9th of Av Fast

So far this fast is going very well for me.  I am very happy that I spent the past few days preparing myself physically and emotionally.  I have eaten a very limited amount of solid foods, focusing mostly on smoothies and juices.  Today, although I am having a bit of a foggy brain, I am not obsessively focusing on food.  In fact, despite my original intention to do this as a water fast, I've ended up just doing it as a dry fast, because I just haven't felt like I need the water for these 25 hours.

I had another thought today that makes me feel like my evaluation vis a vis fasting not being about just mortifying our souls.  As the day progresses, our mourning is supposed to DECREASE.  For example, we don't put on tefillin in the morning, but we do in the evening.  Yet, if the emphasis on the fast was on being hungry, well, that would be counter the goal.  We'd be getting hungrier and hungrier.  

Fasting for clarity is really making a meaningful impact on me though.  I am glad with this orientation.  For the first time, I don't hate this fast or feel the need to binge on cherry garcia icecream the moment I get home by myself (yes, I did that once)

As a side note, I have had several bm's today.  All very easy and good.  I really feel that my body is dumping out a lot over the past few days.  DF even noticed it when he saw me yesterday, he said that my face looked thinner.  I suspected that I was noticing the same when I looked at myself in the mirror lately.

Music and Life

Though, wouldn't it be awesome if there were composers that did write only finales?

Loshon Hora, Lamed Heh, go to hell the easy way...

Tisha B'Av is rapidly approaching.  I have never had a very easy time with the fast days in Judaism.  On the one hand, I am relatively open to fasting, don't find it to be the hardest thing in the world, nor is it all that impossible to me.  On the other hand, and this is where the challenge lies, I don't typically find the reasons that I am usually given for fasting to be compelling.  The combination of not eating because we are sad about the events that occurred on Tisha B'av and the idea that we need to somehow afflict our souls via our bodies is not in the least compelling to me.  

For some people it works.  If you can make the fact that you are fasting a natural consequence of the past events, it makes sense.  You think to yourself, "I'm hungry, I wish I could eat—oh, if only we had not been kicked out of Spain, if only our temple had not been destroyed—then I'd be eating today instead of fasting!"  My thought process is different.  I can't make the immediate connection.  It just becomes a distraction for me.  

Furthermore, I don't really see how injuring my body or soul (not that fasting is injurious, but since there is the idea of afflicting, well...) is going to help anything.  After all, if my body is created in the image of G-d, how is denying it food and water going to bring back the temple in Jerusalem?  Wouldn't trying to damage it be counter the values of Judaism?

So, in trying to understand, I have been going back and looking at the root events that are connected to Tisha B'Av and also looking at the various examples of fasting that are discussed in early Jewish sources and see if I can find something more meaningful.

First, I noticed that there is a very strong correlation to Tisha B'Av and wicked speech (Loshon Hara, in Hebrew).  The first tragedy of Tisha B'Av is not the destruction of the temple, but rather the return of the scouts sent by Moshe that discouraged the people from trying to enter ancient Israel.  They slandered the land of Israel, sowed doubt among the people that G-d would fulfill g-d's promise.  Similarly, the fast which begins the mourning period that culminates on Tisha B'Av is the day that Moses returned from Sinai to discover the golden calf.  Why did the Israelites build the calf? They'd gotten to idle chatter and gossip and come to fear that Moses and G-d had abandoned them, so they needed a new god.

The theme repeats itself: destruction of the temple—punishment for senseless hatred and gossip among the Israelites.  Expulsion from Spain—only happened because the Catholics were able to convince themselves that the Jews were a threat to the church. More Libel.

So, let's hold on to that for a moment and now look at fasting.  The major fasting texts that I looked at relate to fasting to end a drought, and in the story of purim.  In the case of fasting to end a drought, two things caught my attention.  1) during a major drought in an agricultural community, people are already pretty close to fasting.  There isn't any food or water!  Enacting a community wide fast is more than just having everyone be hungry/thirsty.  It's having everyone put aside physical needs and allow their energy to focus elsewhere.  2) In the stories where droughts end because of a fast, there always seems to be some sort of direct communication with G-d that is enabled by the fast.  This resonates with what I have read about and experienced during detox.  You gain access to a certain clarity when you fast that is very difficult to achieve otherwise.  Revelations can hit overwhelmingly.  

So, Purim rather connects these issues.  The whole story of purim begins with people using language to achieve selfish goals. Haman uses words to convince the King to allow him to kill the Jews.  At the end, Esther saves the Jewish people by beseeching the King and asking him to intervene on her behalf.  Before going to him, she fasts, (and asks all the Jews to fast with her) for 3 days.  She is then able to show the King that he has been led astray.  The Jews are able to defend themselves and Haman finds his downfall.

Many people, especially those that do extended fasts will find that moments of great clarity and insight come.  This is an amazing opportunity to bring clarity to matters that have been obscured by lies, slander, libel and propaganda.  

For those of us observing Tisha B'Av, I hope that rather than being stuck in the past we can use the day as an opportunity to think about how we and our communities have allowed ourselves to be distracted by falsehoods and the potential consequences.  May we fast for clarity and understanding so that we may understand the issues that are preventing us from having the full relationship that we could enjoy with ourselves, eachother and G-d.

¡Siete Horas! (seven hours)

Started off the morning again with the ever so delicious apple/celery/ginger juice that I made yesterday.  It blows my mind just how friggin' tasty this stuff is.  It's almost overwhelming :-)  I shared it with my morning smoothie buddy (you don't have one?) and in her words: "Wow, that's...refreshing".  Sums it up very nicely in my opinion.  Also made a kale, banana and peach smoothie to bring with me to school today.  Yum.  I'm almost embarrassed at how excited I am about this.  

I'm also almost bursting with excitement because DF is on his way to DC today and will be picking me up at school when class is over!! This month has been the longest amount of time that we have been apart from each other since we were officially together.  It's been an intense experience.  It's also a little bit bizarre having the feeling that I am so excited to see him on the eve of Tisha B'Av.  I will be so happy to see him on the same day that I am supposed to be mourning pretty much every national tragedy that has ever befallen the Jews.  Hmm.

It's like a sandwich, but with emotions

Today has been a bit more challenging.  I woke up this morning and things started out really strong.  At 6:13 AM (not an accident) I woke up to my alarm and rather than hitting snooze over and over again, I got out of bed and made an amazing juice.  Apple, Celery and Ginger.  Whoa! Tasty stuff! Watered it down just a bit because it was a bit overpowering, but then it was truly bliss.  

Made myself a smoothie to bring with me to school today, and I think I am learning something: despite the convenience factor, frozen fruit do not make for tasty GS.  Last week I was making GS that were out of this world delicious.  I mean, really amazing.  Super simple, too.  Banana and kale or peach and spinach.  I was finally, and for the first time, really loving them.  Well, today I had kale, with frozen mango, and strawberry.  And, well, it just isn't good.  I drank about a pint during the morning, and then my stomach was all, "um, no thank you".  

Well, I ended up choosing to have a snack of chex mix. I'm not thrilled about that, but it's the choice I made, and it doesn't mean that I have to continue making the same kind of choice for the rest of the evening.  On my way home I am going to pick up another big bag o' Kale and some bananas.  I know that that  will be a super yummy treat and will make me feel much better.

Mood has been mostly down today.  There is one fellow in my class, and I don't know why but he just gets way under my skin and I cannot get over it.  From day 1, he's just offended me.  Everyone else thinks he's just so charming and funny, but I keep thinking he's an ass.  He reminds me of a gay Regina from Mean Girls.  I guess it could be possible that I'm just not meant to like everyone in the world but I think also that there is something about him that encourages me to just give give give my energy.  I'm working on putting an end to that though. I have four more days of class with him, and if I'm able to, I will learn whatever lesson I need to learn from him. If not, I'll learn it when the next time comes around.  

I've just arrived home, and I am pleased to report an amazing green smoothie experience.  I am in fact chugging this bad boy down! CHUGGING it.  I stopped at the store, bought fresh kale, and some perfect bananas.  Blended it with cayenne, coconut oil and chocolate.  I am in love.  LOVE. It is sublime.  I love the way that the cayenne gently tingles all the way down.  My body is loving the flavor and the feel of it.  Worlds better than the chex mix that I had around lunch time.  I am really and truly grateful that I did not stop at Burger King, Wendy's Au Bon Pain, McDonalds, Tian Jin Palace, Thai Market or 7-11 on my way home.  Yes, I almost stopped at, and was tempted by every single one of them.  I can guarantee you, 100% that if I had, I would not be feeling the improvements that are coming into my mood as I type at this very moment.  I cannot even begin to think about how much fun it might well be when I get home and have the month of August off to do a Green Smoothie feast.  Do I dare? Oh it is truly tempting.  It seems like a gift, not a sacrifice to eat litres upon litres of green smoothie on a daily basis.  I can only imagine how good I will feel and how happy my body will be.

Breaking a fast gently...

I continued to water fast until I arrived home today and I am sooo proud of myself.  I decided that I was going to transition back to juices when I got home and make another batch of tomato juice from the other day.  I went to the super market, got what I needed and then came home! I so easily could have stopped at any restaurant and gotten something else, I could have gone crazy at the market.  But, I didn't because I knew that this would be good for me.  The tomato juice is delicious and I am chugging it down.  If (and only if) I feel like it, I will make some vietnamese style spring rolls for a snack in an hour or so.  But first I'm going to see how the tomato juice goes down.  I'm not in a hurry.

All sorts of emotional stuff came up today as well.  Some old insecurities, and fears.  The classes I am taking right now are very intense, and I went back into a strong negative space that I had been in before, telling myself that I wasn't learning, it was a waste of my time, I should just give up.  Mind you, this was triggered by getting my grades back and having...an 81% overall.  I am laughing at myself now.  I truly do hold myself to a ridiculous standard at times.  I expect perfection at all times, and am not willing to give myself any kind of break or slack.  I want to practice being kinder to myself.  I will need that in law school.  I've been working hard, on many things and have improved my signing immensely.  I am, perhaps at a bit of a plateau at the moment, but that is fine.  A plateau is a very good place to end a month of intense and hard work.

Welcome Detox

Last night, my body was going through some kind of emotional food related detox I think.  Every attempt I made at making a smoothie, be it green or just fruit, sweet or savory, tasted nasty to me.  I could not for the life of me bring myself to eat any of it.  I was having cravings like nobodies business for all sorts of cooked food though.  I was practically swimming in imaginary spring rolls.  I could taste them, see them, smell them.  And that was only the beginning of the fun.  At the time I didn't recognize it as detox or cravings—I was so consumed by my lust for these very different SAD foods that I couldn't think about anything else. 

I am happy to say that my only concession to the cravings was that I steamed some kale with braggs and sesame seeds.  Some things that helped me to not cave in were the fact that 1) I recently ate some bread and was feeling the after affect of it for days.  2) I'd had a very nutritionally rich day. According to fitday.com I had gotten everything that I needed nutritionally.  I knew that it was very unlikely that the craving was for something that I was missing in my diet. 3) I wasn't actually hungry.  The desires were totally emotional.

This morning I woke up and felt good.  I decided to continue the fasting, and start off the day with a water fast.  I'm just not physically hungry.  My gut is still detoxing and I don't want more in me to push out at the moment.  Emotionally I am mostly feeling ok, but I think I am perhaps starting to heal some of my issues with food.  I keep having these thoughts of, "Oh, but does this mean I'm never going to have a thai spring roll again? What about BBQ ribs?" the thought that very closely follows is "I should go have some right now."  Well, I've been listening to that little voice too much this month (I don't want to think about how many spring rolls I have eaten over the past month) and the truth of the matter is that my anxieties are way getting the better of me.  It's my fear of missing out, of losing something taking control.  The world is full of spring rolls—if I really want to have one, I will.  I will have my whole life to indulge whatever food desires I may have someday.  At the end of the day, there are very few "once in a lifetime" foods.  For now though, I'm doing something else.  I'm eating what I need, and not just what I'm worried I may not have later.

The more that I think about it, the more that I am realizing that this anxiety is perhaps representative of a far greater anxiety that has been dominating my life.  I have a very real fear of what I am missing out on, messing up, or could be doing otherwise.  As a little kid I had a very difficult time sleeping if anything was going on around me, because I was terrified of what I might be missing out on.  It's very difficult for me to commit to any particular course of action and stick with it because I get so worried about the doors that I am closing in the process.  

I want to refocus my life.  I want to start seeing the abundance of opportunity in the world rather than the scarcities.  I want to think about how great it is that I am doing the things that I am doing, and when I think of something else that I also want to do but that doesn't fit in with my current projects be able to trust that it will be there waiting for me when I get around to it.  Or, that if it isn't, that's ok, because there will be something else that is equally worthwhile for me to be doing.

On a side note, I'm realizing again that it is very likely that in order for me to be truly and fully satisfied in the world, I am going to need to find a way to really write frequently and abundantly.  I want to travel and explore and write.  I need to remember that my original reason for pursuing law school was as a means to this: I know that I will find law satisfying and enjoyable.  I know that if it is the case that I cannot support myself just by writing that law will be a satisfying career that will provide me the money to support myself and my family while I indulge my dream to write.  That also means that I cannot allow law to get in the way of writing.  Unless, of course I am so incredibly happy lawyering that I don't miss the writing.  That is a goal I want to keep in the forefront.

V-Whoa!

Today I decided to try making a tomato-based juice for the first time.  Allow me to say that I have always been skeptical of tomatoes.  They can be acceptable, but when I see/hear people getting all excited about tomatoes I feel the need to look at them just a little askance.  Nonetheless, I was feeling today that I did, ultimately kind of have a bit of a craving for them.  Aleesha has been a big inspiration for me the past couple of days, I recently discovered her blog and have been devouring it from the beginning.  She gave a recipe for a tomato juice that I have modified as follows:

5 Tomatoes

1 Red Bell Pepper

1 Stick Celery

1/2 bunch parsley

1/2 tsp cayenne

(her recipe included kelp powder and smoked salt)

Well, all I can say is that I think I am in love.  Chugging is too strong a word, but I am really loving this.  I am regretting that I chose to be cautious at the store and buy only enough tomatoes for one batch (I didn't want to not like it and then have the tomatoes go bad on me).  I could very easily see myself having plenty more of this.  On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing not to have TOO much.

I'd like to add that my GreenStar did a very good job with the tomato juicing.  I used the coarse screen and the fruit nob.  The pulp came out plenty dry and only got a little bit backed up towards the end.  Alternating the tomatoes with the other ingredients did help keep things moving.  There is quite a bit of pulp in the juice, when I return to Boston I may by a straining bag—but for now I don't really mind the pulp.

I also seem to be getting myself into a juice fast.  I think that I will switch back to smoothies tomorrow—they do a much better job of keeping me full when I am in class all day.  I am strongly considering doing a juice fast when I get back to Boston and seeing how that takes me. 

I have a very strong desire to get myself in some semblance of order before law school starts.  I want to have a solid foundation before going in there—I know that if I do I'll be in amazing shape, and so very much prefer that to feeling like I'm trying to catch up.

I am also putting out there that I want to make sure to take time for me and DF to really spend some quality time together over the coming month.  I cannot wait to see him on Wednesday! It looks like he's still going to be working at least on Sundays, so as much as possible we are going to make Saturdays a day for us.  During the week both of us will be so busy that it will require intention to make sure that we are really living together, and not just beside one another.

Answer With Strength

When I was living in Israel, Ovadia Hamama put the piyyut "Ana B'koach" (Answer with strength) to music and it was receiving an incredible amount of radio time.  The poem is an acrostic for the 42-letter name of G-d and contains within it 7 different attributes of G-d depending on what one needs and is asking for. 

It resonates deeply for me, as it did for so much of the country that summer, even without my knowing any of the mystical connections that it possesses.  Even now, I only am touching the very most superficial understanding of it.  It is my hope to memorize it and begin incorporating it into regular meditation for myself.  

 In other news, I am currently dry fasting.  I don't at this moment expect it to go much past noon.  My body is continuing to do some pretty intense physical detox and my mouth simply feels shut.  The worst parts of feeling plugged up are passing, and I am very happy to be moving through that.  I was surprised to find that I woke up this morning at 8 am and was just "done" sleeping.  I felt so well slept that I was actually a little worried that it might well be past noon and I'd missed half the day.  Well, the fact is that I have woken up rather earlier than I normally do on a weekend.  How about that.

עושה מעשה בראשית

What a truly blessed evening.  I came out of my room to mix up a salt water flush, and one of the flatmates bussled in and bussled out, mentioning something about a coming storm.  I stepped out onto the stoop and the energy was astounding.  I was so happy that there was a chair for me to sit in and watch the trees bending and swaying in the powerful wind, leaves blowing around the air felt charged.

Then the rain came pouring down.  Pouring, and I was thinking about how it was cleansing the earth, and the air.  In Hebrew, a ritual bath needs to be filled with "living waters".  That is, fresh rain water, or lake water or stream water that hasn't been pushed through a pump or pulled out with bucket.  It has to be connected to nature.  I wanted the living rain to pour over me, and it was coming down so hard that there was a veritable stream gushing down the side of the road.  I went and stood in it and just felt it pouring over and through me.

Afterwards, I came back into the kitchen and ate the two most thrilling peaches that I think I have ever tasted.  I was amazed at the juicy deliciousness of them.  They were, honestly, two of the tastiest things that I have ever had in my life.  

I think that I have been going through some emotional and physical detox over the past few days, and the colon cleansing is helping me move towards healthier choices.

Plugged Up

Well, I hope that it doesn't turn off too many readers that I am starting off with the topic of bowel movements and constipation, but that's what's on my mind and the truth is that feeling plugged up right now is going way beyond my belly.

All of a sudden, last night, it felt like my bowels just turned off.  And it's just not comfortable.  Physically, I understand the cause--half a loaf of homemade Challah.  I've been taking it easy today--for breakfast had 32 oz of celery/grape juice (can we take a moment and acknowledge how delicious Celery juice is?) with some chia seeds thrown in (hoping the mucilage would get things moving).  Later this afternoon did a saltwater flush—my first one and nowhere near as untasty as I had expected it to be.  That went through me, and when the chia seeds came out, they looked narsty.  There is for sure stuff being cleaned out.

But, here's the thing, I think that this is more a physical manifestation of an emotional/spiritual blockage.  I've become to reasoned, too logical and too methodological in my thoughts.  I used to believe in and long for magic and wonder.  I was a romantic and willing to entertain the possibility that maybe things happened that I just didn't understand.  I have however become a cynic and that cynicism is making me bitter and stuck.  I haven't loved my faith in a long time, I haven't been excited by the thought and the dream of spirituality.  

As I prepare to start law school in the fall, I know now that I will need to find some way to engage the dreaming part of me, the imagining and fantasy loving part of me.  If I don't I'm going to have to become used to the idea of being plugged up and in pain.  No thank you.