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.