East Grove Blues

Well you take the good and you take the bad like I said yesterday. I had been avoiding all grains, with only having a little rice, the occasional cookie at school and some spaghetti at a party. Yesterday after about a week and a half I decided to splurge and have some Gyoza made with white flour. They were delicious and I ate a lot of them. I think this was my downfall. I ate a lot of them and a lot of salt and sugar as well. It was a perfect storm of destruction.

I paid for that last night and today. I wouldn’t recommend reading on if your faint of heart. Last night, and even some today, I was gassy like I was back in my hay day. I mean loud and long. I don’t think they smelled like rotting gut, but I just haven’t had much gas lately and now I know why. Grains, sugar and salt irritate the hell out of my body. I slept poorly last night because of/on top of all that and that is never good for me. My lower regions were angry with me. I felt like I did before I returned to Japan. Not as severe, but there was a noticeable difference. I was slow and sluggish at school and my work out was pathetic. I just couldn’t get myself motivated to do what I needed to do.

Thank god I am back on track today with my food. I finally started feeling relatively normal after school, but I am not 100%. It will take a few days for my body to get rid of the nastiness and return to the path of health and happiness. I was amazed at the difference one big meal like that did and the damage it caused within hours. I will be spending the next week reversing the long term side effects.

While it is good news that I have found some of the reasons for my irritation, but it is also very sad. While I couldn’t care less about salt and sugar, I really like bread, I mean I a lot. There is little better in this world than hot bread strait out of the oven and covered in butter. Just the thought makes my mouth water. Now, like dairy, I will be permanently removing it from my diet.

What does that mean? It means that I will treat myself with such things, but only in very small quantities. There will be no more pasta type party, or sadly, beer guzzling party for a long time, if ever. Gods give me the strength to live up to that statement. Saying one thing and doing another is quiet difficult. I shouldn’t really be drinking any alcohol at all and time after time I have proven that I am not able to say no. I hope that health concerns will keep me on a better track than anything else ever has.

I want to make sure everyone else understands that I am not going to go on a rant about the evils of these foods, even if I have in the past. I just want to say that they are not so good for me. We all have to make our own decisions when it comes to health and while I still love all foods, I have to remember that they all have their consequences and that is the grain truth. (Shameless pun)

I seriously hope we can move to a more sustainable future. What we are doing now, to countries around the world, is inhuman. Change starts with yourself though. Stop buying needless things. Know where your food comes from. Make some small steps to a better future for everyone.

The real Avatar: Mine - Story of a Sacred Mountain

Are we really going to allow this kind of thing to keep happening? I can’t answer that question. We have been doing it for so long that we think it is our right to strip the earth of all that is holy in the name of profit. Humans can adapt so quickly, and yet we are so slow with the change that makes life better for people around the world. What frustrates me is that we have the alternatives and we know how to use them. Except for a few people, who many consider crazy, we are just lumbering along to certain spiritual and physical death.

We all just need to grow up a bit and take some responsibility into our own hands. I will be honest and say that I am one of those people. I can do better than I am and fate willing I will do better. May the earth give us wisdom and strength to do better.

Since about this time last year I have been visiting a Buddhist sect called Shinnyo en. They are a modern sect of an older form of esoteric Buddhism. Like many Buddhist orders they claim a direct line to this darma or that. I can never keep tract of all the names or what they mean. Not to seem like a dick, but I really I don’t care a whole lot.

I originally started to go to see what it was and what it was like. I generally am interested in anything religious and my curiosity got the best of me. They also have a special form of meditation called (excuse my spelling) Sheshin training. They have a spiritual medium help you through your meditation. Seeing that I had a chance to try all this out and see what it was like, I decided to give it go.

Here are some things that I like: They have a very solid community of very eager and helpful people. They are great with volunteer work and they keep the place very clean. They do a wide variety of different ceremonies that are usually interesting the first time around. The head of the order is a women and she has a quiet but commanding presence. The first head of the order gave up a lot and went through some rigorous training before finding his own middle way.

Things I don’t like: The temple is like an office building, far to ‘modern’ for my tastes. They video tape everything, which is kind of creepy, but they also replay old video’s of previous sermons, which can be alright. They are almost to happy and smiley, it seems like an effort and less natural. You have to pay for meditation training (BOOOO!!!!!), and they have a book store which sells expensive watches.

The weirdest thing for me is that they say that the two dead sons of the founder are spiritual guides (in the spirit realm) for the sect. They pray to them for guidance. I don’t want to make the opinion of this being good or bad, but for me personally it gives me a weird vibe that has permeated the whole experience. I just can’t get over it. Inside the temple they have these cast heads of the two young sons, and their parents, the founders of the sect. Maybe it’s because I went to Eureka College where they have a scary bust of Ronald Reagan in the middle of campus, but those gold cast heads freak me out. Not a fan.

Today, after a year of going on and off I finally hit the right time to do the meditation training. I was supposed to feel spiritual energy coming from the spirit realm through my spiritual guide and into me. ( I didn’t) He was then supposed to give me special words to contemplate before my next training. (the special words seemed a bit general) I felt a bit uncomfortable for most of it and rather empty at the end of it and not in a good way.  I don’t like organized religions in general, but I find them fascinating. This was no different. It was interesting, but I didn’t get what I was ’supposed’ to get out of it.

So what did I take away from the experience? Sitting meditation is just not me thing. Being there today reminded me that almost all of my meditation breakthroughs have come from walking meditation. I feel like my form is best when I am walking and I find it much easier to clear my mind when I have to keep stepping. I had forgotten a lot of that because I have been focusing on sitting meditations for probably over a year now. To be honest it is also cold and I have been lazy. I made it out tonight though, and it was a lovely time, as meditation goes. I am glad to have gone to the training if for no other reason that to connect with what really works for me.

Perhaps one of these days I will get to what good meditation feels like to me. I will wait to go into the weirdness of that for another time.

I have stated before my dislike of labels, especially ones that I try to put on myself. I generally don’t like being labeled in one group or another by other people as well. It annoys me to only be considered by one name or attribute.

They say to name something is to make it.
Is it also true to name something is to destroy it?

I have been called many things in my life. Some of them have made me feel good and others made me feel awful. Most of those awful ones were deserved, which made me feel even worse. Yes I know I am terrible sometimes. We all can be, unless you believe Jesus was perfect. But even he was a dick sometimes. (Read the books and tell me otherwise!) I don’t want to use the ‘everyone else is too’ excuse, because that is lame. I am not perfect and I know it. I know it better than anyone else. Every time I hurt someone I feel the pain as well, and I tend to carry that pain for a while.

One name that has been given to me, from several people, I never really thought about much before. I didn’t feel sad or happy about it. It was more like, “huh? Really? Maybe…” The name/title/label has come back to me and it makes me think. Here is were you insert the silly title; some people call me a Dreamer. I will admit that I tend to day dream a lot. I did in high school and college, but didn’t everyone? Do I do it that much more? I spend a lot of time staring off into space and thinking, is that the same? Has people calling me that caused it to manifest itself into truthfulness? Should I dare pick up that mantle of dreamer?

I’ll be honest, at the moment I like the sound of it, and I like the idea behind it. Dreams are a surprisingly large part of my life right now. I fear though, if I flat out and say I am something, I will automatically destroy it. Even if it is a name I didn’t take on myself, but was given to me, if I take it for myself I will be condemning myself to inevitable failure. How do you fail at being a dreamer though?

It all seems so silly. Why on earth should I worry about such things? I will be who I am and that is unlikely to change. I think it’s best to let others make up their minds while I try to do the best that I can at what ever it is that I am doing at the moment. Yet, here I am debating myself over something I know will only frustrate me, for no other reason than that is what I was thinking about for the last few days. I think I need to stare at a candle for an hour or so.

So today is a full moon, the second since the winter solstice. I am hoping for clear skies tonight so I can stare at it and wonder how I got to the place I am in. This time of year is known for several festivals. Imbolc, Ground Hogs Day, and even Valentines Day is just around the corner. We are about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The Sun is coming back and the days will (hopefully) get warmer as we inch our way towards springtime.

I am taking this weekend as a holiday of my own. I call it Spring Cleaning! I am cleaning almost the whole of my house today and tomorrow. I have about half done already and I am contemplating starting the other here in a little bit. It is so nice to have a clean house, and I mean really clean. I usually do a decent job of keeping my house in order, but I don’t dust very often, especially behind my books. So I am trying to get everything as clean as I can. I have also thrown out a lot of papers from school and random mail that I get. My office area is the cleanest it’s been in ages. I doubt it will stay that way, but it will be pleasant for the next few days.

Besides cleaning my house I am also cleaning myself. I started my ‘holiday’ last night with a trip to Onsen after Yoga. I scrubbed everything I could, including the extra dead skin on my feet. I do bathe regularly, but I don’t usually rub my skin to near rawness, nor do I scrape my scalp of all its dry flaky bits. I am also fasting right now. My last meal was Friday night and I (hopefully) won’t eat again until Sunday night. I did some 24 hour fasts last week and I surprisingly enjoyed them. So this weekend I am going for 48 hours. I am drinking water and tea only. I had some green tea for lunch and I will have some rose hip tea for dinner.

I like the idea of fasting, but I have never been good at it. I have tried it several times before only to fail miserably a few hours later. I associate the feeling of hunger and anxiousness together. I am not sure why this is, but I feel them both in the put of my stomach. It is not a feeling I generally enjoy, but I am starting to tell the difference between the two. I just had to get past the mental barrier that linked the two together. I have to remember that I am not anxious, that it is only hunger, and that it will go away with time. Its a test of mental strength and will power.

After Christmas I had a nice lull before going out for New Years. I enjoyed the time spent around the farm. My favorite days were those when Dad and I wondered around the timber identifying trees. It made for cold hands, because I kept having to look in my book, but it made for warm thoughts and interesting ideas about the farm. There is so much there that I just don’t understand and that I never saw before. It was always just full of trees, I could maybe guess I few of them, but I didn’t know what they did or why they grew where they did.

New Years ended up being much like the year before. Annie, a friend of mine I met by chance a few years ago, and some of her friends went out. I was still on an anti-biotic so I volunteered as the DD. We had dinner in Burlington where I had a huge steak but could only eat about four ounces of it. We went to Fun City, which wasn’t that fun, but was big enough to be a city for me, and then went to Fort Madison. There we hit the usual haunts and actually listened to a pretty decent live band. All in all it was a good evening.

I traveled up to Chicago and saw some friends, and made it back to Iowa for the bowl game. By then I was tired of people. I was happy to see everyone up near Chicago and I look forward to seeing them again when I get home, but by the time it was all over I was exhausted. Three weeks of constant socializing had left me feeling pretty tired. The spent the remainder of my time relaxing and talking about my future plans to everyone.

I was really surprised by the outpouring of support for my ideas. In fact it was a bit overwhelming. I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to ground myself and get myself on the right path to future job prospects. I have a lot to learn in the next few years if all goes well. I’ve been known to change my plans though so I am trying not to get to far ahead of myself.

Remember everyone, I need criticism! Without it I become to idealistic. Justin helped me remember that today. I need to stay realistic and within my means. This doesn’t mean I can’t dream and be ambitious. I just have to take careful steps along the way. I have a tendency to build up to much only to not be able to finish what I started.

I am on the road again tomorrow. I can honestly say that I am not looking forward to the long haul back to Japan. I know I will be back soon, but I’d rather not have to go anywhere. The time should fly by though and I should say good by to everyone.

When I get back to Japan I will have time to comment and go over all that happened in the last three weeks. I haven’t had the time yet. Until then…

So leaving for vacation and then returning to Niger has left me a different person. Well perhaps not in most aspects, but there is a lot of myself that I don’t share with people, and so when I do change it is generally an internal thought process and nothing else visible. I have had one of those over the last few months.

I feel like I am worrying less and coming again to acceptance. My life and its general development goes in an ever growing spiral. I come and go to the same things in time. At one point attempting to force myself into change, failing, and then slowing coming to acceptance, and after that actually having some change occur. The process can take a whole year, and this one has been ever growing for some time. I can’t say that I am coming to an end, because it never ends, just changes, and at times I come to understand and acknowledge those changes.

As a person you have to accept your own shortcomings, and like most I have quite a few. Sometimes I can ignore them but sometimes I have to face them, and after-wards I feel far better. Life is about change, for better or for worse, and what you can learn from that change. I’m sure that even at this point I am repeating something I have wrote either here or somewhere else, but thus life.

The whole point of all of this is to say; Relax, things will happen as they are, and when you try to force change you just cause a lot of grief, either for you or for someone else. Things take time, and the human spirit more than any other. You don’t bake bread until after it rises, nor do you drink beer before it has cured.

There are many ways to act in this world, and how you act and react to situations will make your life either a living hell or a heaven on earth. I have found that the more accepting you are, the more you can forgive and the better you can laugh at situations then the more pleasant life becomes. Instead of worrying about something I have no control over I just let it go. When I get crowded into a bush taxi and have to wait in what feels like an oven I just laugh it off as a memorable experience. Instead of getting mad, and taking my anger out on others, I brush it off. It makes life so much more fun.

Now, it is not always easy to brush something off. I get mad at times, and it is healthy to do so. Emotions just don’t go away, and I have my bad days and even weeks. It happens, but those are moments when I can reflect on just what makes me angry and try to rise above it. I have this idea, and it works for me, but I am not sure for others. We all have emotions, and to suppress them is bad. They only resurface later and with more power. We can not run from them, because they will catch up with us in the end. We have to face them, experience them and understand them. When you can do that, than you can rise above the emotion.

I see myself being angry, I feel angry, but it no longer bothers me, it is there, it will go away. I understand why it is there, and I now know how I can avoid a situation like it in the future. Naturally the emotion leaves, no one was offended, I did not make the situation worse by taking out my frustrations on others, and hopefully I learned something about myself and others.

A lot of the time I am happy because I choose to be. I choose to not let things bother me, and I choose to see the good things in all people. We have a choice, to make our attitudes, to make our lives and the lives of others better. It is not something that just happens. You don’t sit down one day and have a revelation. You must work at it, and trust me it is not always easy, but at the end of the day I can feel good about how I treated others.

I have found, that no matter where I go, who I have met, or what I have seen, that at the basic level, all people are relatively the same. We have our basic needs, the things in all our lives that never really change. The need for food and water, the desire for shelter and stability, and the procreation of our species. What separates us all is on what level that these needs are addressed or seen as important. On top of those needs the true separating factor is the superfluous needs of the more ‘wealthy’ nations.

In Niger food is the top need for most of the population. When people have food they are happy, because they will live on and help to keep Niger going. In America we really don’t worry about food, because there is so much of it. And so, we in America have all these other things we think we need and occupy ourselves with. Like collecting material things and sporting events. We still care about family, which is important in all societies, and can help bring us all together. While I may not have children I know people who are and can help them keep this world moving. (I don’t know if I will ever have children, only time will tell)

What is interesting is that people are happy here. They are taught about America and want to go because they think they will have loads of money and that will make them happy, and yet I laugh more here than I did in the states, because that is how people survive. They laugh and joke and make life here fun, even if it is hard. If you put your average American in Niger and told them to survive and a lot of them would die, because what we learn at home would be of little use in the desert.

With that being said, we have fun in the states as well. We make friends and we make a living the best we can with what we are given. I think that some people in the states just take things more seriously and are to wound up to really enjoy what they are given. We busy ourselves with work or politics or any number of different things when we should be enjoying ourselves and seeing what this live can provide for us.

It is frustrating to see a family in America buy a new car and have satellite tv, but not be able to help their kid go through college, but it is even more frustrating when a Nigerian buys tobacco for himself but can’t buy good food for their children and they end up dieing. We all have problems, and we all seem to be making stupid decisions. It is hard to understand why someone might do either thing, but then again I have never grown up in either’s shoes and so I can make no judgment. I don’t see the pressures of status that are thrown onto people that make them think they need something. I haven’t been in the community that supports that kind of behavior. What I may see as wrong and stupid, they see as the only option given to them.

Needless to say we all have problems, and when we get down to it we are all just people doing what we can, as best that we can with what we know. My hope is that we can some day move past this desire to have more than we truly need. I know people in Niger that want a phone, not because it help them, but because the richer folk have one and they want to be like them. It is the same in states. It is just on different levels of monetary value. I wish those Nigerien’s would see how happy they are, see their own laughter, and show them that those material things are not what make you happy.

They have a saying here that is true for all People. Coro ba Nooru, friends are better than money.