a raised platform of some kind)
one-armed medium-grip row (each side)
bridge (using a chair)

Circuit 3
speed skaters
stiff leg dead-lift
seated rear delt lifts (a.k.a. reverse flies)

Circuit 4
dumbbell punches in a squat
morning glories
seated underhand rows (using a resistance band)

Circuit 5
step-ups
bicep curls
donkey kicks (each side)
v-hold abs

Circuit 6
speed skaters
seated concentration curls (each side)
supermans
bicycles

Chicken Shit

2012-01-26T00:07:00.000-05:00

I don't know how it happened or even when. Only that it did.

Somewhere along the line--and maybe that's the problem there: I used to deviate from lines, color outside the picture, walk a curved and unpredictable path, just because I could, and now here I am talking about how my life has somehow fallen out of line--I lost a part of myself. I lost that person whose heart glows with love when she is making something for a friend. I lost that desire to be bold and adventerous, to explore the world and myself and others to every possible extent, to "suck the marrow out of life with a straw" as I read today in Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper. I strayed away from my sense of self in fashion. Is it any surprise that my sense of self in writing went somewhere out the window with it? I stopped being the girl who'd give a big middle finger and a "fuck you" to anybody who even began to suggest what I "should" do. I stopped speaking my truth. I stopped writing poems on my walks to record the way heartbreak smelled or the sound of making love to someone you love but realize is a complete stranger. Brash and bold and daring. Unique and strong and independent. Fierce, fiery. What happened to those adjectives that used to describe me?

And please, please don't even say that I'm exaggerating, that that person is still there. Because she is not. I knew her better than you did, and I KNOW that she is not there. Not 100% anyways. And I want her back.

Somewhere in the passing of time, I became a peacemaker instead of a person says the truth when it needs to be said. I became the girl whose grandmother buys her cute clothes instead of the person who designs them all herself. I stopped being a poet.

And that, I think is the heart of it all.

I realized tonight exactly why it is that I love poetry so much: because it makes me feel so alive. It makes me feel alive again and again and again as I write and re-write and then read and re-read the words I have used to record my story. Life is never as beautiful in living color as it can be in black and white when I shape and mold and play with the words on the page to get it just right. In the moment we are too busy living life to enjoy it, but in writing about it, we can meditate on it, zoom in on a detail or telecscope out to a larger section beyond ourselves and our surrounding; we can pause it, rotate it around, remove the red eye, enhance the colors, add tastes, inser scratch-and-sniffs. Writing poetry made me feel alive. Writing poetry was always my second chance at life, my do-over, penalty kick, foul shot, and encore.

And now I live a wonderful life where I am happy. I have a job that pays my bills and that I enjoy doing. I get a sense of purpose from my work. I have good friends, great family. Every time I look out my window I am in awe of the beauty that surrounds me. I eat well, I exercise. I enjoy myself and my free time. I learn new things. And yet, there is no poetry in my life...

Picture an apple in your mind. Okay, now draw one. Quick, do it. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just a sketch on a scrap of paper is fine. Got it? Okay, now let me ask: does your apple have a stem? Of course it does. But in real life, have you ever seen an apple withOUT a steam? Of course, we see them all the time. Is it still an apple? Yes. Does it still have the same flavor, the same nutritional value, the same texture, the same color? Yes. And yet it is not the IMAGE of an apple that we hold in our minds.

I am an apple without a stem...

Workout Review: Jillian Michaels For Beginners--Frontside

2012-01-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

This DVD is exactly what it says: for beginners. I was quite surprised though because Jillian is usually one tough beeyotch. But it is still a good workout. This video walks you through 6 circuits, approximately 5 minutes each. Each circuit begins with a 30 second cardio interval then is followed by 2-3 strength training moves which she has you do for 10 reps, then you repeat that whole thing another 2 times for a total of 3, move on to the next circuit. She does several super sets (working the same muscle group in a row with different exercises) and alternates between large and small muscle groups, forcing that heart to work harder throughout, not just during the cardio burst. As always, I'm a fan; though I didn't really work up a sweat, it was still a good strength training workout that I'm sure I'll fee tomorrow.

In case you're curious, the circuits are as follows:

Circuit 1
jumping jacks
squats
push-ups

Circuit 2
march in place (advanced can go high knees)
bench dips
king squats (each side)

Circuit 3
jump rope
chest flies
chest press
sumo squats

Circuit 4
jumping jacks
chair squats & anterior raises
(military) shoulder press

Circuit 5
marching/high knees
tricep kickbacks
standing oblique crunch & leg raise to side (each side)
basic crunch

Circuit 6
jump rope
lateral shoulder raises (a.k.a. T-raises)
tricep extension
plank

Six Birds with One Stone

2012-01-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

So I've started a new policy of not driving on the weekends (unless I'm going out of town). I figure since I actually don't have to work then (first job EVER that's been the case), that there isn't anywhere I have to be at any certain time, so I can walk there. And I think I've done well at this for the last 3 weekends in a row. Here's what spawned this thinking:

1) I started working with another "creative recovery" book by Julia Cameron called The Vein of Gold, and one of the tools is daily walks.
and 2) I watched a documentary that made me feel like a spoiled, over-privileged American for driving everywhere.

So, Saturday and Sunday, my car stays parked. But today is Monday and I decided that since I didn't have to be at work until 10:30 and I got off at 3:30, I could walk to and from work each way, a little less than 2 miles. (I've been walking the mile or so to the gym when I teach Zumba for several weeks now as well.) I only had to leave 30 minutes early, just to make sure, and I still got home "early" from work at 4. I was so proud of myself. (Though I will admit that walking with my red and black plaid backpack made me look a hitchhiker for sure! I even had one lady stop and ask me if I needed a ride!)

And then, when I got home, I even walked again to the gym to workout, which is about 20 minutes each way.

In choosing to walk today, I accomplished all of the following:
1) I was kind to the environment.
2) I saved myself on gas.
3) I avoided adding extra miles to my car's total mileage.
4) I broke in my new (vegan, Earth-friendly, fair-trade, posture-improving, light-weight, red, super awesome and comfortable Earth) running shoes.
5) I got my daily walk in for Vein of Gold creative pilgrimage.
and 6) I got in extra exercise (over an hour and a half total of walking time!).

So in addition to my no-driving-on-the-weekends plan, I'm now going to add walking to and from work on Mondays as well. Of course there will be times when it's just not feasible, but every time I do it is better than the alternative!

(Note: Eventually I plan on buying a bicycle and doing almost all of my local commuting via that and only using my car when it's raining or snowing or I'm going out of town.)

AFI's #86

2012-01-23T22:18:00.000-05:00

Mutiny on the Bounty

Sigh. If there is one kind of movie I dislike more than Westerns, it's got to be pirate movies. And although this was about the Britsh Navy and not pirates-at-large, it was still too sea-sickening for me.

I learned once (in my film studies class?) that actors have to speak more slowly on film than they do in real life because when it is played back, it sounds faster. Well, apparently they hadn't learned that yet in 1935 because there were huge parts of the movie that I could not understand. And yet, for the only time in history, 3 actors from the same movie (this movie) were nominated for best actor. I'm beginning to like this whole quest to watch the 100 Top Movies of All Time less and less...

Though I guess the movie is historical and because of this event, the British Naval changed its policy and protocal and is now a worldwide example for the ways in which the doings on board are carried out. Interesting, but not worth watching a two-hour movie to find out.

AFI's #87

2012-01-19T17:23:00.000-05:00

Frankenstein

I think today's modern movies full of gore and special effects have ruined me for being able to adequately review this movie, but I'll make a few comments:

1) I was highly impressed with the makeup job done on the Frankenstein monster and Boris Karloff's acting performance. Coming from a time when we had no concept of such a being or how it would act, I think he did an amazing job.
2) For the technology available at the time, there were some pretty good special effects.
3) There was one part of the movie that just doesn't jive, and I can't let it go as an oversight or a result of the times and what they had to work with: when the little girl dies by drowning (spoiler!), her father brings her into the town square and announces, "She been murdered," and a witch hunt ensues for the Frankenstein monster. Yet her father was out in the field working when she was drowned and no one ever saw her interact with the monster. So how would he know? I call B.S.
4) The fact that this is still considered a horror movie amuses me. I can see when it came out how it might have frightened some chicks in the audience when it first came out, but today? Let's be serious: it needs a new classification.

Finally, I found out while watching the movie that the image we all have of "Frankenstein" as the green monster with a square forehead and bolts sticking out of his neck is incorrect; the name Frankenstein belongs to the crazed medical student who invented the monster. But the monster itself is given no name in the movie. Fun fact of the day :)

"Lick the Plate of NOW Clean"

2012-01-18T11:05:00.002-05:00

As my readers know, my New Year's resolution for 2012 is to "get out of my comfort zone." I wanted to share this post with you from one of the daily newsletters I subscribe to because I think it completely addresses exactly what I meant when I set that intention for this year:

http://thedailylove.com/it-2012-big-deal-step-out-of-your-comfort-zone-for-real/

AFI's #88

2012-01-16T15:22:00.000-05:00

Easy Rider

Reading the movie trivia on my IMDb app was more interesting than actually watching the movie (or at least made the movie more interesting to watch): apparently they really were smoking weed on camera and had to redo scenes because Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper got Jack Nicholson too stoned to remember his lines. Makes for a great post-production story, but the actual movie, I'm fairly certain, could have been done as a silent film and still been equally as successful (or lack thereof).

About two free-spirits of the hippie era who sell a load of cocaine for enough money to "retire to Florida," the movie details their cross-country motorcycle trek from L.A. to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. At least the first half of the movie is spent in almost entire silence, except for the opening scene, which is shot in Spanish, flashing from beautiful scenes of the American West to their That 70's Show-esque campfire circle scenes. The scene transitions at first make you think your DVD player is skipping, but eventually you realize that it is an artsy-attempt to demonstrate the drug-induced stupor with which the characters are passing their days. (Though I will say that the LSD scene is very artfully done to put the viewer as into the experience of the characters as possible.)

Under the right influence, this movie might have been more enjoyable. The shots of scenery as they ride along and the soundtrack are amazing and would be worth enjoying on their own, but it's not enough to hold together a movie when you're expecting a worthwhile plot.

AFI's #89

2012-01-16T15:09:00.000-05:00

Patton
Less a war movie than a character sketch of an eccentric, loud, questionable miliatry leader, Patton was more enjoyable than I had expected the nearly three hours to be (though with a recorded mid-break reminsicent of Bollywood movies, there was time to get up and stretch). Graphically, the war depictions were less troubling than modern scenes, due mostly to technological advances, though I much prefer these older versions: somehow less disturbing.

Patton's character is the kind that you can't help but love because you hate, the kind that is just so far out there you know they are just 100% authetnic and real, and you've got to respect that.

My only criticism about the movie would be that they didn't do a very good job of maintaing a timeline, so at times I was rather confused as to the progression of the war. Sometimes they had a date and place and sometimes they didn't.

Overall it peaked my interest with history again and made me want to be more familiar with this part of history.

Book Review: Long Way Gone

2012-01-12T22:38:00.000-05:00

Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Because of the nature of this book, I'm hesitant to criticize it. However, I would not be speaking true if I said this book was wonderful.

About the life of a young boy who is caught up in the Sierra Leonean Civil War, Long Way Gone was somehow, despite how powerful the over-arcing story is, lacking. To me it seemed to be paced to quickly, going in to detail at seemingly random and unrelated points, as though trying to insert in cultural details as an afterthought, and glossing over huge chunks of time at others. The language is reflective of a non-native English speaker, delivering the story in a very formal tone which doesn't seem to fit the chaotic and gruesome nature of war.

Still, I believe it is a book worth reading if for no other reason than to be educated about the very recent effects of war in other parts of the world that we are not told about in our news. A history and/or current events lesson is never a waste for anyone, especially us Americans who tend to be cut off from anything that doesn't have to do with us getting ahead in the world.

And there are definitely parts to it that have the ability to move a reader with their insight and depth, like the dead men, women, and children's faces whose "eyes still showed fear, as if death hadn't freed them from the madness that continued to unfold." This is probably the most powerfully telling description of events in the entire book.

In short, this is a book with a helluva story, but it might be lacking in the proper voice and framing to tell it.

AFI's #90

2012-01-07T21:19:00.002-05:00

As some of you know, I set out a long time ago (several years ago now, actually) to watch all of AFI's Top 100 Movies. Well, here I am now, just watching #90. I realized as I was looking back that I watched #91 but never reviewed it--oh well, you will have to watch My Fair Lady for yourself. But as for #90...

The Jazz Singer, starring Neil Diamond, is one movie that I would recommend you skip. To say I was UNDERwhelmed is an understatement. If I disliked the voice of Neil Diamond of today, I really disliked the young Neil Diamond. Lack of talents aside, this semi-musical was lacking in every other quality that might have redeemed it: a worthwhile plot, good cinematograophy, talented actors. I watched the movie for over an hour before I realized nothing was really happening. I mean that, too. An hour and fifteen minutes into an hour and forty-five minute movie I realized that there had yet to be any real conflict or tension--the only thing that drives a story. The only thing I took from the movie was hope that if something that bad can make the top 100 list, then I could write a screenplay myself, with one arm tied behind my back, and blindfolded.

Oh, and after the entire one hour and forty-five minutes of the movie, I have no idea why it was called "The Jazz Singer." I mean, it wasn't even jazz, not even the kind of jazz that is like blues that just didn't quite make it. The name evades me.

Two thumbs down.

New Year's Mantra 2012

2012-01-07T18:13:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I don't do New Year's "resolutions" in the traditional sense. Instead, I choose a mantra for which to guide my year. Last year's was "read. write. breathe." Whether or not I lived that mantra isn't really important. At times yes, at times, not so much. But it was a guiding force in my life nonetheless.

This year I have decided that my mantra is: "Get out of your comfort zone."

Back in 2010, when I was considering whether or not to take the AmeriCorps position through Salud in Ft. Morgan (which, I obviously did end up taking) with less than one week's notice, a quote came to me which pushed me into action: "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.--Neale Donald Walsch" Looking back on last year, I know that that quote is responsible for the year that I lived last year. It had its ups and downs--mostly ups, but it was certainly amazing, and I would not have had it otherwise. I realized, looking back, that everything had happened for a reason, even those things that I had struggled to accept because they were so incredibly painful. When I thought back, I was able to piece things together, able to see where things went and, more importantly, why. I have ended up with not just one, but TWO jobs that I love and living in THE town that I had wanted to move to. Everything truly does happen for a reason.

So, as I sat trying to think about the life I wanted to live in 2012, I remembered that quote, and I decided to make it my mantra for this year: Get out of my comfort zone.

As part of that, I hope to include the following:
*getting out of the country (for the first time in my life). I don't care if it's only Canada or Mexico. I HAVE to leave the U.S.
*cooking new recipes (AT LEAST one per week).
*running the Bolder Boulder (a 10K race, the largest road race in the country).
*running a half-marathon.
*finishing all 90 days of P90x.
*finishing all 60 days of Insanity.
*writing my truth.
*speaking my truth, always, even when it's uncomfortable.
*dating (my god, that's going to be a hard one), and truly opening myself up to the experience of love again.
*meeting new people.
*completing The Vein of Gold (the follow-up to The Artist's Way) from start to finish.
*starting to write a historical-fiction novel (a.k.a. Max's story).
*and just generally trying new things.

It's a lot of things, I realize, but the most important thing is that I push myself out of my comfort zone, be that mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, or social. Because that is where I will grow; that is where my life will truly begin, instead of the waking sleep that so many times consumes our days and nights...

2011 in Review

2012-01-07T17:58:00.000-05:00

Before beginning something new, it is always good to look back on where you have been, what you have done, who you have met, things you have felt. At the end of last year, I took stock. This is what I noted:

In 2011, I:
*loved and lost. (Again.)
*cooked with saffron for the first time (a huge feat for anyone interested in cooking).
*began training for a half-marathon (which I never ran, but nonetheless).
*bought a new car of my own (I love my green CR-V, which I named Scout).
*ran along the Pacific Ocean for the first time (when I visited Los Angeles, seeing many of its best features, including: Venice Beach, the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame Stars, Babycakes NYC, Skid Row...)
*played Black Jack in Vegas.
*had two orgasms in a row, without stopping, for the first time ever (let me just say: this was life-changing!).
*completed The Artist's Way.
*wrote Morning Pages every day except one (when I was in Vegas).
*cut my hair SHORT for the first time in my life, and died it blond.
*got a "grown-up" job, which I love, as a patient health educator.
*moved to a new town (again), which I LOVE.
*got a roommate, whom I really like.
*completed one week of the Insanity workout program.
*realized that I am and always have been a dancer--and then became a Zumba instructor.
*finished my year in AmeriCorps.
*finished the Harry Potter series.
*got a job as a fitness instructor.
*went dancing at a cantina, and spoke a lot of drunken Spanish.
*hiked for the first time.
*reconnected with people from my past.
*met some awesome new people.
*improved my Spanish speaking skills TREMENDOUSLY.
*read 28 books (and started several others which I will finish this year).
*and decided that next year, my mantra would be: (See next post).

You Dare

2012-01-07T12:43:00.001-05:00

The following is taken from a book by one of my favorite authors, SARK, called "Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper":

"You Dare
* to fill the world with your enthusiasm, perspective, and experiences
* to be seen and known
* to risk vibrating at a higher frequency
* to be read by others and judged
* not to let judgement interfere
* to practice detaching from 'what people think' and turn squarely and fully to what YOU think
* to be empty and fill your own well over and over again
* to have a writing life!
You dare
* to dance with distractions and invigorate your writing life
* to release yourself from procrastination and perfectionism and write anyway
* to embody your own story
* to write the rage and ordinary and dumb details
* to write your life
You dare to dream your writing life into existence.
You dare
* to be seen as flawed
You dare
* to be viewed and projected upon as wildly successful and ingenious
* to write yourself open
* to write through the closures and scars and insecurities and sometimes loud voices that repeatedly say: HOW DARE YOU? and answer just as profoundly: This is how I dare."

2011's Reading List

2012-01-01T12:29:00.003-05:00

Because I didn't blog about every book I read last year to review it for you, I thought I would just share the entire list of books that I read in 2011. If you have an interest in any of these books and want to know more, just shoot me an email or leave me a comment on here and I will be happy to (try to remember!) let you know what it was about and what I thought of it. Here's the list:

Books Read in 2011
1) Fast Food Nation (started in 2010)
2) The Death and Life of the Great American School System (started in 2010)
3) Fear of Flying
4) The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horses (audiobook)
5) The Science of Getting Rich (PDF)
6) Reflections on The Artist's Way (audiobook)
7) Mind, Body & Soul: The Body Shop Book of Wellbeing
8) Barrel Fever and Other Stories (audiobook)
9) How Starbucks Saved My Life (audiobook)
10) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
11) eat, pray, love (audiobook)
12) The Master Butcher's Singing Club (audiobook)
13) The Soloist (audiobook)
14) Eat Pray Love (hard copy)
15) Animals in Translation (audiobook)
16) Outliers (audiobook)
17) Olive Kitteridge (audiobook)
18) Women Food and God (audiobook)
19) Instant Meditations
20) Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (audiobook)
21) Water for Elephants
22) The Artist's Way
23) Middlesex (audiobook)
24) Reservation Blues
25) The Kind Diet
26) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
27) Smokin' Seventeen
28) Explosive Eighteen
29) Completing the Circle

Documentary Review: Gasland

2011-12-30T13:24:00.000-05:00

It's been a week or so since I watched this documentary, but I want to take the time to tell you all about it. In all honesty, you simply must watch this documentary in order to give it justice. But I'll give you a briefing here:

Documentaries tend to be of one of three varieties: 1) solution-focused (These are the feel good movies that show how things can work well and fix current problems. Example: Food Matters) 2) event-recording (No explanation needed. Example: Gimme Shelter) 3) problem-based (These are the documentaries that make you feel like darkness has just spread over your whole life, the kind that show you a problem you may not have even known existed). This is the kind of documentary that Gasland is.

Josh Fox unintentionally becomes an amateur filmmaker and environmental activist as he seeks to find out the truth about natural gas drilling after receiving a letter requesting to lease his land for hydraulic fracturing a.k.a. "fracking" for natural gas. What he discovers are dead animals, a multitude of health problems for people living in surrounding areas, and--drumroll here, please--"drinking" water that can be lit on fire. And yet along the way, he is unable to find anyone from a gas company to speak with him, nor an honest politician who is willing to admit that this process is contaminating local water sources.

The scariest part for me is that he travels to Ft. Lupton, Colorado to interview several people there about the damage that has been done in their area. Ft. Lupton happens to be the town where my work's adminstrative building is located. I travel there at least twice a month for meetings. I have driven down the roads in the film, I have seen the houses he documents. I have drank the water there.

Please, please, please take the time to find this documentary and watch it. And then do something about it. Lately I have been following several activist email lists called "CREDO Action" and "Open Congress" which have sent me petitions to veto fracking in other nearby Colorado towns. I'm happy to sign them. I'll be sure to pass along the next thing I hear in my area. But I encourage you to watch the film and find out how you can do something about it in your own area.

Documentary Review: Simply Raw

2011-12-23T00:05:00.001-05:00

Last night I sat down with my roommate to watch a documentary called Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days. I heard about the documentary through Kris Carr's weekly newsletter for her website Crazy, Sexy, Life. Being vegan myself and believing in the healing power of (natural, organic, whole, unprocessed, vegan, as close to the source as possible, and live) foods, I thought I would be all on board with this documentary. But after watching it, I'm only about half-way on board. Because in addition to my personal beliefs and lifestyle regarding food, I am also a diabetes educator. Let me explain.
The movie follows the journey of 6 people with diabetes as they spend 30 days at a clinic in Arizona, as they eat a detox diet of only raw, vegan foods and learn about nutrition for optimal diabetes control. Now, 4/6 people fit your typical mold for diabetes in this country: overweight, underactive, and consumer of the S.A.D. diet (Standard American Diet). The other 2 people are Type 1 diabetics, which is a completely different disease than Type 2. Still, they tried their best to control their conditions and yet failed previously. Why? Because they were consuming processed, shit food. So all of these people were able to control their blood sugar levels (all but 1 without any need for insulin), lose weight, lower their blood pressure, drop their cholesterol numbers, etc. Truly wonderful results.

And yet it is no secret that (Type 2) diabetes can largely be controlled through diet and exercise alone, especially if caught early enough (if you're truly early enough though, you prevent it, not control it). But most people don't make the necessary changes for this to happen. I do not believe as a vegan OR as a diabetes educator that a raw diet is the only way to achieve these results. In fact, unless you live in a tropical climate where fresh. local foods are readily available, it is almost impossible to successfully live on a raw diet and can at times be detrimental to your health. If you are eating raw foods trucked in from outside of your area, much of the promoted health benefits of eating raw are lost as the enzymes break down and the food starts to die before you eat it. Not only that, as macrobiotics has taught, eating foods not native to your area or not reflective of the current seasonal conditions is not compatible for matching your body's needs with the food that you are eating. People should eat foods that grow locally and seasonally in order to be provided with the right energy and nutrients necessary for life in that area. So no, I do not believe that a raw diet is the only or even the best option for most people.

The one thing that I do think this project accomplished was to educate these people in-depth about nutrition, the kind of nutrition that goes beyond the severely outdated food pyramid. They were enlightened as to how their disease truly functioned and how foods played a role in that. In essence, this is what every person, regardless of having diabetes or not, needs in this country: nutrition education. And yet we sadly receive so little.

Another thing that the project did well was to place the participants in an environment where they could undergo whole person healing. By being able to learn this new information (and how to carry it into their own life for life back at home after the 30 days was up), AND address the mental/emotional issues that were keeping them from being ready and willing to change (because let's face it, most people know that if they didn't eat those candy bars they wouldn't have such high blood sugar levels and yet they eat the candy bar anyways), they experienced success.

Now, my opinions as a diabetes educator: The participants learned to control their blood sugar levels and almost all eliminated all their need for medications and insulin. This is awesome. But they did NOT cure NOR reverse diabetes. The patients still have diabetes. The damage has already been done to their pancreas. For those who have neuropathy (nerve damage), that pain is also permanent. Those nerves will never regenerate. Their pancreases will never regain normal function. The minute that the participants would go back to their previous diet, the minute that they would stop exercising, their disease would flare up again. So I find it very troubling that the title proclaims to "reverse" diabetes. The doctor heading up the project has also written a book called There is a Cure for Diabetes and says the word "cure" several times throughout the movie. But this is NOT a cure. It is a treatment, albeit one that can work very well and effectively if followed properly, but it is not a cure. The person is still a diabetic. Their pancreas did not regenerate. (If this did happen, there was no evidence of it shown in the film. No tests results were given to show increase in pancreatic insulin production.) They are simply in control of their condition and not being controlled by it.

Also, I found that the film lacked the nutritional information needed to convey to an audience unfamiliar with a raw vegan diet the health benefits. There was no explanation on film about how animal products negatively attribute to health problems, nor was there any other explanation or reasoning given for why so many people have adopted a vegan lifestyle (i.e. animal welfare, environmental factors, consumer rights, farmers' rights advoacy, etc.). Change is hard, but people are much more likely to stick to change when they have motivation to do it for something outside of themselves. (For example: How many times have you heard somebody say they were quitting smoking because they were having a baby? The person knows smoking is bad, they might even really want to quit, but when it is just their own self in the equation for change it is hard. Introduce a baby and suddenly they have a motivation that lies outside of their self.) The point of diabetes education is that people need to be EDUCATED, and this film didn't do that. It had the opportunity, but all it did was say, "This works." Well, why does it work? Explain that to the people! Show them how they too can live healthier and in control of their disease.

Finally, the ending of the film really bothered me. They summed up where each participant left off in very vague terms. No information was given as to the length of time between the end of the program and the follow-up (I wanted to know: did these people keep up a mostly raw diet? for how long? did they continue to be free of oral medications and insulin? what were their hemoglobin A1c levels? I wanted scientific lab results and numbers.). I wanted to know exactly how many other people had successfully completed this program (6 people is not a large enough sample size for a scientific study to be labeled viable).

So overall, I was pretty disappointed by this documentary, both as a vegan and nutritional nut who saw an AWESOME opportunity to educate people AND as a diabetes educator who was upset by the false advertisement of a "cure" and/or "reversal" of a chronic (that means "ongoing") disease.

Love is the Reason, Not the Answer

2011-12-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

One of the things that I firmly believe about life is that its ultimate purpose is to love. I believe love is the most amazing experience any human being (or any living creature for that matter) can go through. I believe love is the most healing of all forces, and it is the most supreme energy in the entire Uni-verse.

Lately I have been thinking about one kind of love in particular: relationship love, as in being someone's boyfriend or girlfriend, having a partner with which to share life. I have been frustrated because I want now more than ever to actually be in a relationship. I want to have somebody to give my love to. I want to do sweet things for somebody. I want a hand to hold, someone to go to the movies with, a voice on the other end of the phone when I crawl into my bed at night. I want to get out of my own head and into somebody else's thoughts, into a conversation with somebody else instead of just myself. And yet, despite how much I want to be in a relationship, I am not. I can't help but wonder what it is that I am missing, what key ingredient or dating skill it is that I am missing that despite my willingness, despite my desire to try and to give of myself, I am still single.

This morning I read the following quote on a daily email I subscribe to, and it really made me stop in my tracks and think: “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Wow. Talk about shifting perspective...

Holiday Uses for Bubble Wrap

2011-12-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

protecting breakable gifts in their box
painting or inking over to use as a stamper to decorate "wrapping paper"
putting under "wrapping paper" and using crayons/ colored pencils/ pens to create a design
using over "wrapping paper" to create a textured effect and add depth and distortion to the designs below
popping to relieve the stress of your family :)

Anybody else have any other good ideas to add to this list?

Holiday Boredom

2011-12-20T15:50:00.001-05:00

I'm desperate for something to do at work, so I made Christmas bows from magazine pages.

Happy, But...

2011-12-19T22:44:00.001-05:00

I finally figured it out today, what exactly it is that has been troubling me. Whenever anyone asks how I am doing, my answer is always a genuine and sincere, "Great!" I have a full-time job that I love and that is incredibly rewarding, and I have a part-time job that is fun, pays well, and keeps me in great shape. I live in the paradise of the mountains, and my rent is cheap. I have my own car. My roommate is amazing and we get along so well. I'm meeting awesome people. I'm constantly learning and always trying something I haven't done before. I am truly blessed and stand in awe at the wonder of my life: where I am, what I have accomplished, and how everything has worked out even more perfectly than I could have imagined.

And yet, despite all this, despite meaning everything I have just said with all my heart, despite telling people and truly feeling like I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life, whenever I respond to somebody there is this silent but resonant, "I'm happy, but..." I never know what follows that but, only that there is one.

But tonight, I finally figured it out: I am happy beyond belief, but I have nobody to share it with. And THAT is why I still sometimes feel just as sad as ever, despite my amazingly happy life...

All the money, accomplishments, success, recognition, difference-making, awards, and happiness in the world means absolutely nothing if you have nobody to share it with.

Workout Review: Insanity

2011-12-13T13:34:00.000-05:00

I have just finished Week 1 of Shaun T's Insanity workout program. (Well, actually, I'm on Day 6, but since Day 7 is a rest day, I figured it's safe to say I've completed one week.) And let me tell you do I feel amazing! I got the program from a friend and have had it for some time now but have put off starting it, mostly because, in all honesty, I was intimidated. But I decided to just jump on the wagon and get to it! I knew that with my work schedule of teaching 5 fitness classes per week and the holidays coming up that I would not be able to successfully complete all 60 days of the program, so instead of putting it off until the "ideal time" (which we know would never come!), or starting it and feeling disappointed that I didn't finish it, I decided to commit to one week only. Now, after having tried it, I know what to expect, and I'm much more prepared for when I do decide to commit to the full program (which I'm planning to be sometime after the first of the year.

Doing the workout, I feel like a badass, I'm not gonna lie. It's intense, but you are the one who pushes yourself, so how hard you workout is really up to you. I try to pace myself so I can get through the whole workout, and then when I know I'm towards the end or the end of a set of workouts and I hear him counting down from 10, I give it all I've got. But just because I'm pacing myself doesn't mean it's easy. I'm definitely pushing.

It's kind of addicting, and I'm not 100% sure that I won't continue on after this week is up because I've already got the momentum, and the adrenaline rush is amazing. But I also really want to take a before and after picture, and since I've already started, well, that messes with the before image now doesn't it? But I've gotten a serious fitness boost and energy and confidence to go along with it, so even if I allow myself to be content with just completing the one week as I promised myself, then I can feel good about that!

I'll keep you posted on my progress as it comes.

"Skinny Love"

2011-11-12T16:28:00.001-05:00

I am sitting in a booth for two in the upstairs atrium of a joint coffee shop and stationary store, by one of the many windows. I can look out and see the permaculture of the mini park alongside the river. It is beautiful here, even with the gray skies of winter.

Bon Iver plays quietly in the background. "Skinny Love" reminds me of all the music we used to listen to, half of which you played and I claimed to hate. I know better now.

I wish you were the empty chair sitting across from me now. I would be so happy to look across the table into your eyes and smile and say, "Hey you..." And yet I know, as happy as it would make me to share this life with you, you would never be as happy here with me...

Reasons of the Day that I Don't Want to Be a Parent

2011-11-09T12:06:00.000-05:00

* I don't believe in circumcision.
I don't believe in female circumcision, and I don't believe in male. I don't believe in cutting a child's genitalia, regardless of which religious custom it comes from, Judeo-Christian or skewed Islam. I believe that if a child is born with an "ant-eater" penis, then there is a reason for that. That is the way nature and God intended it. If God wanted men to have "uncircumcised" penises, he would have not created penises that needed to be circumcised.

* I believe in accepting a child as they are born into the world, especially in regards to "sexual disorders" like hermaphroditism.
After recently reading the AMAZING book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, I realized that there isn't a need to be either male or female. There is a shockingly high percentage of people born with ambiguous genitalia or chromosomal/hormonal complications. If this is what happens naturally in nature, why don't we accept it? Why isn't there 3 "genders": male, female, and intersex? I hate that society has to put things into tight little categories, one or the other, black or white. And yet I understand fully how hard it would be to parent such a child and to BE such a child. And that is not something I would want to have to deal with.

Okay, sorry to rant. Discussion at work today prompted all this. Just wanted to get it out and write about it.

Journey to Healing, Day 1

2011-11-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

After months and months of dealing with adult acne, trying every natural cream and product out there, changing my diet, trying to avoid common foods said to cause acne, and taking an antibiotic for two weeks--all to no avail--I have decided that I am going to heal myself, once and for all. Today, I started by going to my first accunpuncture appointment.

Here are my "homework assignments" to help with balancing my body:

1) Keep a food journal, with how I feel also included in the journaling.
2) Visit adyashanti.org to help with the feeling of separateness I struggle with.
3) Avoid "yang" foods, including: coffee, sugar, alcohol, spicy food.
4) Also avoid "damp" foods, including soy products and raw foods.

Okay, so the raw thing won't be too much of a problem. I actually prefer my food cooked anyways. I've just been trying to eat as much raw as possible because I keep reading that it's good for me. Coffee is a much-loved treat for me, but it's definitely become a sometimes food for me, so I think I will be able to avoid it. Sugar I have been staying away from lately, being more conscious of my "sweets" intake, and I don't keep processed sugar at home anymore at all. Alcohol I could care less about for the most part. Spicy food is going to be tough (I lived with brown people for two years, what do you expect?!), and soy will also be hard. But since I've been denying myself gluten products for the house, I am going to allow those back in and try to focus on no soy. So we shall see.

In addition to the food element and the visits with the accupuncturist (6-8 sessions once a week), I know I also need to work on some emotional components of my healing. Some things that I've been thinking about lately that I think are important for me to examine as I try to find balance have come up in the following statements:

* On some level, I think I hate my body for being female and thus able to produce children. (Because I do not want children, so I think I, on some unconscious level, hate the part of me that is able to do that.)
* Sometimes, I just want to be touched.
* I expect too much of myself, and when I don't do everything perfectly, it creates stress in myself.
* On some level, I think I deny myself many things because I feel it's selfish, including but not limited to wanting clear skin because it makes me feel vain.
* I believe that part of my healing will involve me 'writing my way into clear skin.'

When I first became vegan, I glowed. My skin was radiant and I was so happy and energetic. I walked through every day loving everyone and everything. I felt love flow through my fingertips. But it wasn't just that I had become vegan. I was also exercising for the first time in a long time (I still exercise most days of the week). All that is the same. But what is different is that I'm not meditating like I was. I'm not creating or expressing my artistic nature. I'm not spending the time writing like I was. At the same time I became vegan I was intensely spiritual, as well as connected to my friends and family. I had just finished Eat Pray Love and was exploring religion and my own personal spirituality. I keep thinking that if I had clear skin I could feel that glow again. But maybe the reverse is also true. Maybe if I did all the things that came with the glow, my skin would clear up. The truth is that I don't meditate like I used to. I don't spend the time on positive thinking and affirmations. I'm not connected to my Source. I'm not expressing my creativity. I don't feel connected to my friends and family. I spend a lot of time alone. I don't have people that I feel connected to surrounding me like I did then.

So I'm setting about to get back into that lifestyle and mindset that I had when I first became vegan. I have to heal myself. I have to be the best me possible so that I can give love and light to those around me. I have to shine the way I was intended to shine. It's going to be work. But it takes the same amount of energy to continually feel upset about my skin problems as it does to do something about it. So, here I go.

Meaning and Insignificance

2011-10-14T15:41:00.001-04:00

As I sit at the window of a coffee shop, the sun alternatingly warming my face and pulling the muscles of my mouth into a smile, and then hiding from me behind clouds like a toddler playing peek-a-boo, I am considering the difference between why grass is green and sky is blue, and why the words green means green and blue means blue.

Let me (try) to explain.

The grass is green for a reason. Chemically and physically, there is an explanation. God (or however you choose to call the creative force of life) made it that way.

And yet language, the act of naming things, is as almost entirely arbitrary as money: it has meaning and significance only because we say it does. We haved called blue blue and green green. It does not matter and yet it means everything.

And when I think about it more, language is not at all arbirtary. As human beings we have the unique capacity for language. This is our creative potential given to us by the Great Creator. Just as It gave trees the ability to produce oxygen, It gave us the ability to produce language. We are therefore each of us gods in our own right...

My GOD Jar

2011-10-13T10:20:00.001-04:00

In re-starting the book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, I have been introduced to the task of/idea for creating what she calls "a God jar." I like the idea so much that I wanted to share.

Essentially, it is just a container into which you can place your fears, worries, sadnesses, and even your gratitude. You write down whatever it is on a slip of paper (I am using post-it notes because I have a ton and because they are just the perfect size), and then you release the worry/fear/sadness/etc., telling yourself that "it's okay, God's got it now."

If you don't believe in God, or are like me and just have a hard time with defining your idea of it, Camerson suggests thinking of God as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction," and trust that life has a way of working itself out, always for the best.

Anyways, nothing fancy, but here is my God jar!

Me, Myself, and Poetry

2011-10-12T23:37:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I forget that poetry doesn't have to make sense to anybody but myself...

A Fall Night Walk

The changing leaves have colored

the air with their crunchy scent.

Tall grasses hiss beside me

as I walk.

A parking lot is a lake in the moonlight,

the moon reflecting

Its thoughts in the night.

And poetry is my way home.

I really like the last line because I think it's so true. Poetry is my way back to myself, to my essence. It's the way I process things, the way I express myself and my feelings, the way I remember moments in time. Like a walk home at night in the fall...

Elk Bugling

2011-10-12T23:28:00.001-04:00

Often like the scream of a young child.

Sometimes a rusty hinge creaking open

or closed.

The swing back

and forth of playground chains in hooks.

A flute, rarely, but would come closer.

But never a bugle.

And yet

the notes carry a perfect melody of meaning

as ancient as the mountains

whence they came.

(Author's Note: If you've never heard an elk "bugle," then you will not understand this poem.)

Chai Tea Lattes

2011-10-12T22:46:00.001-04:00

Are so good. Seriously, they make me so happy. If I were Julie Andrews, they would make my list of "a few of my favorite things."

What are some of your favorite things?

Healthy Choices I Made Today

2011-09-28T18:37:00.000-04:00

A healthy life is the total sum of the small, every day decisions made.

Today, I made several:
*I ate my servings of fruit first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and waited to eat anything else until an hour after (for ease of digestion).
*I went home during my lunch break and did Jillian Michaels's Yoga Meltdown DVD. (Initially I was going to put it off until later because I didn't have enough time to do all of it, but then I realized that doing some of it was better than doing none of it (I got through 2/3 of the workout and still felt the effects because I have been a slacker when it comes to exercise lately), so I did it. And I felt so good when I came back to work!)
*I abstained from gluten products. (I'm still looking into this, but gluten is a protein found predominantly in wheat but also in other grain products that isn't easily digested by the human body. I'm exploring whether or not this might be contributing to my acne.)
* I ate slowly and consciously. And enjoyed my food much more because of it.
* I gave thanks for my food. (Spirituality is a strong component of overall well-being!)
*I drank lots of water.

What healthy choices have YOU made today? Please share!

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

2011-09-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

For a long time now, I have been wanting to develop a stronger spiritual practice and have been considering the idea of adding prayer back to my life as one way to do so. And yet, having gone from a defined religious orientation to a spiritual agnosticism, I found it hard to do so.

Until today.

Recently I started listening to Women Food and God on audiobook. The author said something that really struck me and that I wanted to take and apply to my life. She said that she has her retreat students (who are struggling with compulsive over eating) to do an exercise where before they eat they give thanks for the food, but not in a typical dogmatic fashion that pertains to any particular religion. Instead they simply give thanks for the food.

Today as I started eating my lunch, I was disappointed with my choice of soup. It wasn't as good as I wanted to be. I didn't think I had enough. I felt, even as I began my meal and hadn't yet finished what I already had, that I wanted more, that I would not be full and satisfied when I was finished. Then, all of a sudden I noticed how the sunshine made my soup glisten, and I thought how beautiful. Suddenly I was entranced to truly look at my food, to notice the individual parts of it instead of the whole. I slowed down my eating, and then I remembered to give thanks. I could have put off praying "until I remembered to pray before the meal as opposed to after I had already started," but I did it right then and there.

I laced my fingers and cupped my bowl of soup in my hands and closed my eyes and prayed, not to any God in particular, but just a heartfelt prayer of gratitude to the Universe for the food. I thanked the farmers here for the carrots, the farmers in a faraway land for the ginger, the sun for shining and helping them to grow, the rain for falling and watering the soil, the warm weather for giving me a beautiful day to eat outside in, Whole Foods for being such an awesome shopping experience where you can eat your (healthy!) lunch outside, the chef who created my soup, the baker who baked my roll, and then I thanked my body for digesting the food properly and then nourishing my body with it, my teeth for being strong to chew the food, the orthodontistry that gave me a beautiful and strong smile that will last me years, my heart for desiring to change the way I eat and choose a happy and healthy way life diet that is good for myself, animals, farmers, and the planet...

And when I opened my eyes and began to eat again, my food tasted better. I chewed slowly and savored every bite. I felt the bread in my mouth, how some parts were crunchy and others soft and chewey. I savored the pepper in the soup that I hadn't noticed before. I noticed that the soup had texture to it instead of just being a liquid as it first appeared. And at the end of it all, I was satisfied. I felt nourished and calmed. I had no desire to eat more or anything else. It was honestly a euphoric experience.

My roommate's boyfriend told me the story about when he was doing wilderness survival training. They did an exercise where they built two different fires. For both, they used all the same materials. The only difference was that for one fire they "gave thanks" and expressed their gratitude for everything that had come together to allow them to create it (the wood for growing, the sun, the lighter, the skills, etc.). The other they simply built and lit. The traditional fire (without the blessing) threw sparks, created a lot of smoke, and burned smaller. The fire that had been blessed had less smoke, wasn't crackly, and burned noticeably bigger, brighter, and longer than the other.

This is no coincidence; this is the way our world works. And today I got a glimpse of that power that is ours when we 1) become present to our bodies and the world around us, 2) see the connections between all the things of Life, and 3) give thanks for it all.

I believe firmly that the biggest issue facing society in terms of our obesity epidemic is that we, as a culture, have become unconscious to our food.

But that is another issue for another blog...

Today I cried because:

2011-09-25T00:39:00.000-04:00

* a kitchen table and chairs set that I saw at Salvation Army and really wanted but was about to go on sale so I waited wasn't (of course!) there when I went back.
* I realized I was never truly present with my ex and that I completely allowed myself to not enjoy the love that we had in the moment that we had it.
* I ache for a best friend again more than anything in the whole world. I yearn to be so close to somebody that it touches me deep down in my soul, and yet, now more than ever I feel distanced from people, like there is an emotional "personal space" that doesn't get passed between myself and others.
* I am crazy about a guy who won't date me because I'm not a Christian--and a part of me is outraged at the hypocrisy of not "loving your neighbor as yourself" and accepting people as they are.
* someone honked (I think at me) while I was driving and it made me feel like I did something wrong (and then I began to question if the left turn arrow was still green when I went) and I couldn't stop feeling bad about it.
* because I prayed and gave thanks for my food as I ate my lunch today and it made me so incredibly satisfied and happy (and I swear my food even tasted better).
* I watched the series finale of Ally McBeal and it was so real feeling in my pain at her goodbye that it was like it was real. And then I wanted to cry because I realized that we never really allow ourselves to feel that amount of pain in the moment. It is always after the fact (of whatever bad/sad thing happens) that it feels so hard. Goodbye hurts but almost never does it hurt as much as after the fact, when time has passed and we are looking back on it. Because we have this sort of emotional defense system where we go into an emotional coma-like state, as though we are too afraid to feel our feelings in the moment because they might be so strong that they would destroy us (they won't!). I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's the way I see it. We aren't present to our feelings. They are either a before (feelings such as fear, usually about things that will never happen) or after (regret, sadness, anger, etc.), but very rarely do we TRULY feel our pain in the moment.

Today, I suffered from SEVERE PMS. :-/

Netflix Most Popular

2011-09-24T17:48:00.000-04:00

Currently the most popular new arrival documentary to stream from Netflix is Forks Over Knives. This warms my heart and makes me hopeful! Although I haven't personally watched the documentary yet (I will be soon!), I know it is the kind of thing that has the ability to change people's lives when it comes to their views on and thoughts about eating. It is EXACTLY the thing that I would want to be Netflix's "most popular."

Please look into watching this documentary.

At what point does being PC become pIc?

2011-09-20T16:48:00.000-04:00

My new job as a patient health educator has made me think a lot lately (not that this is a new thing for me, but I guess even more frequently and in depth) about the scary obesity rates in this country and the myriad of co-morbid health problems that accompany it.

I have some patients who come in recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (T2DM for short). This disease is ENTIRELY preventable in almost all cases. And yet doctors are too afraid to tell their patients AHEAD OF TIME that their risks for this condition are slowly increasing, as the patient gains weight, fails to be active, eats poorly, etc. At routine labs if a patient runs an A1c (the test that shows the average blood glucose (a.k.a. sugar) levels over the last 2-3 months) between 5.5 and 6.0, often times they are told nothing, when in fact this is considered PRE-diabetic (levels of 5.5-6.5, with 6.5+ being the diagnosis point for actually have T2DM). WHY WHY WHY WHY NOT?! I just do not understand. Yes, people know that "being overweight is bad," but we cannot assume that they know their risks. Why aren't doctors sitting down with their patients and being point-blank about the complications? And when did it become so offensive to look a patient in the eyes and say, "You're fat." Yes that hurts to hear, but it should! Saying, "You're overweight," or even, "Your BMI is 32.6," does NOT motivate a person to take their health and wellbeing in their own hands. It sugar coats the truth. And in the end, it hurts the patient.

We are not doing anyone any favors by using the politically correct terms "overweight" or "obese." Or the even softer terms of "fluffy" and "big-boned." There is a difference between being big boned and being fat. In the end, the healthcare problems associated with being overweight are becoming politically INcorrect. It's politically INcorrect to allow trans fat into our foods. It's INcorrect to tell someone they are overweight and not having a serious discussion with them about the complications (we cannot assume that they understand--there's a difference between knowing something and truly understanding it). It's INcorrect to adjust our standards of normal (HEALTHY!) because we're afraid we might offend some people.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to offend anyone here. I have family members who are severely overweight, and as people, I do not value them any less. Their souls and spirits have nothing to do with their physical apperance and how much I value them is not associated with this. But their health severely concerns me. And the fact of the matter is that it's not all their fault. A profound study in the 1950s by Stewart Wolf on the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that culture has as much impact on health as genetic and lifestyle factors. And the fact of the matter is that our country and culture is sick. Our nation is diseased. And it breaks my heart...

A Thought-Shifting Quote

2011-06-25T21:07:00.000-04:00

"All is well. You did not come here to fix a broken world. The world is not broken. You came here to live a wonderful life. And if you can learn to relax a little and let it all in, you will begin to see the universe present you with all that you have asked for."
- Esther Hicks, is a best-selling author and speaker.

The above quote, sent in a blog/email subscription that I recently signed up for, really made me think. Too often I am guilty of the "I want to fix everything" mentality. It's caused me a lot of heartache over the years--especially with men, but also with friends and family, and ultimately in my career choices--but realizing that first of all, the world is not broken, and second of all, I did not come here to fix it and take on everything and make it all better (because like the first point says, it ain't broken to begin with!), made me feel even more free to keep living my life the way I have been: open to the possibilities that present themselves to me, making choices for life that make me happy and fulfilled, but not necessarily as driven to "fix" life as I used to be.

I've been thinking a lot lately about teaching and my decision not to do it and have felt a sense of guilt because I think that once again next year I will be pursuing other job prospects. But this quote really helped to ease my mind. The current path in front of me is one that will lead to many great things for me--among them the chance to live in a beautiful mountain town in the mountains (a dream of mine for almost two years), help people improve their lives in a one-on-one setting, and have TIME to myself to pursue other passions, interests, travels, and jobs, the most rewarding part of it all. I'm realizing that life doesn't have to be a constant blur of activity and working to make ends meet. There IS time to enjoy life, to travel and vacation and visit with friends. And I can have that, if only I so choose. And that is a beautiful realization...

Performance of a Lifetime

2011-06-15T23:25:00.000-04:00

This performance may have just saved my life...

Lyrics:

Spend all your time waiting

For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay

There’s always one reason

To feel not good enough

And it’s hard at the end of the day

I need some distraction

Oh beautiful release

Memory seeps from my veins

Let me be empty

And weightless and maybe

I’ll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here

From this dark cold hotel room

And the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage

Of your silent reverie

You’re in the arms of the angel

May you find some comfort there

So tired of the straight line

And everywhere you turn

There’s vultures and thieves at your back

And the storm keeps on twisting

You keep on building the lie

That you make up for all that you lack

It don’t make no difference

Escaping one last time

It’s easier to believe in this sweet madness oh

This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here

From this dark cold hotel room

And the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage

Of your silent reverie

You’re in the arms of the angel

May you find some comfort there

You’re in the arms of the angel

May you find some comfort here

The very definition of artistic genius. The mashup between Sarah McLachlan's soul-gripping lyrics and his voice--truly heavenly.

Beautiful Pain

2011-06-08T21:43:00.000-04:00

Right now, I feel her pain in every cell of my body, with every sense I possess. The only thing I can't understand is how she took all that hurt and made something so beautiful out of it all. And I wonder if one day I'll be that strong...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAc83CF8Ejk

God Has a (Screwed Up) Sense of Humor

2011-06-08T14:19:00.000-04:00

Who remembers when I had a mini breakdown on campus last summer, and, in the midst of it, was approached by the two Mormon missionaries? (If not, you can read the blog post here.)

Well, yesterday morning I woke up to a rather crushing email (summary: my ex has not only moved on but is "defacto" living with his new girlfriend, with whom he has talked about the future and hopes to go there with her. Ouch.), and I promptly lost it. I was screaming and bawling rather hysterically, on the brink of vomiting and unable to move myself off of my bedroom floor when my doorbell rang. Thinking it was either a delivery (though I wasn't expecting any) or a neighbor checking to see if I was okay (or telling me to shut the hell up), being naked, I decided in either case not to answer it. I choked back my sobs to a whimper, willed myself to the shower (why is it that I always end up in the shower when my life feels completely fucked?), and tried to focus on breathing. Later, after I had showered and blown my hair dry, I went to the door to check--perhaps there had been a package after all.

There was indeed something that fell from my door: a pamphlet from the Jehovah's Witness. I laughed aloud at the irony.

I said it with the Mormons that if this was some kind of sign from God I wasn't biting, that if he sent me "anyone else besides a Mormon" I might have taken it. I forgot to mention no Jehovah's Witnesses either.

(I joke, but in reality the only thing that is sustaining me is knowing that God is there, that I am okay--or at least that I will be--, and that I am loved unconditionally by a Higher Power inconceivably greater than any human love. So really, thank you God, for making me laugh. Laugh because I'd rather cry, but laugh nonetheless. And afterwards, I was able to go to sleep. Six blissful hours of peace until I woke up and tried again to deal with it.)

Theorems, Postulates, and Axioms

2011-06-08T12:08:00.000-04:00

A long, long time ago in Geometry my freshman year of high school, I learned about various principles of arithmetic which can be proven. For example, a theorem is a statement that can be deduced and proven through definitions, other theorems, and postulates, with postulates being statements that are assumed to be true without (needed) proof. (Axiom is essentially a synonym for postulate, and there are two kinds: logical and non-logical.) No, I did not retain all this information over the years; I had to look it up, and I was inspired to do so after watching yet another episode of Ally McBeal just two nights ago.

In the episode, someone quotes Ally as a source of strength, referring to her oft-said motto: "You only die once." This statement gave me pause. We've heard the expression "You only live once" so many times that it's become a cliché in our culture. People have looked to this statement to justify and encourage them to do any number of things, from bunjee jumping to playing the lottery, trying exotic foods to quitting your high-paying job in pursuit of something more fulfilling. Almost always when people refer to this expression, it is to encourage doing something positive, something you might not otherwise do out of fear or hesitation. We accept this statement as a postulate, something we accept to be true without a need for proof: you only live once (even if you believe in reincarnation, you only get this life once).

So the theorem that "you only die once" can be deduced from that postulate in the same way that you can say that a+b=b+a. And yet with math, the two statements end up the same, just written differently (1+2=2+1--both equal 3). But when you say, "you only die once," it's not the same as saying "you only live once." Whereas the latter is meant to inspire you to do things (a positive), the former is instead meant to help you get through things (the negatives), to remember that no matter how bad it gets, how bad it hurts, how completely horrible you may believe it to be at the time, you only die once.

Right now, this knowledge is the only thing keeping me going. This hurts, like Hell. But I'm not dead yet. And short of death, there is nothing that I cannot get through. I know this, but I'm thinking that tattooing it on myself couldn't hurt...

Grown-Up Imaginary Worlds

2011-06-08T01:14:00.000-04:00

Today, I think I stopped believing in love. At least love in the sense that I once used to believe it existed. And I realized that love is for grown-ups what Santa Claus is to little kids. Only I don't remember feeling so sad when I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real...

Like a Virgin

2011-06-06T23:53:00.002-04:00

For the first time I feel like I am experiencing a desire to love like I have never before in my life felt. And the only way to describe is to say I want to lose myself in you. I have never, in all my life, thought that I would ever let myself or even want to let myself feel like that about anybody. But that's how I feel about you.

For Your Pleasure

2011-06-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

I subscribe to the Crazy Sexy Life newsletter, and this article struck me this week: "Do You Want to Me an Amazing Lover?" Well, who doesn't, right? So of course I read it, thinking it'd be like those oh-so-enticing Cosmo "tips." But instead, it was a more holistic approach to having a great sex life. And I could not agree more with everything the author said (sexual repression in our society, the UNnatural separation of sex and religion, the need to explore and study ourselves and our relationship with sex, the naturality of sex, etc.). So go check this out:
http://crazysexylife.com/2011/how-to-be-an-amazing-lover/?utm_source=Crazy+Sexy+Life+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=6582ff9fca-March+25%2C+2011+nl&utm_medium=email

Pray...

2011-05-27T23:04:00.002-04:00

that our love sees the dawn.--Ben Harper

Someone Like You

2011-05-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

"I'd hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me it's not over yet...Don't forget me, I beg, 'I'll remember,' you said."--Adele

I can't think about Christmas anymore because when I do I think about the possibility that my future Christmases won't be spent with you and your family. And suddenly it hurts too much. Suddenly Christmas doesn't feel so wonderful. Maybe this year it'd be okay and maybe the next too, but how many more? I can't...I just...can't...

A Zen Perspective on Destiny

2011-05-05T18:29:00.000-04:00

Once again, I'd like to share a passage I think is really moving from eat, pray, love. (Haha, if I'm not careful, I might end up writing practically the whole book on here--I love it so much!)

"...something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time.Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well--the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the voice, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born."
She goes on to discuss her journey, how she managed to pull herself through the most trying and desperate of times, and reflects on the moment years before when her life was in shambles and she heard "a voice from God" tell her to go back to bed. She posits that perhaps it was this older, wiser, future self, who wanted so desperately to be where she was in the end of the book, that was able to comfort her from the future, from inside of her own self, and get her through everything. That maybe this was God, her own self and at the same time, not.

I think this is a beautiful perspective on life...

5 Tiny Things

2011-05-05T01:47:00.000-04:00

Commandment #8: be thankFULL.

Tonight, when I was washing dishes, I thought of the tiniest thing that makes me happy, brings me unexpressed joy, and I then, in making conversation with a friend, asked him to name five tiny things that brought him joy. Of course I did the same:

*when it rains while it's sunny without breaking into a cloudy minute
*the way the night sky lights up during a massive thunderstorm on a summer night
*when I wash a glass bottle and all the sticker and goo comes off and it's completely clear (and especially when this happens easily!)
*the last few minutes before I get out of bed in the morning after waking
*sitting in my car for a few minutes after I get home and singing

What 5 tiny things bring you joy that you have never quite expressed? Think them to yourself, write them in your journal, or post them as a comment here--I'd love to know what others think of! I think sometimes even just putting our joys into words is expressing gratitude... So give thanks.

My Fervent Prayer

2011-05-05T01:28:00.000-04:00

I was once head-over-heals crazy for someone whose life was totally fucked up. I loved him stupidly and without reserve or regard to what he was doing to himself or me. Until one day I couldn't anymore, and I was ready to give up. I was ready to stop believing in him, stop throwing myself out there relentlessly and forgiving him constantly and just say to hell with it, make your bed and lie in it for all I care I just don't give a damn anymore if you want to fuck up your life then you go right ahead because I just don't care anymore. (Something like that.) And then I heard this song, and it was literally "like a sign from God" (or at least that's how I took it because it was at the exact moment I was driving and crying and saying to myself that was it, no more, I was done, for good, and I meant it). The song is called "Some People Change," and it was the Montgomery Gentry version, just in case you're interested--much better than the Kenny Chesney version, FYI.

So anyways, there I am, mind made up that I am done and that song comes on the radio. So I said to God, okay, I'm listening, I'll keep believing. But not because I want to, and not without any agenda on my end for hopes of us ever actually being together, because I really am done hoping for that. But I'll keep believing in him and his power to change his life.

And so every night I prayed. Every night it was the same thing: Please, Dear God, help him to change. Send him something that will turn him around. Don't give up on him.

I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. Literally for months on end, the same prayers over and over and over again. Most nights I prayed for nothing but that, it was my only prayer.

I truly believe that I have never loved anyone as selflessly as I did during that time. It made me a better person in ways that I can't explain. And my faith was more steady than I could articulate now or have experience since. Happy ending to that story: he did change, his life did get better, we're still friends, and he's thanked me for believing in him and not giving up on him because apparently it was a huge thing and really helped him :)

But the real point of this post isn't about that story. I guess I only told that to try and convey my relationship to prayer at that point in time. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm trying to commune with God recently, and I'm really hoping to bring prayer back in to my life. But I couldn't figure out what to pray or how. Until about two weeks ago.

Of course it happened while I was reading eat, pray, love. (This should come to no surprise to anyone by now ;-p) Ultimately, she says, "God is an experience of supreme love." (You know that saying, in The Bible, "God is love"? Hmm...let's connect the dots here...) And so, I decided to love. That would be my communion with God.

I've recently..."lost," for lack of a better word and though I know that's not really true, someone I love very deeply.What I've come to realize lately is that sometimes that's all you can do though, just love. And it's hard to accept, because we want to do something, we want to express our love, we want to be with the person, we want things to be different, etc., etc. But sometimes, literally the only thing we can do is just to keep on loving them. Even if we can't say it or show it, we can still just open up our hearts and radiate love for them. Now, the tricky part, is that love in this sort of situation can often become something very ugly: anger. If you've read my theory that there are only two human emotions--love and fear, and all others are some degree of one of the two on the emotional spectrum--and that really both of these come from the same source, the same starting point, then you'll see why I firmly believe in the Eagles song: "They say that anger is just love disappointed." Anger is just another word for fear. And when we love something and are afraid of losing it, it can make us very angry. In order to avoid that happening, whenever I start to feel angry about the situation, about the fact that I can't even tell this person that I love them, I meditate: I sing the words to Ronnie Dunn's new song, "Let your anger turn to water, let it slip through your hands," and I try to picture my anger literally turning into water and try to feel it run between my fingers and let it go. And I try to turn it back into love.

So when I read this passage in eat, pray, love, I knew that I could commune with God by simply allowing my self to love this person. But again, without any action or expression of it to that person, how do we do that? Another passage in the book gave me the answer: "Buona note, caro mio." Now, even if you speak Italian or you are saavy enough to use an online translator to figure out what that translates to, you still won't be able to get what that means to me or would mean between me and this person. Let's just suffice to say that it says a lot more than what it says.

And then I realized: that's it! that's my prayer. Four little words in Italian. That's all I got. No introductory "Dear God," or closing "Amen," just those four words, every night, before I go to bed. It is my fervent prayer. It is my only prayer.

Great Anger is Always a Product of Great Love

2011-05-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

The following title comes from a passage from Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (one of my favorite books of all time), a passage that I have continually come back to again and again. In its entirety it reads: "He could see his uncles slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love. Strangers would never want to hurt each other that badly."

“Strangers Would Never Want to Hurt Each Other That Badly”

I want someone who:

will fight with me

and forgive me

when I say

the hurtful things

will know

that I meant them

in the moment

but not forever

understands

that great anger

is always a product

of great love

wants to hurt me

because they love me

in a way that wants

too much

that can never

give

enough

In the Deep Dark Sea

2011-05-03T11:54:00.000-04:00

In the Deep Dark Sea

response to photos from a Census of Marine Life expedition

November 2009

Recently they have found
creatures that live
at unfathomable depths of the sea.
White with dark liver spots,
it is faceless—
no need for eyes in the forever dark—,
shapeless—
a blob
that sits quivering
as though it is
trying hard to breathe
and scared.
I imagined that
it must hurt,
this air;
the lights: the sun, examining lamps,
camera flashes for the news;
those voices
hurt the places where there are no ears.
It doesn’t make sense,
they say.
The body composition
shouldn’t be able to
exist at the pressure of such depths.

Like the phenomenon
of the bee
and its wings
flying,
these scientists cannot understand.
Let me explain it to you:
the force of gravity is not the same on everything;
sometimes it pulls stronger
on one thing than another,
pulling down
down
closer to the center
where our weaknesses
become our strengths.

Epigraph: Lady Macbeth

2011-05-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

So I was reading through my old poetry to try and find something to submit to a contest, and I discovered some rather (in my opinion, though of course I'm incredibly biased about my own work) good poems which I haven't ever posted. So, here you go, the first of several:

“Out, damned spot—Out, I say!”

I started out very “Freudian,” as Siggy himself would argue it always does. For many years, it was more or less the same thing in different words, though I never quite said it as well as Plath: Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Then he was replaced with another man (Freud has an explanation for this as well). Over and over again about the sex we never had—until we did, and then it was that.

One day the repressed word came out: molested (Freud is having a heyday by this point). So honest, raw. Like a cat’s tongue licking the reader’s eyes.
From then on, I was trying to find out how many licks, how many licks does it take to blind them?

The world may never know because I have finally got to the heart of it all (and now this is where Freud would say, nobody really understands what women want): I am writing to have nothing left to say.

Till The Sun Turns Black

2011-04-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

(That's the title of an amazing album by Ray LaMontagne. Really, it just reminds me of one of the pictures below, and I had no idea what else to title this post.)

Some dishes I have cooked up lately:

Homemade bruschetta. The perfect appetizer to complement:

Grilled asparagus over a bed of black quinoa and navy beans, with a balsamic and lemon-pepper reduction sauce.

(My own creations for the above dinners, no recipes used!)

Sun-dried tomato stuffed artichokes courtesy of Vegan Yum Yum (except I subbed basil for marjoram):

Side view:

And tonight's dish, which is the first thing I have made fresh in so long (and the inspiration for the title of this post):

Roasted carrots with garlic and black quinoa cooked with vegetable bouillon. (If you use this recipe, the lemon juice at the end is ESSENTIAL! Though I also tried it with a dab of balsamic vinegar, which I think I might be slightly addicted to since I discovered it, and that was also amazing, that extra little zing! in your mouth.)

It's amazing what you can do...

2011-04-24T17:02:00.000-04:00

with PowerPoint, paint, and a little inspiration.

Psh. Who needs Adobe? :)

A Novel Approach to the Idea of "Soul Mates"

2011-04-17T20:03:00.001-04:00

Listening to this part of the audio version of eat, pray, love, I was moved to tears:

"'I think the reason it's so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.'

'He probably was. Your problem is you don't understand what that words means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform you life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was hi job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life.'"

When I think about it like this, I think, "Hearing that should make it easier to let go, but it makes it harder. All I want to do is keep holding on, even if just to a thread, that maybe, just maybe some day in the future having gone through all this, having my whole life ripped apart and re-examined and taking all those chances that I never would have taken, that maybe then we'll end up back together..." But that's when I look ahead.

When I look back, I feel like it all makes sense: why I was so resistant, why it hurt so much, how annoyed I used to get, the anger for seemingly no apparent reason--it was all because it hurt like hell to be forced to look at myself "in a mirror" and to admit my flaws, to see where I needed to make change.

But when I think about the present? It feels just like my heart has been 'ripped open for new light to shine in,' simultaneously the most painful and yet the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced. And yet, I'm pretty sure that I'd still trade it all in, if only he asked...but I know that he won't. That's the thing about soul mates; you know them that well...

Music That Consumes Me

2011-04-17T19:43:00.000-04:00

The majority of this weekend has been spent lost in music. I thought I might share some of what I've been listening to:

The Civil Wars. If you think that Robert Plant and Allison Krauss are the duo of the century, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Seriously, go listen to their CD Barton Hollow. Better yet, watch the official music video for the song "Poison and Wine." The song itself is incredibly powerful and moving, but I have never seen a video so well done and suited for the song. It's seriously breathtaking. And you'll know what I mean when you get to the end.

Mumford & Sons. Live at Coachella. I'm really liking these guys. I'm going to have to listen to them more. Very refreshing. And thank you, Carson, for the little story about how they learn to play one another's instruments in order to learn how to better integrate them in their music. As you put it, "how refreshing" to find artists who truly care about music.

La Roux. Again, a thanks to Mr. Del Greco. I take back the fun I was making of her lyrics. You're right: she's amazing. So charming and totally self-aware, but not in the typical in-your-face loud sort of way. There's a quiet assurance to her, aware of who she is as a person and an artist. More electronic than I typically go for, I'm really digging it.

Zac Brown Band. Also artists who are very aware of who they are and where they come from. Not your typical glitz and glam country music band. These guys are straight from the mountains and small-town bars, and it's that sound that is so appealing to their fans. Not to mention their song "Colder Weather" feels like it could have been written about me at the moment (though doesn't ever great song you love feel like that?): "She'd trade Colorado if he'd take her with him....Well it's a windin road/ When you're in the lost and found/ You're a lover I'm a runner/ And we go 'round 'n 'round/ And I love you but I'll leave you/ I don't want you but I need you/ You know it's you who calls me back here, Baby// Oh I wanna see you again/But I'm stuck in colder weather/ Maybe tomorrow will be better/ Can I call you then/ Cause I'm a ramblin' man/ I ain't ever gonna change/ I gotta gypsy soul to blame/ And I was born for leavin'...born for leaving..."

Sara Evans. "A Little Bit Stronger" is one of my new theme songs because "even on my weakest days, I get a little bit stronger."

Red Lipstick

2011-04-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

I believe I am exactly the kind of girl that wearing red lipstick fits. Except I never really have, never thought I could pull it off. But I think it would change my life incredibly to do so, and own it.

The First of Many Letter to You

2011-04-17T01:21:00.002-04:00

This could be the name of a song,
don't you agree?
Perhaps this will turn into a poem.
How few I've written for you yet.
Absence in place now,
maybe someday that will be different,
that whole fonder element coming into play.

Do you like the band Mumford & Sons?
And if so,
would you hate me if I said they're like
"Irish Rock meets DMB"?
And would we turn this into another
of our stupid fights?
And who would throw in the towel first?
Or could it end up being a discussion
that meant something, went somewhere
and brought us closer
instead of tearing us apart.
And isn't it funny how I know the exact
two possibilities for our outcomes,
and could you not agree with me more?
Don't you see exactly what I'm saying happening?
And doesn't it make you want to laugh?
And then cry?

I cannot spend a good winter in French
(no, I did not mean that to say "in France").
Musical association?
A: I am in your car, in your arms, in your bed;
you're beside of me, on top of me, all around me,
inside of me.
Again, inside my heart.

Would it hurt to hear
the ways someone else makes me think of you?

I feel so stupid that I never got that show you loved until now.
The humor was above me
and I've only just now gotten smart enough
to understand it.
Which reminds me that I think you're smarter than me
and if I'm being honest it's threatening.
And one last thing:
what I said did not mean
I never want to talk to you again.
I only just don't want to try.
Or not try. (Like now.)
I just want it to be.

Why couldn't I be this open sooner?
And too many questions that start with "why" start to follow...

What I'm imagining you're thinking right now is this:
God, I think your mind is beautiful,
and I'm hoping that's exactly what you're aching to tell me.

But what message will the silence that follows carry to me?

Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

2011-04-15T14:58:00.000-04:00

It's been years since I've shed my Christian religious identity or set foot in a church for anything but a wedding. Still, that song remains one of my favorite musical pastimes, and I have found myself singing it to myself often lately.

Recently I borrowed the audio version of the book eat, pray, love and have been listening to it on my drives. It's made me achingly spiritual, as much or more so than the first time I read the book.

The other day I was driving and listening and I thought to myself I want to know God. I mean, I really ache to truly know God. It was an amazing self-confession. Followed promptly by the anxiety and motivation and worries that typically follow one of my seemingly endless endeavors for knowledge and truth. I started to approach the idea as though it were a research project: Okay, first I'm going to read books. I'm going to gather the spiritual texts of all the major religions and read them. I'm going to look at the authors and books she mentions in here. I'm going to start getting up at 5 in the morning to meditate--but what kind of meditation do I do? Do I get a japa mala and recite a mantra that I identify with 108 times in a row as I finger the beads (and does it matter if I go clockwise or counter-clockwise)? And how do I know if I "identify" with a mantra? Or do I need to be given one? Should I try Zen meditation and try to empty my mind completely, shooing away thoughts like flies as they drift into my mind? Or do I just allow myself to be and observe my thoughts without judgement? Oh, and I certainly need to start praying again. Every night when I go to bed, I'm going to say my prayers, just like I used to when I still ended them with, 'In Jesus' name, Amen.' And I'm going to meditate. And read. And I definitely need to find a guru. How do you even begin to find a guru?! And on and on my thoughts went like this. (Yes, this is exactly what it is like in my mind.)

And then, it hit me: Not five minutes after I had confessed--first to myself and then to my cousin and best (soul) friend--that I wanted to truly know God, I heard myself say in that "higher-self voice": Chazz, you already do know God. You've always known God, and you will always know God. And in that moment, there was peace.

There was certainly peace with that realization. But what it showed me was that what I really want is to actively pursue and commune with God. Daily. To have the kind of internal peace that only comes with spiritual...assurance and connection.

Let me be clear: What I want is not a religion. Nothing that organized. For that matter, I'm not even sure that I want an "organized" approach to this. I'm not gonna beat myself up to get up at 5 every morning to meditate, though I'm sure it would be beneficial on several levels, not just spiritual. I may or may not do so. I may or may not say my prayers when I lay down to sleep.

What I want is a personal relationship with God. And just like with any human being that I would have a close relationship with, I want to ask Their advice. I want to go to God with my problems and explain my situation, and I want to sit and listen for Their response. I may or may not discover more "Truths" concerning what I believe about God and the purpose of life and what happens after we die and all that jazz. As much as I love contemplating such topics, the real point of all this, what I truly want is not "answers," but that relationship. I want to experience God, inside of me, all around me, in music, in the trees, in the grass beneath my feet, in my heart, in the feeling of love. I want to experience life and know that God is there, in everything, and has always been and will always be. I want to experience God.

And so I lift up my first prayer in song: "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart. I want to see You, I want to see You...."

Has this ever happened to you?

2011-04-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

That you go to type something into Google (and because it thinks faster than your fingers can type) and then become so distracted by the auto-fill search options that you forget what you went there to look up?

Just happened to me. And I STILL can't remember what I wanted to search for. Annoying!

Attn: Marc Sewell

2011-04-08T20:19:00.001-04:00

Thank you for "stumbling upon my blog!" I'd love to catch up with you! How do I get ahold of you? Please comment and I won't publish it ;)

The Weight of The Truth

2011-04-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

(This is something I am working on as a tool to help the people I currently work with on exercising, eating healthy, and losing weight. Feel free to take part if you are dealing with these issues.)

I want you to take out a piece of paper. Actually do this, because it is very important. Got your piece of paper and a pen handy? Okay, now I want you to think about your ideal weight: how many pounds would you ideally like to weigh? Got that number in your head? Okay, now write it down on a paper. Don't skip this step. Actually write it down. Look at that number in black and white, see it. Now, close your eyes and envision seeing your scale read that same number. Again, don't skip this step! Do it! Feel how proud you will be of yourself when that happens. (Do this before reading on!) Notice what's already probably starting to happen though: you're probably already losing that good feeling. But it's not just because it's hard to visualize things; in the real moment, most of us would probably feel that feeling start to slip away quickly too. And why is that? Because when our happiness about our weight is based on numbers, we will never be satisfied!

Our society is obsessed with numbers. We have this mentality that if we don't have numbers it doesn't matter. A new research study comes out about diet and weight loss, and what do we look for? The numbers: how many people lost how much weight, how many points cholesterol dropped, how much blood pressures were lowered. We crave these numbers as though they are the ultimate truth, the key factor pointing to success.

But if I learned anything from my one semester of basic statistics and helping my friend with her masters' research dissertation, it's that numbers can be fudged (and that's putting it nicely). Numbers are not only not "the truth," but they are sometimes even outright lies. And no matter how "sound" the numbers are in favor of one thing (i.e. the Atkins diet is the most effective diet!), you can always find numbers just as sound to support the complete opposite (i.e. high carb, low fat/protein is the way to go!). So despite the emphasis our culture places on "scientific evidence" through numbers, it comes down to what you choose to believe, what rings true in your heart.

And when it comes to our weight management it's no different.

I used to struggle "with my weight." I went through periods where I starved myself, even during track season, when I needed the nourishment the most. It got to the point where I would play mind games with myself: How long can I go without eating anything? How little can I eat? I tried making myself sick. I dieted. I measured with meticulousness everything I ate. I counted calories, read labels. And still, I was never happy with my body. I never felt good in a bathing suit. I was always, despite how little I weighed, trying to "lose weight." Granted, I never really had weight problems, it was all in my mind, but that's the thing about weight: It's not just about the body, not just about the numbers; it's just as much (and sometimes more) in our minds.

On December 22, 2007, I stepped on to a scale and read the numbers: 118.5. I kept thinking, if I could just get to 110, but then I would think that I could get to 105, and pretty soon I was thinking how great it would be to weigh less than 100 pounds, how proud of myself I would feel, and the number in my head just kept getting lower and lower. As I was standing there, it hit me: No matter what the scale says, you will never be happy. I've had moments in life where I feel like I have "heard the voice of God," so to speak, coming through me as my own voice giving me the exact advice I need at a certain moment, and this was one of those moments. I realized that it was true, that no matter how much (or how little) I weighed, I would never find happiness starting back at me from a scale. And in that moment, I made a promise to myself: never again would I step on to a scale. (And since then, I have never weighed myself. Not once. When I go to the doctor's office, I step on the scale backwards. I don't care, and I don't want to know.)

Since that time, I have gained and lost weight, fluctuating several times (I know because of how my pants fit--or didn't fit!). I tried to be more health conscious, to "eat healthy" and workout, but not until about two years ago when I became vegan did I truly change my life.

I had gone through a bad break-up and was still hanging on to it. And despite that I had started to work out again, I was still holding on to the weight I had gained over the winter and since the break up. One day, I found out my ex had moved on and was dating someone new. Finally, I realized I needed to let go and move on myself. I forgave myself for the errors I felt I had made in the realtionship, and I forgave my ex for what I believed were his. Then, I picked up the pieces, breathed out, and moved on. Coincidentally, a friend had recommended the book Skinny Bitch to me, and I started reading it the next day. The day after that, I woke up and knew that my life would never be the same. I was going to become vegan, and I knew that it was a complete lifestyle change.

Those extra pounds shed right off. I committed not only to my change in diet, but also to continual exercise. I have been a vegan now for just under two years, and I have never worked out less than once in a week's time since then. In making these changes, I have not just changed what I eat or how much I exercise (and as a result, the phsyical shape and internal health of my body), but truly committed to a new way of living. And that is the real key.

Now, of course since I'm vegan, I might be slightly biased in believing that a plant-based diet is the best way to go, but what's really important is that you find a diet--and by this I mean diet in the sense of what you will choose to eat throughout your life, not just a fad plan to help you lose weight and get in shape for a few weeks--that works for you. What lifestyle changes will you make and stick with to eat healthfully and nourish your body through food, to move and exercise your muscles through physical activity?

Now, back to that piece of paper in front of you. What does that number signify to you? Is it what you weighed when you graduated high school? before you had your baby? before you got married? what the BMI chart says is an ideal weight for your height? Think about this. Now, think about what has happened in your life to put you off track from being at that ideal weight. What emotional baggage are you holding onto that goes along with it? Are you still beating yourself up for not losing the baby weight faster? Are you feeling down on yourself for packing on a few extra pounds since you got married? Think about this for a minute. Who do you blame? Yourself? Is there anyone else? Do you blame your genetics or a health condition? This may be painful to admit or it may seem silly or it might even make you feel like a bad person, but allow yourself to consider this question with sincerity. It doesn't matter if it's silly or hurtful, just admit it. Do you, on some small level, secretly resent your kids for not having enough you time to work out? Do you blame your significant other for being the reason you don't hit the gym more often? Do you still have hate in your heart for the person who abused you and caused you to turn to food in comfort? Whatever it is, admit it to yourself now.

And then forgive. On the back of that paper, write out your forgiveness. "I, (insert name here), forgive (insert person here, even if it's yourself, or "genetics") for my weight gain. But that is in the past, and I, (insert your name again here), am the one in control of my future. I now take charge of my life and commit to forgiveness and changing my life. I acknowledge my hurts, and I am moving on." Don't skip this. This is a very powerful emotional exercise. Even just admitting that we are to blame for our weight gain and choosing to forgive ourselves for "not being good enough" in the past in regards to our weight can help us to get through the "could haves, should haves, and would haves," and on to the "haves" (I have changed my life, I have been working out, I have chosen to eat more healthfully from here on out, I have chosen to take care of my body and my health).

Now, there's only one thing left to do: throw that piece of paper away. That's right, let go of that number, let go of your hurts. Take a deep breath. Now, move on: How are you going to change your life and take back your body?

Don't be surprised when those pounds start shedding off. :)

21-Day Vegan Kickstart

2011-03-31T12:03:00.001-04:00

Friends, subscribers, and random passersby, lend me your ears!

The Physician's Committe for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) will start its next 21-Day Vegan Kickstart on April 4--just a few days away! The challenge helps "vegan-flirts" (or people interested in losing weight, following a plant-based diet, bringing consciousness to their eating, getting healthy, or any of the other MANY benefits of being vegan) with the transition from our conventional Western diet to a back-to-basics approach to eating, living, and healthcare. You can sign up completely FREE on the website and will be able to access celebrity tips (including Bob Harper, Biggest Loser trainer and vegan convert!), sound nutritional advice from healthcare professionals, recipe ideas, inspiration, a forum for support, and more. There's also a (FREE!) app available for download on Droids or the various iDevices.

I'm asking you to consider taking this challenge. You don't have to commit to becoming a lifetime vegan, but I promise you the results you will see in just three weeks will astound you. You'll be making deicions not only for a healthier you, but also a healthier planet. Just remember, if you are miserable the entire time (I highly doubt it, but worst-case scenario), it is ONLY 3 weeks of your life. But I promise you that by bringing a consciousness to your eating, you will assuredly take tips with you for eating more healthfully that will stay with you for the rest of your life, even if you decide to "go back." And you'd be amazed at how powerful 3 weeks of healthy eating can impact your body for life.
If you're up for the challenge and reaping the rewards, I want to hear about it! Feel free to let me know if I can help with ANY support issues.

"(Just Might) Make Me Believe"

2011-03-27T20:49:00.000-04:00

I want the kind of love you only find in a slow country song.
I wanna be the subject a steel pedal sings about.
I want to get lost in someone's arms, spinning around on a crowded dance floor, everyone looking at us and knowing we mean the words, that the words were meant for us...

iBooks

2011-03-19T14:05:00.000-04:00

So although I am ademantly opposed to e-readers, I did just download iBooks to my phone so that I could finally access and store PDFs. I don't plan on using it much, one because I hate reading on a screen, and two because I know it's bad to read on a backlit screen like an iPhone, but I did look through and find some good additions to my iLibrary, one of which was a free book called Be Happy Now. It's a short book, but it offers some good advice. I wanted to share the following for my Boo:

from the chapter entitled "The Happiness Snowball":

"When I first started looking for things to be happy about, all I could find was bedtime. I was so happy that the day was over and I could relax in my bed with no one to bother me. Each night when I would go to bed I would thank the Universe for bedtime; for the comfy clean sheets, the soft warm blankets, the pillow that fit my head "just so;" soon I realized that life was incredibly peaceful in the mornings when I first awoke, and I would stretch and turn and snuggle down again, thanking the Universe for the peaceful snuggly blankets and yet another moment of calm in my day."

I think this is sometimes the case. Sometimes I am just so thankful for the end of the day, to be able to go to sleep and sleep well, because I know everything will seem a little better in the morning. Sometimes sleep is all I look forward to about my day, but I remember another quote from Mary Anne Radmacher: "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'"

Food!

2011-03-13T12:43:00.000-04:00

Some edible creations I've done lately:

(Raw) vegan chocolate truffles.

And yes, I know what you are thinking: raw?! vegan?! Hardly! I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing. But boy was I wrong! These things are amazing. And there's an endless supply of things you can do with them just by toppings alone. Here we have cocoa-dusted, powder-sugar coated, coconut shreds, and espresso beans! Yum yum in my tum tum.

And here we have saffron-infused red peppers (click the link for the recipe) over a bed of arborio rice garnished with fresh mint.

The plating looks much more fancy than it is. I actually just took a solo cup and cut off the bottom, using the part with two open ends as a mold, which I oiled then stuffed with the ingredients and pulled the mold off when I was done. Easy peasy lemon squeazy.

And another view:

Feng Shui

2011-03-13T01:40:00.002-05:00

So I read this article last month about feng shui in the office, and I recently arranged my desk at work to accomodate some changes to better allow the flow of "chi" at work. (Really, it just helped to get out the clutter and try to include inspiring images and objects.)

And today, when I transferred a house plant my lovely friend Bonnie gave me during my visit to her a few weeks ago into a new pot, I decided to place the plant at the back left corner of the desk in my office, where the article suggests putting a plant of water fountain because it is an area related to wealth and placing such an object here promotes growth in this area of life.

Now, whether or not I fully subscribe to this idea of energy flow in the space around me (I'm somewhat on the fence), every time I have looked over at this beautiful plant in its thrift store pot with a Japanese cherry blossom branch depicted on the front, I am in awe. It seems silly that a plant could spark such a response; after all, it's "just a plant," but it literally amazes me. I can't describe how...emotional I feel about that plant being there. I think, I have a real live plant growing on my desk right in front of me, and it is so beautiful. How amazing the natural world is! So in a way, I do feel the 'growth of wealth' into my life already. Nature is reminding me that life is already abundant...

Three Cheers for Disney

2011-03-13T00:06:00.000-05:00

I've been anti-Disney for quite some time (the sexist, racist, anti-semitic history of the company are just a few reasons), but for once they've done something right and progressive: they shut down the McDonald's in Disney World and opened up a Babycakes vegan cupcake shop in its place! How f-ing cool is that? To read more, go here.

Product vs. Process

2011-03-12T19:31:00.000-05:00

"Our society values products, not process." And for artists or artisticy people, this is hard to deal with. I'm an incredibly left-brain driven person, even to the point of (almost successfully) squelching my right-brain, which I have silenced most of my life. And yet, I want to be an artist. No, I don't want to paint or sculpt or draw. But I want to cook, bake, decorate, make things with my hands, write, sing, create. Creation is, essentially, all that art really is.

And yet, I'm so scared of attempting anything unless I'm assured of a "product" outcome that it's paralyzing. And it's the same way not just with "art," but with my whole life. Now that I'm done with school and I have a degree, I've been so lost. My "product" is a piece of paper that is sitting on my desk doing almost nothing for me. And having left the academic track, I'm so scared of starting anything else. I have all these ideas and things I'd like to try, but it's paralyzing. Where do I begin? What if I get to another "product" and again go nowhere with it? Isn't it still then in the process phase? And how do we manage to let ourselves just inhabit that arena of life, the place where we're just doing, without having to have something to show for it. That's the problem for me right now. I'm incredibly happy when I allow myself to just be and do and try the things that interest me. But then I start to think I have to be doing something that will have something to show for it in the end. And that's when I start to feel overwhelmed and depressed.

My life has been so much more vibrant over the last few weeks. I cook new recipes, I now have live plants in every room of my apartment except my bathroom (where I have dried roses), and today I took a new way home--just decided to start driving and figure out a new route, to see places in this town where I've been living but haven't seen yet. It seems like such a small, pointless, silly thing, but it was HUGE for me. And none of it means shit to anybody but me.

But I'm not thinking about where I'm going after July. In fact, I'm trying not to think about it. If I could, if I weren't afraid, oh the things I'd try! The broken record in my mind keeps coming back to being a vegan baker (like Ace of Cakes style decadent desserts) or cook, a singer (and maybe playing an instrument, preferably something less predictable than a guitar, like a harmonica, a banjo, a washboard, or a fiddle, though a guitar might suffice in the meantime), a personal trainer (Jillian Michaels style), and a writer. Can't I just be them all, and have a garden, and ride and show my horse, and create my own clothes, and knit and read all the time, and go back to school and learn about Einstein and physics and Steven Hawking and black holes and the universe and God? Can't I just do it all?

There's Nothing Worse

2011-03-09T23:56:00.000-05:00

...than stale Swedish Fish. Except maybe stale Sour Patch Kids.

Things I Have Forgotten

2011-03-07T19:39:00.000-05:00

Lately, I have felt as though I have been losing my memory. Example, the other night I was lying in bed, and I could not for the life of me remember how old I was. I knew I wasn't 21 anymore, but I couldn't remember if I was 22 or 23 or how old. Granted I had taken two melatonin and was barely awake and coherent, and I couldn't do the math to figure out the difference between the year I was born and the present year, but still. A person should know how old they are. Or does it really matter?

Yesterday I was driving and momentarily forgot how many days are in a year. My first instinct was of course the correct one, but I still wasn't certain that it was 365 until I said the old saying "24/7/365."

I was doodling some musical notes just a few minutes ago and realized I wasn't sure if I was making actual notes or just things that looked like notes. I realized I've probably forgotten how to read music almost entirely.

I can't do math for shit anymore. I'm so dependent on a calculator that it's not funny.

And yet, there are other things that will not let themselves be forgot, no matter how hard I've tried: phone numbers of exes, the taste of his kiss, the excitement of lying in bed and talking for hours on end and never wanting to say goodnight and feeling refreshed the next day on minimal sleep, home...

A Historical Perspective

2011-02-28T18:14:00.000-05:00

A great point I was just reading about man's historical relationship with food:

"Traditionally, human beings ate foods grown locally, that had matured with and absorbed the same energy as they themselves had. Someone living in a cold northern climate would have been living on foods that were also able to cope with that climate."--Mind, Body, & Soul: The Body Shop Book of Wellbeing

It's a great point for macrobiotics.

Good People

2011-02-27T22:49:00.000-05:00

It will never cease to amaze me the people that we meet, the ones that we end up keeping in touch with; they're always the ones you'd least expect. This weekend I got the chance to spend with an old friend and her husband, both people I deem good people.

After nearly over five months of living in the same state and only 3 hours away, I finally made the trip to visit my friend Bon down in the Springs. It was exactly the getaway I needed. I spent the weekend in her cabin (8,500+ feet elevation in the mountains, over 6 miles up the mountain roads), eating "slow food," touring cute hippie boutiques in Manitou Springs, and talking about everything under the sun. I truly had forgotten just how much we had in common, how well we connected and got along, until this trip. It makes me sad that I haven't gone sooner, but also looking forward to the next trip, which I hope is very soon.

The view was amazing, the food was delicious, the company was divine. Her and her husband are exactly the kind of people that renew my faith in humanity, that inspire me to continue pursuing a conscious, artful, existence. They are so in love--both with each other and life. They have a hunger for life, and not crazy dramatic adventures, but everyday life: cooking, eating, learning, music. They bake homemade bread, brew their own beers, hang their clothes on the line, play cello, dabble in the arts, watch Family Guy, and continuously read and learn everything under the sun that interests them. It was one of the most beautiful things to share some time with them...

The red rocks in the distance are Garden of the Gods.

At a view like this, you can't help but feel incredibly small...

According to Google

2011-02-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

's auto-fill search engine, the top five things that people want to know "how-to" do are:

1) tie a tie
2) draw
3) cook a turkey
4) lose weight
and 5) [just "how to"]

Optimist's Creed

2011-02-21T12:10:00.000-05:00

I've posted the following on the bulletin board beside my desk and try to read it as often as possible and to think of it when I can't. I hope it may be as inspiring to others as it is to me (emphases mine):

Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.
To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
--Christian D. Larson

Universal Truth #1

2011-02-21T12:04:00.001-05:00

Love will never be enough.

(Sorry, John Lennon, but love is not all you need. What is, I'm not sure, but I wish I did.)

The Thing About Small Towns

2011-02-19T23:03:00.001-05:00

...that makes them or breaks them is the people who live in them.

Right now, I am living in an even smaller town than the one that I grew up in, and for a while, I was really struggling. but now I realize that I don't think I have ever been to a place where I felt so welcomed and the people so incredibly friendly. Example: at least once every day I pass someone on the street or make eye contact with someone at the store, and not only do they smile, but they actually say hello. They don't know me. I don't know them. We've never seen one another before. But they smile and say hello. It's like a scene from a movie of times gone by, only it's real and today and I'm a part of it.

Example B: I locked my keys in my car a couple of weekends ago (while it was running, in neutral, my spare keys to it and all keys to my apartment securely locked inside--f my life). Then, that same week, I somehow managed to lock myself out of my bedroom (my phone--and the landlord's number--charging in there, as well as all but my dirty clothes (I'd just gotten out of the shower); don't ask me how this happened because I honestly didn't even know my door locked). Of course, it wasn't the kind of door that you could just stick a bobby pin into and open that way. No, this door needed a key, a key that I was never given nor did I know existed (nor did my landlord when I finally went to my neighbor's to get his number and use their phone to call him). Again, I had to call a locksmith. When he showed up, he recognized me and said, "So we see each other again." "Too soon for my liking," I said. Two minutes later, my door was unlocked (I'd tried for almost an hour to do anything and everything to open it, including beating the knob with a hammer). When I asked him how much, he said, "Don't worry about it." I didn't object; I was so thankful.

Example C: There is an old man that I visit as part of my service, and he is almost enough by himself to make me fall in love with this town. On Valentine's day, I cooked dinner and took it over to be with him so he wouldn't have to be alone. He had bought me three red roses. We talked about his childhood, growing up rodeoing and breaking horses and such, and how his brother (73) is still a working cowboy on a cattle ranch. I asked if he knew anyone around here that has horses, because I have been aching to ride like words cannot express. He said he didn't. But then the other day he came into the clinic and said, "I have a proposition for you. If you want to drive out to Haxtun [about an hour and fifteen minutes away from the town I live in] with me, I'll get my brother to let you ride. Maybe you can even help him work the cattle." I'm in love with that old man, and I truly can't wait to take him up on his offer. I imagine that riding across the range will be one of the best rides I've ever taken.

I love this place more and more every day. I don't want to stay past the end of my lease, but it's a good place to be for the present. The people are what make it worth it.

A Crazy Theory?

2011-02-19T18:41:00.000-05:00

After watching the documentary Touch the Sound, I have been formulating an idea, a theory of sorts about the senses. In the film, Evelyn Glenne says that "hearing is a form of touch." When she said this, I thought instantly of the fact that we hear by soundwaves (which, as we know are a form of energy traveling through space at a certain frequency) that can only be "heard" when the waves cause our eardrums to vibrate. Glenne speaks as a profoundly deaf individual when she says that hearing is a form of touch, but in reality, even normally hearing persons hear by soundwaves "touching" the hearing mechanisms in their ears. Is everyone with me here?

So, thinking about this, I thought how there is also the "regular" sense of touch. But there is also scent, which is actually when minute particles of a substance float through air and are caught in the sensory cells in our nasal passages. So again, the particles must "touch" our cells in order for us to smell them.

And then there's the sense of taste. Of course the taste buds on our tongues are specialized to detect for bitter, sour, salty, and sweet tastes, but taste is also about textures. And in order to taste anything, the substance must be inserted into our mouths and "touch" our tastebuds, our tongue, or teeth, or cheeks, etc.

So there is the sense of touch, hearing, smell, and taste, all of them which are really just forms of "touch" in some way. The only sense that I couldn't get to fit into this category (though I've just had a thought and now I'm not so sure) is the sense of sight. To me it seemed as though with the other senses, something must "touch" us (or we touch it) in order for us to sense it. But with sight, it was more as though we rest our eyes on something. It was a nice idea in my head, this sort of difference between "touch" for all senses and sight on its own as this thing which rests without touching on objects. But then I just remembered that we see by light striking the sensory cells in our eyes. So in a way, again, touch is the sense.

In everything we sense, we are touching, being touched.

Am I crazy? Or does any of this make sense to anyone else?

Documentary Review: Touch the Sound

2011-02-13T16:56:00.001-05:00

"Hearing is a form of touch," claims Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glenne in the documentary Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glenne. From the opening shot, the film is captivating both for its story and its film making. Evelyn, who at age 11 was told by her school audiologist that she would have to go to a school for the deaf and never be able to play music again, has become a world-renowned improvisational musician. This element coupled with the documentary makers beautiful juxtaposition of intricately framed shots of every day life truly take the viewer on a journey--inside themselves, around the world, into the life of a profoundly deaf individual (and musician), outside to nature, returning again and again home, home to the scene of the opening shot, home to the themes of the film, home to ourselves, home to the breath, an important element in the lives of the featured musicians and the film. It's like a pulsing in and out of shots, like the vibrations of the music.

Playing in an abandoned warehouse, a New York subway station, recording studios, on the street, in restaurants and bars, outside Scottish ruins, really anywhere and everywhere that she goes, Glenne demonstrates that all of life is sound, all of life is touch. There is music and rhythm in everything we see and do, if we only stop and pay attention. And it's not just her telling the viewer this that hits the idea home, but the focus of the camera which forces the viewer to pay attention.

Though she's not able to say what the opposite of sound is when asked (though she is able to say with certainty that it is NOT silence), she says that sound is never ending, that even when we stop hearing it, it continues on, to where she cannot say, but sort of like life, and where we go in death. No one can say for sure, but we can be sure that this is not it, that something more continues on. That, to her is music.

Watching Glenne and fellow musicians play, the viewer is reminded of music in its most raw form of artistry. They aren't the kind of musicians who have mastered instruments handed to them. Instead, they make instruments that never were, taking things around them and turning them into musical devices, like the great artists of time have not painted what is but what they see, like great scientist have asked not "why," but rather, "why not." And like all great improv musicians, her featured songs, like the documentary itself, leaves the viewer anticipating (though not desiring--the two are not the same and not always coinciding) but never able to predict the ending, holding always on the cusp of uncertainty, teetering on the edge of finality.

Out With The Old, In With The New

2011-01-09T16:49:00.000-05:00

My motto (resolution) for 2010 to "love until it hurts" has passed. I'm not sure how well I did with this resolution, but I'm ready to let it go and start this year fresh, not allowing myself to get held up on what I see as my shortcmoings of the past. So, for 2011, I have set my mantra to "read, write, breathe." I was inspired to adopt this motto after considering the quote I have often said about myself that "reading is my inhale, writing is my exhale."

Since moving to Colorado, I have done very little of any of the three, finishing only three books between September and December (thought I started half a dozen or more others). And as for writing, I have maintained my three daily morning pages, but I have done little writing of any other variety, as can be attested to by my lack of blog posts. And as for taking the time to breathe in the literal sense of the word, I have perhaps meditated twice in four months.

As part of my motivation to write more, I have looked for opportunities to "write for a purpose." (I feel I like the "intrinsic motivation for catharsis" that writing has so much spurred in the past, possibly for a lack of emotional upsets--which is a good thing...though maybe I'm just supressing them.) So, I have set about to start writing to the companies whose products I admire, especially in regards to environmental, health, social, and vegan aspects of production. Thus far, I have written to the Justin's, a Boulder company who makes a vegan version of Nutella; and Daiya, the best vegan cheese alternative on the market. (Previously, around August of last year, I wrote to Amy's, a frozen and packaged food company that others natural products.) Inspired by my parter, both intentionally and unintentionally on his part, I'm trying to do more than just do nothing. Let me explain. As a vegan, I am committed to not taking part in what I see are the economical, social, environmental, health, political, and ethical/moral problems inherent in animal and animal by-product consumption (issues which I've espoused before and thus will not get into at any length here). At the same time, my commitment, which is a micromovement, is not effective in contributing to any macromovement, or large scale improvements. In my effort to be more macro-thinking and acting, I'm starting by writing to the companies that I admire, to encourage them to keep up the good work (and, if I'm lucky, they'll send me coupons as a bonus ;-p). Eventually, I'm also going to start writing to companies whose products and practices are less than admirable, in addition to working with the CREDO action group to petition such comapnies and organizations.
I'm hoping to get more into writing in other ways, especially in creative writing with poetry and fiction, and by writing letters to my friends and family, looking into free-lancing, and more. But this is my direction for the present moment.

In regards to reading, I've already finished one book (Fast Food Nation) and am likely to finish my second today (The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choices Are Undermining Education).

2011 is off to a beautiful start, which really started at the end of 2010 with my renewed energy and spirit from my trip home for the holidays.

"You Spin My Head Right 'Round"

2010-12-04T23:11:00.000-05:00

Things I have been thinking lately that make my head spin:

The Universe is ever expanding, but as it expands parts of it are also contracting (black holes), and as those masses continue to grow in size, their pull of gravity increases, making them more powerful and better able to suck more things in, continuously getting bigger and more powerful. Eventually, they'll suck everything back in and compress it all down to one tiny mass and explode from the pressure. And the Second Big Bang will occur. Or maybe it's the third or forth or one thousandth. If it happens like this, then the Universe isn't really infinite at all, but can only reach a certain point before it all starts to reverse and start over.

If force equals mass times energy and energy is in all things, all things are energy in some form, what is my potential force? Infinite. Think about it. I am made up of smaller parts, all with their own kinds of energy and potential to become different forms of energy. Every cell in our beings has unlimited potential for energy.

Maybe the point of life is to die, to return to God and our togetherness with everything. Maybe dying is Heaven in itself, to be freed from our attachment to the world.

Wondering While Wandering

2010-11-14T22:11:00.000-05:00

I've gotten to do a lot of traveling lately for my job. I visit Denver and Boulder frequently (Denver is overrated, Boulder may be a bit too extreme for me, but I really enjoy it), and experienced my first snow fall of the season October 18 in Estes Park (which is not, as I have been corrected pronounced like the Spanish word for "these").

Along the way, I've learned to knit. I've just finished my second scarf, in fact, and started on my third (guess what everyone's getting for Christmas!).

But I've felt a bit...lost lately. Like I can't really remember what I started out loving. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of inspiration to keep me going, but it's been hard. I'm trying to live life as in the moment as possible and to take from each experience a directed growth towards those thing I want to accomplish in life, but still, it's hard.

I write every morning in my journal, first thing upon waking, three pages long hand. But other than that, I've written nothing of merit. I can't remember the last time I really wrote a poem. Sometimes I get ideas for a story, but I do nothing with them. And I wonder how I could have come so far, calling myself a writer, and ended up like this. If I were truly a writer, would I not be consumed with a desire to create with words? I feel like I've lost my love of language sometimes. Words don't move me like they used to. I don't remember things in poems. I don't write. I don't even read very much anymore. Since I've moved here, I've only finished three books. One of which, was an audiobook that I listened to on my commutes.

Maybe I'm just growing and expanding my repetoire of things to write about. Maybe I'm just exploring other genres of art (I've found I'm quite good at knitting. I seem to have an eye for design, and it continues to grow as I gain experience and knowledge).

But sometimes I worry...maybe I'm just spread too thin. Maybe I need to just pick. Focus. Hone in on one thing, and one thing only...If I had to, I know it'd be writing, but right now, it seems so far away from me...

Somewhere Far Away

2010-10-11T16:26:00.000-04:00

This weekend DTM came to visit me here in Colorado. It's been AMAZING! We stayed in Boulder and Denver each one night, and Boulder was by far my favorite. I can't wait to go back again. The Farmers' Market there is unbelievable. It's huge, and everyone is so nice. Boulder is kind of like it's own separate universe, full of my kind of people (aka hippies and liberals and progressives), but also a strikingly beautiful vista. We went to a national/state park called Chatauqua, and the view was breathtaking. But standing there on the mountains looking up at the setting sun and down over the valley, I felt, for the first time since I left, that I was far from home...

Dimensions Collide

2010-09-23T19:15:00.002-04:00

As I walk, I think about how my feet, through the soles of my shoes, are thus connected to the road, which is connected to another road and another until the one which stretches through three states before it meets the water of the Mississippi, a river that carries a steamer to the shore on the other side, where the muddy banks meet drier ground which extends itself in cornfields through the Midwest to an earthworm arrogating the soil beneath the oak tree in your courtyard releasing oxygen that will be blown in the wind to your balcony and run its fingers through the curls of your hair…

If all these things are connected, and everything is happening at the same time as Einstein suggested, then we are not really separated at all, not by time or distance. These things have connected us.

Still, I walk barefoot to be closer to you…

Road Trip

2010-09-16T22:40:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures from my drive to Colorado:

Colorado State Line

Beautiful :)

"Happiness is something we create."

Home Sweet Home

Downown (kind of reminds me of Greenville...)

The mountains in the distance (the view from my hotel)

And last but not least...the sunset on my drive back to the hotel tonight.

Three Words

2010-09-15T18:59:00.002-04:00

Glee starts Tuesday.

!

:)

Moments

2010-09-15T00:05:00.000-04:00

Today I was eating at this hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant when I looked across the street and saw these two little boys, maybe 6 or 7, possibly 8. Then I realized one was peeing, right there in the alley, within a few feet of the street! He was peeing for awhile before his friend finally decided to stand in front of him and block the view from the street so people driving by wouldn't see (though the stream struck out way past, of course). Then in a minute or two, an old lady walked passed, and the boys decided to follow her "secretly." They were so damned cute. The one that had been peeing had a plastic grocery sack on his back, so that one handle was on each shoulder, and when he ran, it flopped behind him like a cape. The two ran behind telephone poles, fences, and trees, following the old lady, as though they were being really sneaky and the skinny objects could fully hide both of them in their bright red shirts.

I watched them from the restaurant, feeling like I was part of a whole nother world. And then I laughed aloud, shook my head, and smiled, fighting back tears of complete awe at the beauty of mundane moments in life...

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

2010-09-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

The above quote is by Neale Donald Walsch, and it is the exact thought that popped into my head when I was sitting at a redlight in Arcanum, Ohio, on Tuesday. And that is the thought that made me decide, as crazy and quick and hard and unprepared as it all may be, to take a job in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, where I arrived today at approximately 4pm Mountain Time.

I still cannot believe that this is real. It all feels like a dream, and time isn't passing like it normally does. It feels like ages and yet no time at all since I was home and saying goodbye to all my friends and family.

The drive was pleasant. No traffic whatsoever. Time to make calls and catch up, listen to audiobooks, sing along to country songs that all seemed so fitting, and mostly, think. The sky was blue and the fields were green; the sun shone down warm on my legs. There were times when I wanted to cry out of fear or sadness, but I asked myself, Why cry when there is so much to smile about? And there were times when I did cry tears of sheer and utter joy at the beauty of life, the love and support I have felt from my friends and family in this last week, and the excitement for the adventure that awaits me.

I have never felt more in the moment, more present, more alive than I have in the last two weeks, and this just adds to it. I now know that no matter what, I will be okay. And I finally truly believe for the first time in my life that anything is possible. It's not just something that's said; it's true. I can have, do, or be anything that I want. And that starts now. If I can do this, and I can, then there is nothing in the world that I cannot do.

I have experienced the great American fantasy of packing up and leaving everything behind to take a chance and start over somewhere new, heading out West and driving across the country. It's something I have always dreamed about, and now I have done it.

Don't get me wrong, I miss my friends and family, and this isn't going to always be easy. I'm going to get major homesick. But I know that no matter what, I will always be okay. And that is the greatest feeling I have ever felt in my life.

To all my friends and family for the amazing love and support: no words can express my love and gratitude, and no amount of time would ever be enough to spend with you and show you how you enrich my life. I may be hours and hundreds of miles away, but you are always with my in my heart. <3

Changing Tastebuds

2010-08-30T13:19:00.000-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me the things that I like (and actually crave) now that I am vegan, but would have never touched before: hot dogs, rueben sandwiches, tomatoes, soy milk, cake...the list goes on.

I know that tastebuds change, but still, it strikes me as interesting. Though I have also been thinking that these changes may perhaps reflect the larger scheme of things; after all, "the only constant is change."