So tonight, we are young.

Ohh hey I've been back in the States for exactly 6 months. In 4 days, the alleged "golden year" is coming to a close and I can honestly say it has probably been the best so far. I spent 50% of it traveling the world to come back to a whirlwind of grad school acceptances, visiting friends, exploring America's national parks, and settling down for a new beginning in San Francisco.

On the plane flying back to the States, I made a list of the things I did while traveling. It is a ridiculous, hilarious list, more full of bucket to-do's and funny once-in-a-lifetime opportunities than concrete realizations of wisdom (that is what my Corbett writings were devoted to, burning the midnight oil with Tulsi and looking back on the first part of the experience.) It would be interesting to make a list of new events that entered my life over the past 6 months, then compare the two lists. Sometimes I feel like life has only been more ridiculous in San Francisco, when I came back to feeling "in my element" and embracing my role as the kind of person that stuff just HAPPENS to, you know?

And even though I have been back in the States just as long as I was abroad, I am STILL uncovering details of how the trip has changed me. All good, so far!

I feel so blessed to realize how precious, good, and important something is even while I am living it. Never again will life be so wide open and full of opportunities, waiting to be shaped and begging to be enjoyed like an endless waterfall on a scorching hot desert day.

On the radio, we heard November rain.

Ohh hey blog. There is something about throwing a full-time job in the mix that results in having zero time to write.

Not the most important thing that's happened is.. I am still realizing how profoundly changed I came back from my 6-month stint out of the country. I am observing character traits in myself that I have to work on toning down, while before I left, I lacked these character traits completely and wanted to work to develop them.

For example:
-Patience
-Being more open, fair to people, generous with my feelings
-Ability to be busy without being exhausted
-But at the same time.. doing something MEANINGFULLY useless with your free time.

I guess because I have significantly less free time (more or less working four jobs, thank goodness three of them don't add up to any significant hours), any me time I have is just so much more energizing because I have to draw the same benefits from it.

Like hanging out on the floor right now, listening to Mademoiselle Spektor on repeat, drinking a Thursday beer and not really thinking about packing for Tahoe. About getting into the parking lot at 11 PM and hiking in 2 miles to an appropriate campsite spot..
Yep, adventures only get better when you are busier.

So this is actually the first time I worked in an office full time. Before it was all lab or the silly pool. I kind of love it. For anyone who knows about my intense love affair with the great out of doors, this should be surprising. But it's so much more stable and safe than the POOL. And apparently, I am fine with barely moving before 2 PM. If you stay in your PJ's until 2, that is lazy. If you sit at your desk doing work, that is dedication. (Ohh hey study habit insight for grad school.)

But it's good to keep in mind that there is a huge, incredible, amazing world out there that is so much more REAL than your cubicle, people with more tangible problems, living more satisfying lives, and everything you do for most desk jobs is kind of.. not real. A made up virtual religion like math.

I guess that is motivation to do something that is "real" long term. No dropping things off clouds for me?

Lazy Friday Musings of a Fellow San Franciscan

Today is probably the most pathetic excuse for a summer day since I moved here. Yeah mid July. According to the weather prediction, it is 61 (even though the high is 57), and I think I have to subtract at least 4 degrees to account for the freezing wind that constantly blows down my street, assaulting my non-insulated apartment.  Either way, for a former New Englander it is pathetic that I wore my long spandex bottoms and a fleece (!) lined spandex top when I went for my run. I brought that top exclusively for snow camping trips, and it is the second time I wore it running. If this was New Hampshire and 20 degrees colder, I would be reveling in the fact that it is sub freezing and be sporting shorts and a T-shirt for my run.

Despite the fact that all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and cuddle with a nalgene of boiled water (I REFUSE to turn on the heat in the middle of the day on July 13! I will not be defeated!), I actually had such a wonderful run bobbing along to Russian pop that I ventured past the Presidio St. underpass bridge for the first time since I moved here. That is, excluding any drunk runs I went on, possibly in the dark, when I got hopelessly lost and did not know when I was, but I don't remember those/they don't count.

If you have ever driven with me, you know the motivating power of really good Russian pop (and "good" in this sentence can only mean "bad.")

Now I am sitting in the lovely Velo Rouge Cafe on the corner that serves delicious chai, but that has a hopelessly horrible vibe if you are trying to get any real work done. Seeing as how it's Friday and I have probably had the most pathetic workweek, I decided that I can dedicate the rest of my afternoon to blogging instead of pretending that I am going to solve this fluid mechanics problem before my hair turns gray.

It's a good thing I wake up early, because I did not do one productive thing after lunch all week.
Monday: drove an hour to meet with my advisor in the morning, so clearly it's OK to relax and shop in the afternoon.
Tuesday: did mind numbing research database compilation all morning (that could have probably been automated if I was slightly more creative) and accepted the fact that if I made no further progress between 12 and 2, I should just give up for the day. This was followed by a pang of guilt when I returned from the climbing gym in the evening, and I diligently worked until I got the required task done and sent off for review.
Wednesday: had a wonderfully productive morning where I caught up with 3 friends on Gchat, applied for about 5 jobs, and even did something research related. After lunch, decided I needed to dedicate my time to getting ready for meeting Brynne at 6 PM. Brynne is my friend, so it's important to be well prepared.
Thursday: sick day, obviously did not do any work.
Today: I woke up at a whopping 5 AM and jumped right into a programming tutorial in my online course catalog. This was followed by an entire morning of fluid mechanics, but as I already mentioned, it is Friday, so it is best to relax after lunch in preparation for the weekend.
Besides, I might start a temp job very soon, and then I will be very busy going to the office for 40 hours a week on top of research, fluid mechanics, and online software courses, so no reason to exert myself until it becomes necessary.

I hope that was Bridget Jones-esque for you.

Now, even though it is freezing, I would not technically label what I am wearing as "clothes." I don't mean to offend anyone, but any skin tight , black, stretchy bottoms garment that precisely shows off the shape of your ass is STILL not considered pants. Good thing they are underarmour brand and at least offer some compression, so it is an improved idealized version of my ass you are seeing. Since showering after my run was clearly out of the question, I figured that I should keep my running attire on as a visible excuse and apology for the sweaty, greasy-haired chic look I have going. Of course, since I changed into flip flops, I probably just look moderately ridiculous - but if everybody else in here trying to do work is really just people watching like I suspect they are, I know they all saw me zoom by at the end of my run ten minutes earlier.

Let's talk about you. How was your latest run? How is the weather wherever you are influencing what you are doing for the day? 

What do YOUR recent Google searches say about you?

Check it out. I am athletic, I use public transport, my friend broke his toe, I can't spell "wilderness" nor do I know the meaning of "concurrently," and I am hopeless when it comes to MATLAB.

But seriously, MATLAB. Handles? Children? It's bad enough when I'm driving on the highway and see those Cloud billboards on which I don't understand a single word, yet I know they have nothing to do with those white condensed fluffy things that engulf San Francisco. Now I also have to work with an array of words whose elementary-school dictionary meaning is suddenly devoid of any tangible, comfortable connection.

I wonder if using words that *very* vaguely relate to their original meaning is better than making up a whole new language. In the second case, it would appear to an outsider that you were speaking another language, and in the first case, it would appear that you were just loopy.

What do YOU think?!

Five Years Time

Recovering from a wonderful Tahoe weekend: sunburned, starving despite having eaten everything non-raw that I own(ed), semi-permanent tree sap tattoo on my leg, room is in shambles, I am good as out of hair conditioner, incredibly behind on my research, and oh so happy. Ah, to be young.

On Wisdom and Time

I feel that.. perhaps my travels have granted me the ability to step outside of myself ever so slightly to examine events present or past in my life. After having actually exited my American life and returning as a completely different person, I had the experience of attempting to reintegrate myself with this time-capsule preserved life as an outsider who was living and breathing my identity during and before my absence.

Now I find at times that I still take advantage of this outsider's perspective and get a clearheaded evaluation in situations when we are tempted to lie to ourselves. And I just feel that due to the common threads that link humanity, the world has so much more simplicity we are not always noticing during our day-to-day lives. Simplicity means lack of worry, simplicity means applying a mental equation system to see things as they are and not in a cloudy, wanna-be way.

But I find that with greater life experiences, simplicity also means a straighter-shot arrow weeding through the lots of ways that we imagine things could be and separating out the way that we have come to learn they really are.

Anyway, I wish time moved in a different way sometimes, maybe not so linearly, so I would have the chance to sort through all these thoughts and still in some parallel way get done what I should have gotten done while sorting through these thoughts.

i beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer...
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Let's take it one step further.. how can living this question make me a better person and inject meaning and love into everything else I do in my life? 

How to Sleep Better and Yoga Musings

1. Don't get into bed thinking about things that are going to make you want to jump around and giggle.

2. Don't stay up until the wee hours of morning making cashew milk (recipe here.)

Towards the end of yoga today I got in a really weird funk that consisted of a bad mood I could sense was unrelated to anything going on in my life (for a summary of my life, see #1 above.) I thought it might have to do with the moodiness that comes with eating raw food again, even though I had rice for lunch. Then I thought it might be some weird detox from all the twists we did in yoga. Also I thought my body may be sensing that I am more into Pilates than Yoga and perhaps this is my last yoga class? Which didn't seem true but I was trying to figure out why I felt so uncomfortable, melancholy, and.. nostalgic? Little kid like?

Anyway I got done and came out and saw Meagan and we had a nice chat and I decided that I probably needed some cooked food to balance out my mood. Well, later I found out (by one part inference, one part intuition) what was causing my bad mood and it was pretty wild. Anyway, once it was done I felt fine getting a living platter at Source because my mood was raw-food-unrelated! 

12:14 AM - do you know what that means? Time to make cashew milk :) 

The best kind of Friday

It's a sprint through the sprinklers kind of Friday.

In GGP, right as Lake of Silver Bells comes on, and I remember the dream I had last night,
about two encounters
(or was it two dreams, each about one encounter? the world may never know)
with someone I know used to know,
(who shares the name of a Colorado van driver)
in Asia.

So my iPod asks me,
"What have you learned?"

I think I know.
The dream was familiar but... different.
You are different.
I am the same?
No, I am very different. That's what I've learned.

What else?

Risks.

People change, so is that the risk?
Trust is the risk.
Do I trust that you will change or that you will stay the same?
That depends on how much I change.
Oh hey - the more things stay the same, you know, the more they stay the same.

BUT....

YOU are not the van driver.
I think?!

But just a little bit.
Unless I am wrong and you are not the van driver AT ALL.
Time will tell.

You're like a squirrel in the middle of the road - halfway there but don't know which way to go.
I am in the middle of the road with nowhere everywhere ANYWHERE to go!
The road is endless infinite beautiful.

No diet = no puns today

I woke up this morning and simply could not stand the idea of being a cashew-milk eating, caffeine-shunning hippie so I brewed up some java and ate the most satisfyingly processes protein bar of my life (with a banana, OK.)

I will definitely go back at some point - I just brought up my dehydrator to make raw bread! And I don't think it's worth the time and investment to throw in a piece of raw bread on your cooked sandwich - strictly unscientifically speaking, you won't get any of the benefits of an all-raw detox and it's kind of silly to put in the money and the effort to have raw bread with, say, an egg.

What I WILL do with all the time I will save chewing is move all these entries over to a new nutrition-focused blog, and make this blog back into one of a more personal nature. Comment if there are ANY food related issues you are curious about! (Toxins in raw peanuts and what exactly it means to be "USDA organic" are high on the list.)

Namaste!

Raw Detox Diet: LOGISTICS

Things to consider if you want to try the raw diet!

TIME: Surprisingly, it takes much longer to "cook" raw food, whether you are doing extra chopping, blending, soaking, dehydrating, the list goes on.. If you are soaking anything, keep in mind you may need to start the night before.

You will also need to schedule extra time to chew and go to the toilet (no pictures, sorry.) If this is going to be an issue because of your workplace etc., try a weekend cleanse.

MONEY: Ways to save money on produce are PYO's, farmers' markets, buying large quantities of one thing that is on sale. Ways to spend money are weird things you can't really pronounce from the natural foods store. Something for every size wallet!

ORGANIC: IMO, if you are eating a lot of produce, if you eat the peel it should ALL be organic. One of my older neighbors tried to get into a debate with me about whether we should trust the USDA's labels, since he doesn't even trust the San Francisco Fire Department. I am at pains to draw the parallel. If this controversy piques your interest, drop me a comment and I will gladly look into it.

BODY TEMPERATURE: Oh hey feeling like you're going through menopause prematurely (or again). Being cold was definitely more uncomfortable than being warm, but I would notice hot flashes if I walked into a hot room or if I was exercising. Just today, so much blood rushed to my head during Pilates class that my face was beet red for the entire class - kind of like beer glow. Ways to deal with this: get a blanket, eat more, bail.

STATE OF MIND: When I was all raw, I noticed that I was more stressed out and perhaps more depressed for no reason. Maybe I only noticed this because mid whining about something that seemed SO IMPORTANT, my mother told me to go eat a sandwich. When I added a cooked meal, I noticed such an incredible feeling of well-being and happiness after the cooked meal. Maybe this diet will make you slightly bipolar. I did not notice any mood swings today; on the contrary, I was eyebrows-to-the-sky excited all day. I think eating raw may take whatever you are already feeling and amplify it. Recall that colors were brighter for me and I was more into my music. I also cried when reading The Giver; while this is definitely more emotional than I would normally get, I welcomed the ability to live the book so intensely. You will feel like you were leading An Overcooked Life before!

VITAMINS: I stopped taking vitamins within 2 days of this diet because I felt like I did not need them. Definitely do not take A or E because you can overdose on these. If you are going all raw, B complex every other day or so can be nice since you can only get B12 from animal products (and if you are eating raw fish, I doubt that fish munched on dirt to bring you your B vitamins). No need to take Vitamin C - see TIME part above. (If you don't understand this reference, go take a double dose of vitamin C and wait half an hour. I am not responsible for anything bad that may come as a result of this.)

ENERGY: When I was all raw, coffee was unnecessary, but I got incredibly exhausted around 4 PM. I think digesting all that is hard work! Solutions: nap, eat more, cheat and eat cooked. I think drinking a hot cup of tea with non-raw honey is a good way to get some energy back if you don't feel like going all out for a cooked meal. If you are doing this for a cleanse, that has virtually no calories (unless you're REALLY into the honey.)

COFFEE: Don't do it. Just try! I have been a daily user for almost 8 years, and I have no qualms telling you to try to go off it.

Speaking of not coffee, I'm going to hit the sack and add a second part if I think of more logistics tomorrow. If there's anything I missed that you're curious about, feel free to comment!

Suparatri.

How To: Try a Raw Detox Diet!

A couple of readers have asked me how to get started on a raw cleanse with the intention of weight loss, so I will walk you through my initial detox week with emphasis on weight loss benefits.

If you thought that going raw simply means putting the frying pan away for a couple of days and munching on cold foods, boy, have you got a think coming. Aside from fresh produce, most things that you can buy at a store are NOT raw. By definition, raw food has not been heated above approximately 114 degrees F (this cutoff varies) to keep the enzymes in food from denaturing.

Some foods you may think/hope are raw, but aren't:

Peanut butter made from "Roasted Peanuts" is NOT RAW because the peanuts have been roasted. Nuts are only considered raw if it is specified on the package. You can get them at natural food stores. I have been staying away from raw peanuts because of aflatoxin, but this has to be verified. Raw almond butter is pretty easy to find. You can even get raw walnuts at Safeway.

Dairy is NOT RAW unless it is unpasteurized and specifies "raw" on the label. Be careful with this!

Sugar, honey, spices, vinegar, olive oil is not raw. Olives have been cured and are not raw.

Coffee and tea are HOT and are not raw. I believe that the process of making these out of the plant involves heating them above 118 F, so don't think you can cheat by munching on the espresso beans or making ice tea with teabags.

Dehydrated legumes in bulk food bins: I am not sure if chickpeas and other bulk beans that you can buy at a Whole Foods or natural foods market are raw. I soaked my chickpeas from Whole Foods for 4 days, waiting for long tails to pop up, but apparently the sprouts are very small (see image here.) I will update you when I soak my second batch.

Weight Loss:

If you are going for 5 days tops, you can probably make it eating almost exclusively produce, with some nuts thrown in to get your fats. Produce actually has a lot of protein if you are eating enough of it, so you don't need to worry about eating a ton of nuts to get your protein.

Some key players:

-Spinach, kale, other greens: iron and PROTEIN :) Note that greens have ridiculously few calories, so eating any amount of them to make it count will make you feel super full. Pace yourself.

-Bananas and mangos: fairly calorie dense fruits. Apparently a lot of raw foodists eat bananas like there's no tomorrow. I can't really eat a lot of fruit or I start feeling sick from all the sugar. Maybe you can adjust to this if you push through, but I am still living my life, and I don't intend to spend a week of it nauseous.

-Avocados: if you can get your hands on these, you are set. I have been eating an avocado approximately every day on this diet.

-Coconut oil: since it is apparently AWESOME and helps you lose weight. It is also clearly more calorie dense than lettuce, so it will help you fill up without feeling bloated. Pop a half a tablespoon into your blended creations.

-Whatever else is ORGANIC and on SALE :)



Sample "recipes":


If you think that not heating your food means saving time, you have a second big think coming. You can ingest calories much more effectively if you make smoothies or juices, rather than chewing everything, because you will be so hungry that you will swallow food before the 20 recommended chews per bite, leading to an unhappy tummy. If you want to get really fancy, you can soak, sprout, dehydrate, the options are many!

-Spinach Banana Smoothie: This is one of my favorites. Blend a banana, a bunch of spinach, some cilantro or parsley, lemon juice and/or rind, cayenne (my cheat). Put blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries into it to make a "soup" and eat with 3-4 celery sticks instead of spoons, biting off the celery each time you scoop with it.

-Guacamole with orange pepper chips: Combine a lot of avocado with much less chopped garlic, cilantro, and lemon juice. Scoop with orange bell pepper (or any other color, orange peppers are just the cheapest) instead of chips!

-My cashew milk recipe: After doing some research, I came up with this recipe:
 1/2 cup cashews
 2 cups water
 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
 some coconut oil
 some RAW honey (or agave if you are vegan)

Soak cashews for at least an hour and rinse. Combine all ingredients in blender. This will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. You can dilute the cashews farther if you want this to be more calorie dense.

Serving suggestion: stir the milk before pouring because cashews tend to separate slightly from the water.  Fill up a bowl with some raw granola (I like Living Intentions Chia Ginger Superfood Cereal) and add fresh berries if you like!


COMING UP SOON: Some logistics and things to consider, as in, advice for YOU!

Weekend W-RAW-up

For lunch on Friday, I had another spinach banana smoothie (SURPRISE!), as well as a piece of toast with an egg on it.

Here's my spinach and banana smoothie:

I don't have a picture of the egg, but just picture an egg with a halo around it and you get the picture. That was the most divine egg I had ever tasted. Perfectly cooked with coconut oil instead of olive, silky and smooth, it tasted like sheer perfection. I swear it made my vision even sharper than all the raw nutrition I had been consuming all week.

Dinner involved a ham and cheese panini, but it must not have been enough, because I was FREEZING all night.

Saturday involved some raw "cereal" for breakfast, a burger for lunch, and a burrito for dinner. I felt great! I was so much warmer, happier, more energetic. I've decided that two raw meals and one cooked meal every day is a good long-term balance that I can happily maintain.  My taste buds would be happy eating raw all the time, but in my opinion, the side effects are a sign that something is wrong and not just a "detox period."

Anyway, if a detox period of indefinite duration includes:

-Ridiculous moodiness;
-Afternoon lack of energy (this never happens to me);
-Simultaneous hypothermia and hot flashes a.k.a. "sensitivity to hot and cold";
-Gnarly dry skin and breakouts,

Then I don't think that I want to live my life in a transitional detox state!

Benefits to 2 raw/1 cooked:

-I kind of don't drink coffee anymore. HOW can this happen and WHAT is the world coming to?! I have been happily hooked on the brown IV drip since I was sixteen, and I have never voluntarily bypassed my morning cup and still felt great and alert.
-You basically get to eat whatever you want all the time. When you are eating raw, chewing is like a second job. As soon as I finish with a meal, I am looking for my next snack. This is what hunters and gatherers must have felt like! I'm sure that foraging for the cheapest avocado in the Mission is no less straightforward than discerning among edible and lethally poisonous plants while dodging tiger attacks or arrows from neighboring tribes.
-And when you get to your cooked meal, you STILL get to eat whatever you want because no way are you not starving after eating raw for the past 18 hours.
-Morning vitality and great endurance minus dry skin, shivering, or mood swings. Please tell me what there is not to love. NOTHING, I say! The RAW-volution is here! 

B-RAW-Kfast Day 5

So, I woke up this morning determined to eat something cooked but ended up eating raw because it's all that there was in my house and convenient. I just wanted a bowl of cereal, and all I had was raw sprouted granola and cashews to make milk. (Well, I didn't even make milk because Dean was still sleeping and I don't know who would want to be woken up to the sound of cashews stick blending at the crack of dawn on a Friday morning.)

So instead, I mushed up a banana and some ginger juice and used that as the "base" for my granola, with blackberries and raspberries thrown in.

Yum?

I was feeling a little weird this morning. That is why I wanted to switch back to cooked.  By weird, I mean kind of shaky and strung out. In a physical, not emotional way. I woke up feeling happy because I decided that I could eat whatever I wanted. Currently I am drinking hot non-raw tea with non-raw orange clover honey.

Whether I eat cooked or raw for the rest of the day, I will try to make the meals themselves be more like "cooked" meals. (Example: raw cereal with raw milk instead of a fruit puree for breakfast).

My skin is still incredibly dry, so I put olive butter all over my face this morning. Ingesting a tablespoon of olive oil probably may have done just as well. Also, I took a B vitamin since I figured I may be running low on B 12, and that seemed to help me feel better. 

FouRAWth Day

Muahahah.

Whew! Aside from any midnight munchies, I have now survived four days of this tRAWial (that's trial for you unenlightened folks). First course: food with some pictures! Second course: beginning raw-elations, or mulling over what I have raw-alized this week.

OK, enough of this silliness. Let's get down to the raw business.

BRUNCH: (In the true sense of the world) 10 AM: Smoothie with spinach, half a plantain, parsley, lemon juice. Threw some raspberries and blackberries into it to make a soup and ate that up.

Drank about two cups of cashew milk because I was still starving, at which point I began to feel very full.

SNACK, 11:30 AM: Banana blended with ice and water at Starbucks. Here's my cup:

The left side says Ice H2O Banana and the right side says Blended. I kept it as a souvenir!

LUNCH ISH, 1 PM: Raw Revolution chocolate coconut bar. How the taste of these so closely resembles crack, I'll never know.

SNACK, 3 PM: Apple and pear devoured about 5 seconds after purchasing them in the organic produce aisle at Safeway.

My arms were killing me in Pilates but my legs, abs, and glutes were doing just fine. There really is something to this increased endurance thing!

DINNER, 5:30 PM: Spinach and banana smoothie with blueberries tossed in, eaten with a celery stick instead of a spoon.

Don't you wish your food looked this beautiful?

REST OF DINNER: Apple with walnuts (and walnuts is merely a euphemism for "RAW CHEESE").

EVENING SNACK, 7:30 PM: Large organic orange, followed by guacamole with orange peppers as dipping implements:

There is twice that amount of guacamole left for tomorrow.

I am still incredibly back and forth about whether I must eat cooked food now or if I can never go back to the pre-raw lifestyle. I'm sure that a lot of this uncertainty comes from the moodiness reported as a side effect of the raw food diet.

THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, HOPES AND DREAMS. 

BENEFITS: 

Vision: As I have mentioned, the clarity of my vision is through the roof. Colors are incredibly vivid, and the clarity is around me and in my mind. I had to stop taking vitamins because I felt like I was getting way too much Vitamin A or something and it was making everything too bright. But with a plant diet like this, who needs vitamins?!

Energy: Today is the second day in a row that I voluntarily did not drink coffee, and I feel great. I have had more endurance when rock climbing or doing pilates, and more energy when running - also due to excitement at how vivid the music sounded. Recovery time for muscle exertion seems to have been halved. 

Mind: On the bus this afternoon, I had some incredible realizations while catching part of the music in someone's headphones, the bus buzzing along, and people's conversations drifting in and out with their shuffling footsteps.  Filling my consciousness with these sounds was enough that I did not need to think; I realized that if I also added aimless thoughts, it would only be because of my antsiness about problems that I could not solve on the bus anyway. If I try to plan out my evening, I realized, I will just think in circles for the remainder of the bus ride, exhausting my brain, then think about it some more when I get off the bus to actually make the decision. I just wanted to sit there and meditate for a long time as a way of relaxing the brain. (Ever since an especially productive yoga class, I have felt like the mind is a muscle. I know that this is wrong, but it is a very useful analogy for the amateur meditator.)

SIDE EFFECTS:

Energy: It is 10 PM, and I am exhausted. I slept in until 10 this morning. Doubtful that I am still catching up on some leftover sleep deficit, more likely that I am burning out on burning all this food or not getting enough to eat even though I feel like I am stuffing myself all the time. (see next 2 points.

Bloating: I feel bloated 90 percent of the time. What's the point of any byproduct weight loss of this diet if you can't enjoy fitting into your jeans anyway?

Cold: Today was actually not that bad, but all the previous days I was absolutely FREEZING! According to Steve Pavlina (possibly my new idol, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/01/raw-food-diet-day-4/), many raw foodists report a sensitivity to temperature.  Well guess what? It means you are not eating enough, and your body does not have enough calories to keep you warm. 

Yes it can be a great way to drop a few pounds, but that was not my intention, and if I am shivering even when I am continuously stuffing myself, I need a diet that is more dense in calories. This is even with the cashew milk, raw bar, cheese, and avocado that I ate! 

Moodiness: Let's just call this the PMS diet, seriously. In an earlier conversation with my mother, I was expressing what seemed to me some perfectly rational concerns about the fact that my summer internship has not kicked in yet, and her only response was that this is a non-problem and I should eat a sandwich.

Skin: I can handle a few pimples (which are apparently part of the "detox" process), but the bottom half of my face has been incredibly dry and flaky no matter how much I moisturize. 

Hair growth: The hair on my legs has been growing at an amazing rate. I suppose fast hair growth can be viewed as a positive sign that your body is healthy, but this is not exactly what I was looking for.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

Price: I am averaging about $15 on produce per day, not including raw nuts, which go anywhere from $10-$15 per pound. Raw bars are 3 bucks a pop, and all the other schmancy goodies like raw cereal are prohibitively expensive on a starving student's budget.

Convenience: I did not realize how long it takes to blend things up. I have not noticed my time spent eating go up because I have devoured everything with the dental dexterity of a starving squirrel, but this did result in some stomach cramps from basically chugging up to several pounds of produce in under 20 minutes. I'm sure that budgeting less than 20 chews per bite of fibrous leafy matter is not optimal for digestion.

BOTTOM LINE: 

I think that my reason to keep going with this would be to see what other gems my brain might throw out, such as the meditation episode on the bus. Also, I would like to go without any caffeine for a while, and I am thinking that I may not have enough energy in the morning to do so unless I am eating all raw. But then again, my energy is so variable on this diet that this is not an actual reason.

While I suppose that some of the effects like dry skin and being cold are an adjustment period, I don't know if I buy the whole idea that your body needs to adjust to something which is supposedly GOOD for it by giving you indicators that something is wrong. 

Anyway, I will pass out (a whole 1.5 hours earlier than yesterday) and be completely whimsical tomorrow morning about whether I start off with a spinach and banana smoothie or some nice fried eggs and hash browns.

In either case, more food for thought (yum yum) to come tomorrow!

Raw-nodushie? Not by a long shot!

So around 2:45 PM today I came dangerously close to calling it quits at the end of today and summarizing what I learned from the raw food diet. I was tired of feeling cold, bloated, and moody all the time, sick of how expensive it was, really wanted a warm plate of rice, and doubted that one more day of suffering would really result in any spectacular raw-velations. (HAHAHA)

Then we had a nice chat in Pilates class which really drew attention to the benefits I have been observing and the weirdly intense ways in which these benefits have been manifesting themselves.

Case in point: I slept in until 10 today, finally catching up on the sleep I have been lacking from about 2 months ago. Is that because I did not drink coffee yesterday or because I am playing rabbit this week? The world may never know.

Anyway, I realized that I don't have any rice at the house anyway, and defrosting toast out of spite to the raw food community is not exactly going out with a bang.

So as of right now, I feel good about finishing out these 5 days and then thinking about ways to integrate raw foods into a longer term plan. I haven't decided if that will entail extending the trial or switching to a partially cooked, but still very wholesome, meal plan. 

Raw-velation!

So, something miraculous happened this morning.

I did not drink coffee.

Or, more precisely, I did not want coffee. OK, let me elaborate. I woke up feeling not all that wonderful, not tired in particular but could tell that a cup of coffee is not what my body wanted to make it feel better.

BREAKFAST, 8 AM: I scarfed (or more like slogged through) a piece of raw chocolate, a banana mushed up with cashew milk and some blueberries, two oranges, and a ginger nori carrot cracker. I felt hungry and cold when I finished but could not think of anything that I would want to put in my stomach without it feeling bloated. I felt like I got enough calories because the cashew milk was pretty dense, and my body was just going crazy from the volume of the fruits. As I sat there I realized that actually, I had a LOT of energy and need to do something to dissipate it, be that fiddling or running around.

So I went for a fabulous run where the colors seemed brighter and my music was more in my ears and ringing more true with all my emotions than ever before. Man, it seems that I was living an overcooked version of myself for my entire life until three days ago.

SNACK, 11 AM: Apple and pear.

LUNCH, 1 PM: I guess you could call it a soup. Blended zucchini, half an avocado, parsley and cilantro, slice of lemon and some lemon ginger juice, put raspberries in it, scooped it up with celery/attempted to make lettuce wraps but gave up because it is just way too messy.

Lettuce wraps are not first date food, let me tell you. Well, unless licking things off from all over your body is your idea of a first date.

Anyway, even with the avocado the meal was not very calorie dense, and I felt bloated yet starving until I ate some pumpkin seeds while walking around.

SNACK, 2 PM: Banana blended with ice at Starbucks. I got so much attention after I said I was trying the raw food diet.

DINNER, 5 PM: Sashimi with seaweed salad and miso soup - my cheat.

I got home and realized that I felt more tired than I had all day. I definitely blame that on the cooked food cheat, while at the same time refusing to believe that we are this.. evolved? to eat raw food?

SNACK, 6 PM: Apple, pear, cacao nibs.

While climbing, I felt like I had much more endurance than I should - an apparent consequence of eating raw or my imagination?

SNACK, 9 PM: Apple and cold processed greens bar.

Foods I missed today: Mexican and beer for the camaraderie, but in terms of taste, COOKED RICE. In a way, I don't see myself continuing raw after 5 days (my goal), but in another way, now that I know that it is possible to FEEL THIS WAY, I don't see how I can ever go back.

I could see myself doing 5 days a week, but maybe the other two days would just defeat the purpose of the detox. I need to look more into this.

I could, conceivably, go raw plus rice and beans (and, oh, the occasional multiple beer.) Would probably need to throw eggs and animal products in there because my body does not do so well without them, and sashimi is NOT financially sustainable.

BOTTOM LINE:  I feel weird at times, but overall amazing and psyched for day 4!

Raw-enous Day 2

Since I bought raw chocolate yesterday, I was able to resume my normal routine of eating a piece of chocolate when I woke up. I was surprised to observe how large the 50 calorie portion was and the virtual lack of sugar, instead a whopping high percentage of fat and saturated fat. Anyway, WHATEVER.

The rest of breakfast: ~8AM? Salad with chickpeas, spinach, onion, celery. OK, so I'm still not sure if the rehydrated garbanzo beans from the bulk food aisle are TECHNICALLY raw, but they are cheaper than almost anything else you can eat on the raw food diet, low in fat and high in protein! They also weren't all the way rehydrated when I ate them but I just crunched away.. I was hungry!

Shortly after I got a stomachache that probably lasted for an hour or so. I attributed this to the half of an onion I cut up into my salad but looking back, I realize it may have been the un-rehydrated chickpeas. Well my next batch is going to soak until it sprouts!

Even though I wasn't hungry, I proceeded to fiddle with the cashews and stick blender to make some raw "milk" for later. It was ridiculously easy: soak cashews for over an hour, add 4 parts water, a dash of sea salt, and sweetener if you like (I used raw honey for the first batch and put in coconut oil instead for the second batch because I felt like it, then mixed them together.) If I told you anything else about the proportions it would go against my notion that cooking is like chemistry on acid, when divine inspiration comes to you to mix things together into an art form that is impossible to duplicate. Anyway, it had a taste and consistency that was well above and beyond anything I could have hoped for.

I drank my "cheat" cup of coffee later on that morning, almost feeling that the caffeine was excessive and only contributed to making me feel jittery. I am thinking about phasing it out (BIG GASP).

At 11:45, I devoured half a mango and an orange on my way to the Mission to grocery shop, suddenly feeling spacy and like everything I was seeing was too vivid. Come to think of it, my vision has been a lot brighter since I started the diet, getting uncomfortably so when I get hungry - but not in a "the-sun-is-too-bright" sort of way.

Halfway through shopping I stopped feeling hungry and was incredibly energized, focused not in a complete way but in that same vivid-vision way that made my movements clear and strong. Afterwards, even though I did not feel my appetite anymore, I had my lunch of avocado, spinach, and carrots. After a bit of walking, I devoured an entire chocolate bar and half a block of cashew kale cheese. This seemed incredibly excessive listening to my stomach whine about being full to capacity, but it was the least spacy I had felt all day, and I chased it all with an apple when I got home.

I felt stuffed to the brim but not particularly satisfied all afternoon. Around 6, I made a smoothie with spinach, zucchini, banana, cayenne, and lemon juice, and had lettuce wraps with green liquid and raspberries. The organic raspberries were crisp and as tasty as they were bright. I scooped the rest of the smoothie up with celery sticks.

Pilates class! Since this also happens to be pilates challenge week. I was absolutely freezing walking over. During class, my nose ran for the first 10 minutes and my face felt really red. I felt like my cold was back. At the end of class, though, I got warm and felt fine.

Another weird thing is that I was upset for no reason during class. It seemed that something about the lighting of the room made me feel depressed, even though I love pilates. Also, I teared up two or three times while finishing up The Giver this morning, but no idea if that can be attributed to diet or the fact that the story is INTENSE! Seriously, reread it. Go.

After pilates, I ate a pear, which only made me hungrier, so I got salmon sashimi with seaweed salad and regular salad. The regular salad had dressing, and eating it made me crave all things non-raw. I could tell that the dressing was not very tasty, but at the same time it was amazing and delicious. I definitely felt full in a too-many-calories sort of way, but an hour or so later it seems to have settled. I felt energized right up to 20 minutes ago. My lowest energy level was probably around 12 PM, about an hour after I had coffee. I am really beginning to think that I can phase out the coffee. Crazy!

When I was getting sushi, I craved rice like no other and wanted to go back to when your food options aren't stupid and few and limited. But all those food options are wonderful and incredible. Already I feel different on many levels, physically cleaner and physiologically more alert. Let's not get into spirituality yet.

I realized that I have to buy all organic produce (unless it has a thick peel) because otherwise I am just front loading my body with pesticides. So I bought up the organic produce aisle at Safeway tonight in preparation for breakfast tomorrow. It wasn't a matter of making healthy choices, I just went for everything that I liked out of the things I could eat. The girl behind me in line was buying chips and ice cream and looked over my items with a slightly guilty expression. I can't say that I crave anything else, but it is only because I have firm reasons not to eat it that have nothing to do with how I look or long term benefits (my reasons are pure curiosity and determination to complete the challenge.)

But at this point, I feel like I am already so in touch with my body that I can never go back to eating any other way. I have magically not chewed any gum because I am doing enough chewing as it is, and gum is clearly not raw - and I can just imagine how my body would flip out if I slipped it something that unnatural.

Cheats: I am not even going to google how un-raw seaweed salad is. Along with coffee/tea, I refuse to give that up. I can bypass hot seaweed in soup, but the cold stuff with olive oil and sesame seeds (whether store-bought or home-made) stays! Also, I really don't care that spices are not raw. I will slash my salt intake dramatically but pepper and cayenne and perhaps other things like tumeric are good for you and fire up your energy.

Bottom line: my moods and energy levels were slightly wacky, I miss rice, I will never give up seaweed salad, but other than that I am pressing on!

No Peanut Butter?!

Today was Day 1 of my more or less spontaneous Raw Food Challenge, to roughly overlap with the 2-week Pilates challenge.

My only cheats were two cups of coffee and some soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Here's how it went down:

Breakfast: circa 6 AM, up so early to drive Devon to the airport. Salad with spinach, carrot, celery, avocado.

Mid morning snack: micro greens bar and an orange.

Lunch: 11 AM, salad with chickpeas, lettuce, red bell peppers, and other things I devoured in 2 seconds because I was ravenous; apple; cold processed ginger lemon drink.

Random I'm-sleepy snack: 12:30 PM, another granola bar and a couple of ginger carrot nori crackers.

Post-nap snack: 4 PM, orange and tablespoon of raw almond butter.

Pre-climbing I'm starving snack: 5 PM, Raw-volution bar and sliced cantaloupe (only $2 at a market in the Mission!)

Post-climbing snack: 7 PM, apple and plantain.

VERY late dinner:  9:50 PM, salmon and hamachi sashimi with avocado instead of rice.

Final snack: 11 PM, pumpkin seeds, cacao nibs, apple.


So I'm not sure if I was eating all day just because I was out and about or if the nature of the food affects the way you process it.  You get full faster if you are eating a lot of produce, and I've heard that it takes more energy for the body to break it down. I started falling asleep a little after noon, and I'm not sure if this was related to getting no sleep or somehow related to the food as well.  I also felt incredibly zoned right around 9:30 PM before I got some food, but I imagine that could happen even if I was eating cooked food and put off dinner.  Overall, while I feel that I had to work harder to keep from being hungry and my body was talking to me more in terms of being fed, I would say that my blood sugar levels, if anything, stayed more constant and I had more of the fiber and roughage from the plants to tide me over in between meals.

I'm sure these patterns will become clearer as the week goes on!

Bottom line: I thought this would be much more of a struggle, but it appears that my main reason for eating cooked food is because I feel that I should eat cooked/warm food. I grew up hearing that it's not healthy not to eat cooked food, such as soups. Yes, soups may be healthy, but it is really liberating to eat everything I wanted all day without having to substitute something "boring" (AKA cooked) or "healthier" (instead of, say, a kind of nut.) I suppose the only more-or-less "unhealthy" thing I crave is ice cream.. homemade raw or cashew nut ice cream, anyone?

Also, I feel incredibly fresh, clean, and detoxed (not that I had that much to detox from.. multiple rounds of margaritas with my lovely Alaska friends last night..) You truly are what you eat!

Won't you save me San Francisco?

I've been here for two nights now and just like last summer, I love every inch of it. My send off was moderately dramatic (read: I bawled at the Phila airport in the security line.) I guess Philly IS more fun if you stay over, by "stay over" meaning never leave. Crying is not my usual form of expelling body substances at the airport; I am much more likely to throw up on an airplane. Well at least we didn't have any of that, but I do have two flights coming up this weekend, vse vperedi!

ANYWAY, I will save the reasons for that and how they worked themselves out for another entry, because they will fit in very nicely with the theme and witty title I have already through up. Good titling opps, for me, are few and far between, so I have to milk them for all I can.

I am visiting lovely Scott and Elisse, who fed me popsicles and took me bowling and provided fabulously cozy accommodations and two bonus cats to cuddle with.

Speaking of cats, I am NOTHING like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-92wriOZ-s

Just wanted to take the time to make that even more viral than it already is.

I missed a bus stop today and basically had a two hour bus tour of downtown San Francisco as a result. I love the bus so much more than driving. Running in Golden Gate Park makes the time pass so quickly because of the perfect amount of sunshine and the way that the tiles on the ground are somehow better sized for your feet...

Speaking of feet, walked a bit barefoot after my shoes started giving me mad blisters. It was one thing when I was carrying them in my hand, but when I put them away in my purse I think people were just confused.. (mind you, I was wearing interview clothes at the time.)

Now it is wildly windy and slightly chilly. I didn't realize how much I now enjoy being cold in the evening when I'm not under the covers, thank you Nepal. I'm hoping this wind brings some colder weather for tomorrow so I am not too overheated wearing my boots all day. Why can't I wear flip flops, you ask? I have a VERY IMPORTANT lunch interview that I am eyebrows to the sky excited about!

Suparatri,
.

I am DYING right now.

First, I find this gem in a series of "Only in Russia" photos:

"Yeah, does this bus go to Beryozovsky?"


Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/15-only-in-russia-photos


Then, the following exchange:
Mother: Where is this?
Me: Near Beryozovsky, clearly.
Mother: No! This is fake! They don't have buses that clean there!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not Sparta. This is Russia.

Growing up, but not really. And by "really" I mean "at all."

I alternate being amused and terrified at the fact that everyone basically assumes that I am my half-brother's mother when we are at the playground, but get a kick out of it either way. I told some nanny that I liked her jeans and she said that he has cute dimples. Yeah, it doesn't help that we look alike and that I look marginally old enough to have a 4-year-old (if you assume that I HAD HIM IN HIGH SCHOOL) and I'm not going to spend my time telling handfuls of random strangers my family history.
"Come on, honey, let's do this algebra problem in the sand, you already went to Mommy's algebra class when you were 1!"

In other news, how often do you apply for something and have the application become closed WHILE YOU ARE HITTING SUBMIT?! I accept that it wasn't meant to be, and I am grateful for the motivation to have different kinds of samples more readily at hand for the job application process.

I think that the opinions about the status and quality of the job application process are vastly different for recent college grads, especially when considering the country's current situation as well as the diverse opportunities we have upon graduation. From people with a cushy job to people who have switched jobs to people who are still waiting on a job that has any kind of benefits. Well let me tell you, giving birth when you are in high school is NOT the solution.

The mountains, they surround me...

Courtesy of Greg. MAN oh man, I will never understand how ANYONE can come HERE and see THIS and it will not make them question everything they have ever believed about the world and their role in it. This is so much bigger than anything I had ever encountered before. It turns so many beliefs and understandings on their toes. How do you possibly walk away without somehow incorporating this into your world view and reinventing your world philosophy to include things like THIS?!

Funny things that make me realize I don't know who I am at all

Such as realizing that just maybe, diving > climbing and pilates > yoga.

WHAT?!

I have been on this spirituality kick (very loosely defined) for a couple of years now, and I have been trying to figure out what it is about coming back from my trip that has made me realistic about the lack of real progress or success that I have been making.

I think that I expected to go to the east and find that most people's daily lives are filled with some higher realization of a spiritual presence. I felt it so much when I was in the mountains - my entire existence as committed to memory through my journal entries was so rich with meaning and the quest for more meaning. And while the religions in the east may be more attractive to agnostic idealistic westerners, they are, at their core, just other examples of religions.

So it follows that religion plays a similar role in people's lives, albeit a somewhat more inflated role than it plays in my family life, but when people are not involved with a religious activity, they just go about their life. There is still something about the MOUNTAINS that is so powerful and incredible and evolutionary natural and nourishing and a comforting majestic presence, and I just happen to interpret that as sensing a greater being. To me, that is real. If nobody else knows about something but it is real to you, that does not undermine your perception of it. Anyway, the pristine environment got me to start meditating for a few months, which was amazing and really rewarding - but once I was back in the "bustle" of things, it became more stressful to make time to find a peaceful place for meditating than to continue with it. I know that I will get back into it once I have a set routine, but I am taking a break for now - it's pointless and ironic to even try when meditation makes you stressed out just thinking about it.

Also, my mom pointed out that I had so much more TIME - was this time available because I had less responsibilities and more people doing stuff for me, or because I didn't have a pesky computer to eat away at hours of daylight? Maybe the computer is a nice distraction from the fact that I am taken from a place of so much human interaction to a place of minimal human interaction, isolation, machines everywhere. You pretty much only interact with machines when you are out and about, so you continue to turn to machines when you are home and feel lonely. Everyone is in a car on the road - no horses, bikes, people pushing carts along, people stopping to chat. This is slightly different in a city, but even there, everyone is so BUSY. Also, when I'm not a tourist, I am much less visible, and the fact that "OH HEY I STICK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB" is suddenly removed from validity and cannot retain its convenient place as an ice-breaker to start a conversation with anyone, anywhere.

Not that much of an ice breaker is needed to start conversations in some places in Asia. Places like public buses in Nepal are so tightly packed that you can't help but become best friends with the person you are sitting next to - and it's part of the CULTURE! I would see people get on the bus and talk like they were old friends, then I would be shocked to realize they just met and were chatting each other up.

Yes, that happens to some extent in the states. But everybody is so BUSY and so into their machines, so into their iwhatever's and what they are doing and not being late and using the most efficient methods to get things done. (Not that I am not totally like that.) I just wish that people could realize that they all have that in common and use it as a bonding experience, not as something that isolates them and makes them frustrated.

Anyway, pilates is kind of sort of actually better than yoga. As for diving and climbing - well, that is to be determined.

Suparatri :)

What is it about being in an allegedly first world country that makes cold showers feel so much colder?
The hot water heater in my bathroom decided that its services weren't really necessary anymore, and being a creature of habit, I have been refusing to use the upstairs bathroom - so I have been showering at people's houses and the gym or subjecting myself to 8-10 minutes of shivering per day.

With the way my body is now officially destroyed, the cold water actually feels kind of nice. How is it destroyed, you ask me?
-Shoulder I sprained two weeks ago yet continued doing stuff with
-Triple length ab session in June's yoga class on Friday
-My makeout sesh with the cement when I ate it trying to learn to longboard on Friday afternoon - thank goodness for helmets!
-Beer...
-Lead climbing at Go Vertical today

Yeah. Bruised my knee and elbow, scraped up my stomach, and got a temporary bump on my forehead yesterday mid afternoon. Entirely my fault and there are many ways it could have been more eventful or traumatizing, but I did take two ice packs to dinner yesterday and have spent a good bit of today feeling injuries/muscle soreness that I could attribute to three or four different potential causes from last week.

But I guess the cold water shower must not be so bad (you were the best I ever had) if I just keep going back to it, and could have its benefits too. My way of keeping Asia alive right in my home.

Tony teaching me to parallel park yesterday was pretty hilarious. Reversing down a narrow street towards the spot and having to repeatedly pull forward to let cars pass by. "These kids must be high!" I am much more solid on the boundaries of my car and the general concept, but there are still light years of work to do. Whoo cramming for moving to San Francisco!

The Big Trip is happening at the end of the month. Kimberly is coming and I couldn't be more excited about it. Whatever our shared space will end up being (STRESS), it will be fabulous and arsty and simple and practical yet infinitely beautiful. I can't wait for the adventures our minds come up with when we aren't busy cramming and stressing about schoolwork. And what an inspiring place to be for young people!

I am happy about driving cross country again. Road tripping is fake being outside, but all the while you are building more concentrated memories with the people you are with because you are sharing such a small space. One very vivid snapshot from our Utah trip was listening to the epic violin music while driving west through a two hour sunset from Utah to Arizona, watching the winding road disappear into the mountains into the horizon into the endless sun, everything descending so slowly and all together, our route creeping towards an end at the same pace that the daylight slowly disappeared somewhere - but daylight was so objective if you could just chase it until the end of the coast. Imagine flying with the sun on a two-person airplane, letting the violin sing your feelings and words for you and just floating there, your speed hanging you on a string in the whirlwind of the rotating earth.

Back to the States

And the journeys continue, but it is not a foreign land anymore, is it?
In some ways, it is. I am continuing to gain a profound appreciation of how large and diverse America is - and how easy it is to explore it, yet it often goes undone. You speak the language, you can stay in luxurious conditions or camp for dollars a night. True, it is much more difficult without a car, and public transport is way less affordable, but that does not mean there are not lots of ways to travel cheaply somewhere close and yet experience a completely different landscape, weather pattern, even culture!
I am doing some of that now with this stint up and down the West coast that I get to do as a result of checking out grad schools. I've been completely at the mercy of amazing people hosting me, driving me around, and helping me get my stuff organized, ever since I got back - so big THANK YOU to them!

Here's me and Victoria exploring I 5 together on the drive to Oregon.

Doing that drive at dusk was so magical. The woods were entirely different from the Himalayan woods, but enchanted in their own way. Peeking out of my tent at Sattal, I could see lights dotting the hilly landscape as village dwellers turned on their light for their evening meal. These woods were a completely different story - empty and wild looking, surrounding the suburban giants that reign over much of America.

I can say with certainty that somewhere in those woods, there is a patch of forest that feels just a little more mythical than the spot five meters over - it is unexplainably colder, more living, has a greater sense of presence than the rest of the spots. It's baffling and creates a sense of vertigo that you could roam the woods for weeks before you found it - and I'm sure it's a different spot for everyone.

The crooked trees by the road and the crooked road signs were all frozen in this same still dusky landscape. They come from such different backgrounds - the trees just grow, while the signs were man made and put there. They share a stuckness in their environment; they have nowhere to go, they are forever rooted as far as human time perceptions are concerned, so they simply are. And the rest of us, whether we are alive or inanimate, mobile or immobile, all share the same solidarity of being present in this timeless landscape.

We enjoyed an especially long dusk that settled around in a purplish color, interspersed with peeks of the glorious sunset, still bright blue and highlighting the clouds that would rain and snow on us in the days to follow. I was surprised at my lack of philosophical undertakings on the plane, but maybe the thought processes are yet to come..