Thursday, February 17, 2011

In the Fence of Food

a) A salad a day keeps the IBS away!

b) It says something about the way we civilize our eating when you use your teeth as a knife to chop vegetables for a salad.

c) Wild factoid: salad comes from the Latin for salt, because briny vegetables were the dish of the Roman day.

d) Fun term: salad days. That is to say, days of being green. In other words, that period of inexperienced youth.

e) My salad days are my salad days!

Friday, February 4, 2011

Get Back, JoJo

So. I've moved. I found what I imagined would be a sanctuary for day-dreaming and dream-blogging. That is to say, a room with a desk and lamps for mood lighting and a window that faces the East, so I can wake up buried in light and watch the sunset reflected in the orange bark of the neighbor's trees. But I didn't imagine that I'd be living one cubicle-thin wall away from a Chinese fellow, who talks at the volume that they tend to (is that racist?) and clears the phlegm from his throat as a half-hour gong. Or that once I had the internet I would spend hours in (on) my eternal sanctuary of life-procrastination.

It's should be little wonder then that yesterday I purchased The Now Habit to try to address what the author calls "a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision". And it was fitting that as I waited in line these thoughts streamed through my mind: "I don't need this. I know the problems. I know the solutions. I just have to start putting them into action". What was the anxiety I almost postponed there? The embarrassment I imagined I would feel when I set that book on the counter in front of the cashier. I bought it. And on the walk home I told myself something like, "The mind works in patterns. You have the wrong ones in your head. That if you delay long enough, problems will go away. That there's always more time and money to pour into this B.A. And on. Reading. (And then I corrected myself). Studying this book will help built new, better patterns in your mind, so that you can get to doing what matters".

There's a lot of things to say. I'm going to try to get to some. For now, this: it's interesting how each life becomes it's own narrative, with motifs and recurrent images and such. My name is Jamie. That name has a flavor of childhood in it. My face is young. And I have trouble, to say the least, leading an adult, independent life. None of this is self-pity. It's just a funny story. And as with all life-stories, we seek some sort of redemption. We try to make the story turn out well. A dramatic, cathartic reversal. So, here we go. Every day.