MOO! Often I feel such a cow. Regurgitating old stuff to chew on it a bit more, round and round again. To some extent, you /can/ get nutrition out of this, but you need to have the right symbiots in your stomach and a really long digestive tract. 😛

The trouble with being stuck at the chewing-over stuff stage (which I am apparently addicted to) is after a while you forget about having to swallow the damn stuff and get it through your system, and out the other side.

stuck in the “rumination rut”?

Maybe Freud and his theories was on to something? I do declare there is a link between body and mind beyond just the brain. (memory reference – talking to a massuse who found that manipulation of some muscles resulted in crying and unsticking of emotion). But it’s not just about digesting and shitting. I vividly remember one time that my mother laid into to me so intensely,and I just went upstairs and puked the whole thing down the toilet – it really felt like I was getting stuff out of my system, body mind and soul: everything together- “we are not accepting this poison”.

I think in analogies because it’s less hassle than words and makes more sense to me at least. And it’s good for sweeping generalisations which are always fun at the end of a bad day 🙂

theory of the moment:When it comes to dealing with food, or life, or processes of the mind, there are three options we can choose- spit it out (rejection), swallow it (good and bad, let the body digest and lets hope we don’t get food poisoning), or the endless regurgitate-rumination. We also have to think about where the food comes from, what food we want, and where the best place is to shit (ideally somewhere that it can become compost for the next lot of food). It’s amazing what our bodies CAN deal with, until we overburden them with ‘stress’, or try too hard to keep everything ‘clean’ which weakens the immune system. Still, people will always have particular allergies, preferences, and also (IMO) metabolisms suited to different types of food. Then there’s stuff to take into account like where in the world do you live, what is in season and so forth. (wow I could go on for ages with this…or possibly ruminate for ages??!)

I decided a while ago that I’m not an isolated little brain-ina-vat but it’s only recently I’m seeing how my body and life mixes up with lots of other processes, and actually if you can get the basic ones sorted the complex ones follow.

The best revelation I learnt from my time doing the organic farming in Japan thing is, that when your life simplifies down you actually get MORE pleasure from the basic stuff. I really did find this to be true, much to my surprise, and I’m finding it again now!

This weekend I enjoyed outdoors and sunshine, friends and peace. I’ve been boiling up lamb bones and organic veg to make my own stock (fed up with moaning about salty stock cubes) and generally really enjoying basic stuff. Later I’m going to get some flower pots and do some work with plants, and hopefully draw. My life has been getting better since I realised I had choice, in what I eat, in what I do with my free time, and started acting on it.

Middle Sex: Channel4 9pm

“Middle Sex is a provocative and deeply moving study of human sexuality by award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas. At the heart of Thomas’s programme are the powerful personal testimonies of people of all ages who have suffered because they are ‘different’. As their stories unfold, a radically new view of human sexuality begins to emerge.”

I really wanted that job. It offered, amongst other things, significantly more pay, friendly looking work colleagues, the satisfaction of working for the health service rather than business, and all at 10 min walk from my front door.

I really wanted that job, but I didn’t get it, and I got cross with myself for the things I said and didn’t say at the interview, my lack of preparation, the chance that had come and gone.

And yet…

In other news, and as part of the “growing up” thing, I had Coyote turn up in a dream for the first time. He pissed all over me and my new dress, and although I knew he was going to do that I thought I’d got out the way! It’s a bit disturbing to wake up and wonder about what Freud might say with respect to such a dream, other than hints of some kind of repressed bestial water-sports fetish. The good news I’m more of a Jung girl so what Freud might say doesn’t bother me too much. Yay archetypes!

The result of all this was a reminder of an earlier time when I had a better grip on using humour as a weapon against my own seriousness and over-worry. I intend to reclaim a certain amount of this humour and I’ve already got plans for a new comic so watch this space.

I have also incorporated some coyotish aspects into my latest stab at drawing my “symbolic self”, a strange challenge put to me by a friend and teacher.
symbolic self:coyote-warrior

I’m still waiting to see if the joke is me or on me. probably both.
*grin*

As a general thought – I find a certain wholesomeness to religions/myths containing “Divine Trickster” aspects. Tracing it back, this perhaps was the role of the Devil originally in biblical myth. See the story of Job in the old testament. The classic image of the horned goat-foot devil is a strange twist on ‘older'(/competing) gods like Pan. My general take on such things is that it is only by repression and denial of these aspects of life that things become twisted into demons; whether in myth, everyday life or your own mind.

I also wonder if anyone has looked into the difference between male jokes and the ones women laugh about amongst themselves. Are there different kinds of humour?

a lost voice
a defiant snarl
a whimpering child
clinging, biting, crying

hold me
thats all you have to do
hold me
until I stop shaking
hold me

speak with your eyes
comfort with your warmth
– be – silent –

each utterance tumbles from your lips and crushes my awareness.
You must see – Those gentle, helpful, thoughtful words, are shards of glass that rip through my mind

with each one, you reject me.

say nothing;
hold me.

broken brain? click here

A year or so back I did quite an intensive burst of reading peer-reviewed scientific journals/books on using nutrition to help correct mental health problems; there is certainly something to it. The sad thing is that in some ways we’re shooting ourselves in the foot because we continue to pollute/damage/deplete and generally screw up our food resources – on the one hand eating oily fish and getting omega-3/omega-6 oils into the brains of schizophrenics could stop them hearing voices, or help that “ADD” kid focus; on the other hand our world fish-stocks are getting dangerously low in places and most contain mercury from the pollution.

For some time I’ve being seeing food as a leverage point. I think if people understood the real benefits of nutritive rich food (and the problems caused by hideously processed shite:: For example artificial sweeteners fuck with your brain), and what goes into producing that food, then maybe that would make them actually care about the environment. I think that we’ve got it all wrong to feel that it’s about “saving the planet”; the planet’s been through a lot worse than humanity in her time (see : Lovelock’s Gaia theory)… it’s about saving our health, sanity, and future.

I also am finding that cooking myself nice, colourful, happy meals, treating my body and brain with good stuff, enjoying my food, and all the gorgeous tastes and aromas feeds my soul as well. At the end of the day, if you’re reading this then you’re in a country where you actually have both choice and easy availability of food – so make the most of it!

Of course, as my dad pointed out once, I NEED the majority of people to carry chowing down on McDonalds burgers and Iceland Ready-Meals – we’ve got far too many people to support with full organic methods! It’s just not sustainable. In my view, we’re already cracking under the strain of it. It would be nice to see politics focusing on this rather than sodding terrorism and ID cards. On a more positive note, it’s great to be seeing a lot of my “I wish people knew about this!” ideas from a few years ago becoming manifest in public life – changes ARE happening, and this is a good thing.

Basic food tips : the less processed the better, refined sugar=drug of evilness, you almost certainly should eat something with omega-3 oils in it (ground flax seeds work if you don’t like fish.)
But most of all : DONT STRESS ABOUT IT “The highly-strung dieters, nibbling nervously at some unpalatable so-called ‘health food’ are probably in such a stressed condition that they are undoing all the good that their ‘improved diet’ is supposed to bestow on them.” -from this cool article 😉