The Crooked Path

Cropped Touchstone Tarot

2010-12-27T10:12:00.005Z

Checking in to say hello

2010-08-06T21:19:00.005+01:00

Just to let you know I am not dead. *Waves to show arms still moving*

I have been busy with my new tarot hobby and working out with my latest fitness acquisition, Turbo Fire. I love it! It is like Turbo Jam on crack--not to be offensive. It is seriously intense and it's really very fun.

Check out the infomercial--it's a FI-YA!

I am up to 17 tarot decks now. I just ordered the Golden Tarot by Kat Black. Check it out:

I can't wait to get it, I managed to find it relatively cheap on Amazon (£9). It's made using a computer and bits and bobs of medieval art to create Rider-Waite-Smith tarot images. It originally came out in 2004.

Other recent tarot acquisitions which I love (these by trade on Aeclectic Tarot forum):

Herbal Tarot
Pearls of Wisdom Tarot

And this one, which Derek loves:

Rabbit Tarot

Oh, and I bought this one for Derek, as he loves video games:

8-bit Tarot

What can I do to empower myself?

2010-04-29T06:41:00.010+01:00

I asked the tarot this question recently, using my Anna K deck: 'What can I do to empower myself to lose this weight I've gained?' Then I drew three cards--

The Moon, Death, and Ace of Coins.

The Moon represents the shadowy world of our inner being, so this card suggests that I shed some light on the murky goings-on there. Recognize patterns of behaviour. Remember things that I have forgotten. Become aware of what I instinctively want to do. Distinguish what is realistic from what is illusory.

Okay, so let's examine my pattern of behaviour. Every morning I get up filled with good intentions. (Even though the breakfast I eat contains roughly 400 calories or more--toast and peanut butter, etc). I get to work and as soon as I walk in the door I can 'feel' the presence of the table in the staff room, which nearly always has chocolate on it. It begins calling to me at once. Usually by 9.30, but sometimes before, I have had a piece of whatever is on that table. At break, I will eat whatever I brought with me, then have something from the table. At lunch, same. Afternoon break, same. If I am on late shift, I will nick bits from the table around 5 or 6 PM. Then when I get home, sometimes before I even take my coat off, I forage in the kitchen for a bit of something. A spoonful of peanut butter, it doesn't matter what it is. Some days I eat more than others, depending on what's in the kitchen. Then I do my workout, then begin making dinner. I usually do some nibbling and tasting during food prep. For dinner, I eat what's on my plate, then usually go back for a smaller portion of seconds. Occasionally thirds. Then when helping wash up, I nibble from what's left as I pack leftovers for tomorrow's lunches. Sometimes we've both nibbled up all the remains of dinner so that there are no leftovers. Around 8.30 or 9 PM, Derek will suggest coffee, and we usually have a bit of Kit Kat or whatever naughty tidbit he's smuggled home. Then quite often, I will reach into the cereal box and have a handful of cereal around 10.00 or 10.30. That is a typical day, and why I have gained 9 lbs over the last 2 years or so.

What have I forgotten? I've forgotten how to put my long-term goals and priorities above the instant gratification of stuffing things in my face. I've forgotten how to look with contempt upon things that by rights should not be called food. I've forgotten how to enjoy being truly slim above any allure that junk food might have.

I instinctively want to eat well. I know this because I have observed my body's joyous reaction when I am eating a healthy dinner. It's a completely different feeling eating a veggie tofu stir-fry filled with crisp, gloriously colourful vegtables, compared to the feeling of eating a loaded veggie burger and oven chips. The first is a zinging feeling that thrums through the body--it's purely physical, it's like it trips something in the brain that acknowledges that this is good fuel. The second is more an emotional experience, sort of voluptuous pleasure. It's often accompanied by a quick, subtle feeling of being overfull, sometimes even a queasiness, but you keep eating because something weird is happening to the pleasure centres in your brain. It's almost like they're being overstimulated against your will and there's nothing you can do about it. This is the first time I've tried to describe this, but I know from experience that this is how my body reacts to the different types of food. My body itself prefers the good stuff. It's my emotions that prefer the junk. It's that simple. Feel how you feel and I bet you'll discover the same.

What is realistic and what is illusory? For me, it's illusory to think I can be disciplined all the time and live in my culture. I am surrounded by the worst possible temptations and my culture doesn't have a clue how it should relate to food or how it should be eating. I am going to give in to my cultural training and my emotional temptations sometimes. But it is realistic for me to try to set limits on that behaviour. In the past, I would limit it to weekends and special occasions. At the moment, it's a free for all.

Death is not the scary card it seems to be at first glance. It is almost always a positive card, an archetypal energy, concerned with transition. Particularly in the Anna K tarot, you can see that Death is a fairly attractive fellow who is beckoning to lead you down a path. It's possibly a new path, and he's definitely going to pare away what you no longer need with that scythe of his, if he hasn't already done so. This card asks me to identify what I need to let go of--both behaviours and emotions.

It's obvious to me what I need to let go of. It's no more subtle than a card called 'Death'. I need to let go of mindless and emotional eating.

Ace of Coins can represent both the beginning of and the culmination of worldly or material or corporeal concerns. It represents the centering or grounding of energy, having ideas materialise, sustaining the body, getting tangible results, reward for effort. The card asks me to look at any new opportunities for work, stability, home, money or health available to me now. Identify what makes me feel secure and grounded. Identify how I am putting plans in motion. Consider what kinds of seeds I am planting with my current actions. And identify what my reward will be for my efforts.

Right. Every day is a new opportunity to eat well. I acknowledge that each morning, then proceed to behave in exactly the opposite way. Routine is what makes me feel secure and grounded. I have got into the routine of eating poorly, and because of my nature, I like to stay where I've planted myself. So wrenching myself out of this pattern and starting a new one is hard for me. But, when I consider the seeds I am planting by continuing on this path, I can see that it leads to nowhere but regaining all the weight I lost and which I maintained for so long, and I desperately do not want that to happen. I want to grow old in good health, and I want to be able to take care of myself for as long as possible, because we don't have any kids or other relatives to look after us if we get old and feeble. I want to be alive and kicking until I keel over. Fine one minute, dead the next. Hopefully not for another 40 years or so!

This reading has given me a lot to mull over. I suppose the next step is to figure out the next step! :)

It's a daily choice

2010-04-11T19:39:00.006+01:00

These things I do:

I do not weigh or measure my food.

I judge portions using common sense.

I do not count calories or grams of anything.

I write down what I ate and the time I ate it.

I avoid food products containing ingredients no ordinary human would keep in the pantry--I must be able to picture each ingredient in its raw, natural state.

I avoid foods that list any form of sugar in the top three ingredients.

I avoid food products that make health claims on the packaging.

I believe it's not food if it's called the same name in every language (Fritos, Big Mac, Coca-Cola.)

I eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

I eat the rainbow daily.

I drink the spinach water. :)

I eat whole fruits and avoid juices.

I only eat junk food that I made myself.

I serve a proper portion and don't go back for seconds.

I eat meals.

I limit snacks to unprocessed plant foods.

I follow the 'S-Policy': 'No snacks, no sweets, no seconds except on days that start with S.'

These are rules I used to follow. (They're also some of the rules Michael Pollan recommends in his book, Food Rules). Over the last two years, I've slipped out of these good habits to varying degrees, and I've also gained 9 lbs. I weighed 142 lbs this morning. My jeans are tight--too tight to wear to work anymore. I don't like the way I look in my clothes now. I don't really like the way I feel when I eat the way I've been eating, although to be honest I have really enjoyed the food while I'm actually eating it.

I used to have a preachy food and exercise blog I called 'No deadlines, just daily choices.' That's going to be my mantra again. (I had to Google to find that old blog for the link I gave, but if you have the time, browse around in the older posts, like from 2006-7. There's some pretty good stuff in there!)

I'm also going to stop being so complacent about my workouts. I do work out regularly, I work out hard, and I am keeping fit. But I don't ever actually work out until my legs are jello and I'm truly, completely spent. And those are the only kinds of workouts that are going to get me a true training effect. I've got to push myself. I want to push myself. The workouts I'm doing now are the ones that used to really push me 6 years ago. It's not they're too easy now by any means--but I'm not pushing myself hard enough while I do them. I still make modifications when I know by this time I should be just doing it. I sink to the knees if I even start to get uncomfortably tired during push-ups. I don't lunge or squat as deep as I can when the reps start to add up. I take impact out of moves when I know I'm fully capable of doing them, just because I don't want to push myself. In fact, I'm being lazy. What I'm doing is cheating. I've cheated my nutrition AND my workouts--for 2 years!

If I'd been doing my best, by now I could have been ready to run a marathon. I could be wearing a UK size 6 skirt. I could have cut arms, which has always been my dream. I could be doing pull-ups--another fitness dream. I could be flexible enough to do the splits and able to do a backbend--yoga dreams. It's certainly been enough time to accomplish these things. I've just chosen to do the same old workouts at the same old pace and sit on my butt eating bourbon creme biscuits and in my spare time baking cakes and cookies!

Part of me, of course-- my lazy, I-don't-want-to-change side-- wants to just go curl up with a book in one hand and the other in a Doritos bag. Meanwhile the other side finds herself browsing websites for fitness bootcamps in order to blast off this gained weight and get to the level of fitness I dream of at long last. (Then my hey-wait-we-can't-afford-that side wakes up and says, look you, just eat less and work harder and see what you can accomplish for free!)

I'll be bouncing soon!

2010-04-02T08:35:00.009+01:00

I thought I'd post about my latest acquisitions because I'm all materialistic like that. :)

A few weeks ago, I read about this workout that focuses on the lower body. People at Video Fitness were giving it rave reviews, so I ordered a copy of Tonique, featuring this reedy little Polish gal called Sylwia Weisenberg. It is a brutal workout of three segments: Squats, Lunges and Mat, with added segment of Drills and Cool Down. What's so brutal about it, you ask? Sylwia does all move in sets of 30 reps, with absolutely no rest breaks in between. You watch the clip and think, man, that looks like a good workout. But I guarantee you if you try it, you will be sweating, breathing hard and wondering if this woman is a robot. Look at the Squats segment, for example (all moves done holding 2 lb dumbbells):

30 basic squats
30 basic squats with a shoulder raise
30 squats with a front kick
30 squats with side leg abduction
30 plyo squats
30 squats into a side kick
30 double side kicks (no squats)
30 squat jumps (as for basketball)
30 one-legged squats
30 butterfly squats (a one-legged squat where you lift your opposite leg out behind you while doing lateral raises with the arms) right leg
30 more butterfly squats left leg

Then comes the Lunges segment:

30 R, 30 L basic back lunges
30 R, 30 L back lunges with a front kick
15 R, 15 L curtsy lunge/back lunge combo
30 R, 30 L curtsy lunge with side abduction
15 cross front lunges, alternating sides
15 R, 15 L back lunge/basic squat combo
15 Brazilian lunges, alternating sides
15 skaters with a hop
15 R, 15 L lunges with knee up and over head raise
30 side lunges, alternating sides
30 side lunges with knee up overhead raise, alternating sides

Mat work:

30 bent leg raises followed by 30 pulsing bent raises on same leg, per side
30 straight leg crossover raises per side
30 side raises per side
Then a series of hip lifts where I lose count: regular lifts, one-legged lifts, pulsing one-legged lifts, clam-shell lifts, pulsing clam-shell lifts
Then some killer ab work

It's truly brutal!

I fancied a couple new step workouts recently so I ordered 'Ready Step Go' with Kelly Coffey-Meyer, my first of this instructor's workouts. It's curiously old school because there is a lot of tapping going on, only this woman must have had 50 espressos before she shot this workout because she never taps, she HOPS. I myself do not hop. I remember reading (I think it was Cathe) that hopping like that is actually bad stepping form, hard on the shins, etc. If you watch the clip, notice that the background exerciser on the far right (the tall one) doesn't hop on the floor. All the rest of them do. Well, I follow her. :) The workout is okay, very high impact, and there's a vertical step segment that will take me some getting used to because I don't have quite enough room and have to modify it a bit, but overall, it's okay. :)

I ordered Cardio Fusion on the same day I ordered Ready, Step Go. This is Cathe, my favourite step instructor. This DVD is a compilation of segments from three of her other workouts, two of which I don't own, so it was new footage for me. I enjoy this and will do a lot, I'm sure. It's very high impact, though. If you watch the clip, you will see how fun the workout is. But it's no place to start with Cathe. If you want to start out with Cathe, get Basic Step and Body Fusion and work up. :)

Speaking of high impact, I can't remember why I got it in my head a week or two ago that I want a rebounder, but I shopped it and shopped it and finally decided to order a Heyman's Trimilin Pro Plus. Just ordered it day before yesterday, so it should be here next week! Yay! Do have a look at the link. The website is quite messy and could use an overhaul, but it's got a lot of information and the lady who runs it (Michele) is very nice.

I'm still here!

2010-03-18T07:35:00.002Z

Just waving hello to anyone who might check this blog looking for me. All is well. I'm still working out, still trying to get my snacking under control, still yo-yoing up and down in a silly 4 pound range, and still enjoying my new hobby of tarot.

I will update this weekend!

136.6 this morning!

2010-02-20T07:05:00.002Z

I may be naturally pulling out of my year long bake-cakes-and-eat-everything-in-sight phase. For some reason, the thought of a cake is giving me a nauseated feeling, and I'm not going back for seconds at meals. And my weight has dropped 3.5lbs this month.

I've been doing a rotation of Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred, mostly, with some of Chalene's Fat Blaster (that clip is a great one someone taped of herself doing the workout--so that's how I must look doing it! LOL) and new Cathe step ('Step Moves') thrown in. (Cathe seems to have managed to get more makeup than I even OWN stuck to her face for this one! :) It's a great workout--moderate intensity, complex choreography. Very fun!) So some of the weight loss could be muscle loss--I haven't done any heavy lifting or even any high endurance low resistance work this month. BUT I wore my skinniest jeans to work yesterday and they seemed to fit fine. So that has to be a good sign.

9 card spread

2010-02-20T00:17:00.002Z

So a subordinate of mine phoned me today from another branch to tell me 'someone' called. She gave me a vague description of what the lady called about, said the lady didn't leave her name or her phone number, nor did this member of staff ask the lady what specifically she was requesting, because the lady 'seemed sure someone knows all about it.' Apparently she thought she'd pass it on to me and I'd sort it out. I told her off for not taking a message properly and throwing this in my lap to sort out. If you can even sort out a message that has 1) no name 2) no number and 3) no message! I said to her rather coldly, 'So you didn't ask her name? You didn't ask for a phone number? It would have been VERY USEFUL to have that information.' Which I think showed considerable restraint. Maybe too much restraint. All I know is, some customer is going to come back to me eventually very angry that she hasn't heard anything from us, and there's nothing I can do until she calls, mad.

I was livid when I got home and threw 9 cards from my Anna K, no reversals. (Quotations from Anna K LWB).

What lesson can I learn from this? 6 cups, 3 wands, ace cups

6 cups--The lesson is that some members of staff (me included, most likely) are allowing 'the influence of the past to colour their judgement and decisions'. There is a long history in my work place of poor communication, a fuzzy and little understood heirarchy, lack of strong leadership, and letting poor performance slide. I'm sorry to sound critical, but it really is true. Those of us a more supervisory role are working with management to tighten things up, but we're in for a long haul changing this culture. Really, it says so much about us in general that I feel so conflicted about what most supervisors would rake you over the coals for without a second thought.

3 wands--This is a time, though, when it's vital that we invest our energy in forming a realistic vision of the future. We have to figure out 'how to coordinate to achieve our plans'.

Ace cups--The current climate at work is a new situation that is definitely emotionally charged. Our work place has been undergoing a massive transformation for the last two years or so, and more major change is on the horizon. This is upsetting for people. But it's also a chance to create real vitality and enthusiasm. If handled well.

How can I handle similar situations in the future? page swords, knight cups, 2 pents

Page swords--I must 'be prepared for conflicts, for clarifying discussions and for criticism', but I 'must not be overly fierce'. The Anna K LWB is so perfect, I think, saying, I must 'not be preparing for a fight, but for a conflict for which I need objective, realistic points, not the taunts of a diatribe'. That rings so true and perfect for this sort of situation--how to deal with my anger when someone is so blatantly incompetent. The page of swords seems to me to speak to discipline and reasonable assertiveness. I was not overly fierce with the member of staff, but I certainly launched into a diatribe when I hung up the phone!

Knight cups--I must use my emotions--my sympathy--in an appropriate way. I believe people have been let slide for too long, but as Anna K LWB says, 'It is a time to approach an enemy peacefully...and be careful not to fall into naivety, credulity or inappropriate helpfulness.' I don't know if enemy is the right word, but you certainly feel like there's a possibility of making an enemy if you correct someone where I work, and I know a lot of griping and criticism goes on about supervisors and managers amongst staff.

2 Pentacles--The key to success seems obviously to be to strike a balance between the assertiveness of swords energy and the compassion/sentimentality of cups energy.

How can I assert my authority effectively at work? Queen wands, Death, Ace swords

Queen wands--I need to be self-confident and full of energy but not 'self-dramatising or overestimating my own capabilities.'

Death--The best way to assert myself is to attempt to die to my old ways of thinking and dealing with members of staff.

Ace swords--I must look at things with a clear head and clear mind. 'It is the time to make clear the things which had been unclear or incomprehensible'--which is the best way to describe the convoluted and backward way we have supervised and managed people so far.

I was amazed at how accurate this reading rang for me when I threw the cards and looked them over intuitively, so I checked the LWB for deeper levels of meaning, and was really surprised at how sentence after sentence fit the situation so perfectly.

You tarot folk, what further or different insights do you have?

Ma Po Doufu

2010-02-03T13:55:00.005Z

Ma Po Doufu ('Pock-marked Ma's Tofu')

Prepare and set these aside:
2 packages firm tofu, drained and pressed, cut into bite-size cubes
approx 2 cups frozen veggie mince (or reconstituted dried TVP)
1/2 cup shredded dried black fungus (wood ears), soaked in hot water
2 whole dried red chiles

Combine in a bowl:

1/4 cup dark soy sauce
2-1/2 Tbs Sichuan chili bean paste
1 Tbs black bean paste
1 tsp sugar or a Tbs mirin
4 Tbs cornstarch
a big squirt of garlic paste from a tube (or 2 fat cloves minced)
a smaller squirt ginger paste (or about 1 tsp minced)
a squirt of chile paste from a tube (or a pinch of ground cayenne, or a chopped fresh hot red chile)--adjust heat to taste, but traditionally should be pretty hot!
several grinds black pepper and Sichuan peppercorns
sesame oil to taste (a little goes a long way)
about a cup of water

To prepare:
Heat a little peanut oil in a sauce pan or wok. Toast the dried red chilies for a few seconds, then pour the liquid mixture in sauce pan and add the veggie mince and wood ears. Stir and simmer until thickened and veggie mince is done to your liking. Taste for spiciness and adjust accordingly. (You might want more pepper, more soy sauce, whatever.) When it's perfect for you, add the tofu, stir very carefully, and allow to heat through.

Serve over rice,with a large portion of crisp stir-fried mixed vegetables on the side. (Keep the flavour of the side dish light because the tofu dish is very rich. I just put some ginger in my veg and didn't make a sauce...) Garnish the mapo doufu with fresh chopped green onions.

We had this for dinner last night!

Me and resolutions, we lose interest in each other fast

2010-02-02T16:34:00.010Z

I was going to post my food for a week, but alas I haven't. Probably just as well as it's terribly dull reading. Well, it's kind of like a Greek tragedy. You know, where the protagonist's weakness is the cause of his own downfall. And you surely don't want to watch that happening.

So rather than focus on my tightening waistband, let's talk about something else.

I have rediscovered the Heart Sutra, also known as the Prajnaparamita Sutta. It is a sutra that is very dear to me. It is said to contain the essence of Buddhist teaching, and is recited daily in Mahayana temples and practice centres around the world. It is very short sutra and quite profound. In the sutra, Avolokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, speaks to Shariputra, a disciple of the Buddha, about ultimate reality. The orginal version of the sutra is in Sanskrit, which I am in the process of learning to chant, but I also chant it in English, using my beloved Thich Nhat Hanh's translation:

The Bodhisattva Avalokita,
while moving in the deep course of Perfect Understanding,
shed light on the Five Skandhas and found them equally empty.
After this penetration, he overcame ill-being.

Listen, Shariputra,
form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.
The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.

Listen, Shariputra,
all dharmas are marked with emptiness.
They are neither produced nor destroyed,
neither defiled nor immaculate,
neither increasing nor decreasing.
Therefore in emptiness there is neither form, nor feelings, nor perceptions,
nor mental formations, nor consciousness.
No eye, or ear, or nose, or tongue, or body, or mind.
No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind.
No realms of elements (from eyes to mind consciousness),
no interdependent origins and no extinction of them
(from ignorance to death and decay).
No ill-being, no cause of ill-being, no end of ill-being, and no path.
No understanding and no attainment.

Because there is no attainment,
the Bodhisattvas, grounded in Perfect Understanding,
find no obstacles for their minds.
Having no obstacles, they overcome fear,
liberating themselves forever from illusion, realizing perfect nirvana.
All Buddhas in the past, present, and future,
thanks to this Perfect Understanding,
arrive at full, right, and universal enlightenment.

Therefore one should know
that Perfect Understanding is the highest mantra, the unequaled mantra,
the destroyer of ill-being, the incorruptible truth.
A mantra of Prajñaparamita should therefore be proclaimed:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

To hear it chanted by members of the Plum Village sangha (Thich Nhat Hanh's home in France), click here.

Now, I would never profess to be a teacher of Buddhism. I am not posting this as instruction. I am also not asking for corrective input. I am merely sharing my thoughts on the sutra as I see it, based on how I have been taught by Thich Nhat Hanh (through reading his books and listening to his lectures online).

What The Heart Sutra is saying is that Avalokita observed life (the 5 skandhas are the 5 aggregates of life, the 5 aspects of existence: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) and found that when you look into them deeply, you find that they are 'empty'. (This is the interesting thing about this sutra. It carefully goes through some of the most basic Buddhist teachings about reality and 'deconstructs' them, proclaiming that their teaching is not a teaching at all. This in itself is an important Buddhist teaching, in fact the most important Buddhist teaching.)

Okay, here we go, then. What are the 5 skandhas? Remember they cannot exist independently.

Form (rupa in Sanskrit)--material, physical factors, including our bodies and the material objects that surround us--the physical sense organs and the corresponding physical objects of the sense of organs--but also the mind and its constructs

Feeling (vedana in Sanskrit)--physical sensations and emotions experienced as a result of interacting with Form--'sensation' is the key word

Perceptions (samjna in Sanskrit)--attaching a name to an object or experience, conception of an idea about a particular object, conceptualising

Mental formations (samskara in Sanskrit)--conditioned response to the object of experience, volitional actions whether good or bad--biases, prejudices, interests and attractions

Consciousness (vijnana in Sanskrit)--the faculty that connects Form to Feeling--you cannot feel without consciousness

Now, Avalokita observed us all and considered the Buddha's teaching that each of us is merely a conglomeration of these 5 aggregates, and that nowhere in any of these 5 aggregates can we pinpoint the 'self', nor can we pinpoint it in any combination of them. Therefore, there is no self. We are empty of self. Think of it this way. Look at a chair. Why is it a chair? What part of it makes it a chair? It's wood. Does that make it a chair? It has legs. Is its chairness in its legs? When you're putting it together, at what point does it become a chair? Conversely, if you deconstruct it, at what point does it stop being a chair? What is a chair? You can deconstruct it down to its atoms, but you won't find where its 'chairness' is. It's the same with you. You can't find the part of 'you' that is you. The concept of self is as much of an illusion as the concept of chair, when you look at it that way. The chair is made up entirely of not-chair elements. You are made up entirely of not-you elements. In fact, if you look deeply into things, you will see that there is nothing that is not an element of everything. The only thing lacking is a 'separate self'. And that's what Avalokita meant when he found all skandhas 'equally empty'. Everything is equally empty of a separate self. And understanding this, 'penetrating' this truth, he overcame suffering, or 'ill-being.' There is no fear when there is no separation, no beginning and no end.

The rest of sutra goes on to say that there is nothing that is not empty of a separate self, which is a curious way of stating that everything is actually part of everything else:

'Neither produced nor destroyed.'-- Nothing can be destroyed and nothing can be created. (You can't make something out of nothing. Think about it. And you can't make something into nothing. You burn a piece of paper, it turns to smoke and ash. It doesn't become nothing. Nothing becomes nothing.)

'Neither defiled nor immaculate'--a rose becomes garbage eventually, and garbage is compost to the rose.

'Neither increasing nor decreasing'--everything that is, already is, and cannot be produced nor destroyed.

So when you relax into the knowledge of our oneness, our 'interbeing', suffering ceases. There is no attaining to this, nothing to strive for, no concept to master. It is merely a matter of seeing an 'incorruptible truth'--everything is part of everything else.

The 'mantra of Prajnaparamita' (which means 'perfect understanding') is 'Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha'. This means, 'Gone, gone, all the way gone, everyone gone over to the other shore. Hurray!' Which is a funny way of celebrating that we're all one, and a sort of prayer that we'll all realise it.

Oh, here's a perfectly beautiful rendition of the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit, by a Malaysian recording artist named Imee Ooi. It's the one I'm learning: Heart Sutra Imee Ooi .

And finally, if you want to hear a dance version in English, check this out: Heart Sutra Club Mix. (It's not Thich Nhat Hanh's translation, but if you listen closely you can hear every word.)

I know you're dying to find out

2010-01-29T07:20:00.003Z

what I'm eating today, so here you go:

6.45--my standard breakfast--2 slices seeded wholemeal toast, coconut oil, marmite, peanut butter and all-fruit strawberry jam, black decaf, water

10.30--coco loco nakd bar, water, 1 Cadbury rose (a bite-size choc)

13.00--sandwich--2 slices wholemeal bread, squirt each of mustard and 'burger sauce', a salad topping made of beetroot, tomato and roasted red pepper chopped up together, 4 slices of Cheatin' Meats coldcuts; carrot sticks, water, 3/4 a banana, 1 Cadbury rose

3.30--1/2 punnet blueberries and 1 pot soy yogurt, water, 2 cadbury roses

6.30--about a tsp peanut butter and a lick of jam

7.30--1.5 vegetarian schnitzel, roasted egglant and zucchini, about 2 cups of oven chips

No workout today.

Let's all play food diary for a week. Who wants to join me?

2010-01-28T07:17:00.004Z

My astrological year has officially begun and my year card for 2010 is Death--the card of transformation. The Death card is an archetypal energy concerned with transition from one state to another. Something ends, something begins. It is a time to embrace change rather than fear it. This might mean a change of consciousness, entrance into a new state, giving up your sense of self to a feeling of merging with the cosmos, cutting through the superficial to understand what is at the core...or it could be as simple as a new job. Maybe for me, it's as simple as putting down the Doritos.

I'm posting my food from Thursday to Thursday here, but just so you'll get an idea of what I'm transforming from, let's have a look at a randomly chosen day from January.

18th January
6.45--2 slices seeded wholemeal toast, 1 tsp coconut oil, squirt of marmite, heaping tsp peanut butter, heaping Tbs jam, black decaf, zinc and multi-vitamin supplements

8.05--2 squares dark chocolate

8.55--1 chocolate bon bon

10.30--a small banana and a glass of water

12.00--2 veggie 'meat' balls, about a cup of wholemeal pasta with roasted mixed mediterranean veg and pasta sauce, green beans--followed by 3 Quality Street chocolates

3.30--1 Quality Street chocolate

5.00--1 bite of a chocolate cornflake thing (it was gross so I binned the rest)

5.40--1 slice of chocolate cake

7.30--1/4 lb breaded veggie pattie, steamed broccoli, oven roasted potatoes, 1 slice of chocolate cake

9.30--2 squares dark chocolate, 1 cup black decaf

Exercise: Chalean Dynamic Flow Yoga

I have written down everything I've eaten since 30th December. I'm not kidding, it has been that bad for a while now. I'm very lucky not to have gained more weight than I have. (I weighed 139.8 day before yesterday).

BUT...it's time to transform. So here's what I ate today.

28th January
6.50--2 slices seeded wholemeal toast with coconut oil, marmite and jam, black decaf, water

10.30--banana and water

12.00--sweet potato topped cottage pie, water

3.30--soy yogurt with a punnet of blueberries

5.30--a heaping tsp of peanut butter and a tsp of jam, eaten off the spoon

6.45--1 cup brown basmati rice, chickpea and cauliflower jalfrezi

7.30--large bowl Special K with unsweetened homemade soy milk

Exercise: The Firm Calorie Killer

Right then, that's Day One done. Not too bad! See how telling you about it makes me do better?

Nurse. Nurse. It's my birthday. Take me to the window. I want to look at the ocean.

2010-01-27T13:24:00.003Z

Remember your 33rd birthday?

You threw a great big party,

And all of your friends were there for you--

Jemaine, Greg, and me.

We brought you a cake in the shape of a four and a three

'Cause we all thought you were forty three.

Today is my 43rd birthday and I just keep thinking of this song from 'Flight of the Conchords.' I know it shouldn't make me laugh but it just does! LOL

Happy birthday to me. :)

The Rainbow of Prosperity Spread

2010-01-16T22:42:00.004Z

This spread comes from Aeclectic Tarot forum.

-------------------3---- 4---- 5------------------------

--------------2---------------------6---------------------

--------1--------------------------------7----------------

--------------------------8----------------------------

1. What I want
2. What I need
3. What I already have
4. What I need to give up
5. What step to take next
6. What resources are out there?
7. Who can/will help me?
8. End result/pot of gold at end of rainbow

1. 7 of Coins--I want to watch a full harvest coming to fruition. True! I want to make investments that I can watch grow as I move toward retirement.

2. Queen of Coins--I need to develop my ability to visualise (and thereby manifest) abundance. This is true. I tend to spend a lot of time visualising lack--worrying about having to choose betweeen rent and food. Worrying about who will take care of us when we're old, as we have no children or family nearby and are quite insular. I can visualise all sorts of disaster and loss. But I hardly ever allow myself to visualise abundance.

3. Queen of Swords--I already have a tendency to research and gather lots of information. I use my logical mind quite a bit. I love to write things down, put them in order, color-code them, cross-reference them...so those skills are in place.

4. The Tower--I really need to give up the notion that making decisions about a retirement plan is going to be the difference between a rosy future and certain disaster. I need to let go of the notion that making an investment will prevent bad things from happening. Or that there is any investment that is going to be 100% safe.

5. 2 Swords--No easy solution exists to what step to take next, and all possibilities seem like compromises. A new approach may be called for. (Direct quote from the book that accompanies the Legacy of the Divine Tarot book). This is definitely true. Everything I read about savings & investment shows that no matter which way you go, you may feel like you're being shortchanged or taking too big a chance. This is what has caused me to be frozen on the whole issue for so long. A new approach may be called for. But what?

6. Page of Cups--The question asks about outside resources, but the Page of Cups points to the inner. It is earth of water. The fertile soil of emotion. This seems very touchy-feely for an outside resource about finances. Ciro's book suggests that his Page of Cups has some street smarts, a bit of the Artful Dodger about him. Kafka's Ghost suggests that this is 'more creative and less risk-averse' ways to save and invest. Yikes! Doesn't Tarot know how risk-averse I am! :)

7. 7 Wands--Who will help me? Apparently no one. The 7 of Wands is all about standing up for myself. I guess this card is telling me that I can't expect any financial adviser (or anyone else for that matter) to be able to give me the magic formula for a comfortable retirement. I have to look out for myself. Also, Kafka's Ghost suggests that this means once I have made an investment plan, I should 'stay the course' regardless of market activity. Yep, okay.

8. 2 Wands--My 'pot of gold at the end of the rainbow' is that I get a big decision to make. 'A window of opportunity is presented,' says Ciro's book, 'but in order to take that opportunity it will take leadership, vision, and decision making. Start making plans and setting them in motion. Keep your intentions clear.' Harrumph. I was really hoping for 9 or 10 of Cups here, but the cards suggest what I need is fortitude. Right then.

Mercury is out of retrograde now. I guess it's time to start making some decisions.

Make way for the knights

2010-01-13T14:53:00.004Z

Following on from my Meet the Pages post, here are the knights. Knights carry the message of the nature of their suit into the world. They've gone from the potential they showed as little kids, to feeling the stirrings of action as teenagers.

Knight of Pentacles
So, when Wally Cleaver/Kyle (my Page of Pentacles) grows to be a teen, what character from movies, literature or TV would he become? There won't be a lot of movies or TV shows revolving around a Knight of Pentacles, because he's not a really exciting guy. He wants to work hard, keep a low profile, meet his own goals. He doesn't necessarily have the best grades or the most talent. He compares himself to other kids and wants to have what they have. He doesn't want to be unique! He wants to organise his album collection, make sure he has properly valued his Star Wars collectibles, and shine up his car. He values his home life and family and his few good friends. I think the Knight of Pentacles is Kevin Arnold from 'The Wonder Years'.

Knight of Wands
Who does Bart Simpson morph into as a teenager? He's still Mr. Popularity amongst the other kids. He wants to be top of the heap, so he'll either be captain of the football team or the class clown who decides to be the only male member of the cheerleading squad. He is likely to be involved in the school clubs and might even play the lead in the high school musical. Prom king, top junior salesman at the local Sears department store, the most important thing to him is not necessarily to be the best, but to be numero uno. He can have a tendency to think he's a hotty and is likely to put himself before all others, again not because he's mean-spirited but because he finds himself just so darn irresistible. From mainstream TV, I'm thinking Cordelia from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.' Lesser known, a character called Nazim Iqbal, the PR guy for the local university in 'Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About,' one of my favourite books. (Hey, it means something to me. :) )

Knight of Cups
A moody and dreamy teen--that's who Butters, my Page of Cups, would grow into. A poet or writer of song lyrics, an artist who has taught himself to play 'Dust in the Wind' on his guitar, he can fall prey to a series of earthshatteringly significant crushes. Not the least of which might be on himself and his own deepness. Nobody understands him, no one has ever felt the way he feels, nor felt as deeply and agonisingly as he feels, and so he retreats into his room to grow his hair long enough to flop down over his soulful eyes, or he strikes out from home at a young age in search of meaning and of himself and of 'love'. The true Emo, he better be careful or he could fall into a black depression and then all sorts of bad stuff could happen. This is Ricky, the kid who liked to film floaty carrier bags in 'American Beauty'.

Knight of Swords
Lisa Simpson was our Page of Swords. As a teen, she would continue her quest to be the righter of wrongs and the knower of more than you. The Knight of Swords would be the kid who loves to try to trip up the teacher in class discussions, gets a charge out of playing devil's advocate and considers himself victorious if he can get you to lose your temper in a debate. This just has to be Alex P Keaton from 'Family Ties'. (What would we do, baby, without us? Sha la la la)

Today's draw

2010-01-12T07:18:00.008Z

Today's draw was 4 of cups, The Star and Page of Wands. Boredom and apathy, hope of renewal, and the restless desire for something new to happen. Well, if that doesn't just sum up my winter blahs. The cards seem to hint that something may happen, some message or idea may come my way to kickstart my enthusiasm. I will keep my eyes open for it! (If I don't fall asleep from the boredom first!) Seriously, I'm so ready for some sort of change. I am in a rut! I have no idea what I want to happen, though.

Meet the Pages

2010-01-10T18:01:00.019Z

[most of the content of this post has been inspired by 'Meaning of the Pages' at Aeclectic Tarot]

I've been trying to get my head around the court cards. I decided the best way to do it would be to relate the qualities of each card to a character from a TV show or literature or a movie or something.

First things first. You have to digest the spirit of each suit, and how each member of court characterises the quality of that suit. So here's some information drawn from a wide range of sources I've read online and in books, which has all amalgamated in my head and come out like this...

Pentacles are about security and physical/material realm--earth

Wands are about action and achievement, creativity, moving forward, being a 'go-getter' -- fire

Cups are about emotion, the world of feeling, relationships, how we relate to the external world --water

Swords are about mental strengths and how we use (and misuse) them --air

___________________________________

The KING of each suit is like its sun, the source of its life--fire

The QUEEN of each suit embodies the spirit of the suit in the real world, like rain watering the earth -- water

The KNIGHT of each suit moves its spirit around, like the wind blowing seeds --air

The PAGE of each suit is the actual soil where the spirit of suit takes hold and begins to grow; he's like a little Fool--earth

The Page of Pentacles -- Wally Cleaver 'Leave it to Beaver' & Kyle 'South Park'
The Page of Pentacles is a youngster who is in touch with the practical matters of life and is close to the earth. His version of play is to build things from dirt, like making fortresses for his cars and trucks. He will build a treehouse. Even his games are work, in that way. He enjoys earning his own money, will do extra chores, take a paper route, work in a soda shop (in Wally's case), shovel snow from the neighbours' pavement (in Kyle's case), and likes knowing how much money he's got. He can be seen as overly serious because he lacks imagination and is more interested in practical matters. He is very earnest and values his family and security and has a strong sense of right and wrong.

The Page of Cups--Butters 'South Park'
The Page of Cups is a sensitive little kid who gets caught up in his own daydreams and doesn't pay as much attention to the real world as he should. He loves listening to stories and telling stories and he has a vivid imagination. He likes to play make-believe. He enjoys reading and being read to, because it lets him live out the stories in his head. He is extremely loving, loveable, kind and sweet, very tender-hearted. As Thirteen on Aeclectic Tarot describes, he is the kind of kid who will bring you a flower, try to rescue wounded birds, and who takes very seriously the death of a goldfish. He can get very caught up in his emotions, going from the quiveringest, quakingest fear to the most hilarious of hilarity, from the depths of despair to the heights of bliss, over things that other people might not think are quite that earth-shattering.

The Page of Wands--Bart Simpson 'The Simpsons'
A popular kid and a leader, the Page of Wands never stands still. He runs around everywhere, climbs on everything, never slows down. He's a thrill-seeker, always up a tree or plotting mischief. He is always late to dinner, always wandering beyond his boundaries, a natural born explorer. He's the type of kid who will slip away from you in the supermarket to run karooming into the frozen foods. He loves being the centre of attention, and if you're not careful he can be a bully to other children, not because he's mean spirited, but because he's just so forceful and dominant.

The Page of Swords--Lisa Simpson 'The Simpsons'
This kid loves to talk, talk, talk. She questions everything. She loves facts and is full of arcane knowledge. She thinks she knows more than you and she usually does. She is extremely brainy, loves challenges of logic and takes pride in her smarts. She can be too forthright and honest and in what she says and how she confronts what she sees as flawed logic or injustice. These qualities can turn her into a tattletale or a know-it-all if she doesn't watch out. She loves to argue, or as she would see it, enter into debate!

My Christmas money has all been spent.

2010-01-09T17:19:00.007Z

Today the beautiful Buddha Tarot arrived from America. I managed to buy this deck for £4.72 on Amazon! I took it out of the box and shuffled it, did a quick 3-card draw and found the reading almost intuitive. I don't think it will take long for me to get into this deck. The major arcana are based on the young Siddhartha Gautama from birth to becoming the Buddha, giving his first sermon at Deer Park, then his death at age 80. The pip cards are true pip cards,with only a token symbol or depiction of what the card means. The suits are vajras (swords), double vajras (cups), lotuses (wands), jewels (pentacles). It is based very closely on RWS, so is a pretty quick study.

I decided that I wanted a digital RWS clone, and settled on Ciro's Legacy of the Divine Tarot. This one is so gorgeous, and I got word earlier this week that it has shipped. Maybe it will be in on Monday--gives me a reason to go to work, to collect my parcels!

I am most excited of this last acquisition. It's a self-published tarot by an Austrian artist called Anna Kleffinger. I am very, very happy that I managed to get a deck, because she only had 500 printed and they are now sold out! I love this deck because all the cards are very earthy and, to me, they are instantly readable. I think the characters look like hobbits.

This is the card that won me to the Anna K tarot. I interpret the 8 of swords to represent that the woman tied up and surrounded by swords is a victim of her own perception of her situation. That in reality, she is free. I had no basis for that, really, other than my gut feeling. Lo and behold Anna depicts it perfectly:

Also, the Lovers card. Most decks depict the lovers as nude young people, surrounded by arcane symbolism and references to the Biblical Adam and Eve. Not Anna:

The Lovers are an older couple. They made the commitment to be together, and they have been. They are life companions, trust one another implicitly, have enjoyed each day together and will stay together. Anna K says this card represents the 'unconditional yes'--yes to life, yes to love, yes to taking responsibility, yes to your chosen path. That's just so fantastic. So I ordered the deck. She sold out within the next 24 hours! Serendipity.

Wonderful break

2009-12-29T23:25:00.006Z

I have been off work since 4 pm, 24th December. It has been WONDERFUL! Hubby and I have done absolutely nothing but eat and watch DVDs. We didn't exchange gifts this year, but we have been having an awesome holiday just lazing about. Make no mistake, we have done a workout each day (today's was Cathe's Kick Punch & Crunch, and man am I sore from it already!), but it's been soooo nice to just watch UK's Strongest Man and Star Wars and so on, and eat biscuit after biscuit and drink cup after cup of coffee.

When Hubby visited his parents last week, they gave us £50 each for Christmas, so you won't need three guesses to figure out what I've been doing. I ordered a tarot deck and a book about tarot! The rest of the money I hope to spend on a couple of new workouts, as soon as something catches my eye. Unless I buy something tarot-related with it first.

The deck I chose just really amused me and I had to have it.

The Housewive's Tarot

It's described as 'Far from Heaven' and 'Leave It to Beaver' meet the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. Packaged in a retro-style recipe box, sporting red and cream gingham backs, all the cards are illustrated with graphics taken from period advertisements. It is absolutely hilarious, and gets great reviews all over the internet.

Here's the website (although it doesn't tell you much): www.housewivestarot.com

The Devil card is a chocolate cake with long, stockinged legs, holding a cigarette in one hand and a martini in the other. The Judgement card is a lady whose butt has been morphed into a rump roast standing aghast on a bathroom scale. And the Death card is a jar of out of date mayonnaise with flies on it, surrounded by rotting tomatoes. Every card I've seen online has made me laugh. Had to have it. I love all things 50s retro. I may have to have a 50s retro day when this arrives, and watch 'Pleasantville'.

I also bought a book called Pictures from the Heart: A Tarot Dictionary, which is highly recommended and contains explanations of tarot symbolism. Can't wait to see that!

Four of Pentacles

2009-12-24T17:16:00.008Z

This card makes me smile because I can so relate to it. A young man sits on a bit of stonemasonry in front of a smallish city/townscape. Swathed in a dark cloak, he has wrapped himself around four golden pentacle coins. Hunched over the one in his lap, arms wrapped around it, chin resting on it, he has two more under his feet and one balanced on his head! He looks for all the world like a little kid trying his best to hoard all the toys, or like a puppy that has gathered things around itself, gripping them in its mouth and between its paws.

He's nicknamed the miser and he gets a lot of flak, but I can't help but warm to the old boy.

'Me! Mine!' says this card. He's just a young thing, look at that face. It's open and innocent--it's practically guileless. He has earned a bit of cash, or gained some sort of security, a bit of groundedness, a bit of whatever it is that makes him feel safe--and he ain't letting go. He doesn't want to lose it. His face says, 'This is mine. You can't have it, thank you very much. I'm not interested in taking yours, but I'm going to make sure you don't slip up and get what's mine. Those over there are YOUR toys. These here are MY toys. You don't touch my stuff, I won't touch your stuff. We'll both be happy.'

A lot of people are living their lives at Four of Pentacles level. I know I do. I certainly wish no harm on anyone. In fact, I wish prosperity and joy to all of them. I don't want to take what anyone has got, and I don't spend time envying what they have, either. I just want what I've got--MY money, MY time, MY energy, MY attention--and I'm not willing to give one iota of any of it to anything not of MY choosing. It's not personal--I just come first. To me, that's what this card means. It's saying, 'I don't wish ill on anyone, but this stuff is mine and I intend to keep it.'

Look at that guy's face. He's leaning toward you. He has an open expression. He's willing to be your friend. He'll definitely talk to you. Might share ideas, a laugh, maybe have a real heart to heart. He might even decide to give you one of the coins--if HE decided to. Because HE wanted to. (He probably won't but he might!)

Of course, I know that this is a low level of personal development. We have to learn eventually that no amount of clinging is going to protect us from loss. But this lesson, I think, is hardest in the area that pentacles represents: things of this world. The physical realm, our comfort as physical beings. Think about it. For all your big talk, would you willingly ease your grip on your warm home, your supply of clean water, your endless access to food, your physical survival and comfort? I bet not. And that's just one level of worldly clinging that this card addresses. Surely we can all relate.

Overall, this is probably not 'technically' a positive card. It shows there's some growth required. But I believe it's a very human card, and sometimes, a necessary card. Certainly a very normal phase, at the least.

I'm honest enough to say, when it comes to altruism, I'm not quite there yet. Neither is the lad on this card. The two of us, we understand each other.

Three of Pentacles

2009-12-23T08:04:00.005Z

An archway, beneath which are 3 more archways. 3 circles within 3 circles--3 pentacles within the circles. Three is the number of creativity, results and achievement, and that's what this card is about.

The pentacles are worked into the stonemasonry of a church--they are not coins. This the only card in which the pentacles are not depicted on gold disks. To me this means this card is less about money and more about the actual labour of our hands, its products, and how we get the concept of the work out of ourselves and manifested as a finished thing. The creative process, then the physical process.

In the left arch stands a stonemason. He is elevated on a crude wooden bench, in the middle of doing some carving. His head is above the heads of the other figures in the scene--possibly because as he is the one who brings the vision from idea to reality, he is the superior--he is the one doing the magic of craftsmanship.

There are 2 figures in the right archway. One is wearing a rather outlandish cape and hood in blazing red and orange. Perhaps he is dressed in the 'current fashion' of his age, which always denotes affluence and looks very impressive at that moment, but also always looks ridiculous a few years later. He is probably wealthy and he obviously has his own ideas about how the mason's work should look. He is most likely the architect of the design, or a patron--but he lacks the skill to bring his idea to fruition. He might represent creativity or creative spark.

The other figure is a cowled monk. This is his church. He appears to be listening very intently to the exchange between the mason and the man holding the plans. In some ways, he is caught between the two of them--he can neither design nor create. And yet, he is still very important. He has the power to veto everything, stop the project entirely. He is the last word. He also seems to represent tradition and authority.

The card seems, then, to represent tensions:

fashion/trends/fads vs tradition/ authority
the inner guide of the artisan vs constraints from the outside
seeking guidance from the two (creativity/trends and tradition) yourself

The three figures might also represent the three aspect of the self: the physical (mason), the mental (the architect), and the spiritual (the monk)--but that to me seems quite forced. The pentacles are in the stonework, so the mason is the star of the show here.

So this card is about how you approach your worldly concerns--the way you make a living, the way you approach worldly things. Whether you seek guidance or follow your own inner guide. Whether you follow the latest fad or go with the traditional route. And what the outside world thinks of your work--and how you let that affect you.

Two of Pentacles

2009-12-22T22:28:00.005Z

I step into the frame of the card and suddenly I am in a port town. I can smell the sea and hear the waves lapping. There's the oceany smell of fish and salt, the call of gulls, and the sound men working on their boats and on the docks. Hammering and bells. Waves are crashing heavily against the beach somewhere in the distance.

The juggler is on a boardwalk, and there are lots of people around. This is a crowded, busy place. The people are dressed in clothing of a bygone age. Mixed eras. Aran sweaters. Ladies in long skirts with kerchiefs on their heads. No one is paying any attention to the juggler, though he by far is the most colorful and outlandishly dressed. He is switching two disks from hand to hand while stepping from one foot to the other. It seems an odd thing to do, but he makes it look natural. He keeps the disks moving in a figure 8 motion, but there is no band of infinity visible around them. His expression is neither happy nor unhappy; he watches the disks closely as he passes them from hand to hand. People keep brushing past us and some of them bump into him, but he keeps juggling.

'How long have you been doing this?' I ask.

'Long time,' he answers, still looking at the disks.

'Is it work?' I ask.

'More like a calling,' he says.

I frown and look around. Everyone is so busy, going about their seaside tasks. Men in boats, women with baskets of fish, laundry, towing at little children. There's a bustle, but it is a quiet bustle, steady. It fits in with the setting. Everything is muted in tone, lots of misty grey. The sky seems so big. The sea is the colour of slate. There's a cold, brisk wind. And the smell of hot grease--a chip shop.

'All of these people are juggling, you know,' says the juggler.

I turn back to him. 'Can't you ever stop?' I ask.

'Not really,' he says. 'I can break up the pattern, pause a bit maybe. But you just have to keep going.' He shifts the disk in silence a few times. 'I don't mind it actually. It's just what you do. Gotta keep going.'

I look at the people. They're all going about the business of life. They don't notice the steady, rhythmic pace of it. They're all just living. That's not something you just stop.

'Even if you get dizzy, get jostled, even if you drop one of the darn things, you just pick it up and keep going,' the juggler is saying.

My eye is drawn to a woman in a gray headscarf who has a basket of fish. I suddenly am standing in front of her. She looks up and hands me an empty basket. It is just like the basket I have decided to keep my tarot cards in.

'Thank you,' I say. 'What do I do with it?'

'Put stuff in it,' she answers.

I am puzzled. 'How do I carry this if I'm supposed to be juggling?' I ask.

'Juggle in your head, carry in your heart,' she says.

'Oh,' I say.

'Trust me,' she says.

I am back in front of the juggler. He's a handsome lad. His hair is damp from the sea air. I tell him good-bye and step out of the card.

------------------------------

This is an exercise called 'Entering the Card', where you meditate on stepping into the world of the card and report what happens. You are meant to approach a character you see in the card and ask for a gift.

I found this exercise very useful. Some interpretations of this card suggest it is about continual change, like a mini Wheel of Fortune. In some instances that might be the case, but to me it indicates persevering in the basic duties and tasks of life; in the midst of many ordinary distractions and the general bustle. Concentrating on the task at hand, not allowing one's perspective to be skewed--mindfulness.

Total Immersion

2009-12-22T21:18:00.004Z

Sorry I 've been away for so long, I've been completely immersed in my new interest in tarot. I have set aside my Osho Zen deck for the moment in favour of the more traditional Universal Waite. I am now engaged in an Intensive Deck Study, and I have committed to studying one card per day every day until I complete the deck. So I will finish 8th March, 2010. I may be posting about a lot of it here.

As part of the study, I have committed not to buying any more decks or working with any deck but the Universal Waite. I also have committed to doing a 3-card daily draw in the morning, and a Celtic Cross in the evening.

Tarot is a wonderful thing. The cards are so beautiful. I'm glad I decided to add this to my hobbies.

On another note, I weighed 138.8 this morning and it's only 2 days until Christmas break! Yay!

My first reading (and first daily card)

2009-12-12T15:31:00.016Z

I received my Osho Zen Tarot a few days ago and have spent some time familiarizing myself with the cards, as well as the Rider-Waite/Universal Tarot. Last night, I tried my first small reading. I settled on a layout called 'My strengths'. I simply laid out 4 cards that I chose from the shuffled deck, fanned out in my hand, and put them out face down, left to right, representing:

1. My strength now
2. How I can ulitize that strength
3. Where this may lead
4. The strength I need to develop

I pulled the cards with intention, laid them out, then turned them over and studied them for a long time. I consulted with my books (the Osho Zen little white book, and 'The Tarot Bible' by Sarah Bartlett.) I made some notes and puzzled on it for awhile, discussed with Derek and then this morning wrote up my reading.

This reading seems to be saying to me that I am in a place right now where I am seeing through some of my illusions, that I am seeing my life with unusual clarity. It is true that I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about various aspects of my life--my financial future, my job, and my spiritual practices. I have even recently set a 2010 goal for myself to 'find a way to reach out to others that is true to myself.' And each morning lately, I have been chanting for freedom from 'the great illness', ie, illusion. So when I turned over the card that says my greatest strength right now is 'Awareness', I smiled to myself.

The 'Awareness' card in Osho Zen corresponds to The Chariot in Rider-Waite. The Chariot card can indicate, and I quote, 'You have reached a place where you can stand up for your beliefs and make decisions based on what you want rather than on what others assume is right for you.' Well, isn't that exactly what I said in my last post!

Because I am having this moment of clarity, the cards suggest that now is a good time to strike at one of my most damaging delusions--one of my biggest fears, which has developed through layers of an overactive mind, the pain-body and illusion--fear of interacting with other people, of being more socially active. The card is called 'Participation', the 4 of Fire. I feel that to do this in a way that is true to who I am, I should develop them through my interests. I should keep the interactions at a level that is acceptable for me. I should try to say YES at least occasionally when I am asked to join in something. I should allow myself to be more expansive, more tolerant of others, to realise and feel that I am part of the rest of life. But the 4 of Wands (which the Osho Zen 4 of Fire corresponds to) is not really about tackling your fears. It is 'heralding a time of rejoicing and celebration'. The Tarot Bible says it is 'a blessing in any layout.' It means happier times are ahead. I do have a fresh confidence about who I am and what I have achieved.

According to this spread, the road that Participation may lead to is Guilt, 8 of Clouds (Rider-Waite 8 of Swords). There are 2 cards from the Cloud (Swords) suit in this spread. It is the suit of 'thought, connection, information, ideals and self-expression.' I must admit I was very puzzled and upset by turning over this card. How could awareness and participation lead to Guilt? But within the tarot, you are supposed to look at the cards and say what you see. On the Osho Zen card, I see a woman with her eyes closed being clawed at by the demons of her thought-life, but with a flowering branch overhead. On the 8 of Swords card, I see a woman who is blindfolded and bound to a tree. She thinks she can't escape, but her bonds look like she could slip them pretty easily if she chose to try. Neither woman can see. Both are suffering, but both seem to be suffering because of their perception of their situation. Participating with other people makes me feel vulnerable and afraid, and it occurs to me, so does celebration and happiness! The first because I am afraid of being judged during social interaction, or of not behaving right, not saying or doing or thinking the right thing. I know I am awkward to be around socially because I don't drink, I'm vegan and I don't like to stay up late--most of things people seem to find fun, I find awful and I hate all eyes turned toward me because I'm the one being awkward. And I've always sort of freaked out in groups larger than 2 or 3 people and just clammed up and said nothing. And the longer I stay silent, the more awkward I feel and the less likely I am to ever speak, even when spoken to! The second because--as I said in my last post--happiness might bring about bad things. Like the 'Fates' might take notice of an overabundance of joy and try to balance me out!

(On the other hand, I must consider the layout position of this card. It's what the road may lead to. So it could be that I do try to 'participate' more, feel bound by it, and feel guilty for not wanting to carry on with socialising! So I must be open to the possibility that even if I give it a good go, it might turn out that I'm not so sociable, and I will need to find a way to deal with that.)

The cards suggest that the strength I need to develop right now is Consciousness, Ace of Clouds (Rider-Waite Ace of Swords). A picture of the Buddha. A depiction of a hand emerging from a cloud clutching a sword, at the top of which is a crown dangling vegetation and plumage. The Buddha card and the Ace of Swords both work to cut through illusion. The Tarot Bible says, 'The suit of Swords represents the rational and logical, but it indicates that the rational mind leads us astray and the sword is to cut through the illusions of our principles, our ideals, our fears. These 2-edged swords remind us that we must facd our deceptions, illusions and fears--and that the logical must work with the wisdom of our heart.'

I need to develop the strength to cut through my illusions about the right way to behave, the right way to be a friend, and the delusion that others perceive me as strange or a burden or unworthy of being involved. If they thought that, why would they keep inviting me? I must 'believe in myself and be ready to leap into action'--to me, this means being willing to say yes, to have the confidence to take part.

Overall, this is a very positive reading. At first it caused all sorts of anxiety. I balk at the notion of social interaction, and yet, it's an issue I continue to struggle with. So clearly I have business left to do in this area, and the cards seem to be saying now is the time to work on it.

So what am I going to do? I have idly suggested a few times to a work colleague that she should come over and watch movies with us. Next week, I'm going to set a date for that. And next Wednesday night, hubby and I are going to a Quiz night.

(Again, if it turns out the guilt is a result of realising I'm not really the sociable person I decided to try to be, perhaps this sword would be cutting through some illusion about how I'm 'supposed' to behave or what I'm 'supposed' to want out of life.)

------------------------------------------
This morning when I got up, I did my first daily card reading. You shuffle, cut and pull one card and it's your card for the day. I pulled 9 of Swords--another Sword card! It shows a picture of a grieving Zen monk, and is called 'Sorrow'. What! Today is my day for sorrow? But I consulted a book and I was really surprised to read this interpretation, which follows on so perfectly from yesterday's reading. Here it is word for word:

You and you alone can act to set yourself free from all those negative influences of the past. You are feeling very cut off from people, very separate, as though no one can see through to the real you underneath.

The pain and sorrow of the past will not fade instantly, but it will fade. What you can do now is begin to open up and let the sun in.

For this to happen, you must begin to dig all of the loneliness out of your present and communicate your feelings to others.

You must begin to open up--don't stay in isolation! You may well have to look around and discover new channels in which you can being to relate effectively to those around you. You alone can do this work. It can take either a long time or it can be surprisingly short. Which are you going to let it be? Come on, get cracking and dig your way out! (Step-by-Step Tarot, Terry Donaldson)

Freaky! It just seems to follow on so perfectly. Out of 78 cards, I pulled a card that answered so neatly to the reading from the day before. This is really intriguing. And today's card does seem to be urging me to take action toward more social get-togethers.

Retrospective and looking forward

2009-12-06T22:03:00.009Z

'So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over,
A new one just begun...'

December is a time for reflection. I just bought my 2010 'Sacred Journey' journal, and have been working on my retrospective, and looking forward.

Retrospective

It's been a good year. My days have slipped past, one after the other, in a haze of routine contentment. More or less.

As usual, I started the year in a regimented way, making very strict plans for myself. I spent a lot of time trying to organize my mind and my year, setting lofty, worthy goals, and carefully modifying the journal. I blogged about it. Looking at it now, it seems like a lot of pressure to put on yourself to expect to get everything perfectly colour-coded and all tasks 100% complete.

I feel I learned a lot about myself in the first quarter of 2009 by reading Eckhart Tolle. I learned about the 'pain body'. (I blogged a lot about that, too). It seems to me I've been doing much better with the 'melt downs' since doing that introspective work. In fact, hubby says this best year I've had since he's known me, as far as meltdowns go. None of them this year seemed to have anything to do with my personal life, but with my driving anxiety and those pesky lessons I was taking!)

Which leads me to my proudest accomplishment of this year: getting my UK driving licence. It took me 18 months of lessons, half a dozen books, a complete set of flower remedies, hours of meditation, chanting and hypnosis tapes, and even a session with an Emotional Freedom Therapist (which I recommend!) to get me there. But I did it!

April and May were very tough months. My Dad died in April, my son graduated from high school in May. That was an unplanned trip home in April, and a planned one in May. Both were fraught with emotion to deal with. Distance has made it easier to cope, but that was a difficult time, which rippled into the next few months. In fact, I'm still not sure I've dealt with Dad's death. Grief takes a long, long time.

I believe, though, that this year I have finally detached from the guilt associated with my son. He is who he is and he does what he wants, and I have relinquished control of the situation. (Control which I never had anyway). This has given me a rather numb sense of peace. Whatever happens has so very little to do with me, and I accept that. I think of him with interest, affection and concern, and what I feel is a healthy detachment. I have learned that keeping my head out of the past is the key to freeing myself from the guilt. He is nearly 19. No longer a little boy. I have given myself permission to let go, and this year, I seem to have finally accepted that permission and begun to do it.

I got rather bogged down in introspection at one point in the year and dropped out of Facebook, stopped posting to this blog, and stopped all reading of self-help or other books. I took a break from all of it until after my driving test and I believe that was good for me. I was starting to get 'magical thinking' about it all.

It's interesting where my exploration has taken me. I've discovered an intense interest in the most unexpected things. Crystals, flower remedies, chanting. None of this seems very Zen--but that's okay. My sacred journey belongs to me. I can do and believe what I want, and I can move through cycles and phases of practice and growth as I want. This is freeing and beautiful.

For years I have lived in fear of my financial future, worrying about my fate in retirement but unable to face the daunting prospect of taking action. Last month, I finally started looking into this. We are making a start toward investigating our options and creating a plan for our future. I am very proud that we are taking this step, looking forward instead of back--although we have to constantly remind ourselves not to waste time regretting inaction in the past, or fearing the future. For the first time, I feel hopeful, I feel positive. Maybe I won't be a homeless old lady dribbling in a corner after all. I have a good 25 years to build up a nest egg, and during that time I also must remember to live my life then and there as well as save for the 20-odd years after work is done. The goal is a pension and savings to cover rent and provide our needs. We're seeing an independent financial adviser in the new year (after Mercury is out of retrograde!) Hubby says he thinks that my releasing the guilt about my family has allowed me to move forward. Before, I couldn't look forward as I was chained to the past. I remember during that Emotional Freedom Therapy session, I kept saying over and over to the therapist, 'I can't let go of the guilt, I don't want to, I can't'--it was because I felt that the guilt was my only tie to my family, that somehow, if I let go of that, my separation from my son would be permanent and complete. But what it actually has done is free me. Not tormenting myself does not mean I don't love him. I can't say I'll never have another meltdown about this. But now I see things differently than I did (or rather, I see them clearly instead of seeing my illusions abou them), and as he becomes more of a man, I am sure I will feel even safer to move on.

And finally, the job. I recently had a job interview for a post I didn't want. Thankfully, I didn't get it, and I've been thinking about why I went for it. Once you get past the surface reasons--it was a step up from my current post, it was in a 'nicer' part of the county, and it is closer to where hubby works--you get to the truth. The real truth is, I am very comfortable in my current post and in my domestic situation. This is the happiest I have been, day-to-day, in my entire life. So comfortable that there is a subconsious fear that something bad is bound to happen to destroy the situation. And so, to prevent the bad thing that you don't want, you try to instigate a change yourself that is sort of what you want, or something you ought to want. At least, if change is inevitable, you can be the one in control of change. It's a fucked-up solution to a non-problem, but I'm convinced it's the reason behind a lot of the decisions that people make. I hope I don't forget the lesson that it's okay to be happy and pointless to try to circumvent the unexpected.

Looking forward

When I first started using the Sacred Journey journal, I chose them because they contained a lot of blank pages that I could paste things over or use to make notes on. The pagan elements of the journal bothered me. I found them frightening and distressing, and I would spend hours in December making them more usable by ripping out pages with references to cards, divination, spirit guides, etc. I quickly plastered them over with exercise rotations, charts for recording my weight, and snippets from the sanitized version of Buddhism that I had selected for its lack of imagery or 'heathen' practices, Zen. (It was the easiest thing for my Christian-reared mind to deal with--sitting in silence seemed so much safer than some of the other stuff out there!)

This year, I've learned to let go of my fear of occult and esoteric practices. I've learned to recognize and avoid what I call 'magical thinking'--which is ironic because as I've learned this, I have been moving toward seemingly 'magical' tools. I used to put so much hope into my spiritual practice--hope that it would somehow magically change me, change my circumstances, change my life. I did that with my Christianity, and later with my Buddhism. I felt that if I prayed and believed hard enough, or later, if I emptied my mind in mediation enough, that my problems would melt away. When nothing magical happened, I blamed myself for not doing it right, not having enough faith, not being worthy. I can see this now. Ironically, as I've moved toward crystals, flowers, chanting of mantras, I've become freer of magical thinking, because I view these practices as tools to explore the subconscious mind, to bring out of myself what is there. Even if that means just accepting the situation for what it is. In fact, especially the ability to accept a situation for what it really is! In and of themselves, these things hold no power or meaning. The only magic is in me.

And so, next year, I'm not modifying the Sacred Journey journal. I am going to use it as written. I have even ordered a set of tarot cards to use with it. 2010 is my year of openness, open to myself, open to all paths. Free of magical thinking--I hope!

May I let go a bit more of 'control of the universe'.
May I not make elaborate, detailed plans that no one could live up to.
May I recognise what's right and beautiful about me.
May I accept what's backward and dysfunctional about me, and work on it in a loving, nonjudgemental way.
May I reach out to other people in a way that is healthy and right for me, and true to the person I am.
May I lay the foundations for a financial future that will meet my needs.
May I accept that it's okay, in the book of my life, to leave some pages blank, while filling others edge to edge. But not to leave them blank out of fear.

I think as I move deeper into my 40s, I'm getting comfortable with accepting myself for who I am. I'm finding I struggle less and less within myself. I am coming to terms with societal expectations vs what I really want. I find I don't care so much what other people think.

I am whole. I really am.

Daddy cool

2009-12-02T07:50:00.004Z

I wanted some comfort food last night and thought I'd try a vegan mac and cheese recipe, having read about one on Anna's blog. I had a look at Susan V's Mac and Cheese recipe on Fat Free Vegan, then compared it to the Mac Daddy recipe in Isa's Veganomicon. Susan's recipe calls for all sorts of stuff I don't have--garlic powder, onion powder, tahini (which I don't like), and it's supposed to taste like Kraft mac and cheese, which I never liked, so I decided I liked the sound of the Mac Daddy recipe better. When I went to make the recipe, of course I changed everything. I nearly always do that, if I'm not confident that what I'm reading is going to be yummy. I ended up making something all my own, based on Isa's recipe, and it was really good. Hubby and I ate it all in one meal. Here's my creation:

Pimpalicious Pasta

Cook half a package of wholewheat shells (I couldn't find wholewheat macaroni in the shops), drain and set aside (I like stodgy mac and cheese, so I cooked this just a little past al dente)

For the sauce
3 cloves garlic, crushed, cooked in 1 Tbs oil
several grinds each pink salt and black pepper
pinch dried thyme
2 cups water
1 Tbs Marigold vegan bouillon powder
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1/8 tsp turmeric (or to desired yellowness)
1 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 tsp French's yellow mustard
1/2 pkg Cauldon tofu

Whisk together all ingredients except tofu and cook in saucepan until thickened. Add tofu and puree with hand blender until smooth. Pour into a small casserole dish and stir in the shells. Make sure the pasta is swimming in sauce. Too much pasta and it will be dry. Bake until bubbly and browning on edges.

This came out tasting rich and more-ish. The shells were all full of the gooey sauce and the pasta was chewy on top from being baked.

Word of warning, it didn't taste a thing like cheese. We sure did like it, though. If it had tasted like cheese, I would have had to throw it out. (Last time I went crazy and actually bought some parmesan cheese to put in something, we ended up throwing it out because it had that horrible dairy whang to it. Never again!) We had this with some steamed greens, and it was yummy.

If you don't like nutritional yeast flakes, don't bother with this recipe. And if you think you're going to end up with something like Velveeta, don't bother, either. I mean, if you want cheese, just eat some cheese! If you want something gooey, satisfying and vegan, though, try this one. We loved it.

(By the way, as usual, the photo is nicked from googling and choosing a photo that looks the most like what I made. Because as usual, I forgot to take a picture!)

Sweet potato pie (vegan, of course)

2009-11-27T07:12:00.005Z

2 cups cooked, mashed sweet potato
1 cup plain or vanilla flavoured rice milk
1/4 cup corn starch
3/4 cup dark brown sugar or 1/2 cup maple syrup
1 Tbs molasses
3 Tbs oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp each nutmeg, clove, ginger
1-1/2 tsp cinammon

Combine ingredients and pour into a prepared pie shell. Bake at 400 F until done. Allow pie to cool completely to set.

The pie is darker in colour than you might expect because of the molasses, but it has a delicious, holiday flavour and silky texture. Not wiggly, like you would get from eggs, but very unctuous, and quite filling. It is best served chilled, in my opinion.

I made this last night for the first time and we really liked it. I am taking leftovers to work to today because I'm sure no one has tasted sweet potato pie there! If they don't like it, I'll bring back the remnants. :)

Okay then

2009-11-26T07:10:00.007Z

I had a job interview yesterday that I was dreading. I applied for the job for just two reasons: it's the only step up from my current post, and it's closer to where hubby works. The actual job itself, I was not keen on doing. I guess that came through in the interview because I was not selected. My reaction was as joyful and relieved as it is for most people when they GET the job.

Why are we always questioning and pushing and thinking we should be striving to achieve more, or to move on? Why is it not okay to just like the job you're in, because you can do it easily and everything is comfortable? Why do we have this idea that we should be pushing the envelope, looking to be 'stretched and challenged', moving away from comfort and complacency? Yes, I said complacency. Why is complacency considered a bad thing? Even the word 'complacent', which actually literally means to find peace in something, has come to have a shade of meaning that there is a danger in being okay with your situation as it is. Well, maybe I don't want a grit of sand that I can turn into a pearl. Irritation and 'challenge' (which really means stress!) at work are not required by me, thank you.

I suppose the Buddhist perspective on the danger of complacency is the clinging to the illusion of permanence, the delusion that we can by force of will (ie, by fearing change) keep bad things from happening. That's not what I'm talking about here, at least I think it's not! I can also say with some confidence that I am not afraid of change. If a job came along that I really wanted, I would leave my current one in a heartbeat. But it would have to be one that I REALLY wanted, and not one that I 'ought' to go for.

Occasionally I forget that I'm leading my own life. I start hearkening to what other people think or how other people might perceive things or behave, and I make decisions based on what other people might do or expect me to do. Other people might apply for a job that's the next step up, even though they don't really want it. They might be able to bluff their way into it, then tolerate it. But I'm not other people, I'm me. Sometimes I forget that it's my life and it's okay for me to live it how I want. Strange but true.

Not as bleak as I thought

2009-11-19T17:31:00.004Z

I found out some good news.

By the time I reach state pension age in 2033, I will have worked exactly 30 years and 4 months--just enough to qualify for the full state pension. I have sent in my pension forecast application to see how much that would be, but as a rule of thumb I've done some preliminary figures using the 'average' state pension.
I used a Social Security calculator to see what I would qualify for having worked for 15 years in the US. It was more than I thought.
I sent off to Arkansas Teacher Retirement to see what I will receive based on the years I taught in the US. It was more than I expected, PLUS I can start drawing it 7 years before I reach state pension age here. So I can be investing that money!
I am in a local government pension scheme, which it turns out is the best pension scheme available in the UK. It will leave me better off than I thought.

So I took these sketchy preliminary figures and added them together. According to that first draft of a forecast, I will be drawing pretty much the same amount in retirement that I earn now. If the same is true for Derek (we are working on his now), then our income in retirement will look a lot like it looks now. Which means if we never get to buy a house, it doesn't matter. If we can afford rent now, we can afford rent then. I can't imagine us ever needing to live better than we do right now. We are perfectly comfortable with our level of spending and our lifestyle.

I'm trying to be realistic about this whole house-owning thing. Until the early 20th century, the majority of people in the UK did not own their own homes (only 30% did). In Europe today, 2/3 of Germany rent their accommodation. Half of Austria does. Of course, in Europe they enjoy much stronger tenants' rights, but still. Owning a property is not the be all and end all of existence, nor is it a guarantee of security for the future. It's just a big fat headache is what it is. And a major financial burden.

Maybe someday we'll buy a house, but if we never do, I'm not going to sweat it anymore. I'd rather have a big fat pension than a miserable little house.

Anyway, I have an interview next Wednesday for a job in a library near where hubby works, which whould be a promotion for me, and our chance to move to the south of the county where things are 'nicer' (if more expensive). It's just a temporary 12-month post, but I can take it as a secondment, if I decide to take it, so at least I'll be assured of a post in the county council when the year's up. Nervous about it--it's all human resources. But I guess experience in that field would be good to have. People always need HR.

Oh.

2009-11-16T07:51:00.002Z

Just heard on the morning news:

First time buyers of homes has fallen by 2/3.

First time buyers must come up with a 25% deposit. The average house price being £165,000, that means the deposit is on average £38,000.

The era of the 100% mortgage is gone. The 75% mortgage is here to stay.

The average age of the first time buyer is 35.

All of this means to me we are never, ever going to be able to afford a property. Our entire combined savings of the last 7 years is not enough to pay the deposit, much less the duties and all the costs associated with moving and setting up a new household. At the rate we're saving, I'll be in my mid 50s before we can even meet the deposit--and who knows how much a deposit will be by then. We cannot save at a higher rate than we are. I am already putting nearly a third of my take home pay in savings. We can't help it if our earnings are not very high.

I feel quite despondent about this, not because I particularly want to own a home, but because I am concerned about where we are going to live after we are no longer able to work. The savings we have now are being built up with a view toward pensions investments, not down payment on a house. And there's not enough there for that. Our pension gap is enormous.

I wonder where we are going to live and how we are going to live when we get too old to work. There are no children to take care of us or take us in.

I still have at least 25 years left in my working life to sort out the best thing we can figure out.

Lovely day

2009-11-14T23:30:00.003Z

It's been a lovely day on my own today. I made some banana bread that I saw on The Post Punk Kitchen website. I made my own version:

Banana Bread

1/2 cup each brown and white sugar
2 cups wholemeal spelt flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

3 very ripe bananas, mashed
5 Tbs vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and set aside a loaf pan. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. Mix the wet into the dry. Pour into pan and bake for about an hour.

Let it cool completely, as it is actually better after it has aged for a bit. Or you can eat it hot, each to his own!

I'm not a fan of Christmas, but I've already got a wish list!

2009-11-11T17:04:00.009Z

Amber stud earrings. I've really got into amber lately. It's so pretty!

10kg dumbbells, for those times when I feel I could do a bit better than the 8kg which is my max weight now.

Ladies' Haulin' Hooks. These grip-assistance devices are designed to assist when lifting heavier weights, to avoid having to stop reps just because your grip is exhausted. (This happens to me a lot now that I'm lifting heavier. For example, the other day I was doing sumo squats with my barbell, and even though my legs were not entirely exhausted, I had to put the bar down because my forearms and grip couldn't hold the load any longer. This type of device is supposed to really help with that issue.)

All of which (except perhaps the amber earrings...) will help out a lot if I get my main wish, Chalene Extreme!!!! This set of DVDs contains 15 workouts broken into 3 phases:

BURN--Moderate weight training workouts using 12-rep sets to help start the fat burning process.

PUSH--Heavy weight training--beyond the comfort zone--to build strength and muscle.

LEAN--Back to moderate weights but incorporating dynamic moves to burn tons of calories and strip the fat off the new muscle you've built.

There are also cardio and abs workouts in the rotation, and I've already bought the latest 'add-on' cardio, so once I get the weight-lifting (original) set, I'll have the whole darn thing!

The entire system takes 90 days, then you enter a 30 day 'Lean for Life' phase, then you can do the whole round over again if you like.

I really, really want Chalean Extreme (fondly referred to by fans as 'CLX').

In the meantime, though, I've just ordered Original Buns of Steel on DVD. It shipped today and I cannot wait to try it out. Made in 1987, it is a total cult classic and said to be one of the best butt-burners ever! Creator Greg Smithey is a sports physiologist and supposedly invented the routine to use as part of training for pole vaulters.

Love at first buff

2009-11-05T20:48:00.004Z

So we were channel hopping through infomercials on Sunday morning, as we often do on a Sunday. We love to sit and make fun of the advertisements for the strange fitness products out there. 'I can get my abs AND my cardio done in only 3 minutes a day!' a bizarrely-bosomed fitness model beams, swinging herself side to side on a gizmo that looks like the body of an old lawnmower with some bicycle handlebars attached to the top. We have spent many happy mornings sipping coffee and laughing at the over-the-top agony of 'old-fashioned, back-breaking crunches and boring hours spent in the gym.' Why are all the 'before you buy this product' segments in black and white featuring people who look like they're being force-fed that bitter stuff from the middle of a pecan?

Anyway, Sunday morning we caught Susan Lucci selling her 'Youthful Essence' microdermabrasion kit. Now I have seen her selling this thing for years and never gave it a second thought, other than to wonder why it costs so much and why you have to sign up to get her little pots of crystal creme every month. I have to admit, though, that for the last few years, scrubbing with a wash cloth just hasn't been effective in getting rid of flakiness of my skin. I can wash, put on moisturizer, and still, when I put on my foundation makeup, it gets caught in the little tiny dead skin cells and that makeup shows up the scaliness until I feel like I must look like a lizard person. I mean, it's really noticeable, at least to me. (I had to actually get really close to Derek and point to get him to see what I meant. So okay, most people aren't as close to me as I am to a mirror when I'm scrutinizing my skin.) Still, I've felt self-conscious about it for some time, to the point where I don't even bother wearing makeup most days because I feel my skin looks better without it. Blotchy is better than scaly.

Anyway, after watching her infomercial, I thought I'd look into the microdermabrasion world. It turns out there are lots of little gizmos just like Susan Lucci's available out there. I did a lot of online shopping and reading of online reviews, and settled on the Roc Renewex Microdermabrasion Expert Kit. I found it available at Amazon Marketplace for £15, ordered it Tuesday night, and it arrived today!

I've used this thing for the first time tonight. I cannot believe what a difference it has made to my skin in only one use. It feels like an absolute rose petal. The literature that accompanies the kit says visible reduction of fine lines, etc, in 4 weeks. I can't wait to see how my skin looks after 4 weeks of this, if tonight's any indication.

Here's all you do:

1. Wash your skin as normal, using your normal face wash. Pat dry.
2. Put a bit of the microcrystal cream on the dry sponge of the applicator. (It feels like the finest possible grit you can imagine. Tiny, tiny little beads of aluminum oxide, which allegedly is what dermatologists use for microdermabrasion.)
3. Turn it on and smooth the stuff on your dry face, applying no pressure, just moving it about a bit. (The applicator is like a vibrator with a soft sponge attachment. Who knew!) Don't stay in one spot too long. Do this for 2-3 minutes.
4. Rinse your face with warm water, pat dry and apply moisturizer.
5. Clean the sponge with soap and water and air dry.

This process is to be repeated 2-3 times per week if you have normal skin, 1-2 times per week if you have sensitive skin.

I came out of the bathroom, and said to Derek, 'What do you think?' And he said he could see a difference at once in my forehead. I had him feel my face and he said it was very, very smooth and soft and he could definitely feel a difference.

I can't wait to see what happens when I put on foundation tomorrow!

What is it about vampires?

2009-11-01T19:56:00.011Z

I'm suffering from vampire overload for the last few years and am unwilling to invest my time or interest in all these postmodern vampire movies for tweenies ('Twilight') and Southern gothtastic TV shows ('True Blood'). They don't know from vampires! They've taken all the mystique and replaced it with superfast motion werewolf battles or writhing blood-soaked orgies. Gross!

In my day, our vampires were dead sexy, and gentlemen, too--weary and misunderstood, just looking for their queen to make eternal life worthwhile. Here are my favourites:

1. Frank Langella in the 1979 film 'Dracula'. Langella is the sexiest screen vampire, in my opinion. Although he is a frightening bloodsucker (the scene where he peers in Mina's window hanging upside is freaky!), he is a true Gothic romantic leading man. No wolf eyes, fangs or blood trickling from the mouth to be seen. Lots of soulful looks, fantastic droopy-sleeved chest-revealing shirts, soft kissing and roiling smoke effects, though!

2. Brad Pitt as the reluctant and brooding vampire, Louis, in 'Interview with the Vampire', continues Langella's tradition of the undead who yearns to be part of the world of the living. He's not sexy--if anything, he is ambiguous, being in love with a little girl and Antonio Banderas!-- He's just remarkably beautiful. Not sure if that makes him sexy, but I mean--just look at him!

3. Gary Oldman in 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie absolutely awful. As someone elsewhere online remarked, Keanu Reeves bumbles around as if he's thinking 'What am I doing in this movie?' and Wynona Ryder looks stoned, but Gary Oldman is smokin'. He's not pretty, he's not handsome--he's just hot!

4. Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandridge in 'Fright Night'. Everybody remembers the girl who turns into the freak with the red eyes and horrible too-wide mouthful of teeth, but Chris Sarandon certainly moistened a few pairs of knickers along the way, I'm sure. Hoo ha!

So what is it about vampires? I'm sure people have written loads about what makes vampires sexy. It has something to do with the intimacy, the penetration, the latching onto something and sucking the life out of it...now that I think about it, it's not so hard to figure out! Beautiful immortals. Dangerous to everyone except the girl they fall in love with (which of course will be you!). Eternal protection in their worshipful embrace and all that. No wonder they're so darn popular.

Tamworth Castle 30th October 2009

2009-10-31T09:38:00.016Z

We went to Tamworth Castle yesterday. We'd been planning to 'go somewhere' for a little Halloween treat, but we weren't sure where and didn't want to travel far. Then on the Gadget Show the other night, they featured Tamworth Castle as being haunted, and wouldn't you know it's only a 30-minute drive from here. So off we went. It was a lovely day, not too cold or windy, and I've noticed that you can actually see some autumn colours this year. (Some years, summer seems to slide right into winter in a misty, grey, shivery slippage, with hardly a sign of yellows or reds). There was a tree in the park outside the castle grounds that was absolutely showering yellow leaves, but I didn't think to photograph it.

So anyway, we were pleasantly surprised that admission to the castle was half price, so we got in for £5.00 total! Bargain.

Mwah ha ha! A suitably Hammer Horrorish angle on the castle front...

This is the entrance to the castle itself, passing through a courtyard. This castle is a hodgepodge of different eras...

Here's a view of the Elizabethan courtyard from above, when we went up to the Tower. (Every castle has to have a Tower!)

From the castle Tower, overlooking St Editha Church. (We went in that church. It was okay. Kind of Norman-y.)

So, Tamworth Castle is supposed to haunted by two ghosts, The White Lady, who haunts the Tower and is supposedly mourning for her suitor who was killed by a guy called Sir Lancelot (yeah, right!), and the Black Lady, who haunts a bedroom and Elizabethan staircase and was supposedly photographed in 1949 by some ghost hunters.

Spooky light by the Haunted Stair...

And that's the Haunted Staircase. I was kinda hoping I'd get a weird shadow, but I don't see anything here. I will say that the stairs are very creaky and if I were wandering around in there by candlelight in the dark of night, I'd sure think they were haunted.

At the entrance to the Great Hall, we were greeted by this random skull...

But the Great Hall not only had lots of other horned skulls, it had wrought iron candleabras from the ceiling and looked for all the world like a suitable setting for the movie, 'The Devil Rides Out'!

Here I am in a less creepy room.

And here is a stairway we found that leads up to a wall. It's a good thing I'd already been up to the top of that wall via another way, because there was no way I was going to climb those stairs. The camera flashed and illuminated this staircase, but when you peered up it in natural light, there was barely enough light to see where you were going.

And we're back out again...

It was a good Halloween visit with some spooky moments, especially in this child's room where there was an absolutely eery portrait of a little girl looming out toward you from over the fireplace, and on the opposite wall, a painting of a sleeping child--but it looked like it was either on its deathbed or dead already! Then I spotted some antique china dolls with faded eyes and I got the absolute willies and beat a hasty retreat--especially when I was trying to photograph the portrait and Derek shouted, 'Don't photograph it, it will come to life!' I yelped and got the heck out, I tell you!

Hooray!

2009-10-26T08:11:00.000Z

My trousers are beginning to get looser!

I decided to weigh only once per week for the sake of my sanity during the weight-loss phase, and to my surprise yesterday, I was down 3 pounds from the beginning of the month. This morning, I took a good look at the way my trousers are fitting around the waist and butt, and yes, they are marginally looser. So I am heading in the right direction at last. I have faithfully written down every single thing I've eaten each day since 5th October. I'm not closely measuring it and definitely not counting calories, just writing it down.

I think the best thing I'm doing, though, is a good tough exercise rotation. Cathe's Slow & Heavy 3-day split, interspersed with cardio kickboxing (Chalene Johnson, Amy Bento and Cathe). I have been working hard, and I am seeing renewed definition in my upper body. Yay!

'This'll burn some calories--and isn't that why we're here!!'

2009-10-22T20:08:00.004+01:00

Chalene says this early in the workout I tried today, and boy was she right.

My new Chalean Extreme DVDs arrived today. I got 7 workouts in all, Disk 7 from the original Chalean Extreme (3 workouts), and the new set of 4 workouts that's just come out as cardio add-ons to the Chalean Extreme program.

Of course the first thing I did when I got home was do the first workout on Disk 7: Fat Burn Challenge. It is 30 minutes long and is probably the most intense cardio workout I own--but then, I haven't done the others from this set yet! Here's a breakdown:

1. Jump rope drills, 2 minutes.

2. Jumping Jack Drills, 3 minutes.

3. Plyo Lunges, 2 minutes 25 seconds. This consists of stepping into deep lunges, the deeper the better.

30 second break.

4. Football practice, 1 minute 12 seconds. You've surely seen the football players doing this one. You get in a squat stance and run in place really fast. Chalene calls out left, right, and 'HIT'. (That's where the coach usually gives a sharp whistle) That's your signal to drop to the ground in a push up stance, jump up, and keep running. Tough! But as Chalene says, at least you're not wearing full football pads and helmet! I cannot imagine those poor boys doing this in 100 degree Arkansas heat. I feel for them!

5. Plyo sculpting, with toner band, 3 minutes. This move has you side stepping side to side, and Chalene alternates with a standing thigh toning exercise. So you lunge side to side, then stop and raise alternating legs to the side working the thighs. Then back to lunges etc. This nearly killed me, as I did Cathe's Slow & Heavy Legs and Shoulders yesterday which has some really intense concentrated leg work in it. I didn't know this workout had leg work, or would have opted for a different one, but never mind.

6. Modified Burpee, 1 minute. You jump into a wide squat, put your hands on the floor, shoot your legs back into a pushup stance, then hop back into the squat stance and stand up again. You do 16 total burpees.

30 second break.

7. Moving Prisoner Lunges, 2 minutes. You step forward to a lunge, then step to the right (3 o’clock) for a second lunge. Then back to the front for another lunge, and continue. This move is modified by moving your hands from your hips during the lunges, to behind your head, and then straight up in the air. Then you’ll switch sides and do the opposite leg.

8. Crosses and Zig Zags, 2 minutes. Turbo Jam! Cross punches, mixed in with zig zags (for the obliques), and some knee lifts. Compared to what we'd been doing, this was almost like a break!

9. Squats/Sumo, 1 minute 24 seconds. You hop from sumo squat to standing up, jumping in and out. (Although to be honest, my sumo squats were a bit lame. But then, I was feeling literally lame! Legs like jello!)

10. Giant Leaps, 2 minutes 30 seconds. Leaping from side to side, like a skater's sweep. Very fun, I loved this segment.

11. Squats, 1 minute 30 seconds. Football again. You go from a regular squat to a 3 point football stance, back to the squat, continue to football stance etc. Chalene jumped these, but all I could do was squat and stand. Whew!

12. Lateral Lunges, 1 minute 30 seconds. Side lunges to one side, hold and repeat, then switch legs. This feels great after all that legwork.

3 minute cool down

After this short workout, I was dripping. I didn't wear my HRM, but I bet I burned loads of calories. It was pretty much all jumping, but there is a modifier to show you how to keep it low impact with high intensity. Chalene rocks!

Can't wait to try the next ones! Yay, I love new workouts. :)

Three rules create an eater's manifesto. Read this book.

2009-10-19T17:58:00.005+01:00

In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan. I read it in 2 days. If you haven't read it yet, read it. Get it right now, seriously.

Here's Michael Pollan lecturing at University of California:

In Defence of Food with Michael Pollan, University of California

This lecture is an excellent encapsulation of the content of the book and definitely worth watching.

And here he is in an interview:

Food News: In Defence of Food Part One

Food News: In Defence of Food Part Two

Food News: In Defence of Food Part Three

Food News: In Defence of Food Part Four

(This is a follow-up to his previous book, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', which is truly excellent, but you don't have to have read that one to enjoy this one. Read them both, though. They're fantastic books. By the way, I emailed John Robbins a year or two ago asking him what he thought about the whole concept of 'orthorexia', and he doesn't believe there is such a thing, and that being concerned about what we eat is a good thing...however, I think Robbins and Pollan agree on nearly all points.)

Lovely Sunday

2009-10-18T18:08:00.009+01:00

We went to HMV today and bought some Hammer Horror Dracula flicks for Halloween for 3 quid each:

We watched 'Dracula has risen from the grave' (1968) today. It was completely ludicrous but strangely enjoyable, like all Hammer Horror schlock. (I read somewhere that Christopher Lee thought 'Risen from the Grave' was crap. But then, he thought that about several of his own films.) This one is a direct sequel to 'Dracula Prince of Darkness' (1966), in which Dracula is trapped under some ice right outside his castle. In 'Risen from the Grave', a priest exorcises Dracula's castle and places a big cross across the front door, so when Drac gets a little taste of some blood and revives, he can't get back in. He's truly pissed off about this, so seeks out the priest who did this so he can exact his revenge by killing him and his beloved virginal and buxom niece, Maria. Along the way, Dracky enslaves the local vicar whose church is 'in the shadow of his castle', lunches on a busty barmaid called Zena, pulls a giant stake out of his own heart because the guy who stabs him (Maria's boyfriend) is an atheist and refuses to pray while doing it, then manages to impale himself on a giant crucifix. Pretty gruesome stuff! Amazingly, while this film got banned in Finland and received an X rating in England in 1968, the Americans gave it a rating of G. We've never been much bothered by violence in the old US of A. But if there'd been any nudity or humping, hello! A little religious imagery, blood sucking and walking dead, though--eh, the kiddies can handle that.

After Dracula, we did Cathe Friedrich's Kick Punch & Crunch and now we're about to settle in and wait for episode 3 of the new season of House.

I can't believe the weekend's over already. They should be 4 days long.

Best chocolate cake ever

2009-10-18T11:02:00.006+01:00

I made this cake yesterday and it was so good hubby and I ate it ALL. It is very, very easy and will make an 8x8 (or 9x7)" cake--so nice and small, just enough for 2 people to have cake 3 times in one day! Ha ha

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a cake pan and set aside.

In a bowl, combine:

200g wholemeal spelt flour
150g raw cane sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
5 tablespoons of cocoa powder

In a jug, combine:

250ml water
6 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cider vinegar

Mix wet ingredients into the dry and pour batter into greased pan. Bake until done.

While it's baking, combine the following in a saucepan:

150-200g sugar
2-3 heaping tablespoons cocoa
enough water to make a medium thick paste
soy milk

Heat and stir until the sugar starts to melt and grains disappear. Add soy milk a tiny bit at a time to loosen up the mixture and stir and boil until it is glossy and thickening. Remove from heat, cover and set aside while the cake finishes baking. (I know these instructions are a bit vague, but I always eyeball this and do it by feel, so I'm not sure how to describe it. To be honest, I didn't measure the icing ingredients but just dumped stuff in the pan. You could always get a vegan icing recipe somewhere else online, but avoid ones that call for vegan margarine. Ick!)

When the cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool a bit, then pour and spread the icing gently over the warm cake. It should not be too runny. It will firm up and make a glossy coating on the cake.

This cake is soft, moist, and the icing is fudgy. You would never know it's vegan or that it contains wholemeal flour. Now, if I could figure out a way to get rid of the sugar...

You could use different flour, different oil, and different 'milk'. You could use almond extract instead of vanilla...doesn't matter. Play around with it. But above is the exact recipe I used yesterday.

2 workouts today

2009-10-15T20:07:00.007+01:00

I did Turbo Jam Live Booty Sculpt + Abs today, then when hubby got home, we did Chest and Back on Cathe's Slow & Heavy. Two workouts in one day! Yay!

Booty Sculpt is a good workout, my legs were screaming. You use light dumbbells and a resistance band in this workout, and the leg work is a lot like that seen in Turbo Jam Lower Body Jam, except the workout is more informal (more dancy stuff during the moves) and Chalene walks around a bit instead of doing all the moves with the exercisers. It finishes with some pretty tough ab work.

Slow & Heavy is a 3-day split. One day you do legs and shoulders (we did that on Tuesday night), one day you do chest, back and planks (that's what we did tonight) and one day you do biceps and triceps (we've got that planned for Saturday). You can do them 3 days in a row, or you can do cardio on days in between. I'm doing the cardio in between option.

I really like the Slow & Heavy series. You lift heavy weights and for each move you do 3 sets of 8 reps, 2 beats on the concentric contraction, 6 beats on the eccentric. (So, for example, on split-legged squats, you put a barbell on your shoulders and go down for two, then slowly come back up for 6. On a chest press, you go down for two, slowly push the weights back up for 6. Etc. In the picture on the cover, she is doing plie squats. You go down for 2, back up for 6. She's holding a 40lb dumbbell there. I used my 12kg kettlebell as that's the heaviest weight I own. That's roughly 27lbs. Believe me, even though I was pulling only half the weight she was, my legs were FEELIN it.)

Today's work was Chest and Back. You do chest presses (3 sets of 8 supine, 3 sets of 8 on the incline), pec flyes (3 sets supine, 3 sets incline) , push ups (2 sets of 8 using the down for 2 up for 6 beat), bent over rows (3 sets of 8), ribcage pullovers (3 sets of 8) and deadlifts (3 sets of 8). Then you get on the mat and do supermans (32 total) and a killer series of planks. It's not an easy workout. But it's one of those that when it's over, you're so glad you did it! I just wish I owned some heavier weights and a really good, cushiony pair of weight lifting gloves.

Return to me

2009-10-14T21:00:00.005+01:00

I read something this morning that has stuck with me all day:

If you aren't hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not really hungry.

Think about the times you've been really hungry and you managed to find an apple. Maybe it was on the trail during a long hike and you found it rolling around in the bottom of your back pack. Or you'd come in from yard work and found an apple in the fridge, all cold and juicy. It was so good, it was so appealing. It was the best thing ever, and you ate it and enjoyed every bite.

Now think about the times you were just foraging out of boredom and found an apple. Yuck, an apple. You pushed it aside to make peanut butter and toast, or stand and eat honey straight out of the jar, or maybe you got lucky and found a stash of snack cakes or some cookies. You didn't eat the apple, though. Mealy old apple, it's got a bruise. No way. Don't like apples.

If the thought of an apple doesn't appeal, you're not really hungry. I like that. It's a great rule of thumb.
__________________________________________________________________

I started recording my food in a little tiny notebook (NOT the Streaming Colors Food Journal, which made go very OCD over fat grams and protein grams and all sorts of grams no one should be spending time measuring) on 5th October. I decided not to put any pressure on myself to eat 'well', just to write down every single thing I eat. The first five days are not pretty reading. But then, the snacking began to slow down. And for the last 2 days, I have eaten 'clean'. No snacks. Lighter meals. Drinking more water. The first 4 days, I just wrote everything down. Then I started writing the time beside each item. That helps me see at what time I'm eating. You have to really be vigilant because it's easy to eat something, think you'll write it down later, forget about it and then remember it at the end of the day when you're looking over the list. Seeing it all written out is almost like seeing it laid out on the table in front of you. Sobering.

I haven't lost any weight yet, but as I'm in the normal weight range and I've only been eating relatively well for 2 days, that's no surprise! Conventional wisdom has it that you need a calorie deficit of 3500 calories to lose one pound. As I refuse to count calories and start down the slippery slope to that OCD madness, I haven't got a clue how long this will take. I'm hoping by February, the clothes that used to be loose will be loose again, and the rolls on my belly that used to be smaller will be smaller again. That's my goal!

Here's what I ate today:

6.50--smoothie made of brown rice protein, frozen banana, water, psyllium husks, ultrafine scottish oats; black decaf; pint of water

12.00--(I seriously wasn't hungry until 12.00--amazing!) homemade celeriac soup (leftovers) and a sandwich made of 2 slices seeded wholemeal bread, sliced tomato, roasted red pepper and iceberg lettuce; 1 onde-onde mochi cake; pint water

3.30--half a cup oats soaked in soy milk with added brown rice protein powder

4.30--(pre workout) 3 small handfuls fruit and fibre cereal from the box, maybe half a bowl? Pint water drunk during and after workout

5-6.00 Slanted Riser workout, then Fat Blaster

7.30--chickpea, courgette, red bell pepper and red onion korma; brown basmati rice; 1 wholemeal pita, toasted

That's it!

Yay, this is pretty much like I used to eat when I was doing great.

Celeriac Soup

2009-10-11T18:53:00.005+01:00

This morning we had Isa's 'Fronch Toast', then after working out I had a pea protein and red berry smoothie, lunch was a veggie burger and a few homemade oven chips. So for dinner, I just wanted something kind of light. We bought a celeriac on the market yesterday, and so I made it into soup. This soup turned out to be so yummy! It is thick, and somehow creamy with a buttery mouthfeel. I have no idea how, as this is all I did:

Celeriac Soup

1 small yellow onion, peeled and minced
1 Tbs olive oil
1 finely minced peeled clove of garlic
approx 1/4 cup dry white wine
1 good size celeriac, peeled and cubed
1 medium red-skinned potato, peeled and cubed
2 bay leaves
8-10 grinds pink salt
pinch ground nutmeg

Heat olive oil in stock pot and saute onions. Let them sweat down but not colour much. There might be some light golden sediment--deglaze with the white wine. Add the finely minced garlic and cook a bit. Add the cubed celeriac, cover the pot, reduce heat and allow to cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the celeriac begins to soften. Add the potato, bay leaves, and enough water to cover all by 2 or 3 inches (or more). Cover and simmer gently until the potato and celeriac are very soft, about 30-40 minutes.

Remove bay leaves and puree with wand hand blender until creamy and smooth. Keep blending until silky smooth. It will happen. Add the salt and nutmeg and serve. The soup will be thick enough that you can dip into it and it will hold its shape on the bowl of the spoon. If you wanted yours thinner, you could add water, but most of the pics I found online show a thick soup, so I guess I got it right. It is really yummy!

After we ate it (as usual, I forgot to make a photo, because I forgot I was doing a vegan recipe to blog--it was just dinner after all), I looked online for celeriac soup recipes. They are all pretty similar. I think mine is the simplest, though. Most of the time, simple is best. I just wanted to keep the flavours light and simple so the delicate taste of the celeriac would shine through. It worked! And it's always so satisfying when I think I've made something up then I find out it's a classic recipe. Surely that means I can cook...Hubby had his with toasted bread drizzled in olive oil. I just had mine straight. Try it!

Lentil Soup with garlic and tarragon

2009-10-07T14:34:00.007+01:00

Hey, it's Vegan Month of Food again! As last year, I'm not posting fancy recipes, just the yummy stuff I make for our real meals.

So....this is what I made for lunch today.

Lentil Soup with garlic and tarragon

1 onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, minced
olive oil
3 handfuls of dry puy lentils
1 Tbs Marigold vegan bouillon powder
ground black pepper
ground pink salt
pinch dried tarragon
water to make soup of thickness you want

Saute onion and garlic, add remaining ingredients, simmer until lentils are very tender. Use a stick blender to puree the soup. Enjoy!

I had this with wrap made of wholemeal chapatti and a roasted red bell pepper.

here's what I ate yesterday

2009-10-07T08:22:00.007+01:00

I'm writing down everything I eat in a little book. Not measuring or counting calories as of yet, just writing it all down. Yesterday was not good. I ate a lot of junk at work. Here's what the day looked like. I'm not going to divide it into meals but just make one long list:

1 slice wholemeal toast with 1/2 tsp coconut oil and some strawberry jam

shake made of 20g soy protein isolate mix and water

1 cup black decaf

sandwich made with: 2 slices wholemeal bread, Cheatin' Meats ham, fresh spinach, sliced tomato, roasted red bell pepper, mustard and burger sauce

1 oatmeal biscuit (Hob Nob) (ate this during tea break at a training session because I didn't want to open the falafels I had brought as a snack...stupid)

2 Jaffa cakes

2 Mingles

1 mini flapjack bite (this plus the Jaffas and Mingles were eaten in the staffroom after everyone else had left the room--yes, that old habit of thinking if no one sees you eat it you didn't really eat it has returned)

2 Cadbury Roses

1 chewy sweet from Portugal (Roses and chew picked up from staffroom table while doing lockup routine upstairs)

Salad made with: iceberg lettuce, shredded carrot, fresh spinach, roasted red pepper, 3 green olives stuffed with garlic (packed in olive oil), 1/2 small baked potato (cubed), 6 small falafel patties, nutritional yeast flakes

1 'veggie dunker' (like a veggie finger, made by Sainsbury's) and 2 oven chips (these were nicked from hubby's leftovers--he didn't have salad)

1 bowl of Special K with unsweetened soy milk, then when there was some soy milk left in the bowl, I went back and refilled it half way with more Special K (a favourite old trick of mine)

So, I have no idea what the calorie content of this day was, but that's not really the point. Calorie counting is not something you can keep up forever. The salad was my attempt to salvage the day after eating so many junky nibbles, although it's probably still pretty high in calories with the potatoes, and falafel and olives and all that. It's the junk food that concerns me. This is not untypical for me for the last 10 months or so. This is why I've gained weight.

Also, I had to work until 6.00 again last night. The timetable I've been on since April has me doing two 6.00 finishes each week, and I find it so hard to work out when I don't get home until 6.30 or 6.45. So last night I didn't work out. Fewer workouts, more food.

I also think I'm starting to feel my age. I am so tired on those 6.00 finish nights. And my workouts sometimes torque my knee a bit, and I feel it more in my left hip, which always made itself known to me in the past during workouts, but is now making itself known to me even more. I'm not saying pain, I'm just saying I 'feel' it. It bothers me that I never managed to get my body where I wanted it and now I'm feeling like I'm on a downward spiral, age-wise.

I forgot to weigh this morning, but I've written down my breakfast. Today is my day off--thank GOD--and I will work out today. Must keep trying.

And, Anna, you posted the 'dreaded butt-shot' on your blog...well, here's mine! Hubby took this picture of me when we visited Hardwick Hall a few weeks ago and when I saw this I was appalled. These jeans used to be loose. Now they're like leggings! If they weren't those 'stretchy' denim ones, I wouldn't even be able to get them on anymore. I was not thrilled with this photo AT ALL. (You can see by my expression I wasn't thrilled with him taking it at the time! ha ha) Click on it to get the full gruesome effect. LOL

Day two of journaling my food!

2009-10-06T07:40:00.001+01:00

Today is the second day of food journaling. As usual, my weight has gone UP. It's like the weight-loss gods are testing your mettle--you start trying to eat more strictly, your weight goes up the next day. Yesterday I was 140.2. Today 140.6. On the other hand, I was surprised by the arrival of TOM. So that might be it.

Anyway, longer entry later. Off to Warwick today for enquiry desk training--never mind that I've worked the enquiry desk every single day for the last 5 years. Ours is not to question the logic of local government.

Here we go

2009-09-30T07:15:00.003+01:00

Okay, the recruitment that I was leading is finally finished and the author night is done (my two big projects lately). As far as I know, things at work will let up and I can attend to more routine tasks and not be in 'urgent' mode all the time. Hopefully no more late nights. Now I can work on getting rid of the fat rolls.

This morning I weighed 138.8 lbs. I would like to get down to 131 pounds, ideally 129 pounds, but I will settle for where I was all of 2008, 134 lbs. (I spent all of 2008 thinking about trying to lose down to 131, but I never did it--see where that got me!) SO...I would like to lose between 5 and 9 pounds and/or see a visible reduction in my belly roll situation, have my clothes fit looser and my thighs less gooshy. I'm not asking for perfection, just a small reduction! :) Basically, I want the clothes that used to be loose to be loose again. And the muffin tops GONE again.

I know exactly why I've gained weight. I eat more chocolate and snacks from the work room in one day than I used to eat in a week or even two weeks when I weighed less. My meals are not as well-balanced or healthy as they used to be. I snack at home on junk nearly every day, whereas in the past it would only be on a special occasion warranting a special trip to the shops to buy the junk once the decision to eat it had been reached. And my workouts, while still quite frequent by the standards of most people, have been inconsistent and not planned with any sort of strategy toward a true training effect.

The logical place to start is what I consider to be the most insidious culprit: snacking at work. When I was doing Weight Watchers, I actually ate NOTHING at work during breaks. I drank pint glasses of tap water. I ate only the lunch I had brought. Then as my fitness and diet improved, I had soaked muesli and fruit and things for snack. Then I started adding in the odd chocolate, and now I eat all day every day like a mad woman. This evolution (or de-volution!) has taken place over 5 years, and in that time I have lost a lot of weight and gained some of it back (about 6 or 7 pounds of the 60-odd I lost), and I have to say, nearly every single day of the week, the table in the workroom has been LADEN with rubbishy food that not one single member of staff should be eating. But we all do. I really must try to get that discipline back. My success used to be worth more to me than a chocolate.

What can I do to keep me off the snack table? I can't just avoid the break room. That is the only place you can to relax and escape work during break. I will figure something out.

What's going on here?

2009-09-26T17:30:00.002+01:00

I've been in a tailspin weight-wise lately and I've been wondering why I keep self-sabatoging. (Is that a word??) I've been eating lots of convenience foods, I've taken up baking a bit (in a small way compared to my old days, but still), and I skip workouts. I cannot follow a rotation to save my life. To save my life! Since last Christmas, I have gained 6 pounds. That last 2 pounds of that have come on fairly fast, which means, I think, that my body is accepting its new 'weight gain' mode and if I don't get control of it now, I'll be in the next size up in clothing before I know it.

So what in heck is going on? When I look back over my year, here's what I see (in random order):

1) My hubby is on yearly contracts at the moment, so we don't know his employment status until about mid-year. (Next review is July 2010--will he stay employed or will we be moving on? Who knows!)

2) Work has been chaotic as the library service undergoes 'transformation'--a euphemism for cutting staff severely and changing everything, without anyone seeming to know what we're changing to. Those of us who are left have been picking up the slack left by those who have either retired or been made redundant.

3) My son turned 18 and graduated high school. Stress trying to figure out his domestic and financial situation as he started university. Now stress because he's already saying he wants to change his major!

4) A family reunion had been planned in the US for early May as a surprise for my parents' 75th birthdays. My dad died in April, so I travelled home alone for the funeral, then hubby and I returned on the tickets originally bought for the reunion, and stayed with my mom, who was very ill for most of the visit. None of us have ever mentioned to her the plan for the family reunion.

5) I have been taking weekly (and sometimes twice weekly) driving lessons and took my driving test in August.

6) Unexpected big ticket expenses have made a dent in our savings. Just a ping, but still.

7) I've felt bad about not eating well or exercising to a set rotation!

Looking back on it, it's kind of a miracle I haven't plumped back up to where I started from.

World Peace Diet Ch 11

2009-09-23T09:22:00.002+01:00

Ch. 11 'Profiting from Destruction' Most ominvores don't realise the terrible price that earth pays to provide them with the vast amounts of animal proteins they think they require. This chapter provides a brief introduction to this vast and endlessly fascinating (and troubling) topic. (These concepts are spelled out plainly and in great detail in the books Diet for a Small Planet and Hope's Edge by France Lappe. You must read them. For a taster of these concepts, this chapter is a start.)

Food animals eat a LOT. And they poop a lot. This fundamental problem has deeply damaging consequences for the environment and economy. To be blunt, the earth does not have the resources to sustain its population if we were all to adopt the current Standard American Diet (SAD), also sometimes called the Western Diet. There is not enough water, land or fossil fuel for everyone on earth to live like Westerners, and that's the truth. An even more inconvenient truth is, the attempt to sustain the Western Diet even just in the Western world is wreaking absolute havoc on the globe's fresh water aquifers, fossil fuel resources, air quality, streams and rivers, wildlife, and genetic diversity--that's something they don't tell you when they ask you if you want fries with that.

Causes for alarm:

America now consumes more chickens in ONE DAY than it did in ONE YEAR in the 1930s. And yet, food is a much lower percent of income now than then. Who is paying the price for this overconsumption? The environment, the third world, and the health of the America consumer, that's who.

80% of the grain grown and 50% of the fish hauled in the US are FED TO LIVESTOCK.

6,000 sq miles of land in America is cleared to graze or grow grain to feed livestock each year. (That's 10,000 acres a day, or 7 acres per minute!)

A day's production of food to feed one omnivore human requires 4,000 gallons of fresh water. To feed one human a plant-based diet requires 300 gallons.

It takes 24 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat, tomatoes, lettuce or potatoes. To produce one pound of beef requires 5,200 gallons of water. (It takes more water to produce one pound of beef, in other words, than one average human uses to take a shower every day for 365 days. Think about it. That quarter pound beef patty used more water than you do in 3 months of showers. Ridiculous. Shameful. Stupid).

It takes 27 times as much petroleum to produce one calorie of protein in the form of beef as it does to produce one calorie of soy protein.

Over half of all US farmland is devoted to just 2 feed crops, genetically modified corn and soy crops that are not for human consumption (cannot be fed to humans) but for livestock feed. Two immediate problems there: 1) monocropping is a recipe for catastrophe in the event of a blight, 2) if you are what you eat, do you really want your dinner eating something that isn't fit for human consumption!

What are year of fitness can do

2009-09-22T07:53:00.004+01:00

This bloke decided to get fit and took a photo of himself every day for a year. He ate well and exercised (I think he also started visiting a tanning salon, but never mind! :) ) Then he spliced them together so you can see the transformation before your eyes. It's awesome!

Check this out!!

I wish I had taken a few more pics along the way, but I always hated having my picture made. Plus we didn't have a digital camera back then...anyway, have a look at the clip, it's really inspirational.

What's wrong with wanting to be thin?

2009-09-21T19:42:00.007+01:00

I've just deactivated my Facebook account because I've had enough of people chiming in to tell me I should stop 'worrying' so much about my weight and that 'being thin does not equal being happy.' Why do people do this?

When you're losing weight, no one says anything until about 20lbs in. Then they notice. 'Oh, you are looking great!' They say. 'What are you doing?'

If you continue to lose, they say, 'Don't go overboard now. You'll waste away to nothing.'

Once you enter your actual healthy weight range, a lot of the comments stop. You start to hear people making excuses for why they themselves don't have time to exercise, or why life is too short to deprive yourself of pleasures. People eyeball your lunch. If you're a vegan, like me, they make comments about rabbit food, offer you a rare steak, or say, 'I could never give up cheese!' As if you'd just asked them to! If you're still an omnivore, they talk about your tremendous discipline, in a disapproving tone. As if you would ever consider looking at their ham and mayo on white bread and saying to them, 'Man, that's got a lot of fat. Careful you don't get too FAT eating that!'

If you start to put on a bit of weight and mention that you want to lose it (which is where I am now--I have regained 7 lbs over the course of about 10 months), people pipe up to tell you that you look great, very healthy, not to worry, stop being so obsessed. Because 'thin does not equal happy.'

Whose business is it if I want to weigh 133 lbs for the rest of my life? Today I weighed 140. I haven't been out of the 130s since 2006. I don't like it. I like being in the 130s. I like my size 8 skirts to be loose around the waist. I like not having a muffin top. I like not having fat rolls. I like looking at myself in the mirror and seeing no bulges. And guess what. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I have put on weight for 3 reasons: 1) I've been under stress with my driving lessons and test and I've been eating a lot of chocolate and junk, 2) convenience foods have slipped back into my diet, because there's some magical connection between the junk food calories going up directly leading to the fresh fruit and veg intake going down--chips look so much more appealing if you had a chocolate bar at break than if you had an apple. Don't ask me why, I don't know why, but it's true! and 3) my timetable has changed and I have 2 more late finishes per week, and when I get home late I am tired and sometimes opt not to work out or switch to a shorter, easier workout than I would normally have done. --Come to think of it, there's 4)Facebook. I've spent time on there in the afternoons sometimes instead of working out--and often while snacking on crap!

133 lbs is NOT too thin for my frame. Eating to keep me there is NOT unhealthy. Exercising 5 times a week is NOT obsessive. And I'm tired of defending my lifestyle. I'm sick of rising above stupid comments.

I am NOT going to slip back into horrible habits and get fat again, just so those who won't put forth the effort can feel better about being sedentary and eating terrible food. I can't help it if my choices seem to them like some sort of indictment.

But I'm just sick of defending myself, so I deactivated my Facebook. So stupid that I felt I had to do that. I've NEVER attacked anyone on Facebook for eating meat or being fat or never exercising. How dare they presume that it's okay to do the reverse. So sad.

(Of course I have supportive friends who don't do this to me. But there are so many people out there who never think before they engage their mouth. And words hurt.)

Bon Appetit!

2009-09-20T15:29:00.006+01:00

I saw 'Julie & Julia' Friday night and really loved it. To be honest, it was Meryl Streep's performance as Julia Child that charmed and delighted me. The other story of Julie Powell and her blog left me somewhat lukewarm--I found myself just waiting for those segments to be over so I could get back to Julia.

In the film, Julie and Julia both make Julia Child's famous Boeuf Bourguignon and a chocolate cake. I used to make Julia's Boeuf Bourguignon years ago, back in America, when I was still a meat eater, and I recall how to make it and how it is supposed to taste. Today I decided to have a go at vegan versions of Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon and Gateaux Victoire au Chocolat Mousseline.

Soy Chunks Bourguignon

Julia's original recipe contains bacon, olive oil, stewing beef, carrot onion, parsley, garlic, tomato paste, red wine, thyme, bay leaf, mushrooms, parsley. You coat the beef in flour, brown it in bacon dripping and olive oil, brown the mushrooms, onion and garlic, add tomato paste for 'Maillard effect', deglaze with wine, add herbs and then bake in a covered casserole for 2.5 hours. So here's what I did.

a handful of savoury soy chunks
Kitchen Bouquet or other 'browning liquid'
Marmite
onion
garlic
mushrooms
red wine
olive oil
tomato paste
a bit of Liquid Smoke (or you could use a tad of smoky paprika)
carrots

In a bowl, sprinkle savoury soy chunks liberally with 'browning liquid'. Pour boiling water on. Stir in some olive oil and Marmite. Taste the liquid. Adjust seasoning--you are creating umami, you are not going for subtle! Add just a teeny tiny bit of liquid smoke or smoky paprika --the smokiness should be a barely-there taste alongside the rich umami of the marmite mixture.) Cover and set aside to allow chunks to soak up all the liquid.

Preheat the oven to about 350F.

Prep your veg, heat some olive oil in a pan and brown the mushrooms--don't overcrowd the pan, you want them to brown, not simmer and steam. Add to casserole. Brown the carrots and add to casserole. You should be getting a lovely golden brown sediment on the bottom of the pan. Add oil as needed as you go. Brown the onions and garlic, add a squirt of tomato paste and stir it around until it starts to go brown and make a lovely smell (the Maillard effect) and while the pan is hot, pour in a good amount of red wine and deglaze the pan. Add the soy chunks with their liquid to the pan. Simmer the soy chunks, covered, in the red wine mixture until they are tender enough to cut in half with a fork. This could take a while! Then add the mixture to the casserole dish with the veg. Add your herbs, cover the casserole, and bake until the vegetables are tender and there's a lovely rim of brown around the edges of the casserole. (Julia didn't do this, but to add more sweetness and delight, I threw a small handful of raisins in the mix before baking. Prunes would also be good). The red wine sauce in the pan should have thickened to a lovely glaze coating the soy chunks and veg.

Julia would have served this with boiled white potatoes and peas, but I served over brown basmati rice.

Le Gateau Victoire Au Chocolat Mousseline

Julia's original cake recipe contains loads of eggs and dairy and creamy gooiness, but its defining tastes are chocolate and coffee, so that was my focus. I didn't want to bother trying to recreate a mousse, so I decided to use a cake recipe from the Great Depression which, because of a lack of eggs and dairy and money to buy them with, just happens to be vegan. Although no one back then would have known the word 'vegan', as it wasn't even coined until 1944. I altered the original recipe slightly to incorporate wholemeal flour, and a reduced amount of unrefined sugar and added coffee, going for Julia's chocolate and coffee flavours.

Chocolate Cake

Grease a small baking dish or cake pan, preheat oven to 180C and combine:

200 grams wholemeal flour
175 grams unrefined caster sugar
4 heaping Tbs cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbs rice bran oil (or any tasteless vegetable oil)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vinegar
150 ml water plus 100 ml leftover cold coffee

Pour into greased dish and bake until done, about 40 minutes. Cool.

For a frosting or glaze, I combined in a saucepan:

2 Tbs coconut oil
2 heaping Tbs cocoa
6 Tbs sugar
some coffee (I didn't measure it! Sorry! It was enough to make a thin layer of frosting on the top of the cake. I was making it up, just eyeballing! Maybe...I don't know...half a cup?)

Bring to boil and cook, stirring, until the mixture clings to the back of a spoon and when you drag your finger across the back of the spoon, the track remains clean. (Just short of the soft ball stage, in other words). Allow to cool slightly, then pour slowly over the cake, giving it time to set up and coat the cake before you add more. You don't want it all running down the sides and leaving the top bare.)

Julia loved her meat and dairy, so would probably not at all approve of my tampering, but I don't care. It was nice.

(I cut the cake up into portions and put them in little individual plastic containers, ready to go into lunches--hopefully mostly Derek's lunches! I'm getting so fat!)

World Peace Diet Ch. 8-10

2009-09-15T07:25:00.002+01:00

Chapter 8 'The Metaphysics of Food' All matter is energy vibrating within a certain range that is perceptible to our senses. 'Matter' is not the only vibrational energy present in the universe, though. We can be standing in a dark, empty and quiet room, but when we turn on the television or radio, we are suddenly aware of music and conversation that have been in the room with us, unperceived because we lack the equipment to perceive them. In the same way, there is vibrational energy relating to food (and other things, such as crystals and flowers to name two!) that we might not be able to perceive with our five senses, but that affect our own vibrational patterns and that we have some sort of response to. This chapter is about that phenomenon, and about the metaphysical vibrations of eating animal products. It might be a challenge for some people with an aversion to New Agey type thinking.

Chapter 9 'Reductionist Science and Religion' This chapter sets forth the notion that science and religion, as we know them in the western world, have caused us to reduce our point of view so that we flatly deny any reality beyond that which can be physically quantified, or if we do, we reduce the infinite divine mystery to a judgemental, anthropomorphized authority figure, human beings to self-centred, discreet temporal entities who may be chosen to be saved or condemned based on one fleeting lifetime, and animals and nature reduced to mere disposable props in this drama. It is suggested the science and religion of eastern traditions have never created such dualism, the mind-body-spirit connection is stronger, medicine is more preventative and holistic, and the diet higher in plant-based foods.

Chapter 10 'The Dilemma of Work' This somewhat muddled chapter attempts to fuse an expose of the plight of the worker in a packing house (slaughter house) with Tuttle's own Buddhist notions about 'right livelihood'. Tuttle is a Zen Buddhist priest, and one of the precepts of Buddhism is to choose a way of making a living that causes no harm and does not break (or cause anyone else to break) the Noble 8-fold Path. The conditions of the meat packing plant are deplorable, and it is one of the lowest paid and most dangerous jobs in the Western world (done mostly by illegal immigrants). Of course it's also important to choose a career that is in line with one's beliefs. But I think this chapter could use some rethinking in its presentation.

Today we visited Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire

2009-09-13T17:54:00.014+01:00

I uploaded more snaps than this, but when I tried moving them around, some of them disappeared. Anyway, I might put more on later. It was a fun visit!

World Peace Diet Ch. 6-7

2009-09-12T20:34:00.008+01:00

Chapter 6: Hunting and Herding Sea Life This chapter exposes the truth about fish for those who think it's a healthy thing to eat. There are a lot of misguided people who call themselves vegetarians but eat fish! And a lot of meat-eaters who think it's a good idea to eat fish several times a week 'for health'. The main ideas:1) wild fish = toxic due to pollution and being very high on the food chain (build up of toxins in body fat), 2) factory farmed fish = toxic due to doping (necessary to even keep the fish alive when crammed into such close quarters and living in a thick soup of each other's feces), 3) commercial fishing = environmental disaster. Also, fish are vertebrates and do intensely feel pain. They're alive, same as you! And same as you, they want to stay that way, pain free. And, same as you, they deserve to.

Chapter 7: The Domination of the Feminine Here we focus on the dairy and egg industry. Tuttle details the bondage, rape (insemination), and infanticide that dairy cows and egg-laying chickens are subjected to. A dairy cow, who if left to her natural state would live to be 25 years old, and would produce, with each baby cow, over a 7-month period, a bell curve of 10 pounds of milk per day to 25 pounds, then back down again to 0 pounds (yes, in the wild cows only produce milk when they have a baby--ever thought of that!)--a dairy cow in a modern dairy lives only 4 years on average, is kept artificially pregnant the entire time, and is forced to produce 90 to 110 pounds of milk per day. Her confinement, her physical torture, her misery defies belief. At the end of this wretched 4 years, she is killed and her scrawny, depleted body is used in the cheapest beef products (such as fast and highly processed foods) or for pet food. The milk she has been tortured into producing is not only filled with toxins from the pesticides from her feed and the antibiotics and hormones used to keep her alive and producing, it is not even fit for human consumption because it is not designed by nature for human consumption, and does us only ill.

The only creature in the world of the factory farm in a worse plight than the dairy cow is the wretched egg-laying battery hen. Each battery hen shares a 16-inch high by 18-inch wide wire cage with 7 other hens. They are crammed in so tight that they can barely turn around let alone stretch out a wing. Like the dairy cows, these chickens are kept artificially inseminated to produce as many eggs as possible in as short a time as possible. In nature a hen is particular about a nesting site and lays her eggs in partnership with a rooster. In the battery farm, the chicken will lay over 250 eggs per year (more than 2.5 times what she would produce in nature), which will drop from her uterus and roll away on the slanted wire cage bottoms she is forced to stand on for every hour of her miserable life, and whisked away on a conveyor belt.

Let's put it in perspective here. Are you a woman?

Imagine yourself in a small room, about the size of an elevator with a ceiling about 6 feet high, which is made of wire. You cannot stand up straight, raise your arms over your head, or stretch them out to your sides because there are 7 other women confined in this space with you. You have no shoes to protect your feet, and the wire cuts you and your toes keep slipping between the wires, causing your constant injury and pain. (If you live long enough, your toes will curl around the wires and atrophy in that position...) There is no room to sit down, nothing to make a bed with. If you try to sit or lie down, others tread on you or lie on top of you. It's a constant battle for space. You are always exhausted and you are filthy. You are covered in sores, bruises and wounds. You are likely to have cancerous growths, deformities, running sores. You may have lost an eye, finger or toes in the daily battle for space and food. You and the other women are fed wretched food in meager amounts, food that in nature you would never consider eating, you are kept pumped with hormones, you are regularly brutalized for artificial insemination, and your resulting babies are taken away from you as soon as they are born, you never even get to see them. Your milk is then taken forcibly from you by machine. In fact, you are producing so much milk, your breasts are swollen 2, 3, 4 times their normal size and are completely infected leaving you feverish and in agony. And yet you must continue to stand, fight the others for food and space, fight for air, fight for life. This is not a temporary situation. This is not something to endure for a short time. This is your entire life. This is all you have ever known. This is all you will ever know. This isn't prison, this is your home. This is your universe. This is existence as you know it. And if you fall, your keepers (these mysterious 'others' who bring you only terror and pain) will drag you out of the cage and discard you. You're too cheap to bother with. This is the domination of the feminine in factory farms.

Earthlings

2009-09-09T15:59:00.003+01:00

Please see my sidebar to the right for a link to a film called 'Earthlings'. It was made in 2005 and is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.

I urge you to watch it.

Watch it all the way through, especially if at some point you don't want to.

There are 3 stages to receiving truth:

1) Ridicule

2) Violent opposition

3) Acceptance

Whichever one you feel, at whichever stage of watching this film, know that you are reacting to the truth.

The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony (Ch 1-5)

2009-09-08T07:14:00.011+01:00

This book contains 15 chapters. I want to share with you a brief summary of each, and expand on a few of my favourite gems. I'll cover 5 chapters per post.

Chapter One 'Food's Power' This chapter sets up the book by examining how important the act of eating is to us as human beings. It is a potent symbol, ritual and rite, because it is our most intimate connection to the world around us, the physical taking in of something which then is transformed into you!

Chapter Two 'Our Culture's Roots' Here Tuttle posits the idea that we are actually a herding culture with its roots in the eastern Mediterranean basin and Middle East, whose central defining belief is that animals are commodities to be owned, used and eaten. By extension, nature, land, resources, other people are also seen as commodities to be owned, used and exploited.

Chapter Three 'The Nature of Intelligence' The ideas contained in this chapter are beautiful in the extreme, and express my conception of the divine very well. If I ever were to talk of 'God' (which I rarely do, as people seldom acknowledge the word as I mean it, and to be honest, I prefer the phrase 'Universal Consciousness'), I could do worse than to quote from this chapter. When we look at the universe, whichever direction we go in, down to the tiniest sub-atomic particle up to the biggest whole that we can conceive, each thing is part of a system, interacting in complex ways with other systems to make up larger and more complex systems. And each system has its own unique intelligence. Cells make up organs, organs make up circulatory systems, which make up larger systems like oaks, ducks, sheep and humans, which make up larger systems like groves, flocks, herds and villages, which make up larger systems like forests, marine ecosystems, prairies, societies. These make up larger systems, like planets, which are parts of even larger systems, each contributing to the larger whole and made up of smaller wholes. This is called systems theory. 'Intelligence lies in the ability of every whole part to receive feedback from and make connections with all the other systems that are related to it, and to thereby unfold its inherent potential to serve the larger wholes.' Nothing is ever separate.

The largest whole that includes every atom, every cell, every creature, community, planet, star, galaxy, and universe is, to the part, say an individual human, inconceivable, and is intuited as divine, infinite, eternal, omniscient, and beyond all dualisms. There is literally nothing outside this largest whole, nothing that 'it' is not. Our language completely fails to describe 'it', since by its very nature language makes objects and things, and the ultimate wholeness within which all appearance reside as nested wholes is not a thing in any sense--it is separated from nothing. The intelligence of this universal wholeness embraces all apparent parts down to the tiniest, and lives within all the parts as their intelligence. Our dualistic thinking cannot grasp this directly, for it is beyond existence or experience as we know them. This universal intelligence can only be sensed non-dualistically, through intuitive receptivity in inner silence that is not clouded by concepts and conditioned thinking.

This is my concept of 'God'. Everything. All. It's so beautiful to me, this concept. It's so huge. So much more than the 'capricious mountain deity' I was raised to fear. (I can't remember where I heard Yaweh called that, but it stuck in my mind...)

The chapter goes on to discuss the different intelligences found in other species. Tuttle uses Buddhist language to describe this. 'The intelligence that manifests as a chicken,' he says, instead of saying 'a chicken's intelligence'. This reinforces the idea that a Universal Intelligence pervades all things. Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle, to name two, also use this sort of language. Like all systems, the intelligence that manifests as a chicken has a unique and specific intelligence suited to being a chicken. When we destroy the chicken's connection to family, community, habitat and its intelligent drives, we 'commit extreme violence against not only these creatures, but against the whole interconnected system of intelligence that supports them and that they serve. In committing such violence, we damage our own intelligence as well.'

The message of this chapter is that what we do as a herding culture is so out of whack with the Universal Intelligence, that we have become a cancer cell to the system of the whole, implying that the immunities of the whole must fight back. (And thus we see the ill health effects and other troubles our herding culture has created). We can heal this cancerous state by ceasing to ignore our own innate intelligence--by listening to the deep aversion we have to causing suffering and to ingesting blood and flesh and by acting as our innate intelligence leads us--we bring our systems in line with the whole. Human beings with our delicate, hairless bodies, clawless limbs and our tiny flat teeth and jaws hinged for side-to-side movement (as opposed to the up-and-down movement of carnivores), our long intestinal tracts (as opposed to the short tracts of carnivores), are clearly designed to be herbivorous, like all our nearest primate kin. Add to that our deep spiritual longing for peace and harmony and our instinctive aversion to violence and it is obvious how far from our natural intelligence this 'herding culture' has led us.

Chapter Four 'Inheriting Our Food Choices' This short chapter suggests that we are indoctrinated from birth as to what is acceptable as food. We accept unqestioningly our culture's most fundamental and defining practice, that of imprisoning animals for food. When we begin to question, we are admonished 'not to think about it.' Deep down, in our natural intelligence, we know better. This is why our only defense is to 'not think about it'. (Ask any omnivore how they can eat meat, they invariably say, 'I don't care. I just don't think about it.' Then after a pause, 'Don't tell me about it, I don't want to know.' This is how we thwart our natural intelligence).

Chapter Five 'The Intelligence of Human Physiology' I touched on this earlier, but Tuttle goes into how our physiology is designed for a plant-based diet. 'Classifying the human physiology has always been problematic in our culture and continues to be controversial today. While it's obvious we're not basically carnivores, it's also obvious we are not ruminant or ungulate herbivores, like cows or deer, horses or sheep. We may best be classified as frugivorous herbivores, designed primarily for fruits, seeds, vegetables, nuts and succulent roots and leaves. '

Like all animals, we are essentially spiritual beings, manifestations of a universal, loving intelligence that has given us bodies designed to thrive on the abundant foods that we can peacefully nourish and gather in orchards, fields and gardens. Our bodies reflect our consciousness, which yearns to unfold higher dimensions of creativity, compassion, joy and awareness, and longs to serve the larger wholes--our culture, the earth, and the benevolent source of all life--by blessing and helping others and by sharing, caring, and celebrating. We have, appropriately, a physiology of peace.

The chapter then goes into details of the health advantages of a plant-based diet, such as you will be familiar with if you'd read John Robbins and T. Colin Campbell.

2009-08-28T07:45:00.002+01:00

I had taken herbal Nytol the night before, hoping to avoid nightmares. It worked really well, and I slept from 9.30pm to 6.30 the next morning. I woke up the morning of my driving test feeling well-rested. I got breakfast and got Derek off to work, feeling calm. (What I hoped was calm. I wasn't sure if it was calm or numb...)

After Derek left, I went to brush my teeth, and just said out loud, 'This is the day I pass my driving test. Today is the day I pass my driving test.' I said it a few more times, then kept repeating it in my head as I went about finishing getting ready, assembling my paperwork, writing out a cheque for my driving instructor, etc. I put on a smoky quartz pendant (which I had been wearing daily and exclusively for the last week) and a citrine bracelet. I drank a glass of water with a combination of flower essences selected for the occasion. I had a squirt of Rescue Remedy. :)

Then I went and set up the CD player and lay down to listen to the hypnosis CD 'Pass Your Driving Test'. I lay on the bed and listened, checking my watch now and then to make sure I wasn't running overlong. Wendy, my instructor, would be round to pick me up at 8.37 (one hour before my test). I put in my hearing aids and met her outside.

The very first roundabout we took, I took the second exit when she had told me to take the third. However, I did not panic. I just laughed. We drove around for an hour, practising turning in the road, reversing round a corner, reverse parking and the emergency stop. We went round the Griff Roundabout, which has work being done it so the lanes are all different from how they usually are. She was her usual nitpicky self, but gentler about it. When we pulled up outside the test centre, she told me, 'If you drive like that on the test, you will be fine.'

We then sat and waited for the examiner to turn up. A woman came in who looked like an absolute harridan--tall, thin, pointy features like a witch, very severe short haircut. I thought, 'Oh no!' But she walked right past me to a little Asian girl, and a plump, sweet-faced little woman with gray-streaked blonde hair came up to me and said, 'Carla?' That was my examiner. She looked at my paperwork and we went out. When I answered her questions about how to check the oil and tyre pressure, she maintained strong eye contact with me and smiled a lot.

We got in the car and I told her I have hearing aids and might need to ask her to repeat herself. Her instructions to me were nice and loud, and very clear. She didn't just say, 'Take the next left, please.' She said things like, 'Now Carla, we're approaching a junction. I want you to stay in this lane and follow the road all the way around.' She pretty much made it impossible for me to mess up, if I were paying any attention to her at all. So I never took a wrong turn or left a roundabout at the wrong exit.

I didn't drive entirely perfectly, though. I made 6 minor faults. In the UK, you are allowed to make up to 15 minor faults and still pass, but one serious fault is an automatic failure. A serious fault is one which might endanger yourself or others, so any minor fault could become a serious fault, depending on the circumstances. Here are the areas you are assessed on (with the number of minor faults I made):

Eyesight
Highway Code
Controlled stop
Reverse left/right
Reverse park
Turn in road
Vehicle checks
Control of accelerator, clutch, gears (2), footbrake, parking brake, steering (1--I nipped a kerb, can you believe that!)
Move off safely (1), controlled (1-I rolled back slightly on a hill start)
Use of mirrors and signals when signalling, changing directions, changing speed
Dealing with obstructions
Response to signs/signals: traffic signs, road markings, lights, controllers, other road users
Following distance
Progress: appropriate speed, undue hesitation (1--I hemhawed a lot trying to decide if my car would edge round a bus--I think that's the time she meant!)
Junctions: approach speed, observation, turning left/right, cutting corners
Judgement: overtaking, meeting, crossing
Positioning: normal driving, lane discipline
Ped crossings
Position for stops
Awareness/planning
Ancillary controls

When she told me I passed, I said, 'Oh you angel!' And that's the whole story!

I DID IT!

2009-08-26T11:07:00.003+01:00

I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST TODAY!!

I have been taking lessons since May 2008. I have spent about £1500. Now it's all finally over and done with! I did it, I did it, I did it!

Taking a break from all this pick-pick-picking -- my August plan

2009-08-03T07:22:00.004+01:00

Bad day yesterday, another big meltdown for me. I'm getting to the point where I just can't take much more of that.

I'm taking a break from all this endless reading of self-help books and constant navel-gazing.

Today, I'm returning the books I've been reading (Susan Jeffers 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' and some books about crystals and chakras) and I'm not going to blog for a while.

I'm going to limit my computer use to once a day to check my hotmail. This is going to be challenging.

Any reading I do is going to be fiction--escapist fiction!

I'm going to continue doing lots of yoga and meditation and regular workouts.

I'm going to eat healthy meals.

I'm not going to write in my journal or track anything that I do (well, except the workouts. I don't think it hurts to write down what workout I do). This one is going to be hard.

In short, I'm going to try to just leave myself alone for the next 4 weeks.

Feel free to comment here, it will come through on my hotmail. xx

Took it down

2009-07-30T07:20:00.001+01:00

I took down the Skribit. Didn't like it sitting there all empty.

I've been reading Susan Jeffer's Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Book review coming soon!

Who is this Krishnamurti? I don't know, but I'm going to find out!

2009-07-20T08:31:00.007+01:00

I've been reading about the history of the New Age movement, and I've just discovered a chap called Jiddhu Krishnamurti. Apparently, the Theosophist Society tried to set him up as some sort of New Messiah, and established The Order of the Star in his honour. In 1929, having been groomed from the age of 13 to be the New Messiah, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star, broke with the Theosophists, and went his own way. Here is the speech he gave on the day he dissolved the order (he was 33 years old):

We are going to discuss this morning the dissolution of the Order of the Star. Many people will be delighted, and others will be rather sad. It is a question neither for rejoicing nor for sadness, because it is inevitable, as I am going to explain.

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of Truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to let him organize it."

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth, it cannot be "stepped down" or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest, which is not born out of love of Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountain-top, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.

So that is the first reason, from my point of view, why the Order of the Star should be dissolved. In spite of this, you will probably form other Orders, you will continue to belong to other organizations searching for Truth. I do not want to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind, please understand this. I would make use of an organization which would take me to London, for example; this is quite a different kind of organization, merely mechanical, like the post or the telegraph. I would use a motor car or a steamship to travel, these are only physical mechanisms which have nothing whatever to do with spirituality. Again, I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality.

If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it. No one has persuaded me to this decision.

This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this: not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.

Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussions year after year.

One newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organization in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because, he said: "What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you." If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves? If I speak strongly, please do not misunderstand me, it is not through lack of compassion. If you go to a surgeon for an operation, is it not kindness on his part to operate even if he cause you pain? So, in like manner, if I speak straightly, it is not through lack of real affection - on the contrary.

As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self.

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole-not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal - I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears-from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want any thing from anyone.

You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority, which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers-a miracle-transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority.

You have listened to me for three years now, without any change taking place except in the few. Now analyze what I am saying, be critical, so that you may understand thoroughly, fundamentally. When you look for an authority to lead you to spirituality, you are bound automatically to build an organization around that authority. By the very creation of that organization, which, you think, will help this authority to lead you to spirituality, you are held in a cage.

If I talk frankly, please remember that I do so, not out of harshness, not out of cruelty, not out of the enthusiasm of my purpose, but because I want you to understand what I am saying. That is the reason why you are here, and it would be a waste of time if I did not explain clearly, decisively, my point of view.

For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the World-Teacher. For eighteen years you have organized, you have looked for someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds, who would transform your whole life, who would give you a new understanding; for someone who would raise you to a new plane of life, who would give you a new encouragement, who would set you free-and now look what is happening! Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made you different-not with the superficial difference of the wearing of a badge, which is trivial, absurd. In what manner has such a belief swept away all the unessential things of life? That is the only way to judge: in what way are you freer, greater, more dangerous to every Society which is based on the false and the unessential? In what way have the members of this organization of the Star become different?

As I said, you have been preparing for eighteen years for me. I do not care if you believe that I am the World-Teacher or not. That is of very little importance. Since you belong to the organization of the Order of the Star, you have given your sympathy, your energy, acknowledging that Krishnamurti is the World-Teacher- partially or wholly: wholly for those who are really seeking, only partially for those who are satisfied with their own half-truths.

You have been preparing for eighteen years, and look how many difficulties there are in the way of your understanding, how many complications, how many trivial things. Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your churches new and old - all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding. I cannot make myself clearer than this. I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying.

This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are. You want to have your own gods - new gods instead of the old, new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old - all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches. Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else; and although you have been preparing for me for eighteen years, when I say all these things are unnecessary, when I say that you must put them all away and look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few.

So why have an organization?

Why have false, hypocritical people following me, the embodiment of Truth? Please remember that I am not saying something harsh or unkind, but we have reached a situation when you must face things as they are. I said last year that I would not compromise. Very few listened to me then. This year I have made it absolutely clear. I do not know how many thousands throughout the world- members of the Order-have been preparing for me for eighteen years, and yet now they are not willing to listen unconditionally, wholly, to what I say.

So why have an organization?

As I said before, my purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself. I want therefore to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom . And I, for whom you have been preparing for eighteen years, now say that you must be free of all these things, free from your complications, your entanglements. For this you need not have an organization based on spiritual belief. Why have an organization for five or ten people in the world who understand, who are struggling, who have put aside all trivial things? And for the weak people, there can be no organization to help them to find the Truth, because Truth is in everyone; it is not far, it is not near; it is eternally there.

Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern. "How many members are there in it?" That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. "How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false." I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. As I said, if there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough.

Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.

So you will see how absurd is the whole structure that you have built, looking for external help, depending on others for your comfort, for your happiness, for your strength. These can only be found within yourselves.

So why have an organization?

You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things.

So why have an organization?

But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose. Because of that real understanding there will be true friendship. Because of that true friendship- which you do not seem to know-there will be real cooperation on the part of each one. And this not because of authority, not because of salvation, not because of immolation for a cause, but because you really understand, and hence are capable of living in the eternal. This is a greater thing than all pleasure, than all sacrifice.

So these are some of the reasons why, after careful consideration for two years, I have made this decision. It is not from a momentary impulse. I have not been persuaded to it by anyone. I am not persuaded in such things. For two years I have been thinking about this, slowly, carefully, patiently, and I have now decided to disband the Order, as I happen to be its Head. You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.

There is so much food for thought in just this speech. I must find out more about this man. He died in 1986 in Ojai, California.

I find it so interesting that he was 'discovered at age 13,' then taught for 3 years, then left his followers (so to speak) at age 33. Who does that remind you of? Was that done on purpose, or was it just a bizarre coincidence?

Krishnamurti here calls himself the embodiment of Truth and the World-Teacher. He then went on to spend the rest of his life teaching that each of us is the embodiment of Truth and our own World-Teacher. And who does that remind you of?

There's a fairly thorough Wikipedia article on him, and I've already requested a biography called Star in the East from the local library. I can't wait to read it!

Another book

2009-07-18T17:05:00.004+01:00

Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand

I will come back to Cheri Huber's book another time. In the meantime, I've been reading Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand. This is a very friendly introduction to using Sanskrit mantra to promote healing, insight, creativity and spiritual growth. The book I bought includes a CD on which the author demonstrates how to pronounce and chant the majority of the mantras covered in the book. It's an excellent resource for anyone interested in chanting.

I love chanting and have always loved it, but I wasn't sure how to do it and felt self-conscious about it. Hubby bought me an MP3 player a few years ago and I downloaded some chants and attempted to chant along with them, but that practice fell away. The chants I could find didn't resonate with me. (Except the Heart Sutra! See the bar at the right, and click the link to hear it chanted. I love that one). Mantras are a bit different, in that they are shorter phrases packed with energy and intention, chanted aloud (or silently) in sets of 108 repetitions.

I first discovered mantra through Ravi & Ana's kundalini yoga workouts. Those mantras are sung in Gurmukhi, and are Sikh mantras.

I then stumbled upon Sanskrit mantra when I ordered my first Deva Premal album in order to get to the Gurmukhi track 'Aad guray nameh' on her album, 'Dakshina'. (I discovered that online while doing a search for kundalini mantra). I have since ordered most of her back catalog, and 'Dakshina' remains my favourite. She has recorded traditional Sanskrit (and some other) mantras in a non-traditional way. She has been called 'the Enya of mantra'. Her music is classed under 'New Age' or 'Yoga'. Her music is just so beautiful, I listen to it every morning while getting ready for work. Her songs are Sanskrit mantra, and so it is just the same phrase over and over.

Listen to these 2 fairly traditional (though quite slickly rendered) versions of the Gayatri mantra. I really like both very much, particularly the first one:

Gayatri Mantra (traditional)

Another Gayatri Mantra

Now listen to Deva's version:

Gayatri Mantra (Deva Premal)

(This mantra has an entire chapter devoted to it in the book 'Healing Mantras'.

Om bhur bhuva swaha
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yonah prachodayat

It is a chanted with the intention of enlightenment and is very difficult to translate. Deva's album sleeve renders it:

'Through the coming, going and the balance of life
The essential nature which illumines existence
is the adorable one.
May all perceive through subtle intellect
the brilliance of enlightenment.'

I have also seen it translated:

'Let us meditate on the splendour of God,
who illuminates our understanding.'

You can google it and find many translations. 'Healing Mantras' translates it as:

'O self-effulgent Light that has given birth to all the spheres of consciousness, who is worthy of devotion, illumine our intellect.')

To chant an entire mala (108 repetitions) while singing like that, though, was not Deva's intention and doesn't really work. You have to chant. That's why I was so glad that she came out with her album 'Mantras for Precarious Times', because she just actually chants mantra for 108 reps. Here's the one I've been doing:

Om gum ganapatayei namaha

I don't know if that link will let you play the track, but it's worth a try.

Anyway, I'm enjoying exploring this new world of real chanting, and the book is very helpful. I am now 17 days into my 40 day sadhana using the Ganesh (Ganapata) mantra. I chant one mala, then sit in silence and count breaths (Zen style) for 10 minutes, twice a day. It's lovely.

Book Review (Part 1)

2009-07-06T13:31:00.006+01:00

How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Cheri Huber (Soto Zen teacher, writer and leader of retreats)

I bought this book in the Works yesterday because it was on sale for £1.99 and the title caught my eye. The first paragraph clinched the deal for me:

Earlier in my life, I read many wonderful, informative books about what is possible for us. I was inspired and enlightened by them. But in each case, the inspiration faded, and I was essentially left in the same place I started--with only a little more intellectual understanding, and a stronger belief that I should somehow be 'different' as a result. But I wasn't different in any significant way. I still wasn't able to be the person I felt I was capable of being. I didn't know how to be that person, and none of the books I read helped much.

Well, that sounds just like me. I have read books that have made me want to change the way I live my life and I have made those changes (anything by John Robbins, for example). I have also read books that make me want to change how I am, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get from the me I am to the me I want to be (Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle and so on). Just a few hours before we went to the mall yesterday, I had been trying to explain just this feeling to my ever-patient and supportive husband. I was attempting to work out how I manage to go from zero to meltdown at the seemingly slightest provocation. It really is all to do with my vision of the person I want to be clashing continuously with reality. My disappointment, embarrassment and deeply rooted belief that I've failed to live up to what I should be is what leads me to meltdown, or 'triggers the pain-body,' if you like. When you subconsciously expect yourself to be flawless, you begin to disappoint yourself from the moment you wake up, until the 'tiny' thing that sets you off feels like a really, really big deal. And you're not even aware that you're registering these constant failures to live up to your own expectations, at least I'm not. So you're going through your day, keeping a subconsious tally of screw-ups and boo-boos, then when you can't instantly recognize who gets priority on a roundabout, for example, it might seem like the first insignificant blip of the day, but to my subconscious little scorekeeper, it's mistake number 3,000 and it's one that involves other people--a life-or-death situation--real danger! All the bells go off in my head and the 'pain-body' is unleashed to beat it home to me that I'm a useless nothing, that since everything I do goes wrong I should just give up entirely. 'I try and try and try,' I end up saying (usually sobbing), 'but I just can't seem to figure out how to be good. All I want is to be good. I try so hard and all that happens is people tell me I'm trying too hard. How do you not try hard? Aren't you supposed to try? I don't understand, I just don't know...' and so on and so forth.

It occurred to me yesterday that most of my life has been directed at trying to get to this point of 'goodness' I long for. Looking at my day-to-day life, I realise that most of my spare time is spent trying to 'improve' myself or the world in some way. My diet reflects my concerns for health and the environment. I vote Green. I work out regularly and spend a lot of time and money on it. I use a detailed journal where I make attempts to exercise some control over my days, make my plans, set my goals. My interest in Buddhism, yoga, chakras and even flower essences are all about the attempt to find a way to get me from where I perceive myself (deeply flawed but yearning to be better) to what I want to be: at peace, serene, having the emotional intelligence to deal with life's vicissitudes. During our talk, I realised that all my life I've been searching for some way to turn me from the roiling little wreck I feel I am to the serene and graceful being I want to be. When I was a Christian, it was the same. My favourite song was a prayer asking for 'clean hands and a pure heart.' All my interests have been attempts to find my way to...well, perfection. Even though I know no one is perfect and can't be perfect, the illogical part of me won't seem to allow me to be anything less. And since I cannot possibly live up to my own expectations, my constant disappointment with myself leads me to these meltdowns. There's nothing wrong with the things that I do, it's the meaning I assign to them that is causing the problem. I'm only a quarter of a way through this book, and this realisation has shaken me.

Clinging to our beliefs about what things mean is how we avoid seeing that those meanings aren't true. Most of are terrifed of questioning the validity of those meanings, because that involves going against out internal programming, which we think keeps us safe. But not examining the hidden meanings prevents us from addressing the issues in our lives that cause us to suffer.

For instance, I think that if I take more than my share, I might be seen as 'selfish', and being selfish means I am a bad person. But does it? Taking 'more than my share' doesn't mean anything except that I am a person who on this occasion took more than what was considered (by someone) as 'my share'.

Doing acts identified as kind does not make you a good person; it does not even mean you are kind. Doing kind acts makes you a person who is currently doing what someone has labeled as 'kind acts'. Yelling at the kids does not make you bad parent; it makes you a parent who is yelling at the kids.

When we can separate behaviours from all the 'meanings' that define a person, we can sort them into groups and address each for what it is, like sorting socks...

This is an extremely subtle and enormously important point. What would the issues of your life look like if none of them meant anything?

Wow. I am not a bad driver who will never pass the driving test. I'm just a driver who at a particular roundabout was momentarily confused.

I am not an idle slob. I'm just a person whose weight is a bit higher than it was yesterday.

I am not anti-social and mean. I'm just a person who didn't want to go out when invited.

I am not a capricious wastrel. I am just person who bought a pair of shoes that she then never wore.

I am not a terrible housekeeper and therefore undeserving of a nice home. I'm just a person who hasn't dusted.

According to the author, we start to create meanings for everything as soon as we start dealing with other people--in other words, from birth! This is our social conditioning, and comes about through the same process, although the content will vary from culture to culture or even from family to family.

'Eat your vegetables, people are starving.' What in the world does that mean? What message are we to derive from that? As a small child, I don't know that there are people other than the ones I've seen. I don't know that there are other countries. What is a country? I don't know what starving means. I don't know what eating my vegetables has to do anything--with growth, with health, with money. I've never not had food. I don't know what gratitude is. All I understand is that the idea of not eating what's on your plate makes you a bad person in the eyes of the people around you. Here is the point to keep in mind: children cannot allow their survival to rest with an unknown. If a message is not clear, the child learns to make up meaning from what the message sounds like or feels like or seems like.

So we grow up creating a duality: who you must be and who you must never be. You must always be strong, good, right, kind, selfless, smart, successful. You must never be weak, bad, unkind, selfish, stupid or a failure. The list could go on.

People want to believe that being, feeling, thinking,and doing what they are supposed to will get them everything they want. No problems, no hassles, no disappointments--do the right thing and get the right result. The flaw with this kind of thinking is simply that life is not that way.

The author's answer to this problem is almost a koan:

It's not what, it's how

Instead of focusing on what should be happening, focus on what is happening, and then ask How?

You notice that I didn't ask why, I asked how. Because it doesn't matter why. Why just takes us into our conditioned thinking patterns and away from the situation at hand. In the course of answering how, one will often answer the question why. How takes us to interesting places. How is the movement. How reveals. How is process.

When we stop making judgements about ourselves, we can see the how.

Sadhana

2009-07-04T21:16:00.008+01:00

Since I wrote that last entry, I've embarked on a 40-day sadhana in the run-up to my driving test.

I've ditched my July exercise rotation to focus on daily yoga practice and chanting of a mantra for removal of obstacles:

Om gum ganapatayei namaha

This mantra is to Ganesha (I've added a very light-hearted graphic of 'baby' Ganesha--it was too cute to resist, and I think sometimes the more traditional depictions can be very offputting at first glance--) Ganesha (also called Ganapati) is the god of success and the remover of obstacles. He is one of the five prime Hindu deities. He has a lot of arms because he's a busy boy and has a lot of work to do! He holds a goad (to prod mankind forward toward our goals), a lotus (enlightenment), a noose (for capturing and removing obstacles) and a bowl of fruit (for abundance). His head represents our spirit (the Atman), the trunk is the Om, his pot-bellied body represents the earthly life. And he is accompanied by a mouse, the lowliest of creatures, to represent humility.

I used to be quite repelled by the image of Ganesh, but the more I've learned about him, the more I like him. I'm going to get a figure of him to go on my altar with Buddha, Jesus, and Kwan Yin (aka Avalokiteshvara).

The chant, to me, is not a prayer to an actual deity, but a hello to the 'remover of obstacles' within myself. To me, all the dieties represent aspects of myself. I don't have to seek him or invite him or welcome him, he's an aspect of myself that is already here. I just have to say hello to him.

Om -- the universal

Gum -- the seed sound of Ganesha

Ganapatayei -- the name of Ganesha (Ganapati) -- the 'yei' is kind of a little add on to give it some oomph; it sort of means exalted (many Buddhist chants refer to Buddha as Buddhaya, for example)

Namaha -- 'I bow' or 'I greet' or 'I acknowledge'

The main reason I chose this mantra is because it's on Deva Premal's new album, 'Mantras for Precarious Times'. To do one japa mala (108 repetitions) of this mantra takes a little over 8 minutes. Here's what Deva says about this mantra:

Salutations to the remover of obstacles.

This sound formula assists us in the removal of obstacles. In order for this to happen there is no need to know the exact nature of the hindrances. Just the awareness and recognition that there are obstacles and then chanting this mantra with the intention for resolve is enough. This mantra unifies us within. When there is oneness, there are no obstacles.

This mantra is also used for the beginning of any endeavor. Whenever we start anything anew we can bless the project with the energy of Ganesh through this mantra.

I've been using my carnelian mala, then following the chanting with 10 minutes' silent meditation. This usually comes directly after a yoga practice, but I've also done it first thing in the morning as well, so I'm actually chanting twice a day.

I've chanted every day for the last 3 days, and I've driven a car each day this week, except today. (Saturday is not a good day for a learner to be out in Nuneaton!) But I'm hitting the road again tomorrow morning.

Here are a couple more traditional Ganesha images:

There isn't a sample of Deva's recording of this mantra, but I did find a few good ones on YouTube. This one doesn't sound much like Deva's but you'll get the idea:

Om gum ganapatayei namaha

Sysiphus had it easy

2009-06-30T07:19:00.012+01:00

I don't know what direction this post is going to go in, so be warned.

Right now I feel completely bogged down by my life. I feel like I'm stuck in some sort of warp where I have been repeating the same thoughts, the same angst, the same fears, the same behaviours, the same anxieties, the same worries, the same dread, the same boredom, the same frustrations, the same dissatisfactions, the same--well, everything--for the last five years or so.

I know this is the case because I've had a glance through my old journals going back to 2004. (I did this to have a look at my food and exercise programme, for some ideas of how to get myself back on track with at least that aspect of my life.) I noticed that I keep believing, thinking, fearing and doing the same things over and over. I keep setting the same goals for myself and then not working toward them. I keep wondering if my inaction means I don't really want those goals. I keep worrying that my life is slipping by day by day and I'm still not sure what it is that I even want out of it. I feel like Sysiphus, sort of. He was condemned to push a boulder to the top of a hill, only to have it roll back down again, forcing him to start over from the beginning. And he knew he was destined to repeat this for eternity. --But I don't even get to the top of the hill. I'm Sysiphus standing at the foot of the hill staring at the rock. I think about reaching out to start pushing it, and my hands start to reach out, then they just drop helplessly back down to my sides. I can't get them to raise up again. I don't even get to start pushing. I seem to be condemned to just stand there, thinking I need or ought to make a start at getting that rock to the top of the hill, but I can't do it. My limbs are jittery with potential energy. My throat fills with a nauseous ache. But I just can't do it. (I am sick and about to pop out in a sweat just describing this stress).

I feel overwhelmed by my own uselessness.

What are some of these things that I've wanted for so long but haven't been able to do?

I want a meaningful meditation practice. I'd like to actually go to a Buddhist centre and see what it's like. I've talked to myself about this for years. What do I do? I write goals, I buy beads, I find out about events in the area. Then I go for 6 months without sitting down to meditate, I don't go to the events. I feel guilty for spending the money.

I want to learn to be happy with my work or find a new job. I'm not sure which. I want to not feel like I should be doing something else, something more. What do I do? I print applications for jobs, then I don't fill them in, or fill them in and don't send them off.

I want to have some emotional intelligence for a change, not be so reactionary to things. I want to be at peace in my spirit, and have it show. I want some serenity. I want a new way of coping in place of the volatile reactions and private meltdowns. What do I do? I fly off the handle and make remarks or show attitude instead of keeping quiet.

I want to stop fighting and arguing with the reality of the present moment. What do I do? I keep talking to myself about how unjust and unfair everything is, I keep talking out loud about how wrong everything is.

I want some assurance about my future in my old age. I want someone to help come up with some sort of retirement plan that will help me not be so afraid of the future. What do I do? I make contributions to my ISA but don't know what to do beyond that. I think about getting a financial advisor but I am afraid of taking their advice, so I don't even call one.

I want a house that I can afford, so I'll have a place to live when I'm old. What do I do? I keep finding reasons why 'Now is not a good time' to buy a house. I keep telling myself that I can't afford a house that I'd want to live in, or that the two of us are too ignorant to do the maintenance on a house.

I want to be of help to my son, but nothing I do seems to help. Everything seems to come back at me, and my version of helping him is to try to impose what I think is the right thing onto him, because I don't know what else to do for him but that. And that is not working and never has worked.

I just keep struggling and fighting against everything. I keep fighting. I keep fighting, fighting, fighting. I keep shouting, 'No! I don't want it to be the way it is, because I don't like it! I want it to be the way I want it to be! I will shout and fight and worry and cry and wrestle with it and will it to become what I want it to be! Aaaaaaaaa!!!!' Somewhere inside my spirit, this is what's going on.

Maybe I don't start pushing that rock because I don't want to push the rock. I want to resent the rock out of existence, so I can float effortlessly to the top of the hill and have a golden sunbeam slant down upon me through the parting clouds.

Or maybe there's not a rock there at all, or a hill. Why does there have to be a rock or a hill? Why can't there be a golden bed for me to snuggle into? Why do I envision my life as a futile uphill struggle, anyway? What kind of messed up place is that to start from? And anyway, is there even a start? No, I don't think there is.

I wish I could just let go of all this and just be. I don't need a new life, I need a new way to be me.

No, that's not it exactly.

I keep coming back to the same answer. I have to live in and accept the reality of the present moment. Why can't I manage to do it, for one single second? Even when I'm thinking and writing about doing it, I'm not doing it.

All I know is, I'm exhausted from all this.

Who ate all the pies?

2009-06-24T08:07:00.001+01:00

I enjoy watching TV shows about food issues, obesity, health, fitness and all that good stuff. But I have to say there's a really annoying trend that I've noticed and that I've shouted at the TV about for all these years. I just can't understand it, and it's one of the things that winds me up more than anything else I see on TV.

Every time a dietitian or a nutritionist (or whatever title they happen to be calling themselves) appears on a morning television programme or one of those food and nutrition evening specials, it's almost always a FAT woman. I don't mean just a little tiny bit toward the top edge of a normal weight. I mean fat. As in, FAT.

There she is, tugging her blazer uncomfortably over her big belly, sitting on the couch next to a slim and healthy presenter on breakfast television, spouting statisics about how many British people are overweight, how we need to have at least 5 fruits and veggies a day and get more whole grains. The slim presenter is listening and nodding earnestly and I'm shouting at my TV, 'Who is going to listen to you when you're so FAT! When was the last time you took your own advice, lady?'

Then another one pops up on one of those fat-celebrity-tries-a-diet programmes. Standing in a kitchen beside an overweight B-list celeb, she's at best only marginally slimmer than the so-called 'obese' celeb whose 'bad lifestyle' is going to kill them, supposedly teaching them about proper portion sizes. And I'm yelling, 'Hey, lady, we might believe what you're saying if you weren't so big and FAT!'

'A serving of rice is about the size of a tennis ball,' she says, ladling one onto a plate. And I yell, 'How many tennis balls do you usually eat then, Krispy Kreme?'

Last night on a show called 'The Best Diet in the World,' a fat nutritionist, this time a man, whose gut and man-boobs were at least equal to the celeb he was counselling, asked the celeb to serve himself what he would consider a normal portion of lamb hotpot. The celeb proceeded to put enough for probably 4 people on his plate. 'Well, that is just gluttony,' said the nutritionist, and put a proper portion on a plate to compare them. But I could only yell, 'Yeah, like you don't do the same, Pork Pie!'

I have to admit, I hurl the most vile abuse at these people when I see and hear them. They make me so angry, because how can they have the gall to get on TV and give 'textbook' advice on food and nutrition and, yes, even exercise, when it is so patently obvious they don't practise it themselves? And what is worse, what if the people listening think that they DO take their own advice? Won't they just conclude that obviously healthy eating and exercise won't make that big a difference in the way they look and feel, because the people giving the advice don't look much different from the 'overweight' people they're counselling.

It makes me SO MAD.

I don't think a nutritionist should be allowed to counsel patients if they can't keep their own weight under control. I mean, good night, even Weight Watchers won't let their staff counsel people if they can't maintain goal weight, and those people don't have degrees and aren't giving what is considered medical advice.

They most definitely should not be allowed on telly if they haven't got their own weight under control.

Ugh!

Hey, if you like your pie and chips so be it, if you're a 'foodie' and decided to get a degree in 'nutrition' so you could do food demonstrations all day, whatever, but don't go around advising people about how to lose weight, and for corn sake, keep yourself off the telly, please!

My Credo

2009-06-20T21:54:00.006+01:00

A credo (Latin for 'I believe') is a statement of personal belief. Every year in January, I try to write a credo. In previous years, I have written down platitudes that bear little actual resemblance to my true behaviour and beliefs. They were just things that I aspired to, or thought that I ought to do or think.

This year, I sat down and thought really hard about my daily behaviour and attitude, and tried to find the beliefs behind them. I wrote up a credo that truly is what I believe.

The reason I've dragged it back out again to have a look at it is an old issue of mine that I've struggled with year upon year, the issue of 'socialising' with others. Every year I make resolutions that I know I can't keep, resolutions to be more 'sociable'. I am much more solitary than most people. I have always been that way. When I was a kid, I had only one or, at a stretch, two close friends, and that's all, and I felt happy that way. I was not raised in a home where the family ever took traditional vacations (other than going to visit relatives or the rare trip to the river), visited anyone else's home, or had guests in our home (who weren't relatives from far away who'd come for a rare visit). So 'socialising', other than going to church functions, is not something that was part of my paradigm. It never was. In college, I met a few people I've remained friends with, then I married a boy who hung out with my brother and was thus around enough for me to get talking to him. Throughout my life, I've got my fill social interaction at work with colleagues, and when I get home, I enjoy just being at home. I don't feel the need to talk to other people. I actually don't care about it at all. That's not to say I don't 'care' about other people, but you could say I care about them in the abstract. I want them all to have a happy life and get on with their lives, and if it's all the same to them, I'll get on with mine. Going out just to be with other people as some sort of social obligation feels like a theft of my precious time, the time that belongs to only me. I know that is totally foreign to a lot of people, but to me, it is normal. I feel happy having my husband as my best and only friend, and some nice people at work who I enjoy interacting with but who I don't necessarily feel the need to get together with outside of work hours. It's only when I compare my life with other people's that I feel there's something wrong with me and I should try to be more like them. They're always planning things, going places, spending money, eating crap food, getting together, not having 'time' to work out, watch TV or write a blog. Shouldn't I be like them? What, I've always wondered, is wrong with me?

All this has been brought on by going to my work friend's house tonight. They have given up inviting me to things a while ago, because I always opt out. I do it as kindly as I can, but the truth is I just don't want to go. But tonight I bit the bullet and went. Of course I was the first one to leave the event, but then I arrived first. (I always do that. Get there right on time, and then leave first. Probably because I want to get it over and done with.) While I was there, I enjoyed listening to people talking, and took part when I could--but when I'm ready to go I'm ready to go. Anyway, on the way home, I was thinking, why is it that they seem to enjoy this so much and I don't. I like talking to people socially, but only for about an hour or two, then I'm ready to return to the comfort of my home and my solitude. I don't like stuffing myself with lots of unhealthy food or drinking alcoholic drinks. I don't like sitting up late, knowing that everyone is wanting to go but not wanting to be the first one out. Why can't people just get together for a chat? For me, the nearly perfect social situation is the 15-minute staff break. We get a drink, laugh and talk, then we all get up and go back to work before the conversation gets boring and the whole thing starts to feel like more of a chore than a pleasure, which is what a group social situation feels like to me. One-on-one, I can talk to you for hours, but put me in a group, I clam up, slink around in the background, and check my watch until time to escape.

What deep beliefs make me act this way? What deep-held notions cause my daily behaviour? Does it even have to come from a belief? Maybe some of us are just solitary creatures.

Here's the credo I wrote on 21st December 2008.

I believe in privacy and solitude.

I believe in independence and freedom.

I value my own comfort and security.

I do not wish ill for anyone, but I feel no need to socialise with people in order to feel love for mankind.

I value peace.

I want to live and let live.

I eschew cruelty to animals and people.

I believe that people should show kindness to one another in ways comfortable and appropriate to the individual, not as they want to be treated, but as the person on the receiving end would like to be treated.

I believe everything in existence deserves to be free of pain. It is our moral obligation to see to that.

I believe that it is everyone's responsibility to make an informed decision about how they live their life--and if they CAUSE NO HARM, they should not have to answer to anyone for any of their life choices. Ever. Or be made to feel bad for them. You can have an opinion about it, but you should not condemn someone for living in a way that does no harm, no matter how different it is from the way you live.

There I go getting all clingy again

2009-06-18T21:01:00.002+01:00

What is it that causes us to worry? What is it that causes that constant fear, that niggling doubt, that feeling that if we don't keep up our guard, some big bad shadow is going to overtake us, taking away all the good things we treasure.

We crave physical comfort. We crave intellectual stimulation. We fear discomfort and boredom. We somehow have convinced ourselves that if we cling to what we love, if we worry and fret over it, it can't be taken from us. We live as though the act of worrying about what might happen will magically keep bad things away.

We thirst for existence. We want, somehow, to persist forever. We fear that we will cease.

Yet we long also for non-existence, in the sense that we yearn to be released from this world and its pains and vexations once and for all.

These three forms of craving, Buddha taught, are the basis of all suffering, what he called 'dukkha'. Virtually all the woe of humankind stem from these forms of craving, tumbling and stirring inside our hearts and minds. Our greatest pains are all self-inflicted.

All three of these desires rise out of a confusion about change, and about who we are. We think we are persons or individuals--separate entities that persist through time, with bodies that come into existence and then cease to exist. But we are mistaken. What we call a person, Buddha called a 'stream'. We're a ceaseless flow of constant change, there is nothing permanent about us. Yet there is nothing destructible about us, either. We are a conglomeration of five aggregates: the physical body, awareness, sensory perceptions, volition, and conceptualization. These five aggregates create the illusion of a separate self, but there is no separate self. For what we actually are is an infinite number of conditions which have manifested themselves, and which cannot be created or destroyed.

If you have a beginning, when did you begin? Was it when you were born? Was it at your conception? The truth is, you can't find 'coming into being' as an event or actual experience. If you have an ending, when do you end? Is it when you cease to be able to conceptualize? Is it when your heart stops beating? Is it when the last vestiges of your physical body have broken down into dust? The truth is, you can't find 'ceasing to exist' as an event or actual experience.

Thus you have no beginning and no end.

So what does that have to do with craving and clinging? We crave and we cling because we believe that things last forever, or certain conditions last forever, and that we can hang on to them and keep them forever. But this is not so. Just as we have to beginning and no end, conditions have no beginning and no end, the only thing that is ceaseless is the constant ebb and flow of continuous change. This is what the Buddha called 'impermanence' or 'emptiness'.

Good times come and go. And bad times do the same. Still we spend much of our time trying to get the good times back. We fail to notice that the good times arrived of their own; likewise, the bad times appear even though we spend so much effort trying to keep them away. We don't want them, but bad times are out of our control as much as good times. The times we don't want will come (and go) no matter what we do to control the situation. Good times do the same. Thus, beyond simply living fully in each moment, we should realise that such control is impossible, a pipe dream. When we realise this, we have found the dharma-path, the middle way.

In his book, Buddhism Plain and Simple, which I highly recommend and which I have cribbed from for this post, Steve Hagen tells the story of a Zen student who felt he just couldn't take the austerity of his monastery any longer.

'I can't take this, I want out,' he told his master.

'Okay, then leave,' the master said.

As the student started toward the door, the master said, 'That's not your door.'

'Oh, sorry,' said the student, startled. He looked around for another door, headed toward it. The teacher said, 'That's not your door.'

'Oh!' The student looked and saw little door behind the teacher which was used by the teacher's attendant. He started toward it. 'That's not your door!' the teacher shouted.

Bewildered and exasperated, the student said, 'What do you mean? There is no other door. You told me I could leave, but there's no door to leave by!'

'If there is no door you can leave by,' said the teacher, 'then sit down.'

We can only be here. We can only be in this moment. There is no door to leave by, there is nothing to cling to. There is only this moment. So stop worrying. Stop fighting it. Stop protesting. Stop trying to prevent the vain imaginings of your mind. Stop trying to escape. Sit down in the floor and live this moment.

Sky is falling?

2009-06-18T07:47:00.003+01:00

(written Monday night--sorry for not posting sooner!)

So I head out the door at 8.24, as usual, then remember that I was supposed to be at work at 8.15 in place of someone who is on annual leave. I run there and fortunately all that happens is my line manager tells me I'm getting old and am losing my memory. Great start! A boring two-hour shift on the enquiries desk ensues, then after 10.30 break--something new happens.

On Sunday, a diffuser (aka plastic light cover) from one of the fluorescent light fixtures in the children's library fell down, nearly hitting a little old lady. This little old lady drives one of those scooters, and is just shy of being small enough to be classed as a 'little person'. She talks in a squeaky voice, has no teeth so her speech is nearly unintelligible, and every day she comes in and either asks for a book of knitting patterns or for the phone number of the Coventry crematorium. No, I'm not making this up. She looks exactly like one of those little dried apple dolls, and whenever she comes rolling through the library doors, there's a collective small groan from enquiry desk staff. She's had her share of trouble in the library. A few Sundays ago, she fell asleep in the corner and was missed by the member of staff who does the final look-round for customers and she got locked in. She got out by tapping furiously at the window when a member of the public was passing by, because she couldn't figure out how to get an outside line on the telephone. The police came and got her out and the library sent her a letter of apology. So anyway, she's had bad luck at the library and nearly got cold-cocked on Sunday. (She'd just pulled away on her little scooter when the light fell). You'd think she'd give up on the library, but nope. She's back every single day. Maybe she feels it's worth the risk.

Well, today when he was told about it, the head of libraries, in his wisdom, decided that the entire library needs to be closed until the maintenance crew can come in and put plastic ties on every single light fixture in the place, to secure them. The light fixtures were installed in 1962 and apparently the plastic has shrunk making them loose in their fittings. To be fair, this is not the first light that has fallen; we have had two fall in the work room, and if one hit someone on the head, it would be a pretty serious injury. Apparently it is going to take 4 guys until Friday to finish this job. So, today all staff were told to either take time owing, annual leave, or go to another library in the division to work for the day. Just choose one and turn up there! And that's why I spent today in a different library, apologising to customers for not knowing where anything is and answering the phone wrong. 'Hello, this is Carla at Nuneaton-I-mean-Bedworth library, may I help you?' (I don't have any time owing and I've already planned the rest of my annual leave for the year--there's no way I'm taking it today and missing my holiday!)

Update--

Library was closed Monday afternoon, Tuesday and Wednesday. Staff were in, library closed. It's long day in the library with no customers, I can tell you! Wednesday was my day off, and I had a driving lesson. More on that later!

My baby done gradjee-ated

2009-06-03T08:48:00.013+01:00

Here we are after commencement, 16th May 2009, ASU Convocation Center. (When I was in high school, we just had graduation in the gym. Oh well!) Thank goodness high school is over. Now on to university!

And here we are at Craighead Forest Park. Hubby, son, nephew Jeremy and I had a little picnic lunch then went for a walk all the way around the lake. It was fairly warm, but most of the path is in the shade. We saw lots of ducks and turtles and one snake! Fortunately, it was swimming across the lake and not slithering across our path, or I would have fainted.

I wanted to show Derek something other than the delta, so we went toward the Ozark foothills to Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. We stopped for a bit in Old Hardy Towne, but if you're not on the market for a quilt or jar of fake molasses (ingredients corn syrup and caramel coloring!) with a picture of a hillbilly on it, there's not much to do there, so we were back home by the afternoon. It was lovely hot day, though, and we enjoyed walking around the spring, where Derek took more photos of ducks and geese. Of course!

This water wheel is just outside Hardy. Ever since I was a kid, this has been a place to stop and look around, stretch your legs. There used to be a Water Wheel Flea Market and Quick Shop across the road, but it seems to be out of business. When I was little, the water wheel didn't work, but they got it working some time in the 80s I think, and it was running while we were there. (But the maintenance guys were working on it so it's stopped in this photo).

Here we are on the other side of the stream behind the water wheel. There's a 'nature trail' but it was closed and the maintenance guys recommended we avoid it anyway because of ticks. I forgot about ticks. I have to say, I don't miss sticky Arkansas heat, mosquitos, snakes and ticks! Nice photo, though.

Oh my god I'm so fat

2009-05-31T17:19:00.005+01:00

Two and a half weeks in the USA making poor food choices and not able to get in enough exercise (even though we tried, doing an hour of Gilad from FitTV most days) has left me fatter than ever. I am afraid to get on the scale, but for the first time in years my trousers are actually tighter around my waist and butt. If I am above 139, I am going to cry.

I am so demoralised.

My clothes being too tight is making me want to eat and eat and eat and eat and eat, to just say screw it and go ahead and get fat again.

I'm going to try so hard not to do that. So instead of eating, I'm going to make a plan. It's a tough rotation, and the last two weeks call for double workouts on the same day. But I got me into this mess and only I can get me out. And we all know it's EASY to gain it, and HAAAAARD to lose it. I can see Debbie Allen now, banging that big stick on the dance studio floor. 'Here's where you start payin'. In sweat.' Now where did I put those leg warmers?

June Rotation--Advanced Turbo Jam 'Rip You Up', modified

1--Cardio Party 3
2--3T + Firm Super Body Sculpt (Upper Body and Ab segments)
3--Punch, Kick & Jam
4--Fat Blaster + Ab Jam
5--Tom Holland Total Body Workout
6--Cardio Party 2
7--Ravi & Ana Fat Free Yoga: Lose Weight & Feel Great

8--Total Body Blast + Ab Jam
9--Jari Love Get Ripped to the Core
10--Punch, Kick & Jam 1/2 with gloves + Cathe Abs from Body Fusion
11--Fat Blaster + 3T
12--Lower Body Jam
13--Cardio Party 2 + Ab Jam
14--Maya Fiennes Kundalini Yoga: Willpower

15--Cathe Rhythmic Step + Fat Blaster (big day!!!)
16--Booty Sculpt + Kickin Core OR Punch, Kick & Jam with gloves
17--Turbo Sculpt + Ab Jam
18--Jari Love Get Ripped 1000
19--Fat Blaster
20--Lower Body Jam + Cardio Party 3 OR Total Body Blast
21--Ravi & Ana Kundalini Yoga: Bliss Hips

22--Cardio Party + Turbo Sculpt
23--R&A Fat Free Yoga: Lose Weight & Feel Great
24--Punch Kick & Jam + Booty Sculpt OR Cathe's Kick Max + Leg Drills
25--Fat Blaster + 3T
26--Cardio Party 2
27--Cathe's Low Impact Circuit Cardio Timesaver mix
28--Amy Bento Slo-Mo Strength Challenge

29--Yoga
30--Yoga

2009-05-13T08:21:00.002+01:00

I seem to have lost 2 followers in the last few days. I have been posting about exercising and my weight, maybe that was off-putting. But these are concerns in my life as much as any other aspect of it. The health of my body and the enjoyment of my hobby is as important to me as any spiritual or philosophical aspect of my reality.

This blog is not a subject blog, but the blog of my daily life. If it fluctuates wildly from one topic or tone to the next, such is the ebb and flow of my life and consciousness. All are welcome to accompany me, but don't expect me to stick to one topic!

Namaste. xx

Ugh

2009-05-12T07:52:00.003+01:00

138.0, that's how much.

Yep.

Well, these things happen when you've spent the last 6 months eating pretty much anything you want. For about a year and a half, I maintained at 134, but it's crept up to 135, 136, occasionally wobbling into 137, then today--138.0!

But there's no big mystery to it. Look at yesterday for example. Let me see if I can even remember what I ate.

wholemeal toast with coconut oil, marmite, peanut butter and no-sugar added strawberry jam, black decaf

35g raw food bar and a dark chocolate biscuit

7 small falafels on a mixed salad, an instant cup of soup, a soy yogurt, 2 more biscuits

another biscuit

another biscuit

2 handfuls of granola cereal

roast potatoes, asparagus, faux-chicken breast with gravy and a wholemeal pita

For the last few months, most of my calories are coming from junk. Those biscuits I ate have 127 calories in 2. I checked the packet AFTER I ate them. In fact, I decided to have that last one after I read the packet. Even though I know it takes about 20 minutes of aerobics to burn 127 calories. A cookie that takes 10 seconds to eat takes 10 minutes to burn off. Yet still I ate it.

In fact, this was a relatively good day for me because I didn't eat chips with loads of sugary ketchup for dinner.

Oh, I don't know. I can make excuses about stress and all that, but they're only excuses.

If I allow myself to get to 140, I don't know what I'll do. I just can't do that. I have to be in the 130s, I just have to. I was looking at my photos from 2006, when I was down to 131 for a long time. I looked good at that weight. I want to be back there again. I know if I gain anymore, people are going to be able to see it. I can already see it, even though I'm still wearing all the same clothes. I've always been the type of build that has to lose or gain a LOT in order to go up or down a clothes size.

BUT I AM NOT GOING UP A CLOTHES SIZE! Oh, hell no. That is simply not going to happen.

The warm days are coming, and with them the cheaper and more abundant produce. Time to rejoin the veg box scheme and get back with the program.

Who says veganism's the right thing to do?

2009-05-11T17:38:00.002+01:00

Count Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist & philosopher, (1829-1910):
"If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food."

Albert Einstein, physicist, 1921 Nobel Prize recipient:
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

"It is my view that a vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."

Alice Walker, American author, The Color Purple:
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites, or women for men."

Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu pacifist and spiritual leader, (1869-1948):

"It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet."

"I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live, I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species."

Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian sculptor, artist, inventor, (142:1519):

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Plutarch, Greek philosopher, (46-120 A.D.):

"The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain."

Henry David Thoreau, American author, naturalist (1812-1862):

"Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food."

George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish author and playwright, 1925 Nobel Prize Recipient, (1856-1950):

"My situation is a solemn one: life is offered to me on the condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. It will be, without the exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of its kind ever seen."

"The average age (longevity) of a meat-eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still at work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die, but I simply cannot do it. A single beefsteak would finish me, but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism."

Plato, Greek philosopher, (circa 428-347 B.C.):

"The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds."

Albert Schweitzer, M.D., Alsatian philosopher and medical missionary, 1952 Nobel prize recipient, (1875-1965):

"--There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it."

Benjamin Spock, M.D, the famous Dr. Spock pediatrician and author, (1903-1998):

"When I was 88 years old, I gave up meat entirely and switched to a plant foods diet following a slight stroke. During the following months, I not only lost 50 pounds, but gained strength in my legs and picked up stamina. Now, at age 93, I'm on the same plant-based diet, and I still don't eat any meat or dairy products. I either swim, walk, or paddle a canoe daily and I feel the best I've felt since my heart problems began."

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish Laureate of literature, 1978 Nobel Prize recipient, (1904-1991):

"If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard."

Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, inventor, (1706-1790):

"My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension."

Sir Thomas More, Statesman and Author (1478-1535):

"The utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable."

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution:

"It is increasingly obvious that environmentally sustainable solutions to world hunger can only emerge as people eat more plant foods and fewer animal products. To me it is deeply moving that the same food choices that give us the best chance to eliminate world hunger are also those that take the least toll on the environment, contribute the most to our long-term health, are the safest, and are also, far and away, the most compassionate towards our fellow creatures."

Michael Klaper, M.D., American author and international lecturer:

"People are the only animals that drink the milk of the mother of another species. All other animals stop drinking milk altogether after weaning. It is unnatural for a dog to nurse from a mother giraffe; it is just as unnatural for a human being to drink the milk of a cow."
People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (author, Nobel 1978)

We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.
Robert Louis Stevenson (novelist and poet)

It is strange to hear people talk of Humanitarianism, who are members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals, and who claim to be God-loving men and women, but who, nevertheless, encourage by their patronage the killing of animals merely to gratify the cravings of appetite.
--Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish (1844-1936)

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain.
Paul and Linda McCartney (musicians)

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead (anthropologist)

"Not having known anything better does not alleviate the suffering of the animal. Its fundamental desires remain and it is the frustration of those desires that is a great part of its suffering. There are so many examples: the dairy cow who is never allowed to raise her young, the battery hen who can never walk or stretch her wings, the sow who can never build a nest or root for food in the forest litter, etc. Eventually we frustrate the animal's most fundamental desire of all - to live."
--David Cowles-Hamar.

As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love, and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.
Richard Gere (actor)

I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.
William Lloyd Garrison (author)

"It is very significant
that some of the most
thoughtful and cultured men
are partisans of a pure vegetable diet."

MAHATMA GANDHI (1869-1948)

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
--Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?
--John Harris

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
--Leo Tolstoy

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
--Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
--Vaslav Nijinsky (dancer and choreographer)

"Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable."
--John Robbins, Diet for a New America

There will come a time...when civilised people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say "meat-eaters!" in disgust and regard us in the same way we regard cannibals and cannibalism.
--Dennis Weaver

Compassion is the foundation of everything positive, everything good. If you carry the power of compassion to the marketplace and the dinner table, you can make your life really count.
Rue McClanahan (actress)

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
Anna Sewell (author)

And the thing which is missing is love, some feeling for, as well as some understanding of, the inclusive community of rocks and soils, plants and animals, of which we are a part.
Joseph Wood Krutch (naturalist and essayist)

It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truely a man.
Albert Schweitzer (missionary and statsman, Nobel 1952)

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (poet)

It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.
Maimonides (physician and philosopher)

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
--Albert Schweitzer

..what has been called the "Golden Rule" [should be enlarged] from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.
Thomas Hardy (novelist)

When I was 12, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.
Marv Levy (football head coach)

"If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals."
--Albert Einstein

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
--Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher)

Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misue of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors.
Woody Harrelson (actor)

"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is--whether its victim is human or animal--we cannot expect things to be much better in this world... We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."
--Rachel Carson

The human commitment to harmony, justice, peace, and love is ironic as long as we continue to support the suffering and shame of the slaughterhouse and its satellite operations.
--Karen Davis, PhD (Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs; 1996)

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."
--Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, D.C.

The human body has no more need for cowsê milk than it does for dogsê milk, horsesê milk, or giraffesê milk.
--Michael Klaper, MD, author of Vegan Nutrition: Pure & Simple

"Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sure sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury. Cruelty to animals cannot exist together with true education and true learning."

- Alexander von Humboldt

"The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality."

- Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals".

- Immanuel Kant

"Last year over a million people left the same suicide note: "SHOPPING LIST: butter, eggs, mayo, potato chips, ham, bacon..."

- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

'There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right".

- Martin Luther King

Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?"
Expediency asks the question, "Is it popular?" But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a point when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor polite, nor popular,
but one must take it because one's conscience tells him or her that it is right.

"An environmentalist that eats meat is like a philanthropist that won't give money to charities."

- Howard Lyman

"Imagine living your life in a small, filthy cage constantly in pain, unable to stand or lie down comfortably. After months of agony, your torture finally ends, but not at the slaughterhouse. Instead, two gentle hands reach down to lift you out of the darkness, and bring you to a safe, loving place. For the first time in your life you can stretch your wings and legs and feel soft straw and cool grass beneath your feet."

- Dr. Karen Davis

"I brainwashed youngsters into doing wrong. I want to say sorry to children everywhere for selling out to concerns who make millions by murdering animals."
--Geoffrey Guiliano, the main Ronald McDonald actor in the 1980's who quit and publicly apologised

A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."
--John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation, Santa Cruz, California

Can one regard a fellow creature as a property item, an investment, a piece of meat, an "it," without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?
--Karen Davis, PhD (Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs; 1996)

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."
--Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and President of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, Washington, D.C.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.
--Dr.Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalist for the same reasons.
C. S. Lewis (novelist and essayist)

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.
Romain Rolland (author, Nobel 1915)

"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."
--Charles Darwin

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans.
--Arthur Conan Doyle

"The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, faithful animal race, form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history."
--Edward Augustus Freeman

To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.
--Buddha

"All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?"
--Buddha

All beings hate pains; therefore one should not kill them. This is the quintessence of wisdom: not to kill anything.
--Sutrakritanga (Jainism)

"It is in the battery shed that we find the parallel with Auschwitz....To shut your mind, heart and imagination from the sufferings of others is to begin slowly, but inexorably, to die. Those Christians who close their minds and hearts to the cause of animal welfare, and the evils it seeks to combat, are ignoring the Fundamental spiritual teachings of Christ himself"
--John Baker, Bishop of Salisbury

It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion torwards our fellow creatures.
Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher)

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
- Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher

Turbo Jam rules

2009-05-10T18:12:00.004+01:00

I tried out a couple more of my new Turbo Jams. Yesterday I did Lower Body Jam. It was really tough! Once again she uses the short green band tied in a circle and fitted around the ankles to do side leg lifts and other moves for the outer thigh. There was also a tough series of plie squats, which, if you do using the 'turbo tilt' (basically just a pelvic tilt that focuses on pulling in the abs, tucking the tailbone under and consciously lifting upward using the inner thigh), they are super effective and you can really feel them. During the workout I was wondering about little 5'2" Chalene using the same exact band as the big guys in the back. Then during the special features reel, they show a blooper where one of the big guys in the back (Bret, former college football player and Chalene's husband!) actually snapped his band in two. No, it didn't come untied, he snapped it. So that answered that question! Trust me, the green band was tough enough to do me. When I got up this morning, my legs were a bit sore.

A couple of hours after doing Lower Body Jam, I still felt like working out, so I went and
got Turbo Jam Fat Blaster to try. I was a little afraid of that one because the back says it's 'all turbos.' Those turbos drive my heart rate right up to around 89%, so the thought of doing a workout made up entirely of turbos was a bit daunting. However, Chalene has designed the workout with a warm-up, then you do 4 turbos two times each. The first time is more low impact, so you can learn the moves, then you do it high impact (or you can keep it low). A second to rest, then on to the next. Then a quick cool down and tai chi style breathing and it's all over and done with in 30 minutes. It was so much fun, I was actually stoked to get to the next turbo! I don't know what kind of spell this woman casts during her workouts, but they are just fun, that's it. Fun!

Today I did Cathe's Kick, Punch & Crunch. I burned 480 calories and it was a good sweat, but it wasn't fun like Chalene. I found myself converting some of Cathe's moves into Turbo moves! :)

Golden milk

2009-05-10T08:54:00.006+01:00

Turmeric is a yellow spice commonly used in Asian foods such as curries. It has many purported healing properties; its active ingredient is curcumin. It is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Studies at the University of Texas suggest it is useful in preventing cancers, and as a treatment against heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and arthritis. It's good stuff, and there's a long tradition in Ayurvedic medicine of using turmeric as a health treatment of inflammation, purifying the blood, 'lubricating' the joints, and supporting the female reproductive system.

Yogi Bhajan's recipe for Golden Milk has long been enjoyed by practitioners of kundalini yoga. His original recipe called for turmeric paste, cow's milk, honey and 2 tablespoons of almond oil per cup! I have modified to this:

Golden Milk
3/4 cup water
1 tsp turmeric
1.5-2 cups fresh made soy milk, plain
1 tsp rapeseed or grapeseed oil
3-5 drops almond extract, to taste
2-3 tsp agave nectar
pinch salt if desired

Combine water and turmeric and bring to boil. Simmer for 8 minutes. Turn off heat. Add oil, almond extract and agave nectar. Allow to cool a bit so that it won't split the soy milk. Add warm soy milk slowly to turmeric mixture in pan.

This recipe makes 2 large mugs. It's very tasty!

(Here's Yogi Bhajan's original recipe to make 2 servings:
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup water
16 oz milk
4 tbs almond oil
honey or maple syrup to taste

Boil turmeric in water. Combine with milk and almond oil. Add honey or maple syrup to taste in your own cup.)

I have reduced the oil and increased the turmeric. The turmeric becomes very mild when cooked, so feel free to be liberal with it. I have also tried it without any oil at all and it was lovely. I am sure it would be wonderful made with almond milk!

Sat nam.

A meditation

2009-05-08T06:50:00.005+01:00

'The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with another person in the future? The most important pursuit is to make the person standing by your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.' ~Thich Nhat Hanh

'Whenever you meet anyone, no matter how briefly, do you acknowledge their being by giving them your full attention? Or are you reducing them to a means to an end, a mere function or role? What is the quality of your relationship with the cashier in the supermarket, the parking attendant, the repairman, the customer?
'A moment of attention is enough. As you look at them or listen to them, there is an alert stillness -- perhaps only two or three seconds, perhaps longer. That is enough for something more real to emerge than the roles we usually play and identify with. All roles are part of the conditioned consciousness that is the human mind. That which emerges through the act of attention is the unconditioned -- who you are in your essence, underneath your name and form. You are no longer acting out of a script; you become real. When that dimension emerges from within you, it also draws it fort from within the other person.
'Ultimately, of course, there is no other, and you are always meeting yourself.' ~ Eckhart Tolle

'Do not consider any act of kindness insignificant, even meeting your brother with a cheerful face.' ~ Muhammed

'Love one another, for love is of God. He who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love.' ~Jesus

'However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do if you do not act upon them?' ~Buddha

Great workout

2009-05-07T18:18:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I did Cardio Party Mix 2 and Booty Sculpt plus Abs. I just thought I'd take the opportunity to give a shout out for Booty Sculpt. It's a great little workout, and only 30 minutes long. It's a wonderful add-on to a cardio day, or a sculpting day if your other work had an upper body focus, or if you just want a little more emphasis on working the lower body.

This workout consists mostly of squats and plies, then there is a killer segment using the band tied in a loop around your ankles during which you do standing side leglifts until you feel like your outer thigh is going to ignite! Wow! Then comes a fabulous ab routine with some interesting new moves that really gets your abs burning.

I enjoyed it very much, and as you can see if you follow the link to amazon, it's really cheap. Great addition to your Turbo Jam collection.

Becoming transparent and unlearning the 'unmagical' words

2009-05-06T09:37:00.004+01:00

Becoming transparent

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle teaches techniques to help drop negativity.

Let's say you are sitting quietly at home. Suddenly there is the piercing sound of a car alarm from across the street. Irritation arises. What is the purpose of the irritation? None whatsoever. Why did you create it? You didn't. The mind did. It was totally automatic, totally unconscious. Why did the mind create it? Because it holds the unconscious belief that its resistance, which you experience as negativity or unhappiness in some form, will somehow dissolve the undesireable condition. This, of course, is a delusion. The resistance that it creates, the irritation or anger in this case, is far more disturbing than the original cause that it is attempting to dissolve.

All this can be transformed into a spiritual practice. Feel yourself becoming transparent, as it were, without the solidity of a material body. Now allow the noise, or whatever causes a negative reaction, to pass right through you. It is no long hitting a solid 'wall' inside you. Practise with little things first. The car alarm, the dog barking, children screaming, traffic jams. Instead of having a wall of resistance inside you that gets constantly and painfully hit by things that 'should not be happening', let everything pass through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable.

This is a wonderful lesson, and one I have been trying to apply in various situations. Now I am taking on board the visualisation of becoming transparent. I can imagine myself going invisible, and the irritation passing through me, like a special effect from the X-Men! I have started doing this with teeny tiny irritations, so that I can work up to the big stuff.

The 'unmagical word'

On the website Zen Habits, I ran across an article called 'Are These Three Words Ruining Your Life'? It had a big impact on me. What are the 'unmagical words' that could be ruining your life?

'I don't know.'

Those are the words. 'I don't know.'

For myself, I must say those 3 words a hundred times a day. Ask me anything and my first response is going to be, 'I don't know.' Even if I do know, and 15 seconds later I pop out with the answer, my default response is almost invariably, 'I don't know.' I certainly say it a lot on this blog!

I don't know why I say 'I don't know' so often. Maybe it's because I doubt myself to the point that I think I could not possibly know the answer, so it's the first thing that comes out. Maybe it's because I've convinced myself that a declaration of ignorance means people don't bother me so much with questions. (Not true!) Maybe it's because I can't be asked to make a decision and saying 'I don't know' gets me off the hook.

Even if you don't know, it's still important to move in the direction of knowing. If you don't have an opinion, it's still important to remember that the person you're engaging with deserves your participation in life. Saying 'I don't know' is just an opt-out. Stop opting out of your life!

The example Zen Habits uses is when your partner asks you what you want for dinner. 'I don't know' can mean , 'It doesn't matter to me, whatever you make is fine', but it also means that you're dumping a decision on the other person, someone who would like some input from you. What a surprise it would be to me if for once my husband would say, 'You know what, I would like you to make some spaghetti and veggie mince' instead of 'I don't know.' And I'm sure he would love it if when he asks what I'd like to do on the weekend, I said, 'Let's go for a drive and see what we can find down a little country road' instead of 'I don't know.' I get frustrated always making the decision about dinner, and I bet he gets frustrated sitting at home on the weekends. 'I don't know' is the lazy way, which leads to us doing nothing and getting into a big fat rut. Instead of defaulting to 'I don't know', Zen Habits suggests you take a second and think of something, even it's something you're 'not 100% stoked about' and say that instead, because anything is an improvement over 'I don't know.'

'I don't know' really means 'I don't care'.

If you do care, stop saying 'I don't know.' And if you don't care, maybe you should start caring, for the sake of those around you as well as to make your own life a happier experience.

So...from now on, I'm a transparent X-Man who never says, 'I don't know' lightly. Look out, Jean Grey!

Mung Beans and Rice Detox--Kundalini Yoga

2009-05-04T16:46:00.005+01:00

This eating plan is from kundalini yoga. I'm posting it for a friend who asked. :)It involves basing your diet on mung beans, rice and an abundance of fresh vegetables for a time. Traditionally, the detox lasts 40 days, and you are meant to do morning sadhana each day (rising before dawn for a cold shower and an hour's meditation).

The recipes presented here do not have measurements because I don't know how many people you are feeding. They are based on recipes from The Kundalini Yoga Cookbook by Ek Ong Kar Singh.

If I were doing this, I would cook a whole bag of brown basmati rice in one go and keep it in the fridge, and a bag of mung beans to do the same. I would also keep my sprouter busy producing fresh mung bean sprouts for the duration, and be prepared to make daily stops at the grocery store to buy fresh vegetables!

Yogi Bhajan's Mung Beans, Rice and Vegetables

This mixture is traditionally cooked to a gruel-like consistency, but you can have it as a regular fried rice and vegetable style dish if you like.

cooked basmati rice and mung beans
chopped carrot
broccoli florets
diced red onion
loads of garlic (I mean LOADS)
a nub of fresh ginger root, grated

Brown the onions, garlic and ginger in a bit of oil. Add pinches of basil, turmeric, garam masala and red chili flake. Add vegetables and stir fry with some ground black pepper a couple of bay leaves and a cardamom pod. When the vegetables are cooked to your liking, add rice and mung beans to taste. Heat through and serve, or reduce heat, add some water to make it a little soupy and cook it until it's mushy and creamy. Season with tamari soy sauce if desired.

Ong so hung veg and rice

fresh beetroot, cubed
sweet potato, peeled and cubed
yellow bell pepper, diced
onion, diced
a few broccoli florets for colour
big handfuls of fresh mungbean sprouts
chopped fresh parsley and coriander
basmati rice

Steam the vegetables until tender and set aside. Heat the rice in a big dish with a couple of cardamom pods thrown into the bowl in the microwave; add the steamed vegetables when the rice is hot. Toss it all together with fresh herbs and mung beans. Season with tamari soy sauce and lots of toasted sesame, black and white for colour.

Summer Om Mung Beans and Rice

leeks, sliced
loads of garlic, chopped
purple onion, diced
diced courgette
ripe tomatoes, diced
red bell pepper diced
big handfuls mung bean sprouts
fresh basil, chopped
basmati rice

Cook the veg over medium heat with a pinch of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds and chili flakes. Use a bit of olive oil. Add rice and sprouts, garnish with basil.

You might be getting the idea. You just use loads of fresh veg, mung beans and rice and make something tasty and nutritious. Eat loads! Eat as much as you want each meal, heavy on the veg, moderate on the rice. You can substitute rice noodles for rice, or rice pasta. But you're not eating any grains other than rice during this fast.

Here are a couple of sweets:

Sesame seed honey spread with rice cakes
brown rice cakes
tahini
honey
water
sliced fresh fruit, if desired

Mix a bit of light tahini and honey to taste, beating it with water to a smooth consistency (spreadable). Spread on rice cakes, top with sliced kiwi or other fruit.

Rice and mung bean pudding

Mix together some rice and mung beans with equal amount of coconut milk or rice milk (or a mixture of coconut and rice milk). Add some chopped dates, a bit of crystalized ginger and a swirl of honey to taste. Simmer over low until rice and beans are broken down and cooked to a lovely puddingy mush. You might need to keep adding liquid, use your judgement and keep an eye on it. Before serving, garnish with grated fresh apple and a sprinkle of black sesame seeds, if desired.

Good luck--get creative! Eat loads of vegetables and drink lots of water. This will certainly be healthier than the Polo Mint Plan you tried!! ;)

Ain't got much to say these days

2009-05-02T22:51:00.003+01:00

What can I tell you about my life lately? Nothing's happened to me that hasn't happened to everyone. I've been unhappy with my body, I've eaten poorly in spite of that. I've lost a parent and have yet to really realise it. I've felt guilty for everything from air pollution to being an absentee parent. I've felt inferior to some and superior to others. I've treated perfect strangers with more respect and civility than I have those closest to me. I've slept, got up, gone to work, come home, cooked dinner, gone to bed and done it all over again, over and over. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the past and the future. What little time I've managed to be in the Now, I've spent it worrying that I don't spend enough time in the Now. It's been a weird month.

I've been reading 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle. I'm ruminating over it. I'm mulling over it. I've been comforted by it, I've applied it in the oddest settings. My dad's funeral. In the airport when my plane was delayed and my flight was diverted from 11.30 am to 7.15 pm! I bought myself a copy so I can mark it up with different colour highlighter pens. I've been going through it finding sentences that I can remember in difficult moments when I need to practice being in the Now the most. My favourite one during all this has been:

'Accept--then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.'

I also have had good results using the following as cues:

'No matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.'

'Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action--just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.'

(This one has proven very useful when applied to my driving lessons.)

Here's my new biggie. It may take me awhile to memorize it:

'Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted to peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.'

Tempeh pizza sausage

2009-04-26T16:41:00.003+01:00

A long time ago I read a recipe for tempeh sausage crumbles in 'Vegan with a Vengeance', and today while making our beloved vegan pizzas, I remembered that I have a package of tempeh in the bottom of the fridge. I decided to improvise a sausage for the pizza, having completely forgotten that I had read a recipe for it somewhere else. I thought that I'd just thought of it myself. Here's what I did:

half a package of tempeh, crumbled up

olive oil
fennel seeds
crushed red pepper flakes
salt
black pepper
oregano
sage
Liquid Smoke

While the olive oil heated, I crushed the fennel and other spices in a mortar and pestle, then I threw the tempeh into the skillet with the spices and cooked on low for a time. It didn't seem to be the right texture and wasn't really browning, so I put a bit of water in the pan and it quickly evaporated. I added a tad bit more olive oil to it to make it have a rich taste. I then used this with my usual mix of courgettes, bell pepper, onion, olives, etc, on our vegan pizza.

Well, that was on delicious pizza. And guess what I found online when I opened this up to post about it! Isa's original recipe, which isn't at all far off what I did anyway! Look:

Equipment:
saute pan

Ingredients
8 oz package tempeh
1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried margoram or oregano
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Directions
In a saute pan, crumble the tempeh and add enough water to almost cover it. Over high heat, steam the tempeh until most of the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Drain the remaining water and add the rest of the ingredients and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

It's amazing how similar my version is to Isa's. Either I have an eerily accurate subconscious recall for recipes, or this is how nature intended you to get tempeh to taste like Italian sausage.

Give it a go. It's a winner!

What's your fitness personality?

2009-04-25T11:53:00.004+01:00

I just took a quiz called 'The 8 Colors of Fitness' and it was really surprisingly accurate. I found out I'm a 'Purple Efficient'. Here's what it said about me:

It is in the nature of Purples to orient toward a routine, become comforted by it, and take pleasure in completing their plan as envisioned. Active Purples are occupied with a constant quest for increased competency and self-improvement and believe they should be sufficiently disciplined to make a place and time for regular exercise. Purples approach exercise purposefully and always with a plan—often a loosely envisioned plan, but nevertheless, a plan.
They will research, study, consult authorities, and do whatever is needed to collect information. However, with confidence and independence as trademarks of their personality, they trust their own ability to pull together their exercise program, complete with categories such as cardio, strength, and flexibility. As Intuitves, they readily see the mind/body/soul connection and will often include exercise with that focus as a category.
Purples are attracted to variety and experiment with different approaches from time to time, but are soon drawn back to exercise they can make routine. They prefer a consistent approach to exercise. Once exercise takes on an established pattern, Purples comfortably maintain that routine. As natural planners, they’ll easily pack their gym bag to prepare for their personal needs before and after their workout. They take advantage and enjoy the amenities of a well appointed club—all part of the routine.
Purples prefer to control their own environment and can be surprisingly disturbed by what they perceive as out-of- place elements in their surroundings. Many report they become so distracted by such non-conducive factors in an environment that it actually interferes with their ability to enjoy and maintain an exercise program. (For example, loud music, stray dumbbells, or messy equipment.)

Well, that pretty much sums me up, right down to including kundalini yoga and being annoyed when the dumbbells aren't lined up properly. What's your color?

Jet Lag and Turbo Jam

2009-04-25T10:25:00.007+01:00

It's been a long couple of weeks.

We'd all planned a surprise family reunion beginning May 14th. Derek and I booked flights back in February for it, and of course we told Mom and Dad, but they didn't know that the entire rest of the family was planning to turn up and surprise them. My sister had booked a venue and caterers and everything. Then this unexpected thing happened, a family reunion of sorts took place in April, and now it's just me and Derek visiting May. We agree we're never going to tell Mom about this sad irony.

Anyway, my son turns 18 May 1st, and graduates May 16th. We are going to get him set up with a laptop for university, which he starts in August. The computer and broadband will be his combined birthday and graduation present. We will have to take care of that while we're there, as well some other stuff.

I got back on 22nd April and this trip has taken me longer than any other to recover from jet lag. I'm still not quite back to normal yet. I guess I'm getting old.

On another note, I've discovered some fabulous workouts. They've been out about 2 years, but I've only just got into them: TURBO JAM!

I don't know why these programs have to have such silly adverts. 'You can be lean for life and still enjoy your food!' 'Get rock hard abs!' Blah blah blah. Well, I don't have rock hard abs and never will, and I know for a fact just doing workouts such as these won't get them for you, nor will they give you free license to eat whatever you want--but they're still great workouts! They have to be the most fun workouts I've ever done, and I have done a lot of workouts.

Turbo Jam Infomercial

Now, the only way you could burn 1000 calories in one workout is if you weigh a LOT--I use a heart rate monitor and tend to burn about 400ish calories in a 45 minute Turbo Jam. Same with losing 10 lbs in 10 days. If you are overweight and eating crap, and then you start the Turbo Jam diet and start to do the workouts, yes you'll drop 10 lbs in 10 days. Most of it will be water...that's the thing that really irks me about the infomercial approach. These workouts are terrific, but they're not miraculous and the over-enthusiastic presentation and miracle claims could turn people off from something that could change their lives--home exercise using tried and true methods. The infomercial makes the product look gimmicky, but the fact of the matter is, she's doing good old cardio and weight training, and that's the only real way to lose weight and get fit.

The workouts really are fun, the moves really are easy, and I've been working out regularly using home DVDs for nearly 5 years, and I can say without reservation that these are the most fun I've had working out so far. They're just FUN! And they work you hard, but for some reason you don't realise it. Chalene is just not 'serious' about it. All her workouts use the same 11 moves based on kickboxing. She calls them the 'Elite 11' and she teaches them to you slowly in a session called 'Learn and Burn'. Then she uses them in different combinations and with simple variations in all her subsequent Turbo Jam workouts.

Anyway, if you have the chance to try Turbo Jam, take it! I think just about anybody would enjoy these workouts.

I'm back

2009-04-22T20:22:00.001+01:00

Too jetlagged to say much. Too much to say to know where to start.

On my way

2009-04-12T05:43:00.002+01:00

We're leaving here at 6AM. Flight at 9.00. Arrive Newark 11.50 local time, departing 15.40. Arrive Memphis 17.35. (Which my time is 1AM the next morning...19 hours door to door).

Hubby's going to his parents' after he drops me at the airport.

I'll be back 22nd April. :)

2009-04-10T17:39:00.004+01:00

He went at 3.15 this morning, 9.15 last night, Arkansas time.

I'm grateful this was fast. Just Tuesday he walked 4 miles with mom. He's climbed on the house, he's mowed the lawn, he's worked in his shop whistling and cheerful. He was tired and scared but he laughed and chatted with me when I called him last Friday after he was admitted to the hospital.

None of us could have imagined that a week later he would be gone. We thought he was there for an exam and to pick up a 90 day supply of chemo tablets, to return home and begin treatment. The complications became very quickly apparent, though, and if there was no hope for him, if the alternative was a long, painful and ultimately fruitless treatment, as so often happens with difficult cancer cases, then I believe it is good that he went fast.

It's just occurred to me. Now he knows what the rest of us have always wondered about.

Vigil continues

2009-04-10T06:35:00.003+01:00

He's still hanging on. I have booked a flight for Sunday and will be back on 21st April. My sister emailed me and said there would be a funeral within the next few days. I don't know what to hope for, but it sounds like a quick end to this would be best. The doctors say it's not the leukemia but his heart that will finish him. I can't help but think they should have thought of that before and not taken him off his heart meds. If they hadn't he might not have had a stroke. But the reality and the truth of the moment is that they did what they did, and whether it was the direct cause of his situation now is immaterial.

Hope Mom is okay.