I used to think blogging was for vain, self-important people crying for attention. Cynic, yes. Scornful, yes. To be clear, I still think some people publicize too much of their lives on the internet in the search of validation and from a certain narcissism. But now, I also understand blogging as a need to express, to have an outlet. For those of us who aren't musically endowed, artistically inclined or athletically committed, a putatively easy choice then becomes writing.
Anyways, you know what this 'blog' is about. The insights are my own and particular. That is, they probably won't apply to you. Take what you want, discard what is useless, judge if you will, and welcome to my world.
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I started this coloured project out of despero-curosity. My credo was the old, philosophical adage: Garbage In, Garbage Out :) As you'll see, I had many mantras throughout the process. Some people would say it's dogmatic/extremist/excessive. It is! For this reason, it can probably never be replicated, by myself or others, given that all of my mental might and energy stores concentrated on these tasks. I am driven by something outside myself.
I tried for a modified monastic life. A truly postmodern concortion of East meets West, geographically and spiritually. Eastern insights in a Western mind.
I tried for discipline and direct action within free emotional reign.
The Game Plan
For 7 days, I committed to:
Rising before the sun remembering the billions of people united under that same sun, doing what they must to have their bread/rice. I never gave much consideration to the sun previously, despite going on 3-day solstice celebrations in Peru and Ecuador, where the sun, that life-giving energy, is revered. Its potency is unparalleled. I see why indigenous people and peasants give offerings to it because their entire existences are tied to the land and to the callous whims of the elements. I remember in Peru, a Quechua man explained to me the origins of the thumbs up (as in everything is ok) gesture. According to him, indigenous people spanning the Virreinato of Peru or what is now South America held up their thumbs, like we do now, as contact points between the body and the sun. It was believed that the sun's energy could be absorbed through the thumbs. The evolution of this gesture has no doubt changed, but I thought that interesting.
I also went to sleep around 10pm each night.
Praying. Religion is a constant in human history. We are all spiritual; we all pray albeit in different ways. Some say formalized, ritualized prayers. Others use other mediums whether song, dance, art, emotion. I think when we wish something for ourselves or for another person we are praying. It was time to get back to the infinite, in myself and in others.
Dancing. Even when it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. I did it to show gratitude for the full functioning of my body. To feel pulses and rhythms. There are no handicaps.
Exercise. To stop thinking and physically be stronger. Started running. 30 minutes, 40, an hour (side note, when you haven't run for a long time and you try for a 40 minute 'light jog', the body punishes you)
Reading. I hopscotched between poetry/women's studies/development studies/global history/fables and fairy tales/lyrics/biographies/theories and theorists. I read everywhere and all the time, seriously.
Applications. I want to find my vocation. I applied to medical advocacy work in Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, to organic farming in Hawaii, a summer science camp on native reserves in Canada, and an outdoors winter education camp in Northern Ontario. "Pray while moving your feet", was what I told myself.
Focusing on myself. It's not selfish as I had previously assessed. It's smart. In the end, we can only be ourselves. Trite it is, but true.
Meeting with a different friend everyday. To catch up, change perspectives and opinions, change places, and to laugh god damnit! :)
Opening my mind. I even started Ekhart Tolle's Awakening Your Life's Purpose! If anyone knows of the disparaging comments and critiques I've made about the book and the people who read it... I wanted to let go of my prejudices, assumptions, and judgements because in reality they were reflective of my own self criticisms, inconsistencies, and 'inadequacies'. I went to a crystal/stones shop, got my cards read, yoga, etc. "Bow to your enemies, for they are your greatest teachers".
Letting the emotions rise and fall. "Everything rises to pass away". If I wanted to cry, I did. If I wanted to pity myself, I did. If I wanted to feel rage and jealousy, I did. And eventually I got to the point, YA BASTA! I also allowed myself to feel another gamete of emotions: forgiveness, relief, excitement, hope, wonder, gratitude, humility, trust, letting go. The emotions were cyclical as opposed to linear and I experienced all of them daily; this time without meta-cognitive analysis or psychologizing the thought process or the thoughts themselves.
Writing. To pay attention, see patterns, and chronicle the changes. What you read here is a page of the volumes.
The Food
After Korea, I wasn't taking solace in food, my one sure comfort. I had no appetite. In Cambodia, I kept losing weight. To date, I've lost 20 pounds (through diet and exercise). I'm not buying into the phallic and phantasmal ideals of a perfect body. I am however, concerned about this new shape. To deal with it, I'm reading. Why? Because I wanted to understand my emotional responses to food, to loss, to hurt, to the body, through cognitive frameworks. As a Western woman, our bodies have always been scrutinized so much so that some women understand the entirety of the self through the physical body. I'm still struggling with this. What I do know is that I'm determined to continue respecting this corporal vehicle. After eating vegan for a week, it's not as gustatorily restrictive as I suspected. Actually, quite the opposite. I focused on the palatal sophistication of simple foods and simple preparation.
I'm going to go vegan. That's right. I'm not sure about how long and what kind and yes, I worry about self and other ascribed labels and hypocrisy. These doubts however, are ceding to the knowledge that we are all hypocrites and it's a self-righteous claim to point out these inconsistencies in others.
My energy levels have changed dramatically since cutting out dairy, meat, and fish. More importantly, the synapses are firing. Things are clicking. Once obscure, confusing incongruities are no longer presenting themselves as such in my mind. To be sure, I don't have a comprehensive understanding of anything but I judge myself and others less on where they are in this process and how we come to arrive at the conclusions we do.
Practicalities: Nothing passed my lips that wasn't the designated colour. I cooked everything myself, what you see in the photos is what I ate. No sugar, no caffeine, no refined anything, no desserts, no... Nothing was applied to my skin that didn't come from the earth or pretty close to it. I moisturized with Argan oil from Morocco (I knew these treasures would come in handy!), brushed my teeth with organic toothpaste from Korea, washed with everything-free soaps, shampoo, and conditioner from local artisans. Yes, I went balls to the wall with this project.
Day 1: Orange
Zero hunger. Still sad, still mope-y.
Breakfast: A Carrot and a slice of papaya
Lunch: Ginger and peach infused orange lentils with julienned carrots over baked polenta
Snack: An orange bell pepper, 2 carrots, rosemary and garlic sweet potato fries
Dinner: I prepared suggared butternut squash and pumpkin soup but it was left uneaten. I waited so long for it to bake golden and delicious with brown sugar but then I took a nap at 5:30pm and for some reason, never woke up.
Books: Contemporary world poetry- various authors. Le Deuxieme sexe- Simone de Beauvoir. The Darker Nations- Vijay Prashad.
Observations: According to some, orange restores balance, energy and unity. This colour is linked to our emotions and is the colour of joy. It is useful after divorce, grieving, or shock for improving blood circulation and for stimulating the appetite. Orange foods are high in anti-oxidants that help to destroy toxic cells and repair some cellular damage. Impatiently, I awaited these transformative changes instantaneously :) Needless to say, they didn't arrive. I did however feel determined to not depend on others to ameliorate my moods but to draw from the wells of strengths that I already had. In my undergraduate, I had this mantra beside my computer, "REFUSE TO DO NOTHING!" I refused to let sadness strangle me and subsume my gifts. I came up with an 11 point credo and action plan, that is, what you are currently reading. I slept a lot. I think this was because emotionally, I was operating on baritonal lows sung at an extremely high volume for a long period of time and sleep was a coping mechanism for the body.
Day 2: GreenWhat, if any, is the semantic relationship between mourn and morning? This morning, like most, was brutal.
Bathed in tears, sliding down old whispered words and reneged promises. Landing on traitorous memories.
Breakfast: Green TeaLunch: Thai green curry mung bean soup with baked zuccini and broccoli rosti. Soup ingredients: garlic, green onions, leeks, thai green curry, keffirlime leaf, coriander, turmeric, green mung beans, green bell pepper, green cubana pepper, green chili, swiss chard, kale, baby bok choi, fresh lemon grass, fresh chives, fresh parsley, fresh basil. I pureed the first few ingredients and left the rest intact.
I steamed the broccoli and added some olive oil to puree. I used this wet mixture to glue the grated zuccini together for the rostis. Baked.
Dinner: Leftover soup and salad with pears, green apples, mint/parsley/chive/basil/olive oil dressing.Snack: Seaweed sheets and green tea.
Lots of it.
Books: Fat is a feminist issue- Susan Orbach, Conditions of Love- John Armstrong, Contemporary poetry- Mahmood Darwish and Octavio Paz, La Sombra del Viento- Carlos Luiz Zafon. Stuff from yesterday.
Today I am weak. An unbridled imagination coupled with harsh self-critique made for a day full of remorse, yearning, impatience. A day of hypotheticals/conditionals... should have, if only I, I could have....
Day 3: Red
Supposedly my colour. Astrologically, it corresponds to one of my elements: fire with all of the attendant tropes: passion, light, destruction, love, blood, anger. I visited Tessa today, my kindred. We just get each other and laugh!!! The rip your pants, soul laughing.
Dancing this morning, a song on today's playlist brought tears to my eyes and both turmoil and tranquility to my heart. She sang, "Save me from myself".
I am the problem but also, the solution. We all have our pieces that we're trying to put into a more comprehensive whole. We all have wounds we're nursing; I am learning to respect where others are on their paths and the various tourniquets used to bandage the cuts.
Breakfast: 'Agua de Jamaica'. Boiled water over dried hibiscus flowers (purchased at the Mexican store), let steep overnight.
Lunch: Beet and apple salad with Turkish pomegranate dressing.
Dinner: Red Thai curry with red beans and red peppers over red rice (seasoned with keffirlime leaves and fresh basil). Thai curry purchased in Cambodia, Chinese red beans and Chinese red rice, which apparently have the same properties of brown rice.
Snack: Red cranberries, red tea (hot version of the agua).
Exercise: Hot yoga (I almost passed out). Apparently, I wasn't ready for the Power Flow and I forgot water. Going to yoga was painful. I couldn't do much of the work that involves opening up and stretching the chest muscles. I think this is because exercise, in its most basic form, is the release and recuperation of energy. There was much unresolved tension in my chest which made it difficult to release that energy.
Books: Sinbad and Other Stories from Arabian Nights- Translated by Husain Haddawy, The Beauty Myth- Naomi Wolf, Theory of a Leisure Class- Thorstein Veblen, random chapters from old books.
Day 4: Purple
Lunch: Chinese and Italian egglant, red cabbage, and purple bean casserole.(This one took a long time. Grated the Chinese eggplant and baked it to a crunch consistency as a topping for the casserole. Cooked purple beans with purple onions. Sauteed cabbage with purple onion and garlic and baked eggplant. Put it all together and cooked for 40 minutes).
Snack: Blackberries.
Dinner: leftover casserole. Exercise: Went for a run for 40 minutes, danced in the morning.
Apparently, eating purple coloured foods aids in memory retention and recall. For me though, instead of looking back my eyes were forward. I stopped making up hypothetical situations in my mind and focused on advancing not retreating.
Day 5: Yellow
Why feel depressed when we don’t need to? It’s as if I thought being sad would bring my relationship back. Wow! I’m fucked! Yes, I can actually choose to be happy alone, in a relationship, in a polyamourous situation. I developed an unhealthy addiction with living at unsustainable emotional pitches. I ‘thrived’ off cacophonous highs and lows. I want to be more melodic, harmonious, and make concerted efforts in this regard.
I previously equated living on this steady plane, instead of the hills and troughs, a colder more inhumane experience. That is, I thought our inhibitions or more stoic personalities prohibited us from feeling the gravity/euphoria and only the ‘conscious’ could really take stock of ‘what was really occurring’ at these poles. What I know now is that coming back to this changing grey is what keeps us going, which precludes us from succumbing to our dangerous excesses. I don’t want to live at these intensities anymore. Feeling them, observing them, they are truly unhealthy and provoke further spiralling.
Today, I laughed, hard. A good laugh was long overdue, I seriously missed the sensation. I found out Maria almost killed her grandmother in Colombia and a bird pecked her in the head while studying.
Later I found out that a dog bit out a piece of Catrina’s ass in Ecuador, literally. From her directly, “On Saturday i got attacked by a great dane in campo working on a medical brigade...he took me down and took a chunk out of my right butt cheek”. And the country is going down in flames, Ecuador is on lockdown.
Both of those situations objectively are not funny, but they way they were recounted was.
Breakfast: A banana (white flesh, I realize)
Lunch: Baked, lemon-zested polenta with Cambodian yellow curry
(Yellow dhal cooked with wild Peruvian ginger/turmeric/lemon grass, yellow bell peppers, yellow zucchini, yellow Cambodian curry, yellow cubanilla pepper, keffirlime leaves, fresh basil, whole coriander, fresh lemongrass)
Snack: Golden raisins. Two glasses of white wine (I think the grape was yellow?)
Dinner: Yellow bean salad with roasted onion and yellow Hungarian pepper/yellow bell pepper with fresh ginger/lemon/mint dressing.
Leftover curry and polenta.
Exercise: 1 hour run. My legs are sore. My eyes smarted with tears because it was painful but I just kept going, knowing that the pain would pass and relief would come. It did.
I met some new kindreds today. Nadia, Caroline, Carolina, and Micah let’s do the carpentry and start the cell phone investigation!
Day 6: White/Brown
Okay, so normally these colours are overwhelming on the body and the palate but I wanted to be balanced. Balance. Purity. Peace. Spirituality. High energy vibrations. I had also read that white coloured foods alleviate emotional shock and despair. WRONG! Today I felt quite upset and held negative self-images. I cried again for the first time in days after feeling such strength. I was nostalgic and regretful. If anyone tries this project, skip white it’s not worth it.
Breakfast: Steel cut oats with cinnamon and organic vanilla extract
Lunch: White wine and 5 mushroom risotto (enoki, shitaki, portebello, cremini, oyster)
Dinner: Turnips, potato, daikon and cauliflower soup with white navy beans and Israeli couscous.
Fortunately today, I also left for a weekend of healing and fun with Tessa and Steph near Collingwood. The drive was beautiful. Autumn in Canada really is arresting: vermillion, orange, bursting yellows. The coloured eating has heightened my sensitivity to colours in my surrounding. Even trips to the grocery store involve new ways of perceiving foods.
Exercise: Went for a brisk walk for half an hour, dancing.
Day 7: Rainbow day (Indian) and Healing...in Slabtown... With Gandhi!
Roadtrip! In Slabtown, Tessa’s hometown aka one street with 6 houses near Thornberry, Ontario. Her home, which I christened ‘the womb’ is healing, restorative, balanced, artistic, aesthetic, energized. We held a fundraising event on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday for World Literacy Canada, the organization with whom Tessa ran a mobile library in Varanasi, India. FYI: Tessa made us wear the Indian outfits. We raised $1500 and as a result, 4 children have scholarships to attend school, and 3 of them are girls! Countless development studies have shown that investment in girl’s education is one of the highest indicators of subsequent quality of life for households. In the developing world, women are more likely to invest in productive rather than consumptive investments, which is why the majority of micro-credit initiatives are directed to and used by women versus men (although we know there are snags in the micro-credit schema).
This weekend I met strong, determined women. I am so fortunate to have met people who understand nuances and complexities, who are creating change, committed to making their lifeworlds, and those whom they touch, better. Thank you to those women I met this weekend.
Supposedly my astrological elements are fire, earth, and air as someone born on the cusp of two signs. At this point however, I aspire to the properties of water. I want to move above, beyond, beside, between and through vertices and obstacles leaving nothing unchanged because my presence has passed.
Breakfast: Tea
Lunch: Samosas, Dhal, Chana Masala, Rice Pulao, Mint Sauce, Mango chutney, tamarind sauce...
Dinner: Carrot & Ginger soup, swiss chard and tomato salad, homemade cornbread
It felt like Thanksgiving. I ate constantly.
Exercise: Went for a 5km run in the cornfields and the forest! Running beside stalks that are taller than you is quite awe-inspiring. The air was crisp. I got distracted while running and face-planted near Tessa’s fairy circle in the forest. Got up, started running again.
Changes
At the beginning of the week, I was full of fear. I was afraid to listen to music for that deeply intimate and unsuspectingly personal element that songs adopt. But then I realized the fundamental point: they are speaking to me. Not all and not always in the most engaging or pertinent conversations but nevertheless, the point is to enter in the discussion. This is the cathartic power of music. So I turned up the soundtracks and danced and sometimes cried. Mostly though, I tried to really listen. Simply put, I realized that life doesn’t stop even though I have.
Michelle, Tessa’s mom said, “how long will you choose to be in suffering?”
Happiness, which I define as becoming gracefully in one’s own skin—not as a self-assured feeling of elevation or elation—is a choice. I consciously chose activities/tasks that corresponded to the anthropogenic dichotomies that we all confront:
Competency/inadequacy
pain/pleasure
knowledge/ignorance
body/spirit
passion/restraint
I think feeling dissatisfied or unsatiated are pretty endemic features of (post)modernity. I lived so far into the future with notions of who I could be, what my relationship could represent, that I neglected the now. Many days my ego got the best of me, wishing, wanting, resisting, fighting. I was humbled before my own myopia, brought to my knees before my own conceit. Despite my travel experiences contributing to a certain “worldliness”, I realized I have much maturing to do. This is not a meek attempt at self effacement or false modesty but a critical appraisal of where I stand on my sojourn of empathy, knowledge, and purpose. To be critical is to ask difficult questions about where, why, when, and how something has come to be or pass. It is not, as I previously conflated, to be negative and to turn this negativity into a judgement or cynicism.
Instead of resenting my class and educational privileges (see Thorstein Veblen: Theory of a Leisure Class), I decided to make use of them by choosing activities that forced me to confront my ego in order to encourage new growth. During this process, I weeded, planted seeds, and am now awaiting, still carefully tending to these seedlings, for germination.
I also knew that during this process I built fortified walls around my heart. As a necessary evil, I had to in order to continue with purpose. I feel stronger in my own convictions and in the specific direction I want my life to take. I also know that for the person I will come to love, these walls will prove nothing but curtains. Thin veils sheepishly covering a roaring and willing heart.
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Thank you for being the special, nurturing people in my life, who teach me to become gracefully in my own skin.
With gratitude, I will be here for you. The people I aspire to emulate in deed, in thought, in insight, in foresight, in hindsight, in kindness. I will do this in a way that is distinctly my own, formed by the beauty of your spirits.
Jenelle
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