Jah Love

We got Jah the summer that Japhy died. Somehow, it made sense-lose a friend get a dog...find yourself responsible for a life in order to substantiate that you still have one. We named him Jah, since Japhy liked reggae and, well, for me anyways, it was cool that Jah means "God" in rastafarian and "Dog" backwards is "God." Jah was such a sweet spirited bundle when we got him. He made college more rounded, adding an element of responsibility and fun that somehow enhanced the experience. He would ride with us as we pedaled bikes, running fast, leading the way to campus, tied loosely to a bench while we were in class. He became a campus wide name, everyone loved Jah. He was our fist baby, the glue that held us together, the representation of our connection, the committing factor. Sometimes it would occur to me that he was a metaphor for our love, he was the symbolic embodiment of our connect. When I went to Jersey to find a place I was devastated to find that no one would rent for a dog. I wanted him with me so badly, even though I knew he would be happier in Idaho. Then, he came to Jersey, in a place chosen for a baby and a dog and 2 cats. The night I went into labor with River was Jah's last night as my baby. I held onto him through contractions and when River was born, and Jah heard me scream and smelled the birth blood, he knew he became a dog. He is blind now. Totally blind. Almost a year ago, he wandered out of the yard and was hit in the behind, and then the cataracts overcame him, the trauma shocked his system. He bumps into things now. He searches for us and his food with his nose. Sometimes I think he is truly a metaphor for us. Sometimes I think we died when Japhy did and then Jah lived.

Making Almond Milk

Take 2 cups of raw, organic almonds (organic are recommended, but not required). Soak in a bowl of room temp water for 8 hours. The water should cover the almonds completely (the soaking removes protease inhibitors--which inhibit digestion-- and begin the sprouting process of the nut which makes the almonds more enzymatically "alive"). Rinse the almonds using a strainer or colander (notice the amount of excess "gunk" that is in the water--now you don't have to consume that stuff). Place almonds in blender using as much as 5 cups water and as little as 3 cups depending on how thick you want your final milk to be. A Vitamix or Champ blender is preferable as I blew out 5 regular blenders from making almond milk daily over a 3 month period. Blend until the almonds are completely pulverized--I usually count to 27. Place nutmilk bag over an adequately sized pan or bowl. Allow all contents to fill the bag. Carefully remove the bag from the bowl's rim, being sure to not let any of the insides come out. Cinch the bag at the top. Holding the top closed with your non-dominant hand "milk" the bag like you would a goat, or a cow, or a...well whatever it is is you have milked. Once all liquid is squeezed from the bag, squeeze more to get that extra rich almond yummy still left in the bag. Place bag of almond pulp in soaking bowl. Rinse blender of all first round remnants. Place clean almond milk liquid in the blender. Open section of real vanilla bean using a sharp blade to splice the bean in half. Scrape deeply at the beans inside shell to remove the precious, delicious brown vanilla seed. Carefully balance the knives edge on your way to the blender and place seeds in the liquid. Go back and scrape the bean more--its o.k. if some of the outer bean shell is used in the mixture (Sometimes vanilla bean seeds get under your fingernails--get them out and eat them). Add a generous amount of sweetner of your choice (soaked and pitted dates, raw honey, agave, maple syrup). Blend again until lovely white foam is prevalent at the top of the liquid. Pour, enjoy, refrigerate. (Raw cacao can be added for chocolate lovers at the vanilla sweetner stage). And what to do with the almond pulp? Make bread. That recipe is forthcoming.

Carefull

I'm srue it is perfectly normal. I emean, it is like movin from the infant stage right? Except at super rapid speed. Weeks are onths, and months are years and years are a lifetime. If I felt reborn then u=of course this is what would happen next. That process of differentiation. HTe freudian moment when one realizes that they actully are an autonomous unit. Not attached to the breast. not sucking a the the mother. So I caome here to write. And if anyone reads this, which i do not know, but if they do--be warned this is the post that comes from the place where nothing else is safe enough to be a mode of expression. Even the waterclor seems to small--my strokes want to be braod and beyons the tine card canvas I have chosen. I could roll out the Statesman endrolls but that would take too much energy and know this my body still feels week. Maybe that is the otehr explanation, I am just nerve frazzled. I mean I worked 5 hours today. i cleaned the ouse three times, I wnet to R's wninter performance--we had dinner out afterwards. Ihaven't done that much in the 3 weeks since my emergency entry into the hospital. I had this dream the other night. I know ishouldn't talk about my dreams at night, but maybe i can write about them and it will be o.k. one of the nurses took me out to dinner and gbasically tried to suck my soul out. enough with the dreams. if i go there i havae to go there. the scary dark cold buildigns and the hot deep pools. the hurt kittens. enough. so this ins one of those posts where i will refuse to fix the typos refuse. so allso it makes sesne. i am autonomous. and the hollow feeling it is mine and it is real. i am not sure about the sense of isolation thae sesne theat i havve sold out--myself. the sense that somehow the morphine toxified my brain into a state of dumb acceptance. dammit. so i have this alter. i have 4 alters. make that fivecause one is to Obama. what a totla wste of surface space really--but they are all beautiful and if you count the fire mantel taht is six. why son't i just stop this and pray? i thinkk i will. ithink i will sit and contemplate. tirshgave me a book in the hosipaital called the red scarf it is about stalinist russia and the labor campes oand love and starvation and love and death and love and toruture and love and it iwas hell to read in pain, but it was my friend by the tie=ime i left the hospital and it was so long and it draggdthrough snow covered russia and itit made me woander if marx wwas in on it. if he made his own opium on purpose. and that scares me. but it eneded. and now i don't have i itanymore and i have to say goodbyw to sophia and i am sad. i think i will pray now.

There were no knives

I have noticed, since following my appendectomy, that there is a general conception that surgery entails traditional cutting devices such as knives. Many people have talked about them "cutting into me" and a few friends have mentioned the knives. In the moment it didn't even occur to me to clarify what was actually done to my body to remove my appendix (and a small section of my colon). While some "cutting" instruments were used, my abdominal surgery was performed laparoscopically In laparoscopic surgery they puff up the body cavity and make microincisions using special microscopes and lasers to conduct the operation. In my instance, the surgery was, what my father described (my dad is a retired physician), as the best laparoscopic surgeon in the Northwest if not the nation. That, was dumb luck, considering I had let the infection go for 4 days before ending up in the emergency room after working all day. When my surgeon told me about the operation he said there would be one small incision on my lower right side (very near my only tattoo). It ended up that when he went in things were a lot worse than he had thought. It took him a long time to clean up the infection which had spread throughout my body cavity. My dad said most surgeons would have switched at this point and made a large cut vertically up my abdomen. My guy didn't. He stayed laproscopic and made another small incision above my belly button (directly below what was previously my only abdominal scar from a hernia repair when I was 18). He then used this technique to remove a section of my colon and then stitched my colon back together. Because the infection was so bad, he had to insert a drainage tube that went into my abdomen from an additional circular incision on the left side of my lower abdomen, and then stretched across my abdomen internally to the are aon the right side where my appendix had been (removing that thing, btw, was not the most pleasant experience I have had). So "knives" traditionally defined, were not at play here. Nevertheless, the broader thing I want to write about, using this bit of Western medicine technology as a bridge to the miracles of Eastern medicine is the way in which any surgery, whether traditional or more modern, does in fact sever more than the physicality of embodied flesh. Immediately after my surgery I called my Chinese medicine caregiver. I have seen him, and him only with my family fr the past three and a half years. He explained that he had to wait till 1 week after my surgery to administer any care, but that he would be able to help reduce the severity of any scar tissue I experienced internally, namely on my colon (anyone familiar with nutritional health and digestion would appreciate how scar tissue on your colon could really mess you up). I was eager to see him, because I am really into proper passage of, well, fecal matter. My Chinese med guy does acupuncture on me, but on my visit to his clinic shortly after getting out of the hospital, I did not think he would do acupuncture. I don't know why, I just didn't. But he did and while doing it explained to me that in surgery one of the main issues, from an Eastern med perspective is that the body's energetic meridians are severed. In abdominal surgery this severing creates energetic blockages in all direction. He explained that many people heal physically fine from surgery, but because they don't heal energetically, they get a lot of scar tissue build up and never really feel the same. The way he practices is to find the mirror of the injured area in a different location. So, the needles he inserted were placed in my angle, leg, wrist and shoulder. After my treatment, even right as i got off the table, I noticed a big difference in what had previously been soreness in every part of my abdomen. The rest of the day the whole area tingled as blood flow was restored, by the next day I was at least 50% better. I was also lucky to have a friend who is training in Ama body work give me a treatment in my home and another dear friend purchase me an Ama treatment fro the owner of one of the best school in Boise. Both of these treatments focused on energetic repair as well. I just had my second acupuncture treatment today and will have 2 more. Last night I was reading from a really good book called, "Shaman, Healer, Sage" by Alberto Villoldo. I bought this book this summer, for mostly addressing emotional trauma. It has sat by my bed, virtually unread, until I returned form the hospital. When I had tried to read it before, I was very overwhlemed by the ways it pointed out so much unhealth in my life. Now, confronted undeniably with that unhealth, I am making a point of reading it daily. In a section where the author describes the body as a magnet which can be energetically shifted through attracting elements to move (like that cool think with iron nails and glass we all played with as children), rather than forcing them to do so he writes, " ...I understood that Western medicine, in an effort to change the physical body, was merely moving the iron filings around the glass. Surgery and medication often brought about violent, traumatic change on the body. This approach struck me as crude and invasive, like scattering the iron filings with my hand, rather than moving them by shifting the magnet underneath the glass." The author, argues that this approach takes little regard for the effect on the body's energetic field, and I would have to agree. Later on, Villaldo talks about acupuncture meridians , known also to the Inca in a different form. These embodied meridians are also present in the earth. he writes, " Along the surface of the planet run flux lines or cekes, similar to the acupuncture meridiancs, connecting the major chakras of the Earth. The meridians of the Earth traverse the globe, transporting energy and information from one part of the planet to another." We have all heard of the earth's electro-magnetic field right? Well, that is the same thing. And apparently we are currently living through a time where that field's potency is significantly declined. Villaldo continues, "Many people in our technological society are disconnected from the matrix of the Universe." Amen to that, I say. And it all makes sense really, disconnect from the earth, leads to disconnect from ourselves, leads to dis-ease. I feel incredibly lucky and to have experienced my illness within the frame of both these styles of medicine. I am so totally intrigued by the many lessons I am learning form this trial. And I am so grateful to have access to energetic healing as well as physical healing. if these two forms of medicine were more integrated culturally I believe we would be a much happier people on a much healthier planet.