Author: Mary Aviyah Farkas

Thoughts after teaching tonight.
Everyone, all seven souls, embodied in flesh blood bone which they all wish to change. They seek guidance, support, help to comprehend and have success with this change. They all know, inherently, in their gut, in their heart, of course their minds, what is reasonable. They understand at a very deep level that what they eat is as important to their flesh blood bone as is the air they breathe, the water they drink, the needed rest they must take. They understand their need to eat ‘better’. Better than, than what they presently eat. They know, they’ve ‘got it’, ‘got’ the need to change, all the right reasons, they understand; and truly want to change. But it’s so hard, so very very hard to eat ‘better.’ God, it is so very easy to continue as is. The food is fast, convenient, all over/ubiquitous. And it’s so cheap. Hell, you can almost gorge on just $5.00. And the other stuff is so expensive. And who knows how to cook it anyway. And the bother of not just the cooking, but the cleanup. It’s really the cleanup that is hated the most; so the whole thing is skipped and so much easier to eat out. Fast food for lunch, Applebees or somesuch for supper. It’s quick, done with, no mess, and affordable. And there’s no food shopping. The awful food shopping. The hated food shopping. And so hard for just one.

They want the change for their flesh bone blood, which often hurts, or doesn’t feel good, and even the over the counter nostrums don’t really help anymore. They want to feel better. They KNOW that part of the secret to not just getting, but holding on to a body which feels good is about food, their food, what they eat, routinely, on a regular basis (even when they say “oh, I never eat the same way two days in a row; and I skip meals; it’s never regular or routine…..”). It’s so much all the same, a basic intake of the fast, convenient, ubiquitous, and so very cheap food that surrounds us all. It is so much a part of our lives, it is EVERYWHERE, these food like substances (thank you Michaell Pollan) that have lives of years. Almost everyone eats from this well of disease. It is so very very available to all. It is our mainstay.

And we all, even the fifth grade class I asked, know what food to eat for health. Food to eat to feel better. Food to eat to not get disease. Those killer things which have taken so many of our families, that live in our lives and haunt us with the dozens of pills we or a loved one must take. Those dozens of pills that routinely pollute our water ways, not to speak of our bodies. One is used to counteract the effect of another. And they multiply over the years. The sorting, boxing, taking, remembering gets longer. And longer.

We know that what we eat can change the pill taking, the condition, the fat, the shape, the way our flesh blood bone feels. We know this just as we know that the air we breathe, the water we drink, the rest we take will keep us healthy, or not. We know this at a very very deep level.

And we ignore this knowing. We somehow collectively let go of our knowing the truth of our flesh blood bone. This body which serves our mind, our family, our work in the world, our Divine. This body which we can not live without, which allows our creativity and best humanity to flourish, to overcome the worst. This body is wasted from the fast, convenient, ubiquitous, and oh so very cheap food we have made too available.

Thus this Call for Reason Regarding Our Food. We have made so much of our life better. We have cars which make our transport of ourselves and our goods so incredibly easy. We have drive-up windows which mean we don’t have to leave these machines which make life easy. We have so much ease that we can sit for hours at computer, or tv, even book; hours, with enough light. Enough light. Amazing to have enough light. Such a premium for those before us. Such a nothing, not thought of, not considered part of our lives now. Such change in so little time. Our lives have become so much easier than even the lives of our parents. But it is not easy, it is so very very hard; so very very difficult and expensive and inconvenient; not at all easy, to eat ‘better.’ The way that even the fifth grade class understands to eat. The way we all understand to eat. We know that there is too much sugar, sodas, candy, cookies, chips, salt, salt, fat, fat. Oh so very much. We know. We’ve been told. So many times. So many times we have tried, and always always always fail to change. We always go back to eating to hurt our flesh bone blood. And then take more pills.

Isn’t it time to Call for Reason Regarding Our Food. We can do so much better. This is doable.
We can create food which creates health. Make this food which creates health easy, convenient, ubiquitous, and cheap. It’s got to be cheap, else people won’t buy it, no matter how available it will become. Must become. Cheap and so readily available, and fast, and ubiquitous. This food which creates health can become the norm. Our standard. Our best for us. Just as we prize so much else which is best for us. Our best humanity. Our best for all.

We can call for all food which creates health to be subsidized instead of food which creates disease which presently we subsidize. We create disease with our tax dollars. Given freely, abundantly to a farming industry which supports a medical industry which both support a phamaceutical industry. They support each other to hurt our flesh blood bone.

We can change this. We can Call for Reason Regarding Our Food.

We can mandate (as we presently mandate all food fortification, as we presently mandate how our roads and bridges and buildings and public safety function, we mandate for the greater good. Thus seatbelts, thus shoes off at airports, thus the percentage grade of our roads, thus the construction material in our bridges, thus so much of our life which we allow to be micromanaged, we allow to happen to us) change. Mandate change. We do it all the time as regards safety. Why don’t we consider our health as safety? Why is everyone allowing this pollution of flesh blood bone, and we long ago passed legislation, for the greater good, mandating standards for our water, the air we breathe. More to do, so much more, of course; but we demand certain quality in our water, the air we breathe. And the food we eat, the food we eat, on a regular, even routine basis, the easy, fast, convenient, long lived food we eat. We demand no quality here. We allow disease formation and disability to come into our lives. This is not abstract. This is so very very real. This hurts us. I have seen the hurt, the scaring, the pain carried in flesh blood bone of people who hurt deeply. Daily. Their daily finger pricks, the pills, the appointments, the procedures hurt, eat into their flesh blood bone. And always more pills.

But no. No. I don’t want anyone telling me what I can or can’t eat. Hell, I’ll eat what I want. When I want. What I want. What I want.

Ha ha! Think again. Think, not even very hard, without even thinking even a little bit, think about who tells you what you want. Who lures you in and traps your taste and tells you what you want. Who makes what you want so very very cheap. So very very easy. Oh what you want. You only think you want. You do want it, no doubt. But truly, not what you want, truly. You know better. The part of you that cares for life, that is happy, and loves others. You truly know. But you cling to What I Want. No one’s gonna tell me how to eat. What to eat. Not me. I eat what I want. Ha ha! Think again! More truly what they want you to want. What they want you to want.

The taste of real food is delicious. You know. You would rather, oh yes you would rather the real food. Always. Of course. But…..but…..who, pray tell will make it fast, convenient, ubiquitous, inexpensive if not cheap for our flesh, blood, bone.

Who will do it?

We like to store stuff, keep stuff, even hoard stuff. We’re real good at it, and we like to do it. Makes us feel good, feel rich, feel important, feel whatever that thing is for each of us that sparks us, gives us even a twinge of excitement, and hopefully fun. That true human need for relief, respite, even euphoria, from our extremely stressful, difficult lives.

So eating in surfeit we’ve learned, produces, at least for a brief time, that same spark, that excitement, even euphoria, maybe fun. For many. For far too many.

Eating in surfeit is still a very affordable pleasure. Five dollars worth of fast food will surely fill the emptiest belly. This is cheap. This is obscenely cheap. Hey a ticket to see a good flick to create that excitement, that euphoria is at least ten bucks. And there’s the popcorn. Ain’t cheap to see a new film. So five for a pig out is a bargain. Obscenely cheap.

Enough of these belly full of cheap pig outs will get you fat. The calories get hoarded. The fat’s just hoarded calories. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not bad, it doesn’t mean that you’re bad, that there’s something to feel bad about. It just is. Like alot of things in life. It just is. Neither good nor bad. Truly. Any bad feeling comes from your beliefs/your perceptions about you and your world. About your fat. How you think others think about you. How you think others think about your fat. How you think about yourself, and your fat. Women suffer the most. They have the most bad feeling about themselves, from the bad feelings about the fat, about their looks, about their bodies. More women feel this. Fell bad. Than men.

And I hate when women suffer. It will always mean that children will suffer. The girl children will learn to hate their bodies, feel bad about themselves, think bad about themselves; and pass this on to the girl children they birth.

Women, the surfeit in eating causes suffering. Yours. Not even to speak of the body stuff you’ve been already told will happen, or has happened. Your mind, your heart, your pain, your suffering, your self reproaches and recriminations. The defeated heart. The pained soul. The self sabotage. These are what truly hurt.

And if you’re past the pain, past any hurt, you’re still told by a medical one, a medical person, about the fat. About the fat.
And especially the belly fat, abdominal fat, omentum fat. It’s there and gets in the way. More than you’d like.

I had to address fat. Here. In full view. I am presently facilitating a group of adults who have not been adult with themselves. They are adults in most all other ways. Cept for food. It’s been OK to not take care of business, not be adult, not care about their body. And especially with food. And I know all too well the reasons why. I know the reasons intimately. Money, time, money, time, fatigue, self loathing, abuse, time, fatigue. I know the hearts and minds of the ones who hoard fat. I know your deepest fears and desires. You have been kind to me; you have allowed me to peer inside your being. You have shared your deepest fears and desires, and self loathing with me. You have given me that deep priviledge. I love you. I love you. I love you.

The group is Your Body’s Grace. My play on the words of the wise Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The Body’s Grace is his defense of homosexual love, physical, deep, touching,
significant, meaningful love. As is all love. He is a wizard of the highest order, able to create gold from mere words. So my play on the title of his essay is my way of declaring my view of this body. My body. The thousands of bodys which I was priviledged to work with in my 25 years as a dietitian. Your body. Her body. Her beautiful body. I do care especailly for her body, rather than his. Because she suffers more. In every society, she has it worse. She is less than. Regardless of what you protest. (And of course I understand karma and the fact of her maybe being a man in her past life. All karma. Of course. But it doesn’t negate her present suffering.) The suffering is all too real, too tangible. Evidenced by lab tests, procedures, self poking needles into your flesh, withdrawing blood, testing your sugar, testing your pee, your blood. The fat is too real and the pain it inflicts is terrible to bear. And terrible to witness. I was this pains’ witness for 25 years. I was allowed to see and hear her suffering heart. Her suffering body. She let me in. She told me. I heard. I honor her and what I have heard.

My view of this body, her body, my body, is that it is our only vehicle for knowing the Divine. The Divine Mystery of this dear life. It is our ticket to consciousness. Our brain is our body is our mind, is our heart, is our soul. They are one. Could truly only be one. As we are all one, as we represent the One who we co-create our life, our world with.

Antonio Damasio, the neurologist and neurobiologist writes in Decartes’ Error: “…the body, as represented in the brain, may constitute the indispensable frame of reference for the neural processes that we experience as the mind; that our very organism rather than some absolute external reality, is used as the ground reference for the constructions we make of the world around us and for the construction of the ever-present sense of subjectivity that is part and parcel of our experiences; that our most refined thoughts and best actions, our greatest joys and deepest sorrows, use the body as a yardstick.”

Heavy stuff. If you didn’t finish that last paragraph, don’t worry. My first reading of it took me maybe three, maybe more times to get. And I don’t get it on the level that Antonio does. But I get it. Of course. I’ve spent my whole life looking and learning about the body. And hearing.
Hearing pain. Her pain. Her body’s ground reference which doesn’t work, doesn’t function like it’s supposed to. Like it did in the past, when she was younger. This very painful body, this ground reference which interprets her too hard, too painful world.

There isn’t one person in the group who is devoid of fat issues. Even the several ‘skinny’ ones. There are six to twelve any given week. They all need aid to deal with their hoarding, deal with the too many things they’ve taken on. The too many things they have to do. The people they must please. The lack of time. The lack of care for themselves. Going on, doing, caring for, others, others, others. Never herself. She is always left behind.

Except for the spark times, the excitement times, even times of euphoria. Ahhhhhhhh. Then she can truly relax. She relaxes with food. The food is familiar. Oh so very familiar. Such a dear friend. Ahhhh. The relaxation, the comfort. The comfort. The comfort. So dear, so very sweet and dear.

And then the reality.

And then typically the pain, guilt, feeling bad, suffering, again.

It is for you I write this. It is for you because I love you. I love you. I love you.

You must know that it can change. It does not have to stay locked and tight and safe and permanent. Even rigid. Oh the rigidity. The tightness. The inability to be fluid, to be flexible, to move. You must know that it can change. You must know this. In some place deep inside, you know all of this. Of course. And now to trust. The next step is trust. Yourself. The next step is trust that you can change. It is possible.

So I write these words for you to see. To know. To understand that it is your mind which locks you in. Tight. On a schedule. The evening schedule. The evening routine, nay ritual. The time alone. The time for yourself. All to yourself. Always with food.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

eldermuse.net

And I hate that you hurt.

Who are the gifts in your life? I am naming mine as I write this. I have many human gifts, people who I love heart and soul, who I have often 20 or 30 year relationships with. A flush of love, warmth and sweetness comes over me as I contemplate the many family and beloved friends who feed me, feed my heart, mind and soul.

They gift my life with their love, their ease of sharing their hearts with me, my ease in sharing mine with them. They gift my life with wonder and curiosity, new things to learn, study, know. New things to see and experience. Playing dolls with my 4 year old grand niece and my soon to be 2 year old grand nephew smiling gleefully at me. My 12 year old grand nephew letting me kiss and hug him as he feigns revulsion. My sister gifting me with Greek yogurt and saying: “Don’t even ask!” when I begin to want to pay her. A friend telling me that Patti Smith would visit a local bookstore and waiting nearly 2 hours with me to see her. A son who visits and takes delight in talking about his life. Planning a long trip and traveling with another friend. Another calling me to cry about her lost wife, knowing I will understand.

I am able to call them at any hour and they will only give me kindness, understanding, acceptance. And they know I will do the same.
Humans in my life who I can count on, who give me advice, caring, love, ideas. Who complete me.

A new soul has come into my life who also feeds me well, in many respects. Oh how lucky, how very lucky and blessed am I.

Each sunset is unique and beautiful. Each eye sees what they especially love in the uniqueness and beauty. Sunsets. People. Place. How wonderful to be at peace with our world, inner and outer. Total acceptance of what is. Certainty that what is, is our truth, our reality, and have peace with it. What is meant to happen, does indeed happen; often easily, almost gracefully. Feel complete and whole in feeling fine, in gratitude for what I have, in feeling perfect in what I know I create.

I also realize that truly, at its core, I am but a co-creator of my world; I work with Divine forces beyond my wildest conception. And I love that I am here, in acceptance.

Butterflies and dolphins blessed my sight today. In a town north of Santa Barbara, Goleta. Who could ask for anything more than a pod of dolphins swimming off the pier, and inland, hundreds, hundreds of large monarch butterflies floating overhead in the tops of the sun seeking eucalyptus trees silhouetted in the brilliant sky.
It was quite wonderful.

I am dusting when I should be in bed, asleep. I am looking foward to tomorrow and cannot sleep. So I dust in honor of a friend’s visit. She will be honored by my dusting deeply, this is my bow to her. Here, I will do this task in your honor. Please accept this gift from me.

And tonight as I dusted, I received a gift from the Universe, a gift of knowing. I’ve never liked dusting, generally. In fact I generally avoid housework as best I may. Margaret loved to dust, so I was thrilled that she’d regularly make the house shine. She extended the glow by lighting incense and candles. Then the house became magic. She could create magic. And she always created beauty in her world. Her eye was impeccable.

Dusting, deep dusting requires a good rag, and something that will let the wood sparkle. It takes time, especially if you’re picking up each object, dusting it and settling it back where it belongs. Time to take a look at what you’ve just arranged, just created. Letting your eyes take in the beauty of your objects displayed.

It is exactly in the lifting, feeling, looking at each piece that I now see, I now realize, brings a flood of memories. Of where this piece was displayed in our home, before. I shudder at this Knowing, and am totally content with their new placement.

You’re usually found on trees, branches, twigs, leaves, walking, munching happily; not on the open ground, a roadway where unaware feet may trample you and certainly swift quadrillion times your weight cars will crush you to nothing. You’re lumbering along on the roadway we share this morning. Knowing your fragility, I lift you up (afraid of me, you curl into a complete circle of soft bristles), I’m amazed at your non weight in my hand, and place you on the nearest branch where my mind tells me you belong. Did I just disrupt the order of life?

My head in the uppermost branches of my tangerine tree, I’m standing precariously on my six foot ladder, merrily picking fruit. I feel safe, immune from falls, scraps, even the dread finger lopped off by my trusty #2 Felco pruners. Doesn’t faze me at all. No. I’m just happy to be up here, deep in the branches of this lovely, non-demanding, always generous tree.

But I nearly slip, catching an armful of supple branches which square me back to balance on the topmost step, the one I’m warned against using. My head and face are thrust deep into the leaves of these saviour branches, and I have the good fortune to breathe deeply.

I am greeted by my sweet doggie dog’s scent after soaking in the sun; by the smell of my arm, catching the sun’s glory beating into my flesh as I drive down the road; by the smell of new washed laundry brittlely dry on the line.

To my great surprise and delight, the tangerine leaves smell just like my sweet doggie dog, my own sundrenched skin, my laundry ablaze with sunshine particles dusting our beings.

I’m beginning to comprehend
that I must do a courtship dance
and agree to being taken
rather than me taking.
This time I get taken
by the one I wish to take.

Four Years

For years I’ve wished for the ability to breathe, freely, joyfully, loving every aspect of my life. I wanted either this level of normalcy and bliss, or death. I had had this level of bliss in my life, I knew what it daily felt like, and I wanted it again. Or death. Either/or.

I knew I was mired in the place of such extreme pain that nothing matters. Having this space of pain, daily, hurts. It is painful, physically as well as mentally, soulfully painful. Days of sitting and staring and not seeing, just crying and wishing I would die. I felt my soul being shredded. I felt daily dragged through hell, inch by inch.

When I learned of Lydia’s prognosis in mid-September, that she had only weeks to live, a small part of me, a tiny part, but one which sought and received acknowledgement, wanted to die in her place. I envied her too soon death. I wanted it to be me. I had lost my life with the one I adored, I’d had my cake and my fill, I needed nothing more.
But this envy never became more than acknowledgement, the envy of her death truly never caused me to stop listening to Tina and Beyonce at the top of their game full blast in the car. Feeling good. I was getting out, near daily. I was seeing, doing, being with others. Doing groups, participation, participation in life, in my world. Being willing to create my life, alone, with others in active voice, with desire to be heard.

But…the creation of my life, solely, does cause me depression. I recently wrote my dear friend Janice the fact of my recognition of the times I feel depressed and how it is bound to the reality that I create my life solely. Alone.
I’ve lived more years coupled or grouped than not, and I seem to prefer such living versus living alone. In fact these four years have been the longest I’ve lived alone in my life.

Sometimes it is painful, true. But mostly it has become amazingly delicious and freeing. I pinch myself daily, fully conscious and alive to all that I am grateful for. I understand that I can now create a joy and richness for my heart and soul which rivals anything I had with Margaret. The richness and joy with her, amazing, what a once in a lifetime experience to have this level of love with another. But now I have the capacity to create this level of richness and joy with a group of women, with people. I relish what life is offering.

I wish to acknowledge the passing of four years exactly since her passing. Margaret died only three days after turning fifty nine. No one expected this. No one. It caused pain and it was disruptive.

I want to acknowledge the disruption, the major disruption which death causes the ones left. Total disruption in all aspects of one’s life, including a disruption of one’s previous reality. Death is now part and parcel of reality. Death never truly existed before. Death is here, and now demands to be accounted for in the rest of my life. Death is certain disruption. Death now gets factored in. Always.

Four years, and I have accepted, adapted; and I am beginning to thrive on the disruption. I go on, and choose joy and love and communication with others.