| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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eli golemi. adriatic soul food! delicious! --droopy |
He once gave a sermon about how we live in a culture of envy and how that makes people despise those who stand out and achieve more, hence the push to have everyone conform to the norm of mediocrity and banality. He gave really good examples, the one that stuck with me at the time being the way that children in school are ridiculed by their peers for doing well in their schoolwork. The lesson being, don't let other people's envy (and sin, in general) drag you down into the mire. I have thought about that sermon on occasion for years. It helped me in many ways. What am I to make of it now? And all those good things he had said to me in confession that had truly catalyzed healing and peace within myself. I don't know how to change my evaluation of him in light of his confession to sexual abuse. I don't know how to reconcile those things. |
another thread. i couldn't bring myself to say anything. i don't have anything worth saying other than that i'm sorry. on my father's side of the family--the catholic side--i had an uncle. he was as devout an irish- catholic as they come. but, until the day he died, he had a visceral hatred of priests and the priesthood. he was of my grandmother's generation, and would never have said why. but we knew that the only possible reason was that he must have been abused by a priest when he was a boy. the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes. |
I have nothing more I can say other than I'm sorry you have to experience this. |
There's a part in the Brothers Karamazov when Father Zosima talks about loving humanity in general and hating individual people. Here -- "It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.' But I've always felt the opposite. When you consider the evil, conscious and unconscious, (not to mention the calamity caused by accident or ignorance), humanity has committed and will commit, the enormity of the tally of destruction and sin (for lack of a better word) overwhelms one's capacity for love. But take each person on their own and the task is manageable. |
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one of the things i love about AA is that it levels everyone. no matter where you are now or what you've done wrong or achieved in the past, in every vulnerable moment we are all the same and in the exact same place. good people have the capacity to do very bad things, and then sometimes do them. if they are truly good people, they live in the torment of huge regret. |
this afternoon i discovered a 3-1/2" hornworm had stripped my tomato plant bare. it hadn't produced tomatoes yet, but until now i had hope. took a picture of the worm. up close, the head reminds me of a manatee. include the whole body it looks like the kind of thing that eats tokyo. got a local source of farm fresh eggs this week. a friend of a friend; his name's kyle. his eggs come in white, brown, and blue. i'm like jonathan swift. i can love individuals - a few; say if they have eggs - but mankind is a mess i can do without. |
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And yet the crows won't respond when I leave bits of old food and bread for them. I like crows; crows are welcome any time nel giardino di Spider. В саду Спидера. Russian classes start in three weeks. Better start reviewing my grammar. Sarah, I've been reading through your old posts on food and fitness, and they're really good. I've started getting private yoga lessons from an instructor that gives lessons in your own house, and she's an awesome teacher. I think I'm going to make these cookies tonight: Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies Ingredients: 1 cup flaked sweetened coconut 4 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 cup) 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/8 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup packed brown sugar 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 large egg 2 ounces dark chocolate (70% cacao), chopped Cooking spray Preparation 1. Preheat oven to 350°. 2. Arrange coconut in a single layer in a small baking pan. Bake at 350° for 7 minutes or until lightly toasted, stirring once. Set aside to cool. 3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl; stir with a whisk until blended. Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Beat in vanilla and egg. Add flour mixture, beating at low speed just until combined. Stir in toasted coconut and chocolate. 4. Drop by level tablespoons 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or until bottoms of cookies just begin to brown. Remove from pan, and cool completely on wire racks. |
learning experience. i'll try to revive the tomato plant outside and watch for worms. this afternoon i was stripping my basil for pesto and found a little green caterpillar one one of the leaves. went to austin this weekend with an old friend. we were once very close, but i hadn't seen him in a few years. he had recently gotten a divorce. he had gotten back on drugs. i told him we could spend the weekend at my family's farmhouse in the hill country to help clean up a little. we left late friday in his car. he loaded my wheelchair in the trunk. it's about 200 miles from fort worth to the farmhouse. we had gone about 42 miles when i asked him if he remembered packing my ukulele in the trunk. he thought for a second, then became wide-eyed, slammed on the brakes, and screached to a stop on the side of the highway. he got out and ran to the back of the car and opened the trunk. i could hear him rummaging around. then he got back into the car and sped off. "no ukulele?" I said. "worse," he said. "no wheels." "wheels?" "i forgot your fucking wheelchair wheels. i don't know what happened. but when you asked just now and i replayed it in my mind, i couldn't see myself putting them in. they must still be in the street in front of your apartment. i'm so fucking sorry." so we drove back. i called my apartment complex and had them send some guys down to my apartment to get the wheels out of the street before someone ran over them. we got the wheels and were back on the road. but now there was no way we'd make to the farm before dark. when we got close, we stopped in a spec's liquor in bee cave (a town) and got beer, wine and some kind of new texas vodka that was on sale. we sat out on the porch and drank, listening to insects. on saturday morning i was on the porch early with my clipper about to give myself a haircut. he offered to do it for me, saying he had done that in the army. i sat there as he ran the razor with its guard though hair. then he said "shit!" i looked over at a window and saw my reflection. he had taken the guard off to shake out the hair and forgot to put it back on. there was a bald strip on the side of my head. i just told him to finish the job. now i'm bald except for a peach- fuzz like stubble. it grew on me as the day went on. saturday evening was spent on the porch again, talking about divorce, jobs, kids, disappointment, etc. "you have a gun here?" he said. "there's an old .22 somewhere. and by old i mean i think it belonged to my great aunt. what do you want a gun for?" "just thinkin' about walking off into those woods and not coming back." "wouldn't trust the gun, and i don't think we have bullets." "rat poison?" "nope. but you see all those purple flowers out in the field? it's silverleaf nightshade. pretty poisonous. the cattle rancher the next property over had some cows die from that stuff. a herd had gotten trapped in a pen overnight and all they had to eat was nightshade. when the rancher, guy named wong, found them the next morning some were dead, other's near death, and the one's still standing were trembling and salivating waterfalls. a few of them had explosive diarrhea. that's probably what would happen to you. i'm not cleaning it up." "huh," he said. "what are the little yellow flowers?" "slender scratch daisy. harmless." |
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the vodka, was it Enchanted Rock? that's the new vodka. made in San Antonio. |
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also, i don't think you can shoot yourself with a .22 - it's too long. |
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Spider, i hope you get something worthwhile out of all that shit. that was a very powerful, transformative, and exciting time in my life. i still believe many of those directives to be true and useful. i recently did a 4 month stint in Alcoholics Anonymous. i'll give away the ending now: i quit because my sponsor told me i'm not an alcoholic. which came as a surprise and a relief. alcohol has taken hold of me, but in no consequential way other than preventing me from losing weight. and that might seem really trivial to the average person, but to me it's a nightmare. a certain weight determines my self worth. i know first hand that body weight affects much of what people judge you by - whether they know you well or superficially. it is a beast of burden to be overweight. and i fight this every day in every kind of way. diet and exercise doesn't work for me now how it did 10-15 years ago. it's absolutely at once befuddling and terrorizing. it consumes way too much of my time and energy. it's disgusting and futile, but i can't make it stop, i can't make peace. what i've learned is that appearance is a gateway. and that gateway... well and i could go on and on about the way fat people and all people experience prejudice. i used to be able to control the fat part, and it seems now i cannot. fat. overweight. whatever you want to call it. i hate feeling encumbered by own body. so i'm trying all avenues of repair. i failed the AA test. |
I am still having some problem with internet, however, I am trying to buy a wireless internet. Still losing some weight lately, I am down ten pound and trying to look good. My college start soon, I will be attending there for two classes and had my car recently repaired. I still having some symptom with my hormone, feeling strange lately and looks forwards to see my another doctor soon. |
into getting more magnesium in you to help with weight loss. It helps sooooooo many things run better in your body. Since elevating my magnesium I've been able to maintain my weight easily and lose when I want to. |
I just typed up this long description of my issues, but it's pointless. There is no way to quantify the amount of hatred and disgust I have directed at my body over the years, but Sarah, I trust that you get it. But this is my point -- The other day, I got a mosquito bite on my stomach somehow, and when I was looking at my skin there, it occurred to me that I never look at my stomach. Like, almost never. I've spent countless hours examining every square inch of my face, but I completely ignore my abdominal area. And then, I'm home early from work today, and a few minutes ago I was meditating after doing some yoga. I was lying on my back with my hands resting my abdomen, feeling my breath expand my diaphragm, and I had this revelation: My abdomen is my most hated part of my body -- I have, probably due to my PCOS, a big pregnant-looking belly that I dress to hide. My wardrobe revolves around "Does this hide my stomach?" I also can't stand to be touched in my stomach, and I have lifelong recurrent nightmares of someone drilling their finger into my abdomen, and it hurts and I can feel the pain in my dream. I've always felt disconnected from my body. I'm a head with a body attached (in the words of Margaret Atwood). But this region is especially foreign to me. It's like this negative space that I'm disconnected from, a vacuum. And yet the organ of my stomach is in that space. It's like I've been trying to fill that space with food, since I can't do it with awareness and acceptance. And the more I do that, the larger the area physically gets, but the more I deny its existence. My yoga instructor offers "yoga therapy," and part of that involves body awareness. She says Flow Yoga, with the melding of movement and breath control, is really good for this and we'll be starting on that when I see her in September. I'm really hoping this helps me out. |
I don't want to go down this path. Healthy food is an art form; let me appreciate the art. |
And I'll put extra coconut in, because I fucking love coconut. |
http://pcosinfo.wordpress.com/treatments/natural/magn esium/ |
But...I gather the gist of what you're pressing from the URL. All right, all right. :) |
"magnesium" for some reason.... |
brothers from dallas. and i'll put extra spider in, because i fucking love spider. i have actually played with the idea of joining alcoholics anonymous. there is a chapter that meets in a church not far from where i live. i thought it might be a chance to consort with other pathetic people like me. |
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i'm taking 4x the daily recommended amount of magnesium, half as glycinate, half as citrate. and zinc. |
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AA is so super cool. i will keep going to meetings every now and then just because... it's calming. they say the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. so i'd like to believe i qualify. i have never sat in a room with such an incredibly diverse group of people. all ages, all races, all religious and political convictions. some go to AA on their own; some because a judge strongly suggested it. most because in one way or another their lives had become unmanageable in a devastating way which no nonalcoholic can truly understand. they don't seem like losers to me at all. the big book is entrancing. i read the whole thing cover to cover in four days, and i re-read some of it again. droopy, you love to read, so if for no other reason you should go to AA to acquire a copy of the big book. AA gives alcoholics and addicts a pathway to directly experience a higher power which cures them all of a disease that they all share. the steps are the pathway. they all agree that if they diverge at all from the pathway, even a tiny step over the line, their lives will end in ruin and they will die as if committing suicide. |
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"agnostics" section. i've had a lot of spirituality, in almost every form, thrown at me over the years. especially since i became paralyzed. none of it sticks. if i go to aa, it won't be for whatever message of hope they say they have. i'll go for the drunks. got a dozen ffe's (farm fresh eggs) and a tub of fresh figs from kyle yesterday. |
I haven't made cookies in a few weeks, but when I do, I keep a couple dozen for myself & housemates and give the rest away. And who doesn't love being given cookies? Make them with coconut, or peanutbutter, or oatmeal, or bananas. Whatever you want. Make them with the understanding that you deserve those cookies, as a being of worth. Who hasn't struggled with their body and its parts? I've had battles with my whole torso, thighs, ankles and feet; even my hands and wrists don't escape scrutiny (why don't nice gloves fit me? why is it so difficult to have a long enough sleeve?). With my feet and ankles it's the worst. Long and narrow, it's difficult to find a shoe that fits in the first place, but one that fits and I like and is comfortable? Nearly impossible. Then, with being prone to sprained ankles, everyone and their dog tells me I need more arch support. Which I hate. At times I struggled in such an overdramatic fashion (granted I was in middle school at the time) as to daydream about having my feet amputated (a la the Girl in the Red Shoes or my aunt) and trade my problems for those of wearing prosthetics. Anyhow, things have changed. The more I dance, the more I have to communicate with my feet. They're my foundation; I can't continue to hate them. So I started paying attention to them, and letting the voices around me fade away. I stopped wearing arch supports. I stopped wearing anything that wasn't comfortable most of the time. My feet will never build their arch muscle if I'm always supporting them! I go for long walks and even run (Run! Before April, I hadn't tried running in 13 years!) sometimes in flat-soled sneakers... every step, my feet feel the ground. Barefoot, sneakers, flip-flops. And somehow, these terrible shoes aren't the ones my ankles roll in. I wore some (abhorred) river sandals a week and a half ago, the day after I got back from riding my bike to Seattle, and while preparing to go canoeing sprained my ankle. Into the giveaway bag they went, there's no point in owning a limited-use shoe that I dislike and causes injury. Anyhow, we're not perfect; we can make changes inside our heads and dye our hair and diet and exercise, but the big changes can be a long time coming if they ever happen at all. In the meantime, we should communicate with and love ourselves rather than continue down a road of self-hatred. I'm going to go buy some peaches this afternoon if I can find any. |
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control my weight until I get enough in my diet. |
I may have eaten one or two with a layer of dulce de leche spread on top. I took pictures of the cookies but have been too lazy to upload them. I have to be careful now because I have been at a weight loss plateau for a month now and it is so tempting to say fuck it and make five different kinds of cookies and chow down. Or cake. Goddamn, I would love some cake right now. I will get on the magnesium tout de suite. I I I I I |
you you you you! |
Stat! |
Around 6 pm, my dad went outside to check on his front garden. All was well. He went around back to check on the plants in the backyard, and when he came out around in front once more, he saw a baby squirrel sitting in the driveway. Upon investigation, there were three more baby squirrels squirming around in the front yard. He called me and I came over to see them, and they looked pretty sickly. They had fur and their eyes were open, so they weren't newborns, and there are no squirrel nests in my dad's or neighbors' trees, and they weren't there five minutes before my dad saw them, so he's is convinced someone tossed them from a car into the yard. He was going to leave them there to die (circle of life and all), but I called several wildlife rescue phone numbers until I got in touch with a woman in the next town over who counseled me to put them in a box and see if their mother would come by and get them. By 8 pm, they were still there, curled up and twitching in their sleep. I had to make a few more phone calls, but I finally reached a woman who lives literally within walking distance and who rescues wildlife in her home. At this point, they weren't moving at all in the box and I was worried for them. I brought them over to the lady, who had little boxes and crates all over her dining room with squirrels inside, and she said my squirrels were very dehydrated and hadn't been in contact with their mother for a while. But they were alive! And she stuck some bottles in their mouths and got them feeding, and she's going to be releasing them in a nearby forest in a couple of days. Two boys and two girls. Godspeed, little guys. May you live to wreak havoc in someone else's yard. |
toil not, neither do they reap. but if one person thinks they matter.... |
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That evening I was supposed to have mowed my dad's lawn, and I kept imagining what it would have been like if I hadn't seen them squirming around in the grass and had mowed over them. They moved so jerkily and sickly-like, too. To be honest, they gave me the creeping willies. |
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figs and squirrels. my fig tree only produced about 50 figs this year. about 30 of them were eaten by squirrels and birds. |
squirrels. he was from mississippi and had a life story worthy of faulkner. he would eat virtually anything. except 'possums. he had a disgusting story about them. his whole back yard was a garden, and one of the things he had was a fig tree. his wife, nina, made fig preserves and fig cobbler. this is where i learned to love figs. |
This morning my dietician looked at my food log for the month and emailed me to scold me for eating so many sweets, especially those toasted coconut cookies. Ha, I still regret nothing! A job opened up here at my library that would pay 5K more and give me a wider variety of duties while being less demanding than my current job (and my current job is not demanding). I applied for it last week but haven't heard anything back from official channels, but one of my coworkers is certain I will get it. If I get it, I will have to move into an office where my computer is in eye-sight of my supervisor, so no more internet browsing on company time for me. Until then... |
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on sunday and i have no particular place to go. feels cozy. good luck with the job, spider. buy an ipad and stick it in a drawer. i've never met anyone named falkner, but i don't get around much anymore. |
I am taking two classes,beside my work is almost castrophe for me last week Monday.But, I am fine with that and I finally got back on-line at this time. So hopefully things are ok at Sorabji. |
last night i had microwave tikka masala for dinner. got it from trader joe's. it wasn't long until i started feeling the cramps in my stomach. i checked the ingredients on the box: it contained cashews. i don't have the proper enzyme to digest cashews, and once it's in my stomach it wreaks havoc. i spent all night, until about 5am, in a fetal position waiting for it to be over. since i moved into my apartment complex 12 or 13 years ago, there has been a knights of pythias hall sitting derelict in the middle of it. it was built in 1925 and was the african-american wing of the lodge. i found out that the fort worth housing authority finally bought the place (the owner was going to have it razed) and the mayor will be here tomorrow at 9:30am to commemorate the renovation of the place. it's going to be apartment lofts. |
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same. they leveled my first apartment building and turned it into lofts. every two and three store building in downtown austin has been leveled and turned into sky scraping lofts or business centers. except 6th street, and a few punk rock watering holes on red river have managed to hold their ground. but next door - lofts. |
streets, so they're not tearing anything down. the http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/kophall- 2nd.htm,http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/kopha ll-2nd.htm},knights of pythias hall} will be fixed up and turned into lofts. it's been on an "endangered" list for years. there's a weird dog wandering around our apartments. clearly a stray. he avoids people, even to the point of wandering into the street in traffic. twice i've seen cars screech to a stop in front of him and he won't flinch, as if he was on drugs. i bet that link won't work. |
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wing to it "in the same style". i hate it when they do that, it always looks so cheesy. it's like supplementing michelangelo's david by standing a mannequin next to it. |
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Okay, I am going back to my darkened silent cage now where I can find wireless internet and hormones and cookies and settle down into ol page 449 of my ancient edition of the AA BB. Working through Gifts of Crow and neurobiology of bird brains. Wish I had one. |
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Hey Antigone, how are things working out for you lately? Haven't heard from you for a while. |
I have been silent for a while, chewing the earth, testing my food and air and water, and measuring background radiation; teaching on the east coast this past spring and staying close to the practice in StL for the most of the summer. I am boring at best. My sponsor tells me that if I make thirty years in AA I can think about drinking again. Not. I am drawing illustrations for my little novel of autobiographical snippets for my two boys, so that they know their father in ways they haven't as yet. I want to finish it before I expire, which, likely, will be before my sponsor says I can drink. |
Somehow I doubt that. |
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Here's hoping you use it. :) |
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cocktails at Péché. my favorite was the French 75. second favorite Corpse Revival #2 - gin, Lellet Blanc, Cointreau, lemon, with an absinthe rinse. third favorite was the gin bramble, with creme de mure. senor got the NY Sour: Makers Mark, lemon, simple syrup, red wine float. happy to not be an alcoholic. |
last night to keep from getting mugged. it was night and i was alone in a deserted part of downtown. i had noticed a car was slowly creeping down the street, watching me. the place was called malone's pub. there were three patrons there, all women, and the bartender. ordered a well tequila (no salt or lime) and a negra modelo. shot back the tequila and rolled over to a table to drink my beer. when i got to my last swallow of beer i had one more tequila shot and left. unhappy not to have the money to drink more. |
each other for years and have never met. One of these sundays I shold head over to cow town and we should have lunch. I'm buying. |
cools down. when or if the mood strikes you, give me a heads up. we can pick a place in downtown fort worth and i'll meet you there. |
or just tired of the 100+ days, but it feels more oppressive to me these days. |
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The canard that the SS trustfund "doesn't exist" or some such is silly. When there has been more in the fund than can be spent in a given year the excess is loaned out to the rest of the government by the Treasury. If that were not done then huge sums of money would be sitting idle, distorting the currency supply. Folks who say the fund doesn't exist because of this don't understand basic macroeconomics and should STFU. A good article on it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-h- williamson/the-macro-economics-of-so_b_686817.html |