bonerattler

6.5 hours in a suspension-free bus, designed to seat people shorter than 5’4″ – it’s been awhile since I made that kind of journey. Chiang Mai is my salvation, my sanity. A plethora of farang, fresh green juice, bee pollen, salads, cinemas & bookstores tickle the parts Nan cannot reach. Coming home to Nan is always sweet – I love the quiet, the animals, the river & the smaller critters [cockroaches & rats in Chiang Mai are HUGE], but staying here without escape is unthinkable – green vegetables are rare..

This weekend the planets aligned & my friend Poteet was in Chiang Mai ~ we had sumptuous catching up time ~ flexing my mind in ways neglected since New York. While teaching English has given me a unexpected appreciation of my language, my vocabulary is rusting without use & variation. I crave to hear, read & speak more than Nan allows. Not only did she bring language, but cacao beans. And her iPhone ~ she downloaded Hipstamatic & we began to play. This application kinda disturbs me. It means anyone can make great images, without needing a good camera, or any knowledge of editing software. Which means I need to up my game.

This time I discovered Rimping supermarket ~ and devoured organic spinach. After 3 months without juice, spinach & partays ~ I’ve overdosed on pleasures this weekend. Still a little fevered and achy after spending Friday in hospital being checked out for malaria or dengue fever [of course I thought it was meningitis or encephalitis = too much House MD] watching Inception & The Sorcerer’s Apprentice IN ENGLISH!! was a necessity..

Thank you John for an amazing party & yummy steam room ~ I loved being within the conscious community ~ that was the first room of ‘family’ I’ve walked into since arriving in Thailand. More words coming soon ❤

It’s monsoon season! A storm cloud over the Saturday ‘walking market’. I discovered 3 amazing photographers there ~ they use Multiply for showing & selling their work.

Poteet

Semi-detached termite house

New wish list: iPhone

 

Honking

By honking, I mean stinky. Smelly. Foul odors filling the air. It’s hard to describe how gross the markets can reek at the wrong time of day, or when it hasn’t rained in awhile..

Alas durian season is over in this Northern province!

I’m too disturbed by dead seafood – I literally feel I need to apologize ~ “I’m sorry, they know not what they do” ~ to each and every critter, so I avoid that section of the market.

Wasps. We don’t shop here.

Most vendors swat or cover their foods. This lady seems proud of her swarm. Maybe they’re laying eggs which adds to the flavor/goodness?

Beautiful parcels. Their speedy wrapping skills are amazing.

Rank

Whole, inside-out, cooked, small birds. Stinking

Sizzling

I’m a big fan of non-plastic wrapped meat – the more real the better. Stinks though..

 

Gold

 

4 inches

It is never silent here. The quote “solitude is a human presumption” fills my mind at night, along with the song of crickets, lizards, birds & miscellaneous critters I’ll never see. The day time is clanging with cockerels, dogs, motorbikes, temple prayer, birds & rain. I think this hawk moth is the quietest creature here.. ❤

 

Thailand

2 weeks ago I was in New York.

Now I live in Thailand.

Somehow.

Within 1 week of being interviewed, I was airborne, work permit & visa in hand. If only America was that easy..

I find myself wearing long sleeves [unheard of!!] and teaching secondary school children, in the Northern Province of Nan. It’s 8 days since I landed & today is the first time I feel normal, am able to construct a sentence & have a sense of self. Amazing what jetlag & this climate does to me. The average temperature here is 34°C / 92°F & very very humid. I’m in a beautiful house, with a fish farm across the road, parakeets & cockerels next door [see bottom pic], & the Nan river behind us. I’ll be here for several months – unless life without cacao proves truly unthinkable. More when I’m fully reconstructed ~ for now, some snap snaps x

 

New York peace of mind ~

Crazy though it sounds, New York is my default place for inspiration/rest, stimulation/quiet. After the 1st few days of feeling high & running around trying to see everyone [never happens, alas], daily yoga, Baaba Maal [my personal Elvis] @ Fillmore [photo below, not mine] – thank you Nirav; walking miles & miles, kirtan, running round with JGirl & our cameras, sipping tea on the bikini-clad roof terrace of Soho House, Get Your Dance On [best night in aaages] – the noise & intensity begins to overwhelm me & I look within.

There’s nothing like a yang built-on-granite-rock-island, swept clean by a river to activate whatever needs activating. While the family were loving up Eden, I felt deeply pulled to be in New York.

And what it came down to ~ my last few months ~ I was disconnected from Source. Any time I’ve lost touch with genuine glee & gratitude, it’s a spiritual crisis. Because there is nothing else. Period.

Spiritual Liberation by Michael Bernard Beckwith is knocking my socks sideways to Sunday ~ words cannot express. There is no ‘guru’ – it just takes the right words at the right time from the right person to push your love buttons. Done deal. So it took sitting in Central Park, reading the opening chapter, crying a little to re-enter my body & stop wanting to jump off the balcony. Wow. Add a little Paul McKenna audio trance & I’m relatively sane. I never thought I’d say this. Like, NEVER. But Paul, you rock. And hard. Thank you ~

I made new friends. Really really gorgeous people who I adored at first sight. I ate Raw Soul pizza for the first time – officially BPE [best pizza ever]; I stopped consuming nut/seed milk, because I had no vitamix. WTF was I thinking? It does not suit me – after 24 hours of ‘flu’, my nose hasn’t stopped running since I quit & I’m feeling alot lighter. I went upstate & discovered the beauty of the sunset train south down the Hudson. And Walmart’s yoga pants. Judge me if you will, but $8.33 v/ $80 @ Lululemon is a no brainer. No matter how cool their manifesto & that it’s a great place to work..

Thank you to the beautiful Arlene for her tea & coffee package. She contacted me about photography & then loved me up with tea ~ way to my heart ❤

 

May

This mural/painting is 1 day fresh ❤

 

Agave ~

You know I love the stuff. Not.

I conducted a live blood work experiment with Jasmine Scalesciani back in December 08, looking into the effects of agave syrup on my body. Now Kevin Gianni with Dr. Joseph Mercola & David Wolfe are speaking out about the evil shit. Phew. Thank you all for your work & continuing research into health & vitality ~ our sharing of information is changing the world.

Please ask your local restaurants, chocolate makers & ‘gourmet’ chefs to rethink their choice of ingredients. I’m very, very grateful for cafes & stores making and selling raw vegan foods, but it kinda drives me nuts that so few ‘raw’ restaurants actually make food I can [or want to] eat, and that the snacks on offer give you nut-gut, bad breathe, go straight to your thighs or taste like soap. We know better, lets raise the bar ~

I’m skipping with glee that both Quintessence & Rawvolution – my favourite East & West coast restaurants have cut agave from their menus – bring on the treats ❤

11/05/10 – Update.

Vanessa Barg of Gnosis Chocolate has gone to Mexico to witness 1st hand the agave harvest process. She is happy with her findings & will publish a report in her newsletter soon.

As always, figure out what foods suit you & which suppliers make products you like & trust..

 

Dandelion

Pink rubber-glove-handed, I roam the hedgerows seeking dandelion leaves, cleavers, wild garlic, hawthorn & nettles. Potent bounty, free food, wild nourishment, fertile life: sounds of birds & bees, the colors of butterflies wings ~ Thank you x

 

Black Dog ~ Ghost Dog

Twice in the last week, friends have said to me “You disappeared from my life”.

I replied, kinda expecting them to know ~ “I disappeared from my own life”.

In January the Black Dog* had me in it’s grips. February was Slate Dog recovery month – I have no memory of that time. March was Cloud Dog – fragile; regaining strength – like I was shadowed by a recent illness, the scars of which were not visible to anyone else. An urge to live again, countered with the need to be gentle & soft. I’m amazed how long it’s taken.

April – I am alive. Aries, the 1st sign of the zodiac & symbol of new life – the shoots of spring have sprung, I am strong, excited, energized & optimistic; activated & engaged with the world. It’s been awhile. A long long while since I felt the absence of anxiety, stress & panic. There is still some repeat-cycle monkey mind stuff, like ‘What have you been doing?’ ‘Where has your time gone?’ ‘You’re not being productive, being of service, useful, making tons of money’. And then, that whole living up to your potential thing.

And a large part of that is the ingrained work ethic – get up, do, busy, do, busy. Justifying my time. My life. Still not used to not having a ‘job’ & not living in a city. Accountable only to myself for how I spend my day, I still have my metaphorical time card in hand, looking to clock in/out..

This time with my family is a blessing. I left home so young, I never got to hang out with my parents & I never really made time since. I know I’ll look back on this time one day & be very grateful.  I’m waiting for the doorbell to ring heralding the arrival of my new passport, so I can take wing again ~ and this Ghost Dog? Slink away little one, you won’t be coming with me ✖

*Winston Churchill popularized the term, when he referred to his depression as his “black dog”

 

Sukified

Suki ‘Sunny Honeybee, pollinator of  all things beautiful’ (thank you Corinna) is back from the freezing shores of thermal-clad Ibiza (we had warmth & sun the day we left!) & is ready to Sukify the next lucky faster. My favorite day there was the one I spent alone on Salinas beach, in silence, in the company of lizards & my camera: bliss ~

The last fast went brilliantly = a slim, flexible, energized, happy client & a learning, growing Suki. I always expand [whilst shrinking] way more than I expect to, & then look forward to upping my game, giving more & expanding the program ~ holding a stronger space the next time.

Contact me if you would love to be skinnified x

 

Island Simple

I’ve had many emails from people in countries where the foods we now consider a normal part of our diets are unavailable or prohibitively expensive. I advise them on where to source products, remembering back to the good old days pre-cacao & ‘superfoods’ when our shorter list of needs were met by exciting parcels from Nature’s First Law in San Diego, and exotic fruit deliveries Fedex’d from Orcos in Paris. These days, with so many amazing shops in USA & UK it’s easy to forget the rest of the world. I’m enjoying the island of Ibiza [Spain] for the month of March. When the supplies I cannily brought with me run out, I will eat local fresh seasonal fruits & vegetables, because that’s all there is.

The six health stores here pretty much carry the same products and anything not Spanish grown are more than double that of England [which we already know is overpriced], I’ve seen no cacao products, medicinal mushrooms, Chinese or Amazonian herbs. There is plenty of Tibetan incense, which seems weird, but no weirder than it would be to find it anywhere else in the world – all islands rely on imports – England especially, since we’ve forgotten how [been subsidized not to] to self-sustain.

So how to adapt to a different land & food source when your tastes demand spirulina, nutritional yeast, cacao, chia & lucuma etc – other than growing them yourself? This self-confessed super-food junkie gets simple. You work with what you’ve got, and what is affordable. And I mean bread & milk affordable – I’m so used to justifying my necessities, but I can’t use the same reasoning out here. Unpasteurized miso, seaweed & amazing raw tahini & almond butter are costly, but easy to find.

What does grow on this 35 kilometer long land mass? Avocados [there are THOUSANDS on the trees at the moment], almonds [100% untreated - they are in glorious blossom now], olives [most are exported], carob [I've seen signs of the recent infestation], oranges [the trees are barely standing, they are so weighted with fruit], limones, persimmon [beats Ojai hands down], figs [August - October figpig season is insane], parsley, chervil, rosemary, sunflower seeds, best ever spinach ~ many by the roadside for the picking. I dreamt of driving all the way here with a truck loaded high with Tree Harvest/Raw Food World shipments. I thought of many angles – including sending stuff ahead of arrival to get around luggage limits, but there’s no letterbox/mailman here – mailboxes need to be set up, so shipping is too complicated. So there’s something nice about relaxing into what is available & looking forward to treats on special occasions, without my embedded presumption that I need/deserve them everyday.

We visited Finca Ecologica [Eco-Bio-Organic], where French Jacque grows & sells ridiculously gorgeous produce and teaches permaculture year round to the many WWOOFers who arrive to work the land. Next time I’ll ask him if lucuma could grow here.. And what of the Ibicencans? They subside on cigarettes, coffee, potatoes, meat, local moonshine & beer – pretty much like anywhere else in Europe. According to the ‘Ibiza Sun’ 52% are overweight..

After the closure of the only raw restaurant last year, the spotlight is on Javier Medvedovsky, Espiritual Chef of Natural Food Art ~ rockin the heart of Spain’s gastronomy..

I am available worldwide for holistic, guided personal, custom detoxs in your own home. Alone or with friends, partners and/or children: 24/7 in-residence, tailored, cleansing programs. Want change? Contact me today x

 

patience

I’m juice fasting. Again. I’ve lost track of how many days I’ve fasted, how many different methods, techniques & flavours I’ve tried now. One thing is constant – I’m grumpy and resistant for the 1st day – no matter who is leading the fast. If there’s an authority figure & I’m following their program – god help them [Cue: massive apology to all previous fast leaders]. If it’s me, I’m just grumpy and resentful. What strikes me, again, is how much patience it takes to be ‘with’ the fast. We’re so used to quick fixes & instant gratification, that even though 7 days is a fraction of my life & the benefits will last years, being patience through the long moments of hunger, the roller coaster of emotions means you have to be very present. Which makes time feel longer. Because even if you distract yourself with movies, music, books, talk & laughter, you can’t get escape the very real physical sensations which you’re currently feeling. It makes me kinda narcissistic too – because once I get past the grump, & I start feeling good, I’m so dam smug! I go through the whole – I’ll never eat this again, I’ll never do that again [ie. judging dehydrated/gourmet raw foods & agave syrup], until this time I got to “Next time I’m depressed will someone PUHLEEASE frogmarch me to an aeroplane, send me somewhere hot & starve me till I’m happy”. Seriously.

This is the first time I’ve been without added salt, green tea, my amazing cacao/nut milk/tea elixirs or tahini in forever. I know I need to constantly reassess what I consume, notice when my own habits become less-than healthy patterns [easy to judge others, right?] and step back and see the bigger picture. I still consume ‘raw’ things because they’re raw, when other choices would be lighter or cleaner. Doh! And again, I’m reminded that my libido is magnified if I’m thin/hungry – so I usually eat more when I have no one to channel that energy with. Yes there are answers for this too, probably:

But on the whole, food is a no brainer for me. Yoga it would appear is my greatest teacher, challenge, stumbling block & saving grace. It’s genius. It works like nothing else [for me]. I have 3 mats. I have no excuses, but in the 10 years since I discovered Ashtanga, have I maintained a regular practice? When I’m on a yoga retreat, it feels like it’s the answer to everything & nothing in my life will fail. Then 2 weeks slip by & I haven’t so much as stretched, and it’s not for lack of thinking about it. I start each morning with the intention to get on the matt, and sometimes I manage a sun salutation or 3, but I bail at the resistant point. I’m not the gym-bunny, lets-schedule-time-to-sweat kinda girl. I’ve never had an endorphin rush – from any form of exercise [which I think is connected to my cacao capacity]. I’ve never been fit or toned, and my get-out-of-jail is thinking “I’m just not the kind of person, I don’t need to show my belly in public“.  But I KNOW, every cell knows, what a profound effect yoga has on my life. It’s only when I’m light & clear on a fasting that my energy levels are so intense, my joints loose & supple, that I am driven to move my body. My recent Jivamukti class [prior to this fast] was a huge wake-up call for the creaking stiff shape I’m in & how ancient my body feels if I don’t take care of it. Watch this space..

My blood pressure is crazy low at the best of time, so I monitor it daily to make sure I don’t fall into the ‘coma’ zone. It has happened before – well not quite, but nearly – I hit the dizzy/fainting zone. What I love most, other than my sinews & hollows, great skin & shrinking belly is how my mind works. My thoughts are sweet & clear. Most of them seem interesting or important [to me] – NONE of them have been negative or pessimistic.

Tomorrow we liver flush. I LOVE this day. I adore my delicious oil & citrus blend – I’m salivating already. Taking time to lie & be. To rest & release. With the full moon to assist us, the time is right…

 

Temple @ TED

“Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works – sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.”

“Autism is part of who I am”  Temple Grandin

And she speaks for me. And for every non-academic ‘school-failure’ child who needs stimulating, wants to find relevance in being ‘schooled’ & who dreams outside the career advisor’s box, which lets face it, if it couldn’t contain life’s extraordinary possibilities when I was at school ~ it does so 3000% less now.

Also on TED – Yann Arthus-Bertrand – ridiculously moving, beautiful, important. His projects Home [a free movie with zero copyright] & 6 Billion Others [er, hello - dream job?] gives me tingles!

Now, where is Sarah Silverman’s recent talk?..

 

Kippers ~

2 nights ago I was told my vday vid was posted on FB. Weird.

It gets weirder: out of 240,692 videos uploaded and tagged with VDAYGIFT – my video is the 5th most viewed of Ashton Kutcher’s top 117 favorites. I wouldn’t have bashed it out with little, thought or planning, early morning before grooming or adequate light if I’d known. Seriously, for me to slack on lighting?!!!…

I love Valentine’s Day ~ I’ve always loved sending as many secret cards as I could & any excuse to love up my friends & random strangers. This year my date was with the Divine @ Kirtan. We sang, chanted & prayed our love ~ the reverberations spread far.

I never ate those boil in the bag kippers [in the story] – they became part of my metalwork degree show, with words etched into steel “For you I would go to the bottom of the sea, and for you I would catch a fish” ~ while the boil-in-the-bag kippers hung from a golden wire.

As for the potatoes? Some things should remain secret ✘