Red Alert

What is the first part of your body to go haywire when you feel stressed? I think everyone has one body part that reacts first with pain (which I believe is like a warning signal telling us to take it easy). Mine is my heart. It always has been. Sometimes this scares me. My heart rate can go from 60 to 180 standing still in less time than if I were on a treadmill at 8mph with a +10 incline. I also get palpitations, my face flushes at the drop of a hat, and sometimes I even have chest pains. My heart literally hurts. Milder nagging stress always puts my back out, to the point where I cannot stand or sit upright, and this leaves me out of commission for at least a week every time. I’m guessing some people get migraines, stomach pains, reflux, and other ailments, but I am also guessing most people are struck with the same thing when the alarm bell rings. The body is smart. Where does your alarm ring first?

Reaching for Light

When it comes to my relationship with food and my body, this is the most stable I have felt in a long time, ever since that dreaded “flick of the switch” 4 ½ years ago that began the struggled surveillance of what I never thought to notice before.

Intake. Quantity. Output. Restriction. Shape. Size. Awareness before need. Punishment before pleasure. Consequence before action. War with between the body, mind, and spirit. Today I know they are all one, although I do not pretend that every day I let them be. This cannot be an ongoing struggle for me. It just can’t. All signs point to progression, and that is all I can afford to believe in.

But addiction to control is just like any other… you carry it on a leash day by day, moment by moment, second by second. Sometimes you frolick so far from it, that you forget it is even attached to you. Sometimes you are so aware of it that you tug the leash closer, leaving little slack between you and the animal. And some days, you feel no leash at all, and realize you have become it… as you struggle for breath in your tight collar. “Why not just cut the ties altogether?” I ask myself. But even though I know it is possible, I hold tight to the pleasure that all addiction betrays us with.

I used to keep a photo as a reminder. It was a picture taken of me in Lima, Peru during my semester abroad in college. I was standing on a cliff at a famous outlook point above the ocean. My hair was dry and thinning under my baseball cap, my ribs visible beneath my black tank top, collarbones protruding, eyes sunken, chest flat, smile on my face, but no happiness to be seen. At the time, I didn’t see the physical sickness I had become… I only knew that I had to run around the neighborhood park exactly 16 times that evening in order to offset the sandwich I had eaten that day while I was out with my roommates. And this is at a time I truly thought myself to be improving.

I thought myself to be improving because I was now beginning to binge after restricting, and therefore was “eating better”? Because I was no longer in the comfort of my home gym, where I could run 5 miles on an empty stomach, and buy “safe” foods I had befriended from the local Giant? I was getting better, but I would write poems about death, mutilate my own face, and drink alcohol until I had no more mind to worry with. This was improvement in my sad, sad world at that time. This was the picture I kept around for a while, to remind myself how I didn’t want to hurt again.

Today I awoke to a healthy breakfast…. enough food, and the right nutrition I needed to begin my day, but safe and measured all the same. I remain always vigilant of what IS enough food, and what IS the right nutrition, but do I know to what extent? Today I decided to not do any deliberate exercise, and to rest from what little I did yesterday. But still, my reflection changed in the mirror the moment I decided that. I wonder if I am kidding myself with my idea of stability. I’ve seen the picture, I know how sly false assuredness can be. All I can be sure of today is that I am physically and spiritually healthier than ever. The brain is the one, of this trinity of wholeness, who still needs a babysitter. The mind is not as smart as it is clever. It clings to control. So until my leash is cut, which it will be, I will not let it remain in the dark. That is why I choose to share… because nothing unwanted can survive in the light.

What do you know?

Several weeks ago, Francesco and I got on the subject of the similarities among religions, and in their stories and beliefs. Francesco told me he thought he was a "relativist". I had never heard of a relativist, but I believed him if he said he was one. To him, a relativist is someone who doesn't take any scripture or story literally, but that takes into perspective the collective messages of many religions. I think that makes sense. I'm not a "relativist", but I understand where he is coming from. He jokingly asked me "What do you believe in, the Pachamama?" (alluding to my love of Peruvian/Inca culture). I told him, "No. But I do know what I believe, though." I didn't say what that was. He didn't ask.


Just a few weeks after that, I was emailing my mom back and forth... tiny, short and quick emails on random things we wanted to tell each other. We joke about religion often -- about the hypocrisies, about the "funny" things that somehow cannot be explained, about the drama, etc. I'm pretty sure out of all of the four siblings in my family, I am the least "religious", but I was a little surprised when my mom light-heartedly called me her atheist daughter. I wasn't offended, but I was sure that I was not an atheist, so I wrote her back to tell her what I believed. It was important to me that she knew.


I don't have the exact words that I wrote her that day, but it felt good to tell her, so I am going to put it in words again now. Sometimes putting feelings to words can make you surer of what it is you feel.


I believe in God.
I believe I am God.
I believe you are God.

The ultimate power, the creator, the decider, the puppet master, the spirit, all that is, the person behind the mirror, the you that knows the you, the me that knows the me, the anti-ego, the invisible constant...

No big white beards, no gender, no physical image. No books about it, no rights or wrongs about it, just the white canvas before the paint, light, and possibility,
I believe that we are all droplets of the same big splash of water. We each have our own shape and path, and our own unique reflection, but we came from the same place, and we will return to it.

I believe I have nobody to pray to except my inner being, and no one to worship besides my own spark for life.

I believe that we have all lived before, and we will all live infinitely again.

I believe we all chose to come to this planet.

I do not believe in coincidence, good or bad luck, fairness or unfairness... but that we are all in complete control of our paths and how they pull circumstances, people and places into them.

I believe we are each all powerful and all knowing.


There is much more to what I believe, and I feel it as clear as crystal water. I know these truths because I have lived them, and I am them. Do you know what you believe? Do you feel comfortable telling others? I can laugh at what I find amusing in the religions of others, but I am aware that anyone can just as easily laugh at what I have said. The most important thing is KNOWING what you believe. This is where we each bridge the connection between thought and spirit, and that is what true faith is.

Got me thinking...

I just picked up my new passport yesterday from the American consulate. The passport has changed a lot from the old one I got 9 years ago. As I flipped through the pages, I was positively surprised to see that the quotes on U.S. pride that adorn the tops of them did not just include those by old white men who used to wear curly wigs. Some of them do, but not all. Martin Luther King, Jr. has his words in our country’s passport, as does John F. Kennedy, and even Ronald Regan. When I first flipped through the pages, I was the most positively surprised to see the name of a Hispanic American, who I didn’t recognize at that first glance.

The quote was by Jose Antonio Navarro, a born and raised Texas of “prominent Spanish descent”, who fought for the independence of Texas from Spanish rule. I have to say that after googling him, I am not surprised that our leaders have chosen a person of Spanish decent who fought for independence from Spain. So typical. It’s like “we are using you for your obviously Spanish name, most people won’t know who you are, so you can be the cover-all-bases Hispanic American, and you fought to separate our country from the land your blood came from, which is actually in Europe.” Could they have chosen anyone, I mean ANYONE else? All respect to the very late Navarro, but seriously… so typical.

This all got me to thinking. Why was I so surprised that a Hispanic American’s quote was included? I wasn’t surprised that an African American’s words were there. Could this have to do with the fact that most would recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hero of this nation, while I didn’t even know who Jose Antonio Navarro was? Perhaps to a certain degree… for as skewed and inaccurate our textbooks are, and as WASP-y our national educational programs are, I will say something, which does not pretend African Americans are given the deserved recognition in the history of our country: African Americans are present. In the screwed-up version of the life of our nation, they are present. Maybe not accounted for, but present. I was still in the single digits, a little white girl in suburban Maryland, and I knew MLK, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and I will spare you the rest of the too-short list of the “lucky” few.

Hispanic Americans, on the other hand? Um… let me see who I knew about growing up. Did Pancho Villa have anything to do with the U.S.? (I didn’t know who he was, but I knew the name.) The guy from “La Bamba”, Lou Diamond Phillips? No, that was supposed to be about Ritchie Valens. He was important because he died, right? And why did his name sound so white? I knew Scarface, but he was really an Italian American playing a Cuban immigrant drug lord, so that doesn’t really count. You get where I am going… there were no Hispanic American “heros”, nobody present, nobody accounted for. Not even the sad excuse for a place in our books like George Washington Carver, who was story-book-ized (new word) to explain to little white pre-schoolers where their peanut butter came from. None of that.


To be completely honest, I do not think Hispanic Americans are considered as “American” as they deserve to be. Mexican Americans fought in the Civil War. The original California constitution was written in both Spanish and English. This is not a matter of Hispanic Americans being the “new”addition to the country. Granted, there is an influx of immigration of Latin Americans to the U.S., but this seems to me to be all the more reason that America needs to wake up and recognize that Hispanic Americans are a part of America.
I realize that this is a way more complex issue than I can delve into right now, and I do not want to simplify it. But sometime, you gotta simplify things to get a little clarity, right? I will ponder this some more… there are countless other ethnicities of Americans who are not allowed to truly feel “American”. I wonder how, and when this will change.

Amazing Discoveries...

This morning while I was eating breakfast, I discovered something funny: the mixture of sweet, fresh pineapple chunks dipped in plain yogurt creates a aftertaste uncannily similar to that of Krispy Kreme original donuts. It does! Try it before you call me crazy… and yes, I know I'm wierd.

UPDATE:

Mr. Jinlgles has not returned in the past six weeks to his under-the-gas-burner dwelling. This is not to say he is not around, as I have found "evidence" of him. But at this point, I have gotten used to an outdoor kitchen. It requires a few rules:

1) Store ALL food items in the refrigerator, including cereal, bread, fruit, etc.

2) Keep counters extremely clean and crumb-free.

3) Store waste hanging high, in a place where ant trails will be at a good distance.

4) Wash dishes immediately after use, and keep them covered when not in use.

5) Watch out for mice, geckos, cats, spiders, mosquitos, and all the rest of the critters that want to eat you and your food.

I live on a tropical island... I have to get used to sharing my living space with nature, so I am at peace with Mr. Jingles and the rest of the animal posse. But who am I kidding... there's probably more than one mouse anyway.

Leah starts blogging, take 2!

A few weeks ago, I realized that I really wanted to begin blogging. I was really “cised”, as my sisters used to say in the mid-90’s, and I got right to it and wrote a few entries. Well something happened that caused me to doubt the things I was writing. I became overcome with a paranoia that people who might read things I was happy about would find me boastful or full of myself. Maybe the reason this got at me so is because I struggled for a long time to find real happiness with myself. I had been sad for many years. I guess an analogy could be the people who lose all the weight, but still can’t bring themselves to put on the flattering, form-fitting clothes. That’s kind of it. I know there are people who speak positively of themselves and their lives all the time, and there are many who just do it purely… not to make others think they are great, not to make others think themselves lesser, just to wave their own flags tall and proud, because they know they are worth it. I want to be able to do that, and I know I will. And besides, I have other things to write about besides myself. So here we go again. Leah (otherwise known in blog world as Manifiesta) starts blogging, take 2! I deliberately choose to share everything I am about to share, with full knowing that I cannot – and no not want to – control how anyone views me. I have nothing to lose by being misunderstood, and so much to gain by just sharing….