This morning I sit in Normal, Illinois, at the Coffee House.

I have been reading lately.  books abundant.  I read this book ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach this past week.  A curious experience for me.  An important experience for me.  in my perception.  It is written in what I would call a simplistic, accessible style, and it discusses some “big ideas” about spirituality and the universe that resonate with me.  A little silly and cheesy perhaps although it illuminates the way perception may be the lens through which we navigate our worlds.  Right now, I buy into it.  Last week, I said to my roommate, “maybe there is another way to understand understanding”– and I wonder if the book stimulated these thoughts in me or if I am just reconnecting with these ideas again.  I also had a dream in which Matt, fellow farmhand and friend was breaking through huge rock walls with his mind power. all the same stuff….

In my perception, being “on my own” again, encourages states of reflection that it almost seemed as if there was not time for before.  anyway.  I’m not really sure where I want to go with this conversation.

Last week, as I worked in the field, after a couple hours of working side-by-side in silence with Matt, I felt intensely excited.  I felt a lightness, what I would consider a joy in me, so I wanted to laugh…because as I fell into the flow of the work I was doing, I found there was space in my mind to explore some ideas and think thoughts with what I would call clarity.  I wished I had a tiny notebook in my pocket so that I could write write write all of the thoughts I had, so that I could make sure to remember them.

hooray for the arrival of ideas.  hooray for space in my brain that is not filled up with responsibility or worry.  space to just hypothesize and analyze and enjoy the steady continuation of ideas–to watch my thoughts be my thoughts.

I am not lonely here.  I experience longings for my loved ones, and I appreciate this quiet time I have.

I have scratchy hands again.  the kind of sandpaper hands I had last time too.

I remember when.  four years ago.  I sat with may.  Feeling sorry for myself.  because my hands were cracked and the cracks filled with coffee grinds.  And I thought, “oh my poor hands.  my poor beat up sorry hands.”  and may took my hands in hers. and said something like, “these hands are the hands of a person who works.  they are beauty.  have you ever seen the hands of an artist or a gardener, Rebekah?  These are worker’s hands.”

I’ve got those hands.  These strong.  bronzed.  cracked.  scratched.  dirt in the fingernails.  dirt in the lines.  hands.  I love these hands of mine.  and I love that may who reminded me of the beauty that is in and all around me.  that is inherent in all I am and do.

Right now.  I appreciate the beauty that is everything (and spinach). I appreciate the beauty that is everything.  I appreciate the beauty that is..  I appreciate the beauty. I appreciate

I move to Henry’s farm … tomorrow!  This time a little scarier though as I go alone.  no dogs.  no daniel.  our family temporarily broken up.  and I think  I am ready to work.  and learn.  and be on my own for a little while.  not totally on my own. independent.

Things I look forward to:

air.  greens.  strawberries.  harvest days.  experiencing my body gain physical strength. if I have the energy, running on the weekend.  dirt.  sunrises and sets. goat milk.  chickens and cows. life.

Things I do not look forward to (not to say I really mind or do not enjoy them…I have a fear of them rather):

long rainy days (although my fear is bigger than the actual experience…I don’t think I ever really minded it on the farm last time).  loneliness.  itchiness from plant oils.  tornado watches and warnings.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  I will pack in the morning.  then hopefully walk doggies, and then Daniel will drive me.  And then he will drive home. alone.

And then next week he will move to Santa Fe.  I’ll let him write about that though.

LOVE!  LIFE!

so hectic!

preparing to move!  huzzah!

craziness!

change is brewing here…in our lives and our world.  The spring arrives…arrives arrives…this morning our clocks set forward an hour and it is a little darker when we wake, slash day by day soon to be lighter and lighter, day by day.  Now 40 and 50 degree days are upon us and we breathe in air unfiltered by the wool of our scarves. yay I say!  slash also.  the winter, to me, was beautiful.  I think it is an attitude shift, made even more comfortable through the discovery of wool and winter boots.  It’s like I seldom looked outside this winter and assumed I would be cold, instead I bundled and went out and really spent time outside.  Not just passing momentarily from place to place, breathing in the outside….noticing the outside…feeling and hearing and smelling the outside. appreciating the outside in the ways that I can and/or do.  mmm.

and.  my current bout of days at the Unicorn and in Evanston are numbered.  I am moving back to Henry’s farm!  at the beginning of April.  This winter I developed this craving once again for the outdoors and the manual labor and the MIDWEST.  Yes!!  The Midwest!  I do love this place.  I love the subtlety…of everything.  The people who are quiet and loud and curious and ordinary and just people doing what they do.  I imagine that these sorts of people are everywhere…and I have found an abundance of them here in my life in the Midwest.  And the nature is not the mountains or the desert or the ocean…it’s purely green and changing and rolling, flowing.  So I go to the farm with a desire to learn and conversate with the glorious midwest.  To saturate myself in a part of what it is.

And Daniel?  And Tunas and Nata?  They are planning a voyage, a move, an exploration of the southwest (Santa Fe???).  Planning to live on their own until we again reunite, if and when we do (anticipatorily in late-November/early-December).  oh changes changes.

And I prepare to leave my beloved beloved Unicorn again.  My beloved friends.  This space where I am what I would call incredibly desperately truly comfortable.  Why do I choose to leave what I love?  And what suits me as well as it does??  oh curiosity.  Maybe I’ll come back.  I hope so.  slash I also hope that everything goes as I need it to.  I hope to be satisfied with my life on the farm.  and satisfied with my potential life in New Mexico.  And in love with it, so that if or when I choose to change again, it will be just as much a mourning as a celebration.

Things are never one-sided.  or two-sided.  There are so many sides.  Which may be is one sided.  Like colorfulness.  all encompassing, and all vacuousness.  oh continuity.

Here it is.  another year.  another National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is upon us.  2010.  It seems that right now…that this year…I know less and less people who are talking about eating disorders.  Maybe it is because I am talking less about eating disorders.  I am continually further and further in time from that time in my life, where it was my life.

And I like that it is not something I have to talk about all the time anymore.  I like that I do not have to explain my behavior– why I eat at very specific times and very specific quantities of food, why I see a therapist every week, why I disappeared to Tucson for 80 days.

And.  I wonder if it is useful to talk about eating disorders.  or just to talk honestly.  to consider our relationships with food and feelings and life and bodies and ideas.  I think that sometimes it can be useful to bring it up and start a dialogue, to connect and understand and release the shames that often inherently in my perception exist in secrets.   Maybe I need slash want to bring it up more.  so we all know that we are never alone.

I feel sad when I think people forget how perfect they already are; for example, when people are dieting, it seems like people idealize their lives when their diets are over, idealize their bodies when their diets have fulfilled their purposes instead of recognizing that change for assumed health can be beneficial and also we are beautiful and perfect as we are right now.   I love and accept myself unconditionally as I am right now.  That is something I have said many many many many many times to myself when I am in times of change or when I am doubting myself.  Bodies and lives flow.  ever-changing.  Changes can happen, yet it is hard for me to support extreme goal-oriented changes because then the process and the everyday experiences lose their validity.  when the end goal is all that matters.  What about health through slow and joyful means?  Instead of punishment and shame and intentions to be something else.  Because no matter my body, I am me am me am me am me.

There is this gym that triggers me regularly, daily.  I feel angry when I encounter the membership heckler on the street, who asks me, “where do you work out?”  and I say, “I don’t” and he says, “well that’s not something to be proud of…blah blah blah”  and I think why isn’t it something to be proud of??  I am proud that I am healthy and alive!  I do not enter this facility that advertises themselves by encouraging people to get a better body this 2010.  My body is perfect.  And I can exercise it’s physicalness in so many ways without going to this place where people run on treadmills with headphones and televisions and track how many calories they burn, and then go in the locker room and weigh themselves and consider how many calories they need to burn tomorrow…because I can be outside!  I can walk and run!  I can be in nature and community!  I can work with my body.  and meditate and practice yoga and go dancing with my friends…and further physicalness.  through life.

not that gyms are evil.  and I am not anti-gym or anything.  I want to stress that there are other options.  and that not knowing my weight frees me from a system that tells me that this is what I should weigh.  instead of relying on my body to tell me what is right for me.  instead of relying on taste and smell and the way my body feels to decide what and how I should eat.

and speaking of eating,

Last night…Daniel and I had a very very special (as special as it was birthday celebration)–  we went to dinner at GREAT LAKE, a tiny pizza place in Chicago.  Where we sat and breathed and watched our heavenly heavenly pizzas made with a real person’s hands.  Oh it was glorious.  I respect a place where the people who own it do things the way they want to, where the customer is not always right, where it seems like they are just cooking some food for us, and there is less distance between the cook and the customer.  hooray!  and then afterwards we went and ate a cannolli at the tiny Italian bakery…also heavenly!  mmmmm.

what a glorious experience of deliciousness and celebration.  so hooray for life and celebrating and bodies and being!

I am glad to be alive.  I am thankful to be alive. so let’s talk about it.  feel free to talk to me about it.

I am endlessly grateful for this day.  There is this “snowstorm” thing in Chicago today, and everything is SNOW SNOW SNOW.  In all directions.  The streets, the cars, the trees, the sky, my eyes are snow snow snow.  I feel happy and excited and alive to be in this wonderland of snow.

This morning, I walked each of the dogs, and I think their enthusiasm transferred to me…as I walk the streets and breathe in nothing and everything more than the snow snow snow snow snow snow snow!  SNOW!

Who knew that I love winter?  I wonder if I was totally in love with winter last year too?  mmm.

And I saw birds today!  something I thought was a Crow??  and two little red bellied birds?  yay!

I’ve many things on my mind lately…life things…choices to make… as my lease ends the end of March!

sending snow to everyone

the little cookie.  with the big bite!  woot!

on Tuesday, Daniel and I sat in boocoo all afternoon, getting totally hopped on coffee (they serve Just Coffee), and eating these little homemade chocolate chip cookies that sell for 50₡.  And later I was thinking how good, meaning absolutely delicious, I found the two little cookies I ate (when I say little, I mean just regular size cookies).  There was a simple-ness to them, something that reminded me of the kind of cookies a person makes at home one night when he or she decides to bake a few cookies.  There is a familiarity that is safe to me.
There is something so marvelous to me in something made by hand, mixed by hand, so that one can detect the parts that went into it, instead of it being so well blended that they go without notice.  I think every part is important.  and the homemade bread and cookies seem to lack that pristine professional quality, they are from a real person in a real place and time.

I choose to live my life in this way.  In a way, where I cultivate and have my hand in as many aspects as I do of the things I do and interact with.
I can thus find joy and peace and home in all that I do.

I simultaneously understand and do not understand the value of what I will call “usefulness.”  The past few days I have been cultivating “peacefulness” and “pleasure” in my life.  outside of usefulness.  beyond usefulness in a capitalist fashion.  peacefulness and pleasure is, in my perception, useful in abundant ways, to my spirit and my mind and my home and my family and my body.

There was a time when I first moved back to Evanston in 2005, when my life consisted of working and eating and practicing yoga and napping and doing crossword puzzles.  Doing things that didn’t seem like they HAD to be done.  That I could do or not do.  Recognizing the choices I have.  Mostly importantly committing to take care of myself in whatever ways I needed to.

Since then, I have noticed that my days are a series of doings.  and schedules.  and how to be efficients.  instead of what do I want to do right nows.  In this way, one can become a victim to one’s own life and to the people and things that make up one’s own life.  without even realizing it.  I find that I wake up and I think I need to walk the dogs and do dishes and eat breakfast and go to work and go home and cook dinner and walk the dogs and feed the dogs and clean the living room and do dishes and go to bed to wake up tomorrow.

or I have to do this, so I can do this.  instead of just doing the thing I want to do.

Slash I have found bliss recently, as I have consciously chosen to do the things I want to do when I want to do.  for example, taking a walk because the air is fresh and I want to be in it, instead of doing the more useful thing of starting dinner and organizing the closet and going to bed.  I have sat and read articles in the newspaper while sitting and enjoying my breakfast instead of getting my breakfast together while getting ready for work and running out the door.  hanging out in cafes and writing blogs, instead of doing the have to dos.

Not that the have to dos have to be have to dos.  There’s a way of looking at them so that they are a choice and something I enjoy.  I think appreciating the have to dos instead of expecting them allows me to better cultivate peacefulness and pleasure in my life.