Symbiosis, and Differentiation

Those three words from last time: "Symbiotic." "Commensal." "Parasitic."

Just like kombucha and kefir cultures, we "individuals" am/are are symbiotic cultures, amalgams of bacteria, yeast, human cells... But since you are in my arm and I in yours, we are all connected. Human culture is symbiotic; you are my symbiote, life is symbiosis, acting on and being acted on by each other--
                                                                                                     as the earth does with the moon--the earth pulls the moon and centers its path. And the moon pulls the fluid bodies of the earth, even within our own bodies.
Sym- "with" bios "life." Life together, life cumulative, life collective. 
As probiotic, antibiotic (for- and against- life).
As sympathetic (suffering/feeling together with -- you in my arm again).
As symptom (circumstances seen together).
As symmetry (measurements taken together to form a pleasing whole).
As syntax (elements arranged together to make some sort of sense).
As synesthesia (multiple senses experienced together).

As synchronicity (events falling together at the same time to create magic).

Synesthesia could be my middle name, and I know synchronicity (to say I believe in it would be far too weak an assertion). Easy though it is to disparage the Internet, it is a fantastic fulcrum of synchronicity. As I began to think about this post, to reflect on "symbiosis" and all it means, from my kitchen ferments to collective humanity's potential to turn around the ship of global warming, I found myself listening to an interview with fellow Israeli Anat Baniel. She's one of those wonderful holistic bodyworkers who became wise to how using the body's movements can "rewire" the brain (align the synapses, where nerve endings touch together).

I was thinking about symbiosis, right?  --about how all beings are connected and thus influential on one another. Go there, and it's tempting to go one more step to "we're all the same."
The wonderful thing about Anat's message was that she was saying the opposite of this, and at the same time she was reinforcing that we are all connected. Her point was that a lot of physical pain and range-of-movement issues, and also a lot of the behavioral and spatial problems autistic children suffer, are predicated on lack of differentiation. If you have a series of vertebrae all moving together as if fused, you're not going to know the flexibility that would otherwise be available to you. If multiple areas of your brain all light up in response to a stimulus that "should" only affect one part, you could end up being excitingly synesthetic, or you could lack the filters and buffers to respond appropriately to a situation.

I guess that's why we all need to be the best self we possibly can be. I can't harm myself, because you are in me. But without differentiation, yes, there would be no war; but also there would be no musical cascades of notes, no art, no sentences, no poetry.
Our lives, together, side by side, interlinked, each one of us unique as the tile of a mosaic, different in our location within the whole, different in our individual certain sparkle.

Culture within, Culture without

Water kefir on the left, milk kefir (more on that later) on the right. Proofs from the dictionary project on bottom.

Yes, I do some of my editing work in the kitchen. Sometimes that's the most time I spend in there of a day. This isn't really a tangent: on the subject of "me in you, you in me," I've been thinking about microorganisms within and without, and of course that takes me to words. "Symbiotic." "Commensal." "Parasite."

It's now understood that nonhuman cells outnumber human cells in our "own" bodies by ten to one. These microorganisms form colonies that can lobby with powerful demands, so that it can be literally true that we are possessed/overtaken by influences within us but not of us. "My bugs made me do it!"

Reflected on the outside: my kitchen, no doubt, is full of uncontained bugs I can't see. I welcome the spiders when I see them, benign weavers and cleaners. But I was horrified by the roaches that showed up. In my kitchen, I also contain and feed several colonies on purpose and strive to ensure they get fed correctly. It's another kind of gardening, in a way, and I do it at least as much to cultivate (pun intended) my spirit relationship with microorganisms as I do to consume the products of bacterial/yeast ferments.
Aside from the two kefirs, I have more kombucha cultures than I can manage (give me a shout if you want one!) -- enough to give some of them experimental diets, like coffee instead of tea (far right) (so far so good). This culture's ancestor moved with me from Hawaii over six years ago, and it seems to be happy back in a warm climate, although I left many of its offspring happy with happy owners back in Alaska.

Both kefir and kombucha cultures are called "SCOBY"s -- an acronym for "symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast." Which I guess we are, as humans, too.
Taking a walk on the wild side, here are two veggie krauts: napa cabbage/onion/ginger, and daikon radish. In their own juices with a little sea salt, these are consumed almost overnight in this climate by wild yeasts/bacteria (i.e. I didn't add a culture; bacteria in the environment came and feasted) and become crisp, sour-sharp, without the overwhelming pungency of those sulfurous vegetables when raw. They have to go in the fridge at this point to avoid "rotter" bactera taking over and composting them.

Sandor Katz, the great fermentation guru, points out that no American has ever died from eating wildly- or home-fermented foods--if something's really "gone bad," your taste buds will protect you.

On the other hand, many "humans," American and otherwise, have died of organisms growing out of control within their bodies, and far more feel helplessly identified with addictions and cravings that are not truly of themselves. There is a way out.

• Whatever I am doing at any moment is practice.
• Whatever I practice I get better at.
• What am I practicing now?

Likewise, 

• Whatever I feed thrives.
• What am I feeding now?

Back to the kefir, since I don't do dairy, I had a problem figuring out what to feed the milk kefir grains. I quickly figured out that they need protein (a la casein in milk) as well as sugar (a la lactose in milk). Soy milk worked great. but I mostly avoid soy too; an almond milk fortified with protein also worked well (and of course I need to get back in the kitchen habit and make my own). But then I almost killed the kefir grains when I got back from my trip by feeding them unsweetened protein almond milk. The end product smelled bad, the grain colony dwindled. They made their unhappiness clear.

A dance away from sugar seems a good idea for me right now (more on this soon), but that doesn't alter the requirements of this age-old ferment culture. Even feeding the kombucha on coffee as mentioned above, or hibiscus tea or green tea instead of black tea as I also do, and with maple syrup instead of sugar, doesn't violate this concept: the kombucha culture needs some sort of simple sugar and a tannin-rich tea medium. Coffee, hibiscus, and other grades of tea all have plenty of tannins; maple or even coconut sugar are simple enough.

Would that it were so simple to figure out the correct fuel mix for the SCOBY that is each unique human, to keep the good bugs happy and keep the detrimental or composter bugs from taking over.

More on that, and on those words up top (symbiotic, commensal, parasite), next time.

• Whatever I am doing at any moment is practice.
• Whatever I practice I get better at.
• What am I practicing now?

Celebrating Everyday Precarity

 Write about something ordinary that’s inspiring to you, something simple, perhaps overlooked,

that fuels your activism.

Today’s prompt was recommended by Abigail of http://hiddencourage.wordpress.com/

Something simple and everyday that's inspiring to me...something most of us, well or sick, handle almost every day...something that flows; ebbs, too...something many of us worry about inordinately...Today I'm going to take a brave step (yes, I say so myself) and give thanks for something I'm about to step into huge uncertainty and precarity around: MONEY, and specifically HEALTH INSURANCE!

I've never been close to wealthy; in fact, in Hawaii I lived on next to nothing for a few years. And yet, no matter how much I've felt precarious and fearful, I have always been provided for. This, I know. Of this, I remind myself when I feel like the bottom has dropped out.

When it comes to healthcare, I am so grateful I have been provided for. I am sad that healthcare in this country is so monetized--perhaps one of these prompts will get me started on the sickening, sometimes life-destroying monetization of eating disorder treatment centers; the callous, sometimes warningless spot decisions of insurance companies who couldn't see the patient at all... (okay, I just deleted a bunch there for a different post, was starting to get heated about something other than my theme for today.)

As I prepare to leave for my next trip and make gestures toward tidying up this cabin, today I went through a pile of health insurance paperwork Phil had left out for me to check. Various appointments, hospitalizations, ER visits, all the way back to last Fall. Some of the figures made my eyes ache. They simply didn't mean anything in the context of people's lives. Especially non-wealthy people's lives, and people with mental health conditions are often not wealthy. There were two health insurance company decisions I need to query and one bill that needed paying; otherwise, these tremendous sums were taken care of!

This reminds me both to feel immense gratitude and to advocate for healthcare for everyone. No one should have to worry about the bill when she comes out of a psychotic episode; no one should have to drop therapy sessions because his insurance decided he doesn't need it. No one should have to pick what meds they take based on whether there's a generic or not.

And here I am, about to lose health insurance within a few months as our marriage (through which I'm insured) dissolves. My mom said yesterday that it would be a different matter if I could just "pull out of all this" and not need the insurance. Yes, wouldn't that be lovely? When I pointed out that my previous attempts to do that had not worked out well, she agreed.

Yes, I have felt, will feel, scared, worried, frightened about this. Precarious. Do you know what precarious means at its root? It means a situation that merits praying over. So, I choose to surrender, pray, trust I will continue to be taken care of, that getting my meds and other healthcare taken care of is part of the magic that comes from outside the dominant paradigm into which healthcare is dragged.

Am I crazy? What do you think?

Wordless Wednesday HAWMC #10

PROMPT: It’s often hard to like pictures of ourselves – post your favorite picture of yourself.

Favorites change all the time, just like our faces and the stages of our crosses. Many more photos of this trip to come when things are more settled.

Another Perspective on Sharing Suffering

It's been so long since I last posted--again! That outflow onto the beach that I pictured bearded with ice a week or so ago...

...is now shorn of snow and flowing freely.

As should I be, I can't help but feeling.
I don't know what's preventing me from writing more here.
It's true, I'm not settled on where "here" is right now. I've been talking about migrating this blog and changing its appearance for months now. The superficial blogger-internal face-lift I've given it recently seems only to have rendered it buggier and less user-friendly (user-unfriendlier?) so I may undo that.
And the blog displacement and stagnating migration intent are only highly convenient metaphors for what's going on in my own life at the moment.
I did just see 22:22:22 on March 22, which should have told me it's time to get ready for bed, but it made me superstitiously happy and excited to write at least "something." I do have a pretty neat photos post almost ready to go, too.
But the truth is, I had far too much work this past week. And my faculties seem to be diminished and less than equal to overburdened weeks. Apprehension of loss of my own particular brilliance on which I've always been able to rely has rammed me further into the posthole of despair, the tunnel stopped at one end.
Manic seems such a long way away, and meds only make the posthole tunnel less deep and final.
And I confess it's been so long since I've eaten or drunk anything without accompanying punishing nausea and pain, I'm starting to drive myself crazy with the frantic mental scrabblings of what I might add in or (more likely) take out of my diet. And this without "indiscretions" or castor oil punishments for well over a week.

I can't see the woods for the words, as I am saying a lot at the moment (quoting myself from a half-written poem). But I am recognizing how right my wonderful naturopath is in emphasizing that words can be my salvation. As I've been trying to think through my creative thesis for my MFA--it really is coming to that time already!--and suffering through everything I laid out above and many other life stresses, which make it harder to focus, I found a path by meditating on words. Passion is a tense of "suffering," and compassion (from Latin) or sympathy (from Greek) mean suffering together, sharing the experience. But if you choose to be a victim of your suffering, your passion, you are christ on the cross, excruciated, a grand and solo passion that can only be venerated or turned away from in pity and horror.
In other words, I need to acknowledge my sufferings as normal for someone in my circumstances rather than thinking of them as extraordinary and specific to me (even if my behaviors sometimes exacerbate the pain)--and then I can write about them in such a way that my readers will see themselves and suffer together--sympathize. Without the possibility of sympathy, what I write will be alienating; the crucified figure left alone in a desert place, the paradox of standing out when no one can bear to look. (After I came out of my worst period of anorexia seven or eight years ago, which was beyond excruciating for anyone who had to be around me, let alone for me, some friends and colleagues came up to me and shared that they had had to look away during that time; watching me die was too much to bear. The book of my life unreadable.)
I am learning to write a book for companions (sharers of sustenance) and compatients (sharers in suffering).