Okay, first off, I am not trying to tell you I am vegan now. I love me some dairy, and a life without milk chocolate sounds sad.

One thing that keeps me from doing it is knowing that I will become a sensitive sissy if I do. Here's the analogy: If you take someone that smokes a pack a day and you have them smoke one more cigarette, they will hardly notice any effect. But if you have a young child (or me) with nice pink lungs smoke one, they will feel like they are choking themselves.

There's something about switching your diet to eliminate the middle man (the animals that come between the seeds, plants and your stomach) that re-trains your stomach to operate on a new level of efficiency, or so I've been told.

People always ask me how I get enough protein on my diet sans meat, as if I'm wasting away. People in this country are so used to planning their meals around the meat that they can't imagine a meal without it. There is so much prejudice in the athletic world that I want to get back into full time training just to show people you don't NEED meat. Look at the elephant…no meat, no problem. I wouldn't mess with an elephant OR call one a sissy.

I remember an assignment in an honors college critical thinking class to bring in a song with meaningful lyrics. We had to read the lyrics aloud then play the song for everyone. Everyone laughed or snickered when it was my turn and told them I had brought a song by Alanis Morisette (it was ‘Would Not Come’).

But by the time I had finished reading the lyrics, they understood why I had chosen that song. While they were expecting a scorned lover’s song, what they got was something much broader and more relevant.

Today’s lyric is another gem I found in a Switchfoot song (Golden (Album Version), off their Nothing is Sound album), a band I never would have volunteered to see in concert were it not for a friend who had tickets.

‘There’s a fear that burns like trash inside.’

What a beautiful line. All of our fears, our insecurities ARE just that–trash we burn inside ourselves. Sometimes we stoke the fire ourselves even. And the product of cultivating fear in ourselves is a poisonous smoke we blow everywhere, causing others to turn their backs and walk away. Remember that fear is trash, and our job is to take out the trash, not burn it!

Traveling alone for this past week has reminded me of something: How being alone tests your faith in the universe (literally “one song”, or the fact that we are all part of one big song). Being among crowds of “strangers” can make you question your every move, and make you wonder if you are really OK. I suppose that is why people always tell me that I’m brave to pack up my things and go driving off on my own, just hunting for adventures.

In new situations, your brain is constantly re-assessing your interactions with the people and environment around you and forcing you to re-evaluate your responses. I noticed my natural reaction to this stimulus was first to become needy…to force long eye contact with people, or to hold onto conversations a bit longer than normal, just to have a false assurance that I was OK. Then my yoga training kicked in, and Swami Satchidananda’s words began to guide me: If you want nothing, then everything will want you.

I found that as soon as I gave up my insecurities about having my needs met, and just focused on being interested in others, I was finally greeted with the bountiful, meaningful connections I had been craving, and even offered a place to stay for tomorrow night. Another way of saying it is “Let Go and Let God.”

It reminds me of a particularly frustrating week for me in San Francisco some months back. I was feeling sorry for myself one morning and thinking that I was so poor I didn’t even have bread in the refrigerator with which to make a cheese sandwich for lunch. I was reluctant to go ahead and pay for groceries once again with my credit card at the grocery store because it wasn’t payday yet and I still hadn’t developed a good plan for making ends meet. It was that exact afternoon; I dropped my business laundry off at the dry cleaners, and my dry cleaning lady came from the back of the store carrying a bag with 3 loaves of bread, and offered for me to take them home. She explained that they (Chinese) prefer to eat rice, and her mother brings home food like this from the senior center that they just can’t eat. That was an emotional moment for me, being handed bread from a stranger in a clear time of need (very New Testament!).

I took it as God’s way of saying, “Look how I will provide for you. Keep your peace, continue to do the job I have set before you, and you will make it through.” I guess looking back on it, that was my own personal miracle. As far as I know, I am the only customer of that dry cleaners that takes home loaves of bread with the laundry–sometimes so much bread that myself and my roommates can’t use it all.

My lesson from this trip was to trust the universe. It has shown me, once again, that I will be taken care of.

So I was looking up Bell’s Palsy to make sure I spelled it right, and lo-and-behold found out there is a strong connection between it and cold sores. Wow! Each little mystery, indeed.

http://www.bellspalsy.ws/cause.htm

FHS Reunion 00015, originally uploaded by Chrissy Mc.

I realize my last couple posts have been a bit depressing. In spite of the beautiful scenery around me, I am reminded every day about how little energy I have. For the past year or two, I have lived in a constant state of low-energy, like I’m on a mild depressant or something.

I’ve decided to return to taking multivitamins. I’ve been monitoring my health fairly closely over the past year since foregoing eating meat, though I haven’t been to a doctor or gotten stats. I remember getting tested for anemia when I worked at Chevron, and was disappointed when the tests came back negative. I’ve always FELT a little anemic, but have never been able to prove it.

Some other strange symptoms have returned this year…in February, I began pulling at my split ends again. I believe I have at least a mild form of trichotillomania, which started around age 12/13. Pulling your hair out is a funny disorder. Basically, it does what other addictions do, which is to focus the mind when it becomes overwhelmed by either boredom/ennui or overstimulation. It’s like your brain is a CD or record (for those of you that kick it old-school) that skips for a while, and while it is skipping you kind of transcend time and circumstances. My hairstylist told me it is always the girls with the beautiful, thick, healthy heads of hair that end up with this habit. For the past couple of weeks, it has been under control.

Boredom seems to be the biggest trigger for me, and boredom actually can become more of an issue the busier you try to be! When you are completing task after task during the day, the pauses between the business feels like boredom, or a kind of uneasy indecisiveness.

I have a theory that there are many things that ly dormant in our bodies and just wait for stress to bring them out. For example, my father has had all his toes amputated in the past couple of years. As far as he can recall, he thinks it may have stemmed from an injury he had as a boy scout when he was 8 years old. He had a shoe problem on a long hike and ended up with an infection. It was supressed for about 50 years, then came back when his foot was re-injured during a construction accident.

Similarly, since I was a child, I would get cold sores on my lower lip when stressed mentally or when I would be in the sun for too long. The last one I had was probably 3-5 years ago. I’ve learned to pay better attention to my stress levels, and had avoided them pretty well until this past week, when my excitement and mental planning for my class reunion and vacation got the best of me.

Another disturbing thing I’ve noticed this year is that the left side of my face will start to go numb if I hold onto any negative stress at my day job. Luckily I caught this one early enough and recognize the triggers. I know people who have had one side of their face paralyzed (Bell’s Palsy?) and it’s not pretty!

So I know I sound like a mess right now, but that’s what I get for volunteering for a crazy, chaotic lifestyle this summer! Routines are probably good for people to have, and I should probably get back into one when I return from my 1.5-week vacation.

As I drive over some impressive bridges en route to Eugene, Oregon, I am reminded of how interesting the next 100 years will be! Eighty percent of the nation’s bridges are deteriorating. Oil pipeline infrastructure designed for a 50-year life expectancy in steel and concrete life is reaching the point of structural collapse. The Nation’s landfills, though some have been retrofitted, will continue to collect poison and toxins that no one has decided what to do with should climate change disrupt these weak, poisonous burial grounds. Road construction/maintenance on America’s highways is predicted to fall behind population demands.

You get the feeling we are living in the last of the ‘good ole days,’ before energy, food, and resources (air, water, etc) become scarce, and the infrastucture begins to collapse. The engineers that run our oil companies, levee systems, and transportaion systems did not design for a civilization that would last thousands of years, but DOZENS of years.

This will put us in a vulnerable position in the eyes of our enemies. The population will demand more resources be spent to upkeep infrastructure, yet we will have to keep the military strong to protect our interests. This can go very badly or very well, depending on who our leader is.
The leader will need to be someone with a thousand-year vision for our civilization. I believe this is why we currently see the shift in politics away from special-interest money. Special interests generally support initiatives that create short term benefits for ‘special’ individuals at the expense of the greater, common good.

We’ve recognized early on as a Nation that un-governed capitalism fosters a primitive human tendency toward selfish greed. That is why there are laws against Monopoly and Trusts which drive money (and power) to single entities at the expense of less powerful entities.
If Obama really is the candidate of change that we all hope for, his will be the responsibility of defining the next 300 years and beyond:

How can we be LESS greedy as a nation? How will we take better care of our citizens and neighbors? How will we clean up the messes we’ve created? How will we come together with the intelligent nations of the world to allocate resources and what goals will the world set for itself? Will each person vow to let their neighbor find and serve God in their own way?

Like the Phoenix, our citizens must rise to the occasion. Serious discussions must take place in every city legislature, every house, every church. Who do we WANT to be? This is our chance to right the course.

A few days before my big trip back to Montana, a man and his two grown sons were shot to death in their cars on my street corner in San Francisco. The motive was determined to be road rage. That 4-way stop is a particularly frustrating one located on the way up an unkempt hilly street lined with cars.

This episode so close to my house made my obervations while driving back to Montana particularly poignant. It was amazing how, when I reached about Pocatello going north, how remote a possibility road rage seemed. Life and traffic just seemed to slow down, and I observed people actually looking me in the eye from their cars. If anything, these perfect strangers began to go out of their way to yield to me in traffic, smiling and waving me forward, even out-of-turn. Driving became a pleasant experience, almost a way of interacting socially, like making small talk in a grocery store.

Having spent over 1.5 years in a city has certainly given me another perspective, and I have to say that there is nothing like the small-town friendliness that I grew up with. Those that say life in Northern California will make you soft have probably never spent time in the true “North”.

Ahhh, Home Sweet Home.

How much are we the product of our own dreams, and how much are we acting out the dreams of others?

I didn’t think I had any heroes. Then I found out today that George Carlin died. His comedy and commentary were a large influence on me. I consider him a sort of counter-culture hero. His critique and analysis of the culture’s use of language in particular was always thought-provoking and honest. He was a true “smart” comedian. He took whatever was popular and dissected it for its true motives and history. I didn’t always agree with his conclusions, or enjoy his foul-mouthed delivery, but he is a hero to me for wanting to find the truth and speaking it boldly.

I was lucky to see him in concert a couple of years ago in Bakersfield, CA. He was looking pretty frail then at 70, though gruff and witty as ever, and it was awesome seeing him in person. It was like when I drove to Modesto and got to see Suzy Powell compete in the discus throw. She, like George Carlin, was someone I had admired and whose actions I had imitated. It was emotional to see them both in person.

Thanks, George, for being a light in the world. You are a legend and your voice will be missed.

Dark Night 00004, originally uploaded by Chrissy Mc.

My back yard at 1:30 a.m. as viewed from my bedroom window with my camera shutter half-closed!