Commensality? -- But What Is, Impacts

You all know I'm a serial junkie. Grain free, of course. So (couldn't resist), isn't it going against the grain that I've taken so long to come out with the next in my Symbiotic - Commensal - Parasite series? Where have I been?

barnacles on a feather--were they there when the feather was on the bird?

As I would tell any friend of mine, the important thing is, I'm here now. In the meantime, though, I spent the weekend at a silent Sufi retreat and then took a hike today. I'm on day fourteen of a 21-day sugar detox, am getting things set up as a professional post-MFA writer (including sending my work out), have registered a domain name and committed to learning a new content management system for my "for real" website--oh, and I've been working. Stunning synchronicities, humbliing realizations, astonishing liftings of veils enabling me to understand what has been before my face but hitherto opaque.
No excuses -- but hey, I could blog for the rest of the month just filling in the details on that paragraph!

Commensal, though. The real reason it's taken me some time to get to this is that I find "commensal" hard to explain and even understand. "Symbiotic" is straightforward--life working together to make life. "Parasitic" (which we'll get to next time) is also a pretty clear-cut concept.
Commensal comes from Latin whereas the other two come from Greek. Maybe just a coincidence that it's more slippery. If it were a Greek derivative, it would be:
Syssitic. In other words, it combines the first element of "symbiotic" -- the sym/cum/co "with"
with the second element of "parasitic" -- sitos "food" (actually literally "grain"; NB the "mensa" in Latin literally means "table" but specifically a meal table and with an etymological connotation of grain harvest also).
The colloquial translation of commensalis/syssitios is "messmate" -- someone who sits at the same table in a communal cafeteria. In that situation, you'd think one diner is much like another. But in our parlance, technically a commensal  organism is one that feeds from a host without causing the host any harm or damage. The remora fish glomming onto a shark or manta ray is a commonly cited example, as are the barnacles on whales.
So it turns out part of my discomfort is linguistic/syntactic. The word "commensal" properly denotes a reciprocal (sym/cum/co = "with") relationship between two different diners/remoras. But our language is using it to denote a one-way benefit relationship between remora and manta ray.

Sometimes words just don't collide with reality in a logical way...

Reaching deeper, with all the messages I've been receiving lately on the interconnectedness of all of us, animalvegetablemineraletherial (and that's why we have differentiation) I just can't wrap my brain around the idea that something feeds on something else without affecting it for either good or ill. Something can be affecting me even beneath the threshold of my awareness. And something else that isn't even present can affect me because I believe it is. The idea that the barnacle or the remora or the commensal bacteria have no benefit or detriment to the whale or manta ray or human gut seems to me tantamount to saying that they don't have real existence. It's a disrespect to them! Surely the barnacle helps clean the whale's skin, the remora and bacteria likewise--if they're nurturing themselves from what their host doesn't need, in my book that's actually providing a benefit.
When I've been in social situations being served gluten/dairy/meat, being able to pass the food I couldn't eat on to a friend or partner was a boon for me--there's one kind of commensal.
On the other hand, for whatever scarcity consciousness reasons, for much of my life I've appropriated the "cleanup crew" commensal position whereby something's permissible for me to eat if no one else wants it and it'll otherwise be thrown out (like stray fallen pieces of fruit on the floor at the store or farmers market, or godhelpme leftovers). Current meditations--and, no doubt, the sugar detox--are helping me let go of that old pattern. 

Commensality is no one-way street! I am, therefore I impact.

Choosing Housemates and Guests

Fresh fruit in Alaskan winter feels like a decadent blessing--notice the date on the plate, which seems more reasonable; notice the snake on the plate.

There's turmeric brought back from England, too, like the last time I went. Last time I brought turmeric back it was the harbinger of hard times for me physically, and the same again now, or worse. So many scientific studies are bogus because they claim, for example, that cholesterol causes heart disease, confounding correlation "a happens when b happens" with causation "in the presence of/because of b, you get a." Today's lesson. Returning from England with turmeric and having my weight/food relationship in free fall have happened together twice now, but that does not mean the one causes the other. There is a much bigger picture to be taken into account. Lots of other fruit on the plate--and the snake.

This has been such a rich week in terms of Internet-based offerings in the setting intentions/personal development arena. I could have listened to great audios all day every day. And there's still more to come! We've had intention setting, nutrition, manifestation, sacred journaling, yoga... Next week, there's The Future of Nutrition Conference, with five days of talks--the first four days twelve talks on the hour EST (I guess I'll be waking up early), the fifth day "only" eight. I'm always relieved that they offer 24-hour replays in case anything's actually going on, you know, in my "real" lift. I'm looking forward to this one because there's a dizzying array of nutrition experts, from low-fat vegan promoters to paleo dieters, from raw vegans to low carbers. I love the opportunity to listen to such a spectrum of views in short order; it enables me to note commonalities, spot fallacies, notice what I'm attracted to.
I've been taking notes on the other summits/webinars, and  I'll share some in my next post.

I'm grateful to have had those guests into my temporary home. They're ephemeral visitors, my sojourn here is temporary, and yet listening to them has offered me some modes for creating stability.

Another guest I had in this house was less welcome: a mouse. Having lived in the jungle with rats and centipedes and biting ants in the bed, you'd think mice would be no big deal to me. But man, I was so upset! Last summer I had a serious mouse problem in the small-dark-room living situation I had then. They got into my stored food--I'd inadvertently left some nuts and other mouse-attractants in plastic bags instead of glass jars. But the little buggers ate into my bag of cinnamon, my nori sheets, my spirulina, and other things I'd never have guessed a mouse would eat! Between the damp/dark/smell/irritation, I guess I grew some antipathy back then. 

There was only one mouse, and I chose to expel it from this space; I didn't want it as a room mate. But ever since it was here, I've been seeing mice everywhere! Moving shadows, my hair in my peripheral vision, passing hallucinations...all mice!
My wise mom told me once, "If you have unwanted guests, don't entertain them, and they will leave." There's nothing lying around for a mouse to eat here. Not even the phantom mice.

Here are the housemates I did choose. I mentioned sprouts before. I now have some little clover greens, one or two milk thistles, sunflower sprouts. They struggle in the yellowish light here, reaching eagerly and leggily toward it. I love how the sunflower sprouts loop up, still with that black seed cap on their dicot leaves, hands clasped in prayer.

I was sat on a chair beside this table, writing, and heard the sort of soft-fall noise that usually startles me and is sometimes hallucinatory. It was the sound of one of those sunflower husks dropping from a sprout, the liberated leaves opening out. Hello, hallowed.

Sunt Lacrima Rerum -- Always in Season

Three times in the past three weeks. On Monday, it was around "sixteen-one thousand" in my litany, standing on one leg in front of the cop car; my car in the ditch, eleven below zero. The day before, it was seeing Tom and Jeanie's movie for the first time since Lucas died. A couple weeks before that, it was being unable to remember a friend's phone number as I continued in the downward spiral now thankfully reversed.

Sunt lacrima rerum, says Vergil. Literally, "There are tears for things." As humans, with human experiences we have tears.

I find myself seasonal like the Nile in this. At times, I don't cry for months on end. Other times, I cry nonstop. At the treatment centers this summer it got to be embarrassing at times--I'd say my goal for the day was not to cry, and would be crying twenty minutes later. But until these past few weeks, I hadn't cried since getting out of treatment.

I accept my small bouts of weeping with gratitude, an opportunity to allow some balance in the water table. Laughter's similarly seasonal. Lately, I've found myself laughing more, where it had stopped pretty much entirely. I welcome small bouts of laughter. Why not laugh a little, weep a little, every day? Why can't the grace of being moved by life be an everyday nourishment?

As a writer, I wish to make myself laugh and cry every day as I engage with the wonder of the universe. To make others laugh and cry also. If I can't find it within myself, I can read and watch movies to educate me and make up the deficit as I laugh and cry (I am so far deficient in film education, and am grateful every time I watch a single film to fill the gap a little).

The obvious metaphor: I have gone from habitually eating almost nothing to eating everything I could hold and more, for an ultimatum. One whole week later, the barren season beckons with siren song; the complications of appetite strike fear. Why can't daily nourishment be part of a full life, like tears and laughter, and the ecstatic connectedness to which they are a response?

Tears, laughter, adequate and appropriate sustenance. May they always be in season.

Touchstones--50 First Weeks Resumed

Remember all the way back in the third week of January, I started my "Fifty First Weeks" series of Monday posts, intended as all Mondays the rest of the year? Things went a bit off course, didn't they. But (not to steal my own thunder) the whole principle of "Fifty First Weeks" is that one can always start a day, or a time of day, as fresh time.

(Have you ever tried to braid rocks? Me either, but I'm trying to now, to braid touchstones with a return to returning, and returning, and returning to the metaphorical saddle.)
Stones can impress, can be similes in their very being. They can also protect. Helmet rock:

Things went off track and I went away, and then I came home and things continued hectic; I didn't get back on track and I didn't get back in the saddle and I didn't write all that was in my head, and I felt like an unmilked cow.

Glittery objects picked up don't always retain their luster, and the perspective is very different on opposite sides of a hill.

I knew my attitude was wrong: that I should have seen spending time with my mother-in-law in a beautiful house, taking care of cute chickens and a pair of neurotic little dogs who somehow like me, as a wonderful opportunity; possibly a source of much poetic inspiration; rather than a tightening in my throat. The same for numerous other activities this past month or two.

I forgot to remember where I came from this lifetime, or three months ago.

I forgot to remember where I came from on the scale of this universe.

I forgot the ease that comes out of moving with the flow. Actually, that's seldom been easy for me, and I also know that the flow can be a destructive onslaught--the rocks underneath our own home are under its threat.

What flows can move rocks and pile up mountains out of what has been moved.

 I need to accept that our life here is going to be studded with visitors and travel and other chaos, and not use that as an excuse to fall in the hole. Learning to work around these must be part of my challenge in life, which means at some level I have chosen it.

After all, I seem to pick up the same rocks over and over again...

I always have potential poems going through my head, and wish I were better at making the time to write them. The most upsetting part about the recent sequence was the feeling that that voice had gone quiet; that only the disinfectant tinnitus was left, more unbearable than silence

I'm finding my way back to that little opening of space in the midst of the heavy clay (a different sort of hole to fall into), since...

There's constriction in my throat, a lot of 'throat chakra' "stuff," energy I need to work with.

...even a stone can mime singing. 

The message over and over is, Do the work. Do it no matter your complaints about the circumstances. Mess up, and start over.

And sometimes, you'll pick up a rock entirely different from all the others, with a whole new metaphor within it.

I was gone for a long time over the summer. Physically, I've lost almost all my reluctant gains during that time. However, all along and even at the time I said the most useful aspect of the whole experience was all that I learned about communication, boundaries, awareness of other people's intended self-portrayals rather than blurt-empathy. 

And these past few days, I keep getting the message to be more precise in my own communication, more fearlessly honest, more impeccable with my word. I take that to heart in my conversations; I take it to heart in my creative writing also. Thus far, I've been pretty cranky a few times--but I can always start over.

Speaking of which, I'm aware that I haven't posted a single recipe since I got home. The reasons for that may be obvious superficially; I'm also still puzzling over what this blog is about. I'm ready to make some changes, even if they're just cosmetic, but recipes at some level of frequency will return.
Much love.

Lament for Fall

"April is the cruelest month," they say--perhaps because it fails to fulfill promises, spring struggling to break out of winter like bubbles of steam trying to break out of liquid water. As for autumn? Many people's favorite time of year, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..."

thank goodness for the barges that allow us to ape that fruitfulness here

 In these polar regions, though, spring may be more exciting--think The Rite of Spring--visceral eruptions of fertility through ice. And here, for me, autumn may be the cruelest season. Were I still in CA right now, I'd be harvesting persimmons, just getting into oranges. Better not to even think about HI's harvest this time of year.

Here, though, fall is a paper-thin prelude to a long winter. We were harvesting cranberries in full fall colors in early September; in late September, blueberries through the ice. Before October is over, the convivial fire ring at our neighbors' (where we're house-/menagerie-sitting now) looks like this, the garden beds off to the left languishing similarly.

 And our garden beds are blanketed with thin foam (gosh this one's close to the edge!)

You see this dark cast to the light also: yes, "light" can be an oxymoron at this time of year. I like bright fluorescent light shone right in my eyes--except when I'm driving! It's true, the sun is so low in the sky that when clouds aren't in the way, it shines directly into the eyes.

 

We've been floating on the meniscus of surface water pooled over freezing ground; buoyed by warm south wind storms like in the last two days, floating from one house- and dog-sit to the next, soon to fly out of state altogether for ten days; also enjoying visitors, principally this wonderful lady: 

Phil's mom is 89, whip-smart, strong, full of wisdom and positivity around life. She brought a breath of the bounty of Oregon fall with her. 

Now, I'm trying hard to get back on track with work and, please life-force and all the angels, my creative writing, and so to pull myself out of my physical tailspin. More on that soon--I had to post my lament for fall first.

Intermission--The Art of Finding

Seems things have been getting heavier around here as I've been getting lighter. Obviously there's more to be said about that--perhaps I owe an explanation--but let's have an intermission. I have lost so many things--objects, people, opportunities; and I choose to live without so many things--amenities, luxuries, status... As such, much of what is delightful and nourishing in my life comes from things found...

Things like wild blueberries, tiny, almost hidden, full of goodness and deliciousness that couldn't be bought.

 Things like this rock. I pick up rocks every time I hike the beach, which is several times a week. Generally, all the rocks I pick up fall into a very similar category in terms of size and color. Occasionally there's one with a special shape or color. But this one I picked up two weekends ago, with the tiger face that can also be a sheep face and also many other faces and expressions is the most amazing rock that's eve come to my hands. It was washed up on the Homer Spit, and who knows how deep in the ocean it has been, from how far it has traveled, to be a found object and muse for me.

Things like this--what is it? Magnifying glass? Telephone receiver? Goofy toy, anyway.

 Things like the potato people, slightly different every harvest.

 Things like a whole sea urchin, whole except for the life force, every geometrically placed spine present, delicate filigree.

 Things like this chip of fir bark with its own little figure drawing inside. I found it when I was down in WA at the Sandwich Academy.

Things like this piece of charred wood found a little way up from Bishop's Beach in Homer. Does that or does that not look like a fish?

I end with the rock again, since its coming into my life feels almost mystically significant. It's an odd kind of significance that I haven't yet figured out for myself--I've never been a cat person especially, although I have always been a rock person and a person who finds faces in objects without objective faces.

Mastery of the art of losing may not lead to disaster, suggests Elizabeth Bishop. But perhaps living with the daily losses that are life, I -- perhaps we -- can come into a space where loss is exhalation, finding is breathing back in. And perhaps, somewhere in there, is balance. That's my prayer for today.

Getting Back Into It--Thanks and Pictures

Hello again everyone!

We're well post "termination dust" here now--the snow is halfway down the mountains.

Today is two months since I got out of 'treatment', which means it is six weeks since the MFA program residency, which means it is over a month since I got home and since Phil's surgery, which means it is a week since my mom left, and a week of appointments and a short-notice editing deadline, which means my first packet is due...tomorrow. 

On and on and on and on and on and round. I finally saw the psychiatrist last week, who knows me far less well than my ND and therapist. She wants more stringent 'monitoring', which is exactly what I was glad to be free from, so things feel to be swinging in a way to remind me of treatment as well as the far more welcome reconnection offered by my packet deadline.

Speaking of reconnecting, I have missed this blog, I have missed you guys; I promise I'll be back soon with some of the several posts currently in my head, and perhaps to ask your thoughts on directions I might take this blog moving forward. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on my mum's post, and thank you to all my friends with whom I've been woefully out of contact recently, and Tracy E, I so look forward to getting to know you more and maybe making friendship bracelets... 

And thank you to my neglected worry beads, and thank you to all the friends who gave me nail-care products recently as I continue to pull at those poor digits, and thank you to the floor for holding your dust until I can vacuum, and thank you to my long-suffering toenails, my under-brushed hair...

All my friends, all parts of myself--please accept my thanks and apologies. I'll aim to email or call you come the weekend, come the passing of this deadline and, with any luck, the beginning of a less frenetic period.

And since I'm so far out of the rhythm and so burnt by the ticking clock that anything I could post would be a squeezed non-sequitur, I'm going to do the only sensible thing and share some pictures. More words soon.

A few final pictures of my mum from our drive to Anchorage to take her to the airport--one of the most beautiful times of year for that drive, autumn glory at its ephemeral best up here.

This birch tree so close to Tern Lake its feet are wet!

Yet another in the timeworn genre of "Ela in a tree" pics...

Mum and Phil.

The Kenai was in impressive (read: evacuation from homes) flood. Check out that glorious glacial blue.

Here's another view of the snow on the mountains that day Phil and I finally headed back home: a day of gray lowering clouds suddenly replaced by blue sky and then rain again. The way winter skies are, but we'll be glad of Fall for a while. Definitely getting darker here, but at least the astonishing windstorms have died down.

We went blueberry picking one more time. It's freezing pretty hard at nights now, so the trick was to pick the blueberries while they were still frozen: try to pick thawed frozen berries and you get mush, especially when the blueberries are tucked away like this--that's some tricky picking!

On a final fruity note, we got a parcel in the mail from Phil's mom. It smelled of apples, and when we opened it, we found it was apples: apples from the little orchard Phil and I planted three years ago, no less! How lovely to be getting fruit from those trees already! The big ones are Honeycrisps; the little ones I think are Snow, Jonathan and Rome. I know everyone's all excited about Honeycrisps, but I'd never really had one before because (a) they're usually frightfully expensive and (b) I generally don't prefer big apples (and perhaps (c) I can be put off by hype!). All that said, my goodness, those Honeycrisps may be the best apples I've ever tasted.

But lookit: these three are all apples! There's the huge Honeycrisp, the smallish Snow, and a little Alaska Crabapple! I don't know that we see humans sized differently by such orders of magnitude--talking fully grown humans here--but perhaps our souls or auras can differ by that much.

I missed Rosh Hashanah, but with these apples, a sweet new year to everyone.

On Wearing Jewelry; Visit Update

Update first: we are having a great time here! It is a delight to have my wonder at this place renewed through my mom's marveling eyes. We have hiked beaches in rain and wind and fleeting sunshine, stopping to pick up rocks, exclaim over clam shells, slipping up on mats of kelp. Phil and mom took the truck while I stayed home and did some work. They returned with our season's second load of kelp to layer over our gardens as we start to put them to bed. We have experienced the adventure of The Washboard and taking showers there. We have picked low bush cranberries and have been enjoying them cooked down with a little sugar/erythritol and some freeze-dried raspberries added at the last minute to thicken things up and add some redlicious flavor.

I'm getting lots of feedback from two people who know me very well. Despite all the work I did on communication and boundaries over the summer, I'm astonished anew by my lack of self-awareness.

Jewelry-wearing
This is something I've been wanting to write about for ages--two months at least.
Before I left at the beginning of the summer, I shared this wooden diamond pendant Phil got me as a parting gift.

I adored it, I wore it every day at the Foie Gras Farm at least, I fingered it around my neck, I proudly explained its provenance to admirers; I couldn't believe something so beautiful could be mine.

The truth is, a big part of my appreciation of it was its uniqueness; also, its connection to Phil and home. Another part was the sheer novelty of wearing jewelry. Ordinarily, I hardly ever do. I'll put on a necklace for a while, wear it non-stop, be aggravated by the extra effort of taking it off for showers or bed, over and above taking off all my layers...;)  and finally (soon) settle back into necklace-less-ness(!) 

Putting this one on and taking it off gave an intentionality to the act of wearing it that was so new to me. Juxtaposed with the fact that all the other girls with whom I was in such close quarters had elaborate grooming and dressing routines, whole cases of jewelry and make-up to choose from every day, never mind the clothes, this awareness invited me to think about the act of wearing jewelry--what it says and does for and about a person.

Any ideas? 
I know some of the girls there said that it was one way to feel ok about themselves--to pay a lot of attention to their make-up/hair/jewelry. Now I'd always not-wanted to draw attention to my appearance, not-cared whether I felt ok about myself from that external perspective, but it all comes back to what you think of as normal. Being around it so much, I started to think that maybe paying more attention to appearance was normal, that maybe I should consider it.

I ended up with another necklace I liked a lot while at the Sandwich Academy, and a friend sent me a friendship bracelet, which I was so incredibly glad to get. I realized I'd always wanted a friendship bracelet and had never had one. Perhaps I'll learn to make them soon. But here's another thing I got so beautiful I can't believe it's mine.

I found this wonderful stall at the Arts Fair that happened toward the end of my time in Bellevue. The artist called her work 'copper lace' or 'silver lace'--she worked fine strands of those metals into bracelets and pendants, sometimes studded with gemstones or worked glass. She also reminded me of one of my most beloved poetry professors in her energy and spirit. We tried on lots of bracelets and I found one that I loved even more than the others, studded with citrine and garnet. It needed resizing, so she kept it overnight and I came back for my bracelet, made to measure for me, next morning!

Yes, isn't the juxtaposition with the friendship bracelet just wonderful?
You'd think I never wanted to wear a bracelet again, after all the identification bracelets at Foie Gras Farm and the privilege levels they connoted.
But what I realized with this beautiful copper on my wrist was that whereas I never really see a pendant, I can see a bracelet myself whenever I choose to look. A call to remind myself of..what? 
My own worthiness? 
To pay attention to my appearance/to appearances?
That there is beauty in the world?
That this too shall pass?

What does jewelry tell you?
Coming up: a guest post, from Mum!

HAWMC Reflections--and What's Next?

Yes, I did!

It's been a month of transformations... 

...and, as I mentioned yesterday, of many endings. At the beginning of April, here's how it looked outside our front door... 

...and by a couple days ago, there was green on the ground and I was picking nettles for my green smoothie, sometimes able to go outside unbundled. 

There are still patches of snow in the shade even on our place though, and higher up and farther from the ocean, it's still deep.


I finished up and sent in my eight and final packet of the MFA year. The final for my course is live. Many people I know moved house; several got married. 
Turn and turn and turn.
And through every day of it, I wrote a blog post, faithfully but not always cheerfully following the prompts.

The Challenge, Response

There was more emphasis on the visual and pictorial in the prompts than I ordinarily go for, and I think that was a good challenge for me, pushing beyond my comfort zone. The whole thirty days was an invitation to exceed my comfort zone in a more general way, to write about "health" on this blog not just through sharing allergy-friendly recipes, but also through talking frankly about my own "issues." 
I've feared judgment, feared triggering loved ones or worrying other loved ones, feared that self revelation might be taken against me on a professional level, feared being perceived as courting the wrong kind of attention. I've been accused or warned of several of those things. But this challenge introduced me to bloggers whose whole focus is to write about the experience of having a stigmatized health condition from the inside. Some of my most powerful creative writing recently has come from that same place--writing that I haven't been able not to write. 
These posts have helped me gain some perspective on those more private, intense pieces of writing. And while I've shared those intense pieces of writing with a very few trusted friends, mentors and writing group colleagues, the blog posts are out there for anyone who chooses to read them. The responses to my writing, both private and public, writing, both private and public responses, consistently humble me. I've received frank, personal feedback, constructive criticism, some essential leavening of praise, and, best gift of all, the news that I've moved people or struck chords of resonance and recognition within them.


I've strengthened connections with a couple bloggers I followed before this challenge, and connected strongly with a couple new-to-me voices. A small regret I have is not having spent more time reading other challenge participants and getting to know everyone better--but then I didn't write a poem a day in April either, and consoled myself with the reflection that all the wonderful prompts flying around the blogosphere would still be there in May--as will the treasure trove of posts written in response to this challenge. Which brings me to...

What Next?

Well, as you can see, there's a band of fog on the horizon. "What's next" is not entirely clear to me.

It's hasn't been my regular habit to write a post every day: I've generally been on a four posts per week schedule. Although I enjoyed the daily blog posting, I suspect I'll step back to four per week once again.
With all the changing and falling and ending, it's hard not to see this as a more cosmic end. Right now, I'd feel quite content to ring down my curtain, call it quits--it's been a great show. But after I've caught up on some sleep, perhaps the desire to shape more words and share more experiences and sensations, will surpass the fascination with disintegration, with separating into my several elements and floating, washing, sinking away.
I owe you guys some recipe posts too. I hope it's not off-putting to the foodie readers that other topics are here to stay in addition.


What would YOU like to see more of on here in May and beyond?