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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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For This Demon Too
New Gods
Here is a fairly bad picture of what I would consider to be an impromptu altar to my biker babe existence. That's my motorcycle jacket and its liner and my scarf (yes, a scarf in August) hanging above a row of pieces that I made that use the hands of The Aka Demon, The Demon Who Finished The Job, and Fu. At the foot of the altar are my Docs, now my motorcycling boots. I took a longish ride last night from my apartment down to the range where I learned how to ride. It was about eleven miles round trip, most of it on busy streets and frontage roads. The only time I choked was on the first ninety degree turn off my street onto a slightly busier street. I just knew that I wasn't going to make the turn, and while a car a stop sign waited for me, I pulled the bike off to the side of the road and had a little chat with myself. I know that it's not just self-talk that gets me around corners. There is also the slow/stop, look, press, lean, roll on thing too. But self-talk helps. And I'm quickly coming to realize that one of the bigger challenges so far moto-babe-wise is learning the moves but it's also been learning to have confidence in my abilities in the moves that I do know. After my ride, I made Max take me for some sugar, a big iced triple ginger cookie at a nearby coffeehouse. I ate a bite more than half, and felt better after what was a relatively safe but somewhat out-of-control feeling ride. (It was the first time I'd been on such busy streets, and the first time I'd gone over 45 mph). Sugar I am convinced will be my downfall because The Brain? Loves the sugar. While we ate (Max had a cherry turnover), Max assured me that I don't look or act like a beginner on the bike. It's small praise, given that I have so far to go in terms of increasing my proficiency, but I was glad to hear it. Comfort Zones Frida takes me way out of my comfort zone, that's for sure. And to combat that, I head straight for other things that do give me comfort. Food, for example. Lately, I have found myself focused intently on food. Though I have been eating a ton, it's all been fresh produce based, lowfat, and very high fiber. I've been prepping meals to grab so that I can get out the door and on the bike sooner. I made a huge bunch of burritos out of the craziest and most delicious things: soy sausage, sweet potato, and kale for example are a divine combination, as is marinated pinto bean and avacado salsa. All of it is from scratch, all of it the healthiest stuff you can imagine, all of it super tasty. Trips to the farmer's market have also yielded lots of opportunity to experiment with new kinds of comfort food. I am fast becoming a whiz with vegetable-based soups and salads. I made a "white" gumbo the other day with some white eggplant, white squash, okra, onions, garlic, and a bunch of other fresh stuff. Today I made a zucchini, Swiss chard, and purple eggplant stew. Tonight I'll toss together a pumpkin, white bean, and basil soup. (Yes, I cooked my happy farmer's market pumpkin into a beautiful pumpkin-sauce, half of which I used cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and mace to make into a sweet dessert, and the other half of which I left plain to be used in soups. And I love me some pumpkin soup, which I got to eat all the time in Oz.) And Speaking Of Food I have come around to eating a largely vegetarian and often vegan diet. There are a few foods that keep me from going completely over. Plain, nonfat yogurt, for example, fish, and egg whites are the biggies. (Though I did try soy yogurt the other day and loved it and would eat it exclusively except for the fact that it's absolutely loaded with sugar in most cases.) I eat no red meat or chicken anymore. (And I gave my supercool landlady Andrea a huge Costco bag of year old frozen chicken to feed to her dog Oliver, a move that prompted her to talk to me about her worries that I had become anorexic--though how she can believe this when she sees me carrying about three bags of groceries in every couple of days is beyond me--as well as to tell me about her forays into crazy eating habits (including a macrobiotic diet and fasting--once for three weeks--on juice and water). Andrea also guessed my weight at about thirty to forty pounds lighter than I am, so I assured her that the weight lifting has allowed me to build up enough lean muscle mass that is heavy but compact so that I look much lighter than I am.) So these days, I live on vegetables (sometimes up to 20 servings a day), a very small amount of fruit, soy protein, legumes, and a few whole grains and whole grain products from time to time. And it feels and tastes very good. I have also begun the maintenance phase of weight loss, and so have added a few calories to my daily intake to stop the weight loss. This has brought up a whole slew of new issues to deal with, as eating more feels as out-of-control as taking Frida above 45 mph. I have been journaling a lot to deal with these issues, which relate to my earlier eating habits when I ate nothing but high-fat foods in excess. Now, it feels like I am eating in excess, and I have to remind myself that I am not eating to excess as long as I am maintaining my weight and that those days of excess were not about lowfat, vegetable-based foods but were about sugar and fat and refined crap. That's why I was fat, because I ate that shit and got zero exercise. Now I eat lots of good stuff and exercise, and I maintain. It's all good, as the kids say these days. And of course, I am still exercising. I lift 3-4 days a week and do cardio 5-6 days a week. I still love lifting, still marvel at my body's ability to lift twice or more of its own weight. I still do cardio grudgingly, knowing that it burns calories actively, aerobically, but I don't enjoy it the way I do lifting. And I Am Grateful For The Following: Frida, the marvelous body, The Brain, Max, triple ginger cookies, a good ride, farmer's markets, cooked pumpkin, English breakfast tea, feathers, spiders, impromptu altars, Nicolas Ray movies, the hottie at the video rental place, David Byrne, David Bowie, Madonna, Sophistica and her Null Boy hypothesis, Mayflower, coffee, diet Dr. Pepper, eggplant, zucchini, green beans, yogurt, cigarettes and water. I am grateful, too, for this time, for danger, for comfort zones and for the zones outside of comfort, for my life, for this day, for this moment. I am grateful, too, for demons, whose challenges increase in number and complexity each day. I still wrangle demons with increasing confidence and success and for this ability too, I am grateful.
More lies:
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