January Wasteland
While Christmasing in Michigan, I remember hearing a bit on NPR which announced that the blog count on this illustrious inter-compy wunder-web had reached 100 million, with 100,000 new ones being created daily. So welcome (back) to 0.000001% of the blogosphere. It's different here. Really.
An aside of the article: "...most are read by only the writer and his mother." I hope this is not the case here, but as I have been less than prolific in weeks past, so I understand if it is. Better get cracking. Besides, how else will I be able to achieve a level at which I can post a strip of Google ads over to the side and live off their proceeds?
Today, as I was wandering the city streets, three people spat as I walked past them. I like to hope that it was coincidental.
Coming home last night, I passed a thick stump of a 30-ish, white Brooklynite pissing in a phone booth. Then, I noticed that the form to my right was a similar companion of his pissing on a wall. Each one received an entertained-yet-reproachful glance from yours truly, which prompted the wall-pisser to call out in a perfectly Italian-Brooklyn tone, "What the fuck you lookin' at, n*gga? I'm takin' a piss heah." Evidently, a certain portion of this city's non-black population has adopted the n-word as an innocuous way of addressing another human being, as he addressed his partner-in-piss in the same manner only seconds later. Cute.
Crazy or not, I'm now on day three of the Burroughs lemonade fast, a.k.a. the Master Cleanse, though I always think that seems a little dramatic and authoritarian. Shooting for seven. A short description: All one drinks for a good week or more is a lemonade made from fresh lemon juice, grade B maple syrup, cayenne pepper extract, and springwater; herbal teas; and plenty of water. Every morning one does a saltwater flush (whee!). No, I don't have all that much weight to lose (any?) and probably don't have a whole lot of toxic junk sticking to my intestinal walls, though the numerous late and beer-sodden nights of the last weeks have probably left a stain somewhere which could stand to be wiped away. What I really do enjoy about it, though, is that it's the closest thing to pressing the reset button for our body that I've found thus far. After coming off it, I feel like I do have significantly more energy, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually. My favorite part: the clarity. It's like all the silt of the mind settles to the bottom, leaving nothing but a sharpness of vision. A miniature rebirth, of sorts.
It's a great thing to do during a transitional period — say, when one has recently come off a tour, spends too much time alone in their apartment, and wonders what exactly to do with themselves. Each time I've done it before (three times), some critical decision has come about as a result of fasting thought patterns. It tends to disrupt endless, fruitless, and energy-wasting cycles of thought and illuminate a way out. Not all of them, and not always that dramatically, but it helps. I can partially attribute my move to New York to the first time I did it. Otherwise, I would've been in Chicago, or still in Ann Arbor.
Damn, it can be tough. That whole not-eating-anything-for-seven-days thing?? Yikes. Not to be underestimated. Especially when one derives a great amount of satisfaction, joy, and comfort from the acts of eating and cooking (I try not to think of my highly successful cider-braised pork butt of two weeks ago. Oh, too late...). Funny, though, one doesn't spend nearly as much time being hungry as one would think. I've been legitimately hungry once today. Other than that, not so much. It's more feeling a touch disoriented, intolerant of bullshit, intermittently exhausted, and emotionally fried. Definitely intense. Mix that with January's gravity of gloom and listlessness, and it's even more so, especially concerning that last bit. Please refer to most any posting from December, January, or February of any year. Same shit, different year.
The worst thing one can do is nothing. Motion saves, busyness comforts, creation is critical. So I'll try to keep posted on how things progress. The fourth day is supposed to be a turning point, where the body stops feeling the sluggish results one would predict after not eating, and awakens to a burst of energy. I've never felt it all that dramatically, but maybe tomorrow will be the day...
An aside of the article: "...most are read by only the writer and his mother." I hope this is not the case here, but as I have been less than prolific in weeks past, so I understand if it is. Better get cracking. Besides, how else will I be able to achieve a level at which I can post a strip of Google ads over to the side and live off their proceeds?
Today, as I was wandering the city streets, three people spat as I walked past them. I like to hope that it was coincidental.
Coming home last night, I passed a thick stump of a 30-ish, white Brooklynite pissing in a phone booth. Then, I noticed that the form to my right was a similar companion of his pissing on a wall. Each one received an entertained-yet-reproachful glance from yours truly, which prompted the wall-pisser to call out in a perfectly Italian-Brooklyn tone, "What the fuck you lookin' at, n*gga? I'm takin' a piss heah." Evidently, a certain portion of this city's non-black population has adopted the n-word as an innocuous way of addressing another human being, as he addressed his partner-in-piss in the same manner only seconds later. Cute.
Crazy or not, I'm now on day three of the Burroughs lemonade fast, a.k.a. the Master Cleanse, though I always think that seems a little dramatic and authoritarian. Shooting for seven. A short description: All one drinks for a good week or more is a lemonade made from fresh lemon juice, grade B maple syrup, cayenne pepper extract, and springwater; herbal teas; and plenty of water. Every morning one does a saltwater flush (whee!). No, I don't have all that much weight to lose (any?) and probably don't have a whole lot of toxic junk sticking to my intestinal walls, though the numerous late and beer-sodden nights of the last weeks have probably left a stain somewhere which could stand to be wiped away. What I really do enjoy about it, though, is that it's the closest thing to pressing the reset button for our body that I've found thus far. After coming off it, I feel like I do have significantly more energy, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually. My favorite part: the clarity. It's like all the silt of the mind settles to the bottom, leaving nothing but a sharpness of vision. A miniature rebirth, of sorts.
It's a great thing to do during a transitional period — say, when one has recently come off a tour, spends too much time alone in their apartment, and wonders what exactly to do with themselves. Each time I've done it before (three times), some critical decision has come about as a result of fasting thought patterns. It tends to disrupt endless, fruitless, and energy-wasting cycles of thought and illuminate a way out. Not all of them, and not always that dramatically, but it helps. I can partially attribute my move to New York to the first time I did it. Otherwise, I would've been in Chicago, or still in Ann Arbor.
Damn, it can be tough. That whole not-eating-anything-for-seven-days thing?? Yikes. Not to be underestimated. Especially when one derives a great amount of satisfaction, joy, and comfort from the acts of eating and cooking (I try not to think of my highly successful cider-braised pork butt of two weeks ago. Oh, too late...). Funny, though, one doesn't spend nearly as much time being hungry as one would think. I've been legitimately hungry once today. Other than that, not so much. It's more feeling a touch disoriented, intolerant of bullshit, intermittently exhausted, and emotionally fried. Definitely intense. Mix that with January's gravity of gloom and listlessness, and it's even more so, especially concerning that last bit. Please refer to most any posting from December, January, or February of any year. Same shit, different year.
The worst thing one can do is nothing. Motion saves, busyness comforts, creation is critical. So I'll try to keep posted on how things progress. The fourth day is supposed to be a turning point, where the body stops feeling the sluggish results one would predict after not eating, and awakens to a burst of energy. I've never felt it all that dramatically, but maybe tomorrow will be the day...
posted by David at 5:31 PM
2 Comments:
Now that I have a feed aggregator I can really keep up on this blog thing. Watch out! I heard you brought your special drink to Matchless the other night. Yes!
You brought your elixir to the bar? Way off base! Or maybe way on base! Yes indeed!
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