To Indulge? Me?

Task # 12
Completed July 26th, 2007

So, as mentioned here, I don’t indulge myself often, so I visited the Olympus Spa (http://www.olympusspa.net) in pursuit of the goal of feeling alive, indulged.

Alive….the lusty sugar of honey seeping into my skin, the coolness of the cucumber releasing the callousness of those facial membranes…
While experiencing the moisturizing body wrapped, which involve cocooned in some honey mixture, I felt that I am body, I don’t have a body, I AM it. And I remembered those lines in Beloved: “She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That is they could not see it, they would not have it.” The passage goes on to speak of loving our flesh, our hands, our mouth, and nourishing it on our own and not despising it as the world does.”

Oh, the hands briskly swaying across my chest, my swollen belly, my core…
Alive

The solitudeness of being single sometimes means a forgetting of the sensuality of nature, of connection. The denial of my sensuality so pervasive that the hunger now is so palpable.

On that table, I didn’t become “more acquainted” or “more connected” with my body, because that would mean again that it is something I possess or external to me. More like, I became aware of my aliveness.

And the honey, womb-like, desperate to penetrate and stick. Incredibly freeing….

So then, I visited the café, because the body wanted what it wanted: nourishment. Again, the mind of shoulds attempted to reign, but the body won out this time…
And oh!

Alive!

I ordered a Tofu Red Soup…and it was perhaps one of the most delicious meals of my life…

Spring onions sweetness dances with the earthiness of shitaki mushrooms, the soup ase briny infused with chili oil and garlic, the tofu bathing wontly, crumbling off in waves…the tiny cucumbers, smaller than half peanuts, yet crunchy….

Alive!

And, a lover of condiments, am I! Perfection! From Right to Left, Top to Bottom: The flamboyant pickled radish, flavored with sweet mirin, soft and chewy bean sprouts, chili dusted fried cucumbers (So pliant!) and a firm ponzu laced tofu, then (oh! There-is-a-God) sweet black beans, half like a fig and beans with a plum afterbite…so amazing! And a seasame seed slaw, very sweet….

Alive!

Yes, this task will go down in infamy! Hard to top…

Because this is one night where I will fall asleep knowing that if I died, I lived….

#60 BookCrossing!

I eat words. Strung together with sugary potency, or slapped haphazardly with sourness, words nourishes the total me. They are the simple carbs, the power-packs proteins, the wide-range vitamin that sustains my life.

Now, many stories begin this way, and go on to inform the audience that since inception, passionate readers and writers ate up words in conjunction with their first forays of solid food. Um, no. Not me. I don’t remember liking reading much until Susan Mayfield.

Susan Mayfeild was my 6th grade teacher, and my first supplier. She gave me The fall of Freddy the Leaf after my grandfather died.

This interaction commenced the addiction. It was not individual. I was communal, almost like communion itself, food externally sacred entering my physical being and becoming spiritual in nature. Our appreciation of each other grew into a friendship. A friendship that pays homage to the sacredness of words. She accepts me and yet inspires me to step into myself more completely. She is the epitome of grace with skin on Carefully crafted postcards, lovingly written letters, and almost month, we pass along a book. It is a way for us to mark where we’ve been and release a bit of ourselves into the heart of the other. This is us in May, posing for “courage” at tea.

BookCrossing is a new craze for readers everywhere. If you've enjoyed a book and you think someone else might like it you can leave it in a public place for someone else to pick up. You can then find out who took it and what they thought of it through the BookCrossing website. http://www.bookcrossing.com/

So, last week, Susan sends me The Book Thief, which I read last year. I read the book about 18 months ago.
Here is my review:
Death is not our enemy, in fact, death knows us more intimately than we are conscious of. This book personifies death, what if death was a character? This book will resonate with any book lover. The plot and narrative create an originality that speaks for itself. And as much as death is central, survival is more the main player here.
It seems fitting that Susan would be the cook in the kitchen for my first book crossing adventure, which I released into the wild, at my beloved Mandolin Café. http://www.themandolincafe.com/

I also released another book into the wild yesterday, because us word eaters often are impatient and require constant source of fuel to maintain our high. I just can’t wait for someone to find these books, eat them up and report back on the website.
So, Beloved. Probably the most transforming book of my adolescence, with phrases that burrowed down into my developing identity, with characters that gave skin to the bare bones of my awareness of suffering, with a plot that made racism not just a word but a haunting experience.

"She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That is they could not see it, they would not have it." The passage goes on to speak of loving our flesh, our hands, our mouth, and nourishing it on our own and not despising it as the world does.

This is my Special K Treatment right now, today, and it seems fitting that I "released" this book into the wild…

Oh! Hungry for more…I am off to Seattle to sit in a café and read my latest meal.

In my mind, of course I projected some expectation: it is July, for goodness sake, and figuring you’ll see the sun at some point in the day is a pretty safe bet. But this is my season of false platueas, and of course it was overcast and drizzly throughout task number #33visit the Ape cave and Mt. St Helens. I’ll take it on faith that the volcanic mount was there at all, because the fog was definitely keeping her chastely robbed today.

My friend Josh and I drove in my little Scion to the Ape Caves. Named by members of an outdoor group called the Mount St. Helens Apes, this cave is the longest continuous lava tube in the continental United States The cliffnote skinny is that “down” there are these two underground pathways carved by lava tubes 2,000 years ago. It is wet, cool (40 degrees) and pitch black down there. The floor is sometimes flat, sometimes craggily. There is a more challenging 1.5 mile path and an easy ¾ of a mile path. Josh and I both choose the more difficult one. Prior to descending, I name my fear out loud, “I am a little afraid!” in hopes that it will some how dissipate the feeling. It doesn’t.

We start. And yep…it’s dark. Josh rented us a big lantern, but it is dark, and navigating the rocky bottom forces the light in scattered directions. I was super afraid! In fact, I kept thinking about scary movies were things eat people alive in dark. My first time in a cave, and my fears of the dark, of being out of control underground without light, gets projected onto images from stupid horror thriller flicks. Josh asks if we should turn around and do the easier one. and you know what? For the first timee in a long time, I immediately oblige. I don’t try to change my fear or overcome it or be the tough chick. I don’t try to be resilient or choose the hard way. I allow myself to “chicken out” I am a Robert Frost “road less traveled fanatic” and much of my energy is spent on doing the more complicated, messy, but exceptional thing. So this is not me, people! But …and within minutes and with just a vestigal feeling of guilt (“Weak!”) I start to enjoy myself and look up…this place is so unfamiliar! This “path more common” approach proved just fine…and fun? Why didn’t you tell me that going with the flow, with the popular route could also be so freeing?

Did I mention it was dark? So, these pictures are pretty impressive to discover. That old camera keeps on performing….

It takes us around 45 minutes total. I talk about Plato and his notion that we experience life as if seeing shadows in a cave and that the real thing out there in the real world would blow our mind away…

But the dark has its benefits as well.

It seems fitting this “easy” route is the first accomplishment.
Of course, it takes us three hours to go home…

We found this winery I was THRILLED to try out…!

Blasted! It’s Closed!
And guarded by an ewok I call “Trixie” not a friendly little lady. But that’s what you get on the road less traveled: bristles. We just had to take a few detours down country roads just to experience that less traveled terrain at least once today.

And thus it begins!

The Mission:Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.The Criteria:Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part). Visit Day Zero for links to Other Lists and Tips for Creating Your Own
My 101 things to do 1001 days
FYI: These are things I have NEVER done before or have rarely done in the past
COMPLETED ARE IN GREEN!

1.Start a blog and journal about my 100 experiences (completed 7/6/08)

2.Skinny Dip

3. Befriend someone over 80 years old

4.Get a pet

5.Wear a birthday hat through a meal at a restaurant in a month no where CLOSE to my birthday (btw: April)

6.Raise money from loved ones to buy a Heifer (http://www.heifer.org/)

7. Go a week without caffeine

8.Ride a train

9. Eat a quail egg (Arenal volcano, Wed, 8/27/08)

10. Create a place setting for 8 with 8 different patterns found in thrift shops (plate and a bowl)

11.Visit a WA winery and buy a bottle of wine

12. Get a body wrap at a spa (07/08)

13. Participate in a Habitat for Humanity Project

14. Receive postcards from all 50s states (6/50)

15. Finish a NY Times crossword puzzle, (Jon West says “Monday and Tuesday don’t count)

16. Become educated about changing a tire

17. Go to three live music events

18.Go on a spontaneous road trip

19. Sing a song in public (07/08)

20. Buy 20 dollars worth of flowers and give them away to complete strangers

21.pay off one of my 5 student loans!

22. Try to learn how to crochet or knit

23. Cultivate a garden of some sort

24.Ride on a motorcyle

25.buy flowers for myself

26.buy flowers for some one else

27. Go on a blind date

28. spend half a day playing a video/computer game

30. Not drive my car for a week

31.Attend a book or poetry reading

32.Trade something on gimmie your stuff (http://gimmeyourstuff.blogspot.com/)

33.Visit Mount St Helens and the Ape Caves ( 7/5/08)

34. Spend a girls weekend with my sister Caity

35. Go fishing

36. Visit an apple orchard in Washington

37.Drink pink champagne

38. Donate my hair to locks of love (http://www.locksoflove.org/)

39. Do something with dry ice

40. Watch the sunrise and the sun set in the same day

41.Learn how to use google reader and organize my favorite blogs

42.Complete a mad lib asking total strangers to supply the words

43.Ride in a hot air balloon

44.do yum cha or korean stirfry with friends

45. Take a class that features something I am not good at or have never done

46.Buy a frivolous kitchen gadget

47.learn how to say “where’s the bathroom” in six languages

48.Make a toast in a bar

49.make a sandcastle OR make a snowman

50.floss every day for a week

51. Visit a craft store in the morning and complete a gift project for a friend in one day

52. Give a care package of money, food, and clothing to a homeless person

53. Spend at least three nights in a cabin

54.Panhandle $5 (Jess wants to document this!)

55. publish something (a research article, letter to the editor)

56. Hike Mt Rainer

57.Create a survival kit good to last a week

58. Do something special with my mom

59. Eat only food produced with 100 miles of where I live for one week

60. Post Something on BookCrossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/) ( 7/17/08)

61. Go Caroling

62. Buy a pair of shoes that cost more than $100 (runners don’t count!)

63. Lie in a hammock (Costa Rica, 08/08)

64. Spend a day from sunrise to sundown in silence with no technologym without using electricity

65. Ask a guy out on a date

66. Throw a dinner party for 6, having each guest pick an ingredient and prepare a special course for each featuring that ingredient

67. Do not use my credit or debit card for an entire month, living only on a cash budget

68. Stay up all night

69.See a comedy routine

70. Complete a puzzle

71.Buy something on ETSY

72. Try Rockclimbing or Canyoning (Costa Rica, 8/27/2008)

73. Research the foster care system and the process for becoming a foster parent

74. Tour a farm

75.Ask someone to tell me his/her life story

76. Organize a community/neighborhood event

77. Watch 3 foreign films

78. Do something from The Art of Doing Nothing (like take a “gourmet nap” )

79. Sneak into a convention

80.Try to send someone a telegram

81. Host/Throw 6 Themed Potlucks (1/6 Nourishment Potluck, 8/15/08)

82. Do a “Price is Right” Challenge by spending as close to $100 in Whole Foods on 25 items.

83. Visit the biggest bookstore in America: Powells in Portland (7/31/2008)

84.Pick an inspirational book (Who Cares?) or movie and organize a community discussion of the book

85. Play Dress Up

86. Eat a meal at a sit down restaurant by myself WITHOUT reading

87. Learn something new (like 5 constellations) and teach something to someone else

88. Write a “If something ever happens to me letter” and give it to a family member AND close family friend

89. Go Camping/Sleep outside

90. Create the “ultimate” picnic

91. Attend a sporting event and drink a beer

92. Do NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano)

93. Take 10 pictures with 10 people I love and write one paragraph about our relationship together

94. Attend a murder mystery party

95. Spend a full day shopping with $500 in cash AND NOT FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT!

96. Go to someplace people would called “sacred” (e.g. Great Wall of China, Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, a monastery)

97. Have a share week at work where I share something with a new person each day

98. Do something out of character/comfort zone that others would not expect me to do

99. Follow a financial plan (such as this one: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/31/31-days-to-fix-your-finances-a-wrapup/

100. FREEBIE: TO BE DETERMINED

101.Throw a HUGE shower/celebration for myself when I finish this list