Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-Bill Shakes-

Reasons I am excited about spring...

A few ideas about who to befriend and what to do with them...

1. Never apologize for who you are. Trite? Yes. But if you're hanging around people who make you feel like you need to pretend to be someone else, you're hanging out with the wrong people.
2. Never make someone else apologize for who they are. Save yourself the trouble. If you constantly find yourself picking someone apart; if they drive you crazy, don't torture them or yourself. Spend time with people who you can celebrate!
3. Don't act or speak if you feel jealous. Good people do horrendous things when they feel the heat of envy. Envy destroys rationality, good manners and, inevitably, friendships.
4. Don't suffer fools. Period. There is nothing admirable about tolerating someone who offends any of your true senses: justice or right and wrong. Stand up for the things that are worth fighting for, and don't waste time on people who make you fight about the asinine.
5. Don't pick friends who are just like you. One of you is enough! People who compliment us are often the people who do what we cannot, or who cannot do what we can. That way, they lift us up and we lift them up; we teach and are taught; we grow in ways we wouldn't if they were not in our lives. 
6. Love hard. Don't be distant for the sake of being cool. Love true and hard. The people who matter won't push you away. They'll be glad to have you.
7. Don't play games. If you're mad, say it. Say it when it happens. Get it out. Emotions grow exponentially when you suppress them. And suddenly, something as simple as "you hurt my feelings" becomes "you always hurt my feelings because you're selfish and vapid and I hate you." Seriously.

I miss Montana...

Glacier National Park...

Just a river, cutting through the forest... As if anything were "just" anything in Montana.

Swimming in the purest water I've ever seen...

This field was full of glacier lillies. Their leaves are edible, and delicious. They taste like a sweeter (and spicier) spinach. They were my lunch every day...

As we blazed trail that few people have traveled, our paths were often flooded by the running streams of snowmelt flowing down the mountain.

The mountain goats in Glacier National Park were strangley acclamated to the presence of human beings. After spending most of our trip west in the wild and untamed Bob Marshall Wilderness, where animals kept their safe distance from us, we found the close proximity of these gorgeous animals to be strange... and a bit disturbing.

...I've always felt like the trade that we made for getting these big brains of ours has been a costly one: We are forever seperated from the animal kingdom. While I wish it wasn't so, I know that maintaining that distance is the only way of being good stewards on this planet.

Why I love Kurt Vonnegut

This is his gloriously simple drawing of an asshole. A sense of humor is more potent to me than any sense of style.

Below is his drawing of a tree, which will soon be a tattoo on my body.

Some midday poetry

The drip and dribble of midday urination

Are punctuated by a sudden discovery:

The tag in my thong

Says MADE IN BANGLADESH.

As I sit and I stare

At the tiny white ribbon,

Marked with an "S"

(Skeptics, tread lightly)

Drips and dribbles become the whirring of needles

Sewing and surging.

A girl,

Much and not at all like me,

Holds my underwear,

Her callussed hands caressing

Cotton and polyester blends.

As she connects my g string

To the triangular bit of fabric that holds

My fleshy flower.

I can almost mistake the ammonia aroma rising from the water

For sweet patchouli;
Can almost see her in my minds eye,

Dangling the thong from a graceful brown finger,

A dark eyebrow raised 

at what she can only dubiously call

"almost underwear."

 

-3/9/09

An old relic...

Her pain is black and white.

She is the mountain and the stream.

She tries to scream out the hurt,

But the louder she cries

The more silent and cold it grows.

She shakes her head in disgust.

Disgusted at her own reflection.

Her hair falls down like rain,

A hot fury of tears.

She wouldn't say she's torn:

There's nothing tangible to tear.

The mountain crumbles.

The stream dries up. 

She swallows her pain

And chokes.

 

Orange magic.

I took this one at the end of the summer. "Dan in the traffic light."

The Great Falafel Fall

Well, my last blog seems to me, after a few months of hindsight, hysterical.

I lasted 7 days on my cleanse. It was more than enough. ...Too bad I drank a couple glasses of wine during the cleanse. I don't think fermented grapes clean out your intestines, MeMe.

So, in an effort to take myself a little less seriously and give myself a break, I post to you the most embarassing of my recent endeavors into late night eating (always a bad idea).

Enjoy...

Excerpt from email on 2/19/2009:

ALSO. Last night, I drunkenly went for falafel.

It gets better.

THEN. With a guilty expression and a small falafel on wheat (adorned with hummus, spicy garlic, red sauce and onions) I stumbled out of the establishment. On my way down the steps, the gods punished me for my drunken eating. I slipped (on what I don't know) and fell, breaking (I think) a bone in my arm and (here it is) landing face down ON MY FALAFEL.

Yes.

I get up. Covered in what looks to be vomit. Couples pass me by, gawking, giggling, laughing outright. I begin to wimper. I call Dan. It went a little something like this:

ME: DAN.
DAN: Yes?
ME: COME GET ME NOW. I'M IN ADAM'S MORGAN. I'M NEAR... *begins to cry* Amsterdam Falafel.
DAN: Okay... Are you alright?
ME: No....waaaaaaaah.....no. I'm not. I had an accident.
DAN: Oh my god. Wait, where are you? Are you ok?
ME: JUST COME GET ME, DAMNIT.

10 minutes later, I get in the car. After a bit of silence, Dan finally says it. "Did you get drunk and go get falafel and then fall down and drop it on yourself?" ....

.....Amazing. My reaction: "SHUT UP, DAN!"

Oh, and ps. What was left of the falafel, smushed between me and the filthy city sidewalks...


......I ate it.

Cleaning out Remnants of 2008

Today begins my second endeavor into the Master Cleanse - a juice fast that lasts anywhere between 10 and 30 days, depending on the willpower of the participant. I did this fast over a year ago and lasted 12 days. The results were unbelievable.

I developed unbelievable mental clarity. My energy shot through the roof. My skin was glowing. I felt pure and sterile; a blank slate upon which to paint a fresh start. I came off the Cleanse having lost about 10 pounds, and feeling like a million bucks.

...Unfortunately, I also launched into a year of detrimental weight obsession, starvation and insanity. Yes.

SO. Now that I've got some much needed hindsight, I realize that my pursuit of successfully completing the Master Cleanse was the result of my desire to lose weight rapidly. I jumped down the rabbit hole - and didn't surface until a few months ago. Thankfully, I've been scared straight. And my foray into the Master Cleanse has foundations in the pursuit of sanity and purity - not developing the willpower to reject food.

These are my goals for the Master Cleanse:

1. Start 2009 fresh. Eliminate the toxins and impurities built up from the last year.

2. Access the mental clarity that I experienced during the last Cleanse to make some major life choices, and to help deal with finding a mental medicine for anxiety.

3. Give my skin, hair, and insides a deep cleaning - to see how pure can I make myself. Get beautiful on the inside.

4. Reduce cellulite. Hey, look. I know. Sounds like a dangerous repeat of my first try. The truth is, I don't have much of it, but it gnaws at me and makes me feel like no amount of exercise is enough. I think helping to shed the cellulite will help me relax about my body - regardless of the number I see on the scale.

5. At the close of the Cleanse, reintroduce food as if for the first time. Appreciate the purity of raw food & GO RAW for 2009. I think it will be easier to do this if I get a fresh start.

...So, that's what I'm doing. I'm doing the Master Cleanse. Did my first salt water flush this morning. I will keep you posted as to how it goes from day to day. From my last go-round, I remember that the first three days are the worst.

Maybe it will inspire some dark poetry. Or a profound revelation. I suspect I'm going to have to hold out until the end before I experience one of those.


Wish me luck!