I haven't forgotten, I've just been testing you to see if you're paying attention

Dear reader, by now you may be a bit perplexed. "Um," you are saying. "What about the food?"

At the beginning of this blog I had my chest all puffed out about my new identity as a food blogger, yes indeed. And trust me when I tell you that the puffery was sincere. I had every intention of developing this space as a cohesive tribute to my experimentations and epiphanies in all things epicurean, from procuring my food (oh, those sweet bicycle-rides down to the farmer's market) to cheery ventures in front of the stove, to revelations in flavor.

So, yeah, best laid plans, and all that. It turns out that I still love to blather on at length about Deep Life Topics like right livelihood and pesticides and health care and such things. And oh, how I *love* to write about my many feeeeeeelings. They are dark and angst-ridden; they must be recorded!

(I ask myself, just like Angela asked Jordan Catalano in the boiler room, "why are you like this?" ["Like what?" "Like, how you are." Ladies? Can I get an amen.] Not sure. Would love to know. Parents would also love to know. But that's another story. I digress.)

Anyway, so, this blog has undergone a kind of de facto expansion in its range, which is pretty fun for me, and I hope you are having a good time too. Dear reader, I just want you to be happy! And I haven't forgotten about food, you know. I've been buying it and cooking it and eating it pretty consistently since I started this blog, and expect to continue within those general parameters for quite some time.

As does all things, food goes in waves. Sometimes I enjoy periods of all home-cooked and home-prepared meals using the finest, local organic ingredients; sometimes I am buying breakfast from the Bagel Street Cafe and lunch from the Golden Lotus and dinner from Mitama Sushi. Not all the time, I promise (mom), but sometimes. I recently purchased a breakfast crepe from a place called Metro Cafe, where all of the crepes are named after cities. I.e. the Mill Valley has eggs, tomatoes, and cheese, while the Barcelona has turkey and pesto. I swear to you that there is an item on the menu called the Las Vegas: "any crepe and a spanking." $25. Would I lie about such a thing? No.

This weekend I ate some Indian food which just didn't agree with me, and I was depressed for about 36 hours. The connection between food and mood is amazing. So now my fridge is stockpiled with leafy greens and radishes and other cleansing vegetables. Oh, the body knows, the body knows.

Really, though, the reason I'm writing all of this is because I wanted to share two bona fide food blog items with you.

Thing One:

I think that the executive chef at this restaurant just moved into the studio apartment downstairs from me. I enjoyed a fine dish of tender duck meat and savory potatoes there in January with my beloved Cuz, and it was perhaps one of the most flavorful meals I have ever experienced. And now the dude is my downstairs neighbor?

AWESOME.

Thing Two:

Could there be a more compelling package for a loaf of pumpernickel bread?



I think not, dear readers. I think not.

a world of we

I just finished watching "Sicko," Michael Moore's documentary about the health care system in America. Have you seen this movie? It came out a while ago, but I didn't see it because I so rarely make it to the movie theatre, even though every friend who'd seen it implored the rest of us to go. (But I really would like to see "Mongol" on the big screen -- anybody want to see that one with me?) Zelig even brought it up when we were in the high desert back country on our vision quest last summer.

So, I recently acquired a TV/ DVD player (which I keep tucked behind the couch most of the time, thankyouverymuch) and have signed up for Netflix. I ordered Sicko out of a sense of obligation, really, like it was part of my civic duty to check out this film about health care. How bad could it be, really? The health care situation can't be as bad as, say, the 9/11 situation, or the gun situation (which, incidentally, got a lot worse today, thanks to the Supremes), both of which Moore exposed so masterfully.

I am engaged to an extent with western medicine because of a condition I have, that requires doctor visits and pharmaceuticals and such. I've always had health coverage, and I've always been able to afford the prescriptions. Yes, it's a bummer to shell out a $40 co-pay and $50 at the pharmacist, but in the context of my privileged lifestyle, it isn't a major concern of mine. There has always been a cushion between me and any kind of real, pit-in-the-stomach fear about medical care, so I get to spend my time and resources on things like stopping aerial pesticide spray and transformational workshops. Other than my personal health situation, concerns about healthcare -- mine, or the overall state of the system -- don't really penetrate my reality.

Um, I mean, until I finished watching "Sicko". If you haven't seen it, it's an intense and unflinching expose of our deeply broken health-care system. People suffer debilitating illness for years on end because they can't afford to pay the exorbitant costs for simple treatment that could help them; toddlers die because they are turned away from emergency rooms which don't accept the type of coverage that their parents possess; families go bankrupt because of unexpected health conditions; members of Al Qaeda imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay receive free, highly-advanced medical care while one American man had to choose between having the joint on his fourth finger re-attached for $12,000, or the one on his third finger for $60,000 after an accident with a saw.

The worst part, though, the most embarrassing part of this whole movie was the fact that Moore, as he does, told the story of other nations in order to contextualize the American story. And, as usual, those comparisons end up illustrating just how profoundly alienated, mistrustful, and selfishly-motivated we are here in the U.S. He went to France, Canada, England, and Cuba, all of which have extremely low-cost or free prescription medicines, entirely free medical coverage, and even house-call doctors. All paid for by the government. Moore repeatedly asked people in all of these places: how much did you pay for procedure X or surgery Y or doctor's visit Z? And the answer was always: nothing. With a chuckle! None of the people he spoke to could fathom the possibility of paying out-of-pocket, much less paying the astronomical costs that we pay, for any goods or services related to healthcare.

At the end of the film, Moore took a group of individuals who were ill from exposure to 9/11 chemicals to Cuba, where they not only received medical attention of the highest caliber (just like everyone else in Cuba) for free (just like the Cubans), and where they could purchase medications that cost $120 in the U.S. for $0.05, but where they received friendly and even loving attention from the providers, the pharmacists, and receptionists.

Mind-boggling.

Now, yes, I'm sure that this is an idealized look at things to some extent. If Moore had gone, for example, to the Parisian ghettos where all the Algerian immigrants live, I'm sure that it wouldn't have been as tidy of a picture. But the gist of it is that we in America just do not take care of our own the way that most other places in the world do.

As I was watching this movie I started inquiring into my own stereotypes about caring for others, because they started to enter my thoughts as the movie went on. Things like, poor people and privileged people naturally receive different standards of treatment; that's just the way it is. There are too many people and not enough resources to adequately care for everyone. I started to notice in my head a context of: everyone is basically on their own when it comes to health and well-being. People don't take care of each other, really, and that's just how it is.

And I thought about all the friends I've known over the years who work as social workers, or who run struggling non-profits that do things like provide childcare for low-income women. These friends were all striving to do the basic work of caring for fellow citizens. This is poorly-compensated work, mostly done by women. Government funding for social services is sparse, and lately what has been coming down the pike is being funneled towards religious institutions. (Remember that whole debacle?)

All of this just makes me realize, viscerally, that our ethic in this American society is really "every person for him or her self." Especially people of color, immigrants, poor people, people who are sick or weak or disfigured or otherwise not living out the dream of being wealthy and sexy. Even here, in our bubble of beauty and consciousness which I wouldn't trade for anything -- even here, notice how many people spend years of therapy and go through boxes of tissues in workshops because they (we) don't know how to ask for help? Like asking our friends and community for physical or emotional assistance would be placing this inordinate burden, this inconvenience, on their lives, because everyone's supposed to be just cruising along in their little self-contained unit of I've-already-figured-it-all-out. And yet, for me at least, I can't think of anything that makes me happier than helping people with their life cycle events: birthdays, weddings, births, career transitions.

You know what I mean? What greater joy is there, really, as a human, than building a marriage altar or bringing dinner to new parents or reflecting a friend's beauty and brilliance to them on their birthday?

It is remarkable and tragic how isolated we are from one another and from the earth. And our government encourages that, the print media encourages that, schools encourage that, the workplace encourages that, the legal system certainly encourages that, even our family structures encourage that. Why? I don't know. Because there's profit to be gained from fear-based consumption habits, from ignorance, from hopelessness.

We live in a world of "me," Moore said, and we suffer immensely from it, and the earth suffers. The most frustrating part is that there are nations all around us, right next door to us in fact, who live in a world of "we," and not because they're better humans than us or somehow different, but just because they made a choice to live that way. Somehow the collective wisdom in those other places hewed to the natural human impulse towards community and communal well-being as the highest value. We missed that memo, I guess, or maybe we're still just being swept along mindlessly by the sheer momentum of corporate dominance and its corresponding cultural malaise.

There are so many of us who want a different life. And we haven't yet figured out a way to achieve critical mass towards the radical changes we want to see implemented. What good is the federal government if it's not overseeing a national system of care-taking? But for all our prayer and meditation and cleansing, for all the hard and breathtakingly beautiful work we do here to support personal and planetary transformation, we can't overthrow the government. I mean, have you *met* the federal government? I read an article in SF Chron today about how the Bush administration actually told EPA that if EPA sent the White House documents revealing the truth about climate change, the White House WOULD NOT OPEN THE E-MAIL. Dubya is literally up in there with his fingers stuck in his ears going "la la la, I can't hear you!"

What gives me any hope at all is that all those people in Tuscaloosa and Des Moines and wherever the hell they are, just *waiting* for the hand of God to smite San Francisco and all these unholy homos getting MARRIED, those people actually do go to church, and do bring meatloaf to their ailing neighbors, and do just want to do right by the Lord and their families and stuff. And for them, maybe right now that means driving an SUV to Costco, an SUV that has a yellow ribbon sticker on the back because their 19 year old sons are over there in Sadr City, and hating gays and hating abortion and hating treesitters. But maybe at some point, if gas prices keep ballooning and the rivers keep rising and the sons keep dying, maybe those people too might notice that Something Is Wrong and we need to Come Together if we want to have any chance at all of living out our natural days on this precious planet.

I hope that when that time arrives, we're all ready to meet them with gentleness and kind language, just like the Cuban firefighters received the 9/11 volunteer EMTs, with a salute.

En Las Noticias

I used to write a different blog.

Yes! It's true. It's not my first time. Do you still love me? *sniff*

The old blog was anonymous, and mostly private, in the sense that I didn't share it with my friends here in the way that I share this one. It was much more of a "Dear Diary" sort of place than this is, and through my experience of writing it I discovered the distinct, 21st century cathartic satisfaction of pouring one's heart out to a circle of (mostly) far-flung strangers.

At some point, though, that sense of satisfaction wore thin and I realized that all the covert disclosure, all the connecting-under-the-cover-of-darkness made me feel, well, shrouded, like I was telling all these truths but the telling was somehow inappropriate or unwelcome in polite company.

So at some point I just said fuck it. I love to write more than most other activities, I have this bizarre compulsion to share the truths and the discoveries and the meanings that occur to me every day as I stroll through my funny little life, and I have an incredible community of people who I love and who also love me more than I've ever been loved before by people who were not my parents.

I declared (to all 5 people who were reading my old blog): I'm gonna write, and I'm gonna tell people about it!

And so here we are.

Perhaps by now you are a bit titillated, sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for me to tell you some intimate, heart-wrenching, vividly-detailed story about my life. Oh, dear reader, I can spin those yarns anytime. For whatever reason, I just *love* doing that. Maybe someday I'll write a whole book. And normally, just for you, because I want you to be happy, I would oblige.

But not today.

No, today I am interested in resurrecting a feature of the old blog that I particularly enjoyed. It wasn't a regular occurrence, but the need for it would arise every so often, when enough juicy tidbits had accumulated from my obsessive cruising of online news sources. (Hi, my name is Caitlin, and I'm cracked out on current events.) And so every so often, my five fabulous readers would be regaled with all the obscure, off-color, momentous-to-somebody-somewhere stuff that caught my attention.

Lately, a lot of stuff has caught my attention, folks. And so, without further ado, I give you:

IN THE NEWS, 2.o!

*Ahem*

First, we have a story that is near and dear to my heart: suddenly, without much advance warning, the state announced yesterday their plan to halt all spraying of urban areas, at any time, for the light brown apple moth!

This is simultaneously a hugely fabulous piece of news, and also just another sneaky tactic by the government to dispel activist energies. While it is *totally awesome* that we don't have to fight against the risk of having BHT and TMAC land on our homes and bodies and babies this autumn, the state and federal governments still plan on doing aerial spray of forested areas (meaning all that nasty stuff lands on rivers, lakes, animals, trees, insects -- even after we saw that last fall, hundreds of birds and pets up and died after the sprayings in Monterey and Santa Cruz), and are still planning to do ground treatments using incredibly toxic chemicals like permethrin. All because of a little moth that's not even a threat to agriculture!

And even though this is a victory, we're still living in the context of a regulatory system in which the profits of big ag and big chem are valued above human and ecological health. In my months of research on this issue (I have taken to calling myself "moth lawyer") I have looked into the very heart of the pesticide behemoth, and let me tell you, dear readers, it is a dark, dark heart. Our federal pesticide governance regime is probably one of the most corrupt, secretive, and undemocratic systems of rules in the entire federal government. It boggles my mind, the extent to which decision-makers value profit above health, and even above life itself, as so much of this stuff is endocrine-disruptive and causes infertility.

So our work is very much still cut out for us. But for now, yes indeed, there is cause for celebration! I wonder if I should leave the "Stop the Spray" bumper sticker on my car, though.

Next on our news docket: gay marriage! Yep, gay and lesbian couples all over California (excepting Kern County) have been able to tie the knot since Tuesday morning. I have been jubilant about this major progressive step towards equality and justice for all in our great state, but what's been the most enjoyable to see are the pictures.

There are so many wonderful shots in all the newspapers of people who are so clearly in love with each other, so pleased to finally have validation of that love from the community (and all the attendant healthcare and legal benefits), and just so cute! I tell ya, nothing brings a tear to my eye like seeing images of people who are totally head over heels for each other, and who can finally choose to affirm their love with a legal bond, just like everyone else.

The funniest part has been reading all the arguments against gay marriage, which mostly boil down to: it's not traditional, it's not historical, it's not in the bible. Oh GAWD. That's all you got? Blah blah blah, insert usual litany of responses to such allegations (i.e. if we were still acting all biblical we'd be keeping slaves, stoning people to death, et cetera). It's such a curious phenomenon, this way in which some people need to harass other people about "morality" and lifestyle choices. What's the big fear? Let me assure you all, The Gay is not actually contagious.

Anyway, yeah, lots of joy about that one.

And finally, I could certainly insert here a nod to the various crises of the day: skyrocketing oil prices, water shortages, worldwide hunger as food prices spike, escalating brutality and misery in the war without end, devastating floods in the midwest, China's attempt to rebuild from the earthquake, and all of the various, quiet atrocities that may never even get picked up by the AP.

But you can scan NYT or LAT or SFChron and find out about all that stuff for yourself.

So instead, I will leave you with this exemplary piece of journalism, a veritable model of the kind of intrepid reporting that makes the world a better, or at least more interesting, place.

And that's that. Stay tuned!

little big word

SO.

What a word, huh? Two rounded-edged letters, nestled next to one another so naturally and unassumingly, just as you might find a couple of skinny garter snakes lounging in the sunshine or a piece of seaweed coiled around a sand dollar at the beach.

So. I like that word. It often comes in very handy.

"So," just like that, at the beginning of a sentence, can alert a listener or a reader that a juicy bit of honesty is imminent. "So, to tell you the truth," or "So, what really happened is..." It's a highly efficient attention-grabber: somebody's about to cut the bullshit! (Usually me. I am honest to a fault when I write, much to the bemusement, I am certain, of more than a few recipients of letters from me.

...So.)

"So" can also signal -- or better yet, invite -- a conclusion, a bringing-back-around of the truth after a long, circuitous journey through a story. "So what I realized was," or "So, what are you trying to tell me?" In such an instance, "so" is a potent catalyst for culmination and closure.

And of course, "so" is one of the simplest yet most opulent adverbs of our lexicon.

"It's so hot out!"

"This sunset is so beautiful!"

"I love you SO much!"

"So," in such instances, can become "soooooo" or "*so*" or any number of emphatic variations on its emphasis-expressive theme. Sometimes there aren't enough o's or enough stars or big-enough capital letters to tell someone how very SO something is. I love it when that happens, when language fails us and renders us mute, positively unable to cram the grandness of the moment into these two curvy little letters.

In any event.

I wanted to tell you that I have been learning and growing so much lately. My heart has been opening so wide. I have been so showered with blessings. I feel so inspired. I am so ready for and receptive to the shifts that I am experiencing.

And

I

have been

eating

SO

well!

That's all, really.

And so to sleep.

P.S. Goat cheese on a ripe apricot? SO GOOD!

slow prayer

Sometimes, in my head, I write the story of this time in my life from a few years in the future.

From my cozy vantage point in the future, I'll look back with compassion at the over-scheduled, under-rested pace of my life. I'll remember with some melancholy the way that my exhaustion was so clearly mirrored in my health challenges -- the clumps of hair in my comb, the broken-out skin, the discomfort of excess flesh, the quickened-by-pharmaceuticals rhythm of my heart. I'll recall how I trudged forward, pushing myself to achieve and produce, and how my relationships -- to my friends, to the earth, to God, to myself -- grew thin and brittle. I'll marvel at the misguided ways in which I attempted to nourish myself.

Mostly, I know that I'll be smiling, because I'll be able to see from that place how powerfully the Universe was holding out its astounding and infinite bounty for me, just waiting for me to receive it. I'll smile, because I'll remember the way that the din of my life drowned out Spirit's voice as it implored me: "no matter what you do or what happens to you, you are my beloved!"

From here, though, in this moment, it's hard to imagine the shift. From here, I grieve for my health, for the feeling of endlessness that is so inherent in these challenges. And it is with much trepidation that I consider releasing these burdens of time and pace, for though they cause me to suffer, they are also my safety. I am safe inside the world of overwork, even though I am also withering there.

And yet, improbably, this is also a time of utter transformation, of quantum leap, of breakthrough. Simple, visceral realizations effect tectonic shifts within the landscape of my life.

And the messages from the other side are so powerful, so clear. This morning at Ecstatic Dance I sat in front of Rivka's beautiful altar, kneeled and bowed before the graceful deep-hued creation of water and light that she'd assembled. At the base of the altar was a set of Osho's Zen Tarot. I sat for a long time holding the deck, asking for guidance for the road ahead, and feeling deep in my body that from this moment forward, I was opening to the shift. The words formed clear and resonant in my mind: "I'm ready to go with the flow." I felt the heat pouring from my hands into the deck, knowing that whatever card I pulled would contain such perfect guidance

And then I pulled this card.



Laughing out loud, I read the meaning of this card in the deck's book:

The figure in this card is completely relaxed and at ease in the water, letting it take him where it will. He has mastered the art of being passive and receptive without being dull or sleepy. He is just available to the currents of life, with never a thought of saying "I don't like that," or "I prefer to go the other way." Every moment in life we have a choice whether to enter life's waters and float, or to try to swim upstream. When this card appears in a reading it is an indication that you are able to float now, trusting that life will support you in your relaxation and take you exactly where it wants you to go. Allow this feeling of trust and relaxation to grow more and more; everything is happening exactly as it should.

Everything is happening exactly as it should.

Trust.

Surrender.

I know that trust and surrender form the golden key, which unlocks the door to a future of health, of energy, of vibrance and radiance. Trust and surrender, instead of push, control, stay separate.

I live inside a remarkable, beautiful life. But in many ways it is a life that I have carefully fabricated so that I can be good, and so that I can be loved. And now those seams, so expertly crafted out of my quiet desperation, are beginning to unravel, as a deeper truth strains to free itself. The current becomes irresistible; though the banks of the river have been carved and shaped, the wild water will always find and follow its true course.

Osho says: "What is the movement of water? or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves towards depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitious; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last."

The very mention of "non-ambitious" is truly frightening to me. And yet I know that it is this towards which I must now turn. As I am beginning to sense it, non-ambition is not a release of passion or creativity. No, just the opposite -- ambition, as I have known it, is powered at its core by the question and the doubt of self-worth. Performing to make myself good.

I am certain that this kind of ambition blocks the upwelling of my deepest gifts. When I am always running after approval and, ultimately, love, I do not stand at the center of myself, and so I cannot offer the world the realest bounty of my heart. When I am running like this, I cannot construct my life around the central axis of spiritual practice, cannot take time to lovingly prepare and enthusiastically enjoy delicious, nourishing foods, cannot feel enough energy to be in the flow of giving and receiving with the people I love, cannot devote myself to breathing with my experience. And I run so fast that my body becomes injured, debilitated.

For what?

This is my life. Why would I make choices that are anything less than life-affirming, life-supporting, life-giving?

The shift is coming. Life has extended its hand to me, and there is only one simple word I must utter -- "yes" -- before the music begins and I step forward to join the swirling, sweating, exalted dance.