My mood is slowly improving... it is true that I should be able to be happy anywhere I am. It's internal. I am slowllllly making up my big sleep deficit, and that is probably the main thing that is helping. I slept almost 12 hours on Sunday, and have been getting decent amounts of sleep since. Realistically, it won't resolve overnight.

I really should have known better. I always thought sleep was important. My final paper in a class my last semester of college was about hormonal effects of sleep deprivation, and how that leads to increased appetite and fat deposition. My speech to my English class in 9th grade was about how I hated my alarm clock (I liked my work to be personally relevant ;)). I suffered chronic sleep deprivation headaches in high school, during the school year, until I started taking classes at the U of M. So I should know how sensitive I am to sleep deprivation.

It's sunny and warm here, I'm not sure how long that will last. But I'm off to Boston for the weekend! Should be great regardless of the weather.

sunny Sunday

I slept almost 12 hours last night--and it's in the 80s here--it's great. Just a few more weeks of classes to get through. I wish I could go home for more than a few days, and I'm going to Boston next weekend. I'm missing the end of the last day of classes--the Pussycat Dolls are coming for a free concert, it's funny. So the next few weeks should be busy and fun.

I think I am not big on moving because I felt like my move was really forced. I didn't want to go but thought it might be good, so I made myself go by applying to other schools. Forcing always hurts more than helps, in my opinion. It produces a rubber band effect. I wanted to travel but I didn't want to leave. So I think it makes it a little harder for me to grow, since I forced it. I've reverted more than anything, and things will take some more time to move forward. But, oh well. My instincts were right, of course.

The more I think about it, the more I think it is a tragedy I thought I had to move to learn more about myself. If we had whole communities, we would be content exploring the depths of our region with them. I think I was wrong that I had to leave loved ones and change life's distractions to see myself. If it was okay to just be ourselves, and we had a support system at home, we wouldn't feel we have to leave the people that make us who we are, to learn more. I still like traveling, but I don't like living away from home. It seems like a distraction--instead of getting to know one place deeper, I thought I was "bored" and moved on to a new place to get a new, shallow understanding of where I am. There is something special about getting to know the land in one place, one could spend many lifetimes and still know only a tiny bit.

I wish home had a warmer climate...sadly, it might. I have been learning a lot about climate change and there will be a lot in the next thirty years.

Things are pretty good. But I'm going to visit home for a bit soon, and I was wondering if it was a good idea that I ever left. Career-wise, probably. But I don't really get the point of leaving everyone you care about. People used to travel with their tribe their whole lives, as far as I know. It's weird to leave them and correspond through all these fake means, electronic and everything. It's not as satisfying. Modern life is not as satisfying, for sure.

All the trees and flowers and blossoming. I took a nap in the library today, for over two hours. All very nice.

friday story

On Friday, I had had it! Something had to change. I couldn't stand it anymore. The straggly ends of my hair were ruining my life (maybe it was symbolic?). I didn't know what to do with them. Even in that moment, they were too long and heavy for my hair binder, so tying it back didn't work very well. I couldn't wait to have someone cut it for me, I couldn't wait another minute.

So I went down to my office, got a pair of scissors, went to the bathroom, and hacked off a few inches from each side. The left looked better than the right, but the right was shorter, so I couldn't make it look like the left. I just left it. I kind of cut the hair in the back, but I think some of it is the old length. I love it and feel like a huge weight has been taken off my head :) I was very self-satisfied.

the kundalini!

Today was sunny and warm, and there are flowers everywhere. I am so happy for summer finally coming.

When I first read about kundalini energy, it seemed very mystical. Now that I've experienced the effects, I think it is just a matter of time until we are able to measure it. 100 years ago a computer would have been magic, but it was just unknown. What happened was, I had been feeling increasingly anxious and depressed from too much spiritual exploration. I thought, maybe I need to take the next step, and add pranayama before my meditation. I added just a few minutes cautiously, since when I was doing it this fall, I ended up nearly going insane (literally--if I had continued it long enough it might not have been okay). I felt like I was burning from the insides. Mentally I desperately went through what would bring some instant relief--alcohol, no, weed, probably not but worth a try, food, yes. A package of bread and rice cakes (which I don't even like) brought some acute relief. Finally I remembered the pranayama, backed off, and now I am lucid again, without my nervous system being burnt up.

If you are bringing up too much energy through the gunk in your body (of which I have tons), it just creates anxiety and fries your nervous system. I think that's why so many people have problems with meditation (they can't, or it makes them feel bad)--hearing/feeling all the junk in your mind is hell until it noticeably subsides. It's not a linear path, and people have to do different things.

I've also been allowing automatic yoga to occur, and it actually makes me feel much better. It gets the knots out, mentally and physically (I personally store my emotions in my body instead of expressing them, on a deep subconscious level). There is nothing mystical about it, I am sure now it is the from the kundalini trying to come through, and shaking out blockages. If civilization continues another hundred years, it will probably start to measure it, I would guess.

So I have been feeling very tired, and anxious, and eating to compensate for feeling so frazzled. Then I saw my adviser briefly in the hall, and she said: tired? Oh yeah, I've found that when I get really sleep deprived, it can make me feel very depressed. And then I start eating horribly.

Then she set up a meeting and that was it. It was very funny. OK, I'm not losing my mind, I just need to reset my circadian rhythm, which is horribly messed up.

male sexuality

From Adbusters: 'The traditional anti-porn stance on how violent and misogynistic material incites rape and violence towards women is false due to an inaccurate analysis: pornography actually subdues rather than provokes. Consuming pornography does not lead to more sex, it leads to more porn. Much like eating McDonalds everyday will accustom you to food that (although enjoyable) is essentially not food, pornography conditions the consumer to being satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real.'

The article neglects studies showing that these images shape the desires of the men who consume them, making real-life partners less attractive over time (maybe they're in the book cited).

The porn industry, now bigger than Hollywood and pro sports combined, has facilitated the transformation of sex into a liquid consumer good. There is nothing left to separate the individual from the market and the industry’s success has also produced a feedback loop that results in its own intensification. In order to compete with porn, the mainstream media appropriates the pornographic, which in turn forces porn producers and websites to create more vicious and chaotic content. The mainstream becomes porn and porn gradually edges closer to snuff.

Of course very little of this sexual media reflects reality in any way. When watching hard-core porn, one is struck by the message it so desperately attempts to communicate: sex is boring. And the more violent the porn, it seems, the more anti-sex its message. But could anything be further from the truth? Isn’t having sex with another living, human being the one thing that provides the most intense connection with the present moment?

This is also thought-provoking.

sleep is so undervalued

I am in a terrible cycle--I want to play around and hang out and relax, so I stay up late. Then I'm tired, but it's not so bad. Then I get kind of anxious, because I'm tired. I don't want to go to sleep because I'm anxious and I know it'll take awhile. So I go to bed late... then maybe I'm too tired to exercise, which makes the low energy/ high anxiety problem worse. Then maybe I snack to keep my energy up; eating at night makes it harder to get to sleep... and so on.

I'm reading a book called Calm Energy that discusses tension and energy and the things we do to regulate it. One problem is that frequent exercise is important to dissolve tension build-up--we evolved to have frequent activity. Maybe you're running around, playing with your friends, or gathering berries, or building a shelter, it doesn't matter. Now we are stuck at desks, and it's so easy to munch on foods or take a drag off a cigarette to release this tension. It goes into sleep and exercise as well.

I am just committing to a certain schedule. I have to follow it, even if I don't feel like it. Even if it means I lay in bed awake. His suggestions on short spurts of exercise and other tension dissolvers are also good. And soon I'll be outside a lot--that should be good for me.

how vegan?
I can't believe some vegans will avoid
honey and then buy conventional produce. Not because of insecticides, but because conventional agriculture is killing everything.

I was talking to someone about Portuguese yesterday--I had him speak in it, and I tried to follow. I tried to speak it, but it made my brain do somersaults (great mental exercise!). He was happy with how much I could follow along, though. I really want to go to Brazil now. Languages are fun.

summertime!

I made sunflower seed yogurt and almond cheese today, for the first time. I cultured them with probiotics. I also came into possession of some local raw cheese. I could have eaten it, it would have been freegan. But I smelled it (I, the former half-a-block-a-day cheese eater) and it didn't smell edible to me. Instead, I brought it to one of many potlucks I have been invited to lately.

I'm going to Boston in a few weeks! And soon after that, classes will be done and I'll be out in the field. My CSA will start, the farmers' market has already started here, the sustainable ag group I'm involved with plans to stay active--it should be a fun summer.

I'm also getting a grip on my back problems. If it gets significantly better, I'll be able to run a lot more, which makes me a lot happier. The massage I have to do to release the muscles is very intense and emotional, but it's better to open those things up than to keep them tense and closed.

Coconut!

I have been eating tons of coconut lately. I'm craving the fat, I guess. It's better for me when I'm meditating because it's grounding. It's not local, but the dried coconut flakes are pretty light and better than a lot of other foods (anything with water is much heavier). And I love the So Delicious coconut ice cream and yogurts.

I had Mayan Abdominal Massage yesterday and tomorrow am going to a Structural Integrationalist. It's supposed to be like Rolfing, which has helped me a lot. My back is not supposed to be tight and painful! It keeps me from running and it's not healthy. I have to stop storing tension there. So it is worth the high cost, for my health. Plus it feels great.

I've also been making my soil for my plants, which we start in the greenhouse and plant in the beginning of June. It is so fun to get to put my hands in the soil. I love it and am excited for the summer, even though my schedule will be less flexible (more like 40 hrs/wk instead of my erratic school schedule). Summer will be great!

I saw a speaker today that said we have to be honest and admit that we need zero population growth and zero economic growth if we are to survive on a finite planet. We need to have restraint and character (he is an older guy from a rural area). He also talked about the importance of perennial cropping systems. If we turned the majority of crops (corn, soy, grains etc) into perennials (and we can with smart breeding), then we would have something resembling sustainability.

Someone asked him, what about the seed companies?

Honestly, he said, they're not going to like this. Neither are the fertilizer, pesticide, mechanical, or other companies. Let's be honest. The only one who will benefit financially from this is the farmer, and the landbase. This means the end of capitalism, it can't go on.

So this seminar was quite different from the usual. No economist has the answer to the problem of a finite landbase, that I have heard (apart from New Agey--"believe in abundance, not scarcity" irresponsible crap). He said that if we are honest, we will admit that all the renewable fuels and efficiency in the world will not permit growth (this I have always believed). We would need that just to continue on.

Another thing I am hearing over and over is that biofuels are not the answer to anything, except on-farm fuel needs. As an alternative to petroleum, it is anti-human and anti-environment, and I can't believe that environmentalists have promoted it. It never quite made sense to me--just because it is extracted from something green, doesn't make it "green".

Plant breeding

The conference I went to on the food crisis this weekend was very good. One thing that was confirmed for me is the wrong-headedness of the focus on plant breeding. Plant breeding was a key focus of the Green Revolution and is a focus of the programs the Gates Foundation is promoting for Africa. Scientifically, it's a very poor decision since it lessens biodiversity. A single disease can wipe out almost everything. Second, the true purpose of this is not to help peasants, but to privatize the seedbank. A great example of this is the yellow rice (with vitamin A), which was actually developed by plant breeders who truly do care. But their approach to hunger was totally wrong. Aside from the fact that access, not production, is the problem, and aside from the fact that you need fat to absorb vitamin A, and aside from the fact that vitamin A is already plentiful in many fruits and vegetables---there already are several varieties of rice with vitamin A! Red rice is well known throughout the world (it's a weed for those who want regular rice) and has much more vitamin A than the yellow rice did. If the yellow rice breeders had good intentions, maybe they should have done some research. The road to hell is paved with good intentions... if you don't care enough to truly look at the implications of your actions, you are not going to do any good.

This is good for me to know especially since I turned down a great grad assistant position that would have had me studying in Brazil for a year or two if I wished. But a key focus was plant breeding, and that wasn't something I felt was worth my time. Not that there's no place for it--but the emphasis is problematic. Especially when new breeds are genetically engineered--it just drives the price up. Why not just cultivate varieties that already have drought resistance, or disease resistance, or high yield? Oh, because it's not profitable, I forgot.

That being said, I love the organic plant breeders I know. They have the yummiest tomatoes, because the organic market is looking for good-tasting varieties.

I was part of an event today on solutions to the World Food Crisis. There were many, many intelligent people there, and it was a reminder of how many intelligent people there are out there working on these issues. It really needs to be reframed--clearly hunger is not an issue of production, it is an issue of sovereignty and access.

Overtone Moon day 6
Year of the White Self-Existing Wizard



kin 251: Blue Self-Existing Monkey
I Define in order to Play
Measuring Illusion
I seal the Process of Magic
With the Self-Existing tone of Form
I am guided by the power of Accomplishment