Shipping · and · Handling

I've been vegan (with a couple of momentary lapses into cheese) since New Year's. I like it. I especially like eating giant piles of dark green leafy vegetables which is very healthy and delicious! So interesting what I've learned about what my body likes to eat. I just started talking to my friend Chris about health and fitness and eating stuff and he and I have decided that I will do an experiment with him and eat raw foods and do three five minute exercises each day or when I think of it. There is no goal except to see how I feel, to see if I like it. I might lose weight. That could be fun or not. I don't know. I feel conflicted. I like who and how I am right now and this is significant, it's been a hard won thing to feel good about myself in this body/age/weight/etc. Whenever I notice that my weight changes a little (up or down) I tend to freak out about it for a few days. I think the way to stay sane during this experiment is to remember that it's MY experiment and there is no goal except to see if I like eating/exercising in the Chris suggested way (which is mainly raw and doing gentle Fenldenkrais kinds of exercises, no wacky shit or anything extreme or invented by Chris while he was on mushrooms). Why would an intuitive eater feminist forty-two year old woman want to do any of this? To see if it gives me greater enjoyment and energy, enhances my beauty/skin/strength/flexibility, and gives me greater freedom and health. Or am I saying all this as a smokescreen for so it will make me skinny and I can eat chocolate pudding all day for the rest of my life. Hmm. We will see friends, we will see.

So much has happened since my fast. I've made some new friends. I've done my first one person show. I've learned how to be vegan and like it. I've written a lot. I've played Scrabble. I've been to therapy. Now I am resting and it feels so luxurious to lie in bed and write a silly livejournal post. Gabrielle died a year ago today. I was there. It was so gentle, almost imperceptible, the actual moment she died. I feel so grateful for being part of that process, of her process. I miss her. She was a cool person. I know that sounds ridiculous and small to say but it's true. She was cool. I think she would be happy for me right now. I'm working on some writing projects that are new and challenging and it's funny, the books I took from her house, the ones her parents wanted me to have, are her how-to writing books. Scene. Plot. Script. Character. They all have the sticker her dad made that says, "As you tell your story, you are telling mine" or something like that. Her dad kept saying it to me, "All you have to do is tell your story and you'll be telling hers! Anybody who tells their story, is telling hers!" He was crazed. It was so strange to get to know them, her parents. To love them right away and try to help. They are nice people. I should call them but I don't want to. I don't do things I don't want to do lately. Another person I know is dying right now and I am not there. I am not part of it and I don't want to be. I do not feel badly about this. I dreamed of Gabrielle a few nights ago. A good vivid dream but all I remember is saying to her things like, "You were good at dying. You did it well. You were so great, classy." Then she dropped some cigarettes out of her purse and we rode together in a van with Jeremy and we fucked him in the front seat. I woke up horny. I wish I remembered more, what she said to me. I saw a mutual friend last night. He was with a new girlfriend. He's leaving his wife I guess. His girlfriend had long sexy red hair, like Gabrielle. Her death fucked with people. It made us do things. One guy moved to New York to be a comedian. It made me decide to grow up. I think. I think maybe it's still doing things to me.

I'm so hungry! Well to be perfectly honest at this moment I am only hungryish like I'm not having to rock myself (I'm not kidding about the rocking)to sleep because my stomach feels like it's burning, I'm more just hanging out with the dull throb, like I'm okay but if there was a cheeseburger in this room right now, the juice fast would be a memory. Maybe. I'm feeling good because I saw a friend tonight and she kept saying that I look like I've lost weight. I can get so high off flattery! Inside of me there is a raging fat acceptance feminist telling me I ought to be ashamed of liking "you look like you've lost weight" compliments. I would indulge my inner r.f.a.f. and shame myself horribly but I've had too much therapy lately so no shaming! There are many energies active in my mind these last five days. I keep thinking that there should be little commercial breaks in my mind that say, "Today's cravings have been brought to you by unresolved grief." Today I craved avocado, cottage cheese, and I had a few stray longings for the KFC all meat sandwich I keep seeing yahoo news stories about. I wonder when I will not spend all every day thinking about food. It's been about forty years now, maybe one day soon I'll be able to give it a rest.

Oh God! Today is day four of my juice fast. I stopped drinking coffee and eating food and I bought a juicer from walmart.com and Wow! I feel like shit! I decided to do this because I've been feeling so exhausted and sluggish and generally icky and tired and also because I need a break from everything. I told somebody recently that it's like I've gone on a vacation only I'm at home and it's not really any fun. By some amazing coincidence, Billy Cotter is totally depressed and wrecked right now so we are quite the pair! I don't think anyone has left the house in two days. Still, I am hopeful that I will have all kinds of transformational juice magic happen and when the fast is over I will glow and levitate and feel fantastic all the days of my life! The thing that is blowing my mind today is that I am so incredibly hungry. Funny that is such a shocking surprise. I guess I thought it wouldn't be so bad to not eat anything except expressed carrots and apples and greens for days. I thought it would be like having lots of cheeseburgers and fries but in liquid form and healthier. I would write more but I have a finite attention span today and I can't bear to waste it on writing when there is so much computer solitaire time left before I curl up in the fetal position and beg God to turn the air into candy.

One day soon I will feel normal. Maybe. Maybe a new normal. I've been reading all these blogs lately about people suffering so many things, being sad and broken, being sick, and I just have to throw my two cents in and say that I feel pretty fucken' weird, too. I think I have a lot to write, a whole new chunk of stuff, but it's not quite ready, the faucet is still humming and rattling without the water coming. I'll let you know what happens.

I wonder how many blog entries in all the blog entries across time and space have had the heading, "feeling weird". I really feel like part of a global tradition now, like I really am a blogger.
I am feeling weird. Sad, spacey, quiet, dull, and then jolly, silly, happy, content, and then scared, anxious, tired, sad. My friend Gabrielle died on Friday. I was there. I haven't been out of the house much since then. I want to be in my bed, with my things, in my house. I haven't had a lot of stamina for interacting with people. Today I feel myself lightening up, getting more energy but I think it will be a little while before I am 100% La Ganga.

I'm here on the bed wanting something again. It's not cheese and crackers. I ate a huge bowl of queso and chips today and now I am sort of over cheese for a while. Now I am just here wanting. I'm not sure even if I want a thing. Lately I think the job of being me is not to try and get everything (or maybe even anything) I want but to make a relationship with wanting, with my desire. My way in life has always been I want what I want when I want it and instant gratification is too slow. But over time, especially after getting what I want many times only to want the same things again very soon after I've had them, I realized, I simply am a wanter. I want. I'm not ashamed of this. I want lots of great things for me and everybody else. I want to be and do and have and see and play and make and share and fuck and laugh and all that stuff. I probably won't ever be completely satisfied for very long. Sometimes I've felt satiety and enjoyed it but I go back to wanting. It is my baseline. I wonder if it has to do with the way I was weaned/nursed. I think I was bottle fed. Sometimes I think the reason I am a wanter is because my mother died when I was young. Sometimes I think I am a wanter because I quit smoking and honestly, nothing, not a single thing yet, has ever given me what cigarettes did. Sometimes I think I am a wanter because I am an artist, because I am an addict, because I went to the mall all the time when I was young. I remember a time when I didn't want anything and it bothered me. I was leaving the Highland Mall and I thought, "There's nothing I want." It's understandable that there might not be anything to want at the Highland Mall, it's not so surprising, but me, I'm a wanter. I want. That's why I get up in the morning and do things, because there is something I want out of the day. When there isn't anything I want, it is a sign that something is wrong, something is deeply fatigued or worn out or sick inside of me. In the tarot deck there is a card called Strength and in certain decks it is called Lust. Traditional tarot interpretation of Strength/Lust is about being in charge of your animal nature, being able to control your desires or put them in the service of the conscious mind and build skyscrapers and shit instead of just lolling around feeling yummy. For me, Lust is my Strength. I don't mean naughty sex addicted feelings, I mean the deeply physical and psychic and emotional engine of desire that powers my joy in life. Funny that when I am happiest and strongest and healthiest, I am wanting the most. Or, I know what I want, I want lots of specific things and feel excited and happy to go after them. I feel deserving and capable of getting what I want. But tonight, I am not feeling that so much as I am feeling a low grade buzzing nondescript wanting. Maybe I want a cup of tea, maybe I want to clean my room, maybe I want to dance, maybe I want some attention, maybe I want a steak. I'm going to see a new therapist on Saturday. When we spoke on the phone she told me that I probably have some grief work to do. Maybe I want to grieve. Tonight, I think I'll have a cup of tea instead.