S'mores Anyone?

Running, waiting, wishing to be done with these days when our silly little world lays burning at our feet. Mother always had the graham crackers, marshmallows and God forbid we forget chocolate. She would say: “On the upside, these flames are a perfect opportunity for s’mores. Would anyone like one?”

Epitaph 2008

He had always been the voice on the other side of the telephone.

In a way then, it was fitting how we found out. My mother picked up. She spoke her half into the line. My brother and I listened intently from the next room over. Each of us,  still and silent.  Each word she said was frozen and unmoving within me, just like her black shoes on the red tiled linoleum floor. If she had only been moving, then everything would have been alright. 

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“He died” 

Some peoples’ grandparents send them letters in the mail. He had sent me thirty-two snowy owls. Probably cut from any and every issue of National Geographic lying in the chaos of his apartment. A few crumpled bills - matching the way Tardive Dyskinesia had crumpled his scrawls. 'Share this with your brother' said the note. Matt could have the money, I would keep the birds. 

Keep the fragments of his voice. 

Keep the poetry,

Keep the lingering taste of chocolate covered bananas on my lips,

Hold onto to the feeling of wetness and the smell of the air on the Santa Monica Pier,

The hallucinations and the arguments,

The silence of a blocked call, that even without a ringing, you knew was incoming at four p.m. precisely each day. 

There was always a call. Until there wasn’t. 

But the problem with birds, and the voices in your head is that they both have a tendency to fly away; to dissipate into thin air.

All I have left of Arthur Goldberg is a memory of the voice on the other side of the phone,

And thirty-two impeccably white owls.  

*A note to the reader: My grandfather had schizophrenia, but had by the time I was older stopped taking medication for the disease.  He used to call us almost every day. As a child I didn’t understand that some of things he talked about, the ‘stories’ and ‘poetry’ were hallucinations. I still don’t know what was real for him and what wasn’t. It was just as I was getting to the point of understanding his illness when I was in in fifth grade. That year he had a bout of hallucinations that led him to lock himself in his apartment for 3 days, without food or water. By the time they found him, he was in critical condition and they couldn’t save his life. 

He was the crazy guy that you see all the time – perhaps wearing nothing but underwear on a street corner. He did that once. But that crazy guy may mean a lot, to a lot of people. He may have been a great artist and dashing gentleman in his youth, who continues to inspire his grandchildren to think and create. It’s just a different perspective. He was messed up in a lot of ways, but I love/d him. Sometimes it’s hard to see past a disease and the stigma of it, especially when it’s mental illness. But knowing my grandfather, talking to him, he was much larger of a personality than can be summed up by a single word from the DSM.

Urban Food Forest

I guess being a vegan, it's kind of taken for granted that I'm kind impassioned on the topic of food and the environment. Local food gets me especially excited, because whether or not we think about it the way that we eat food or purchase it has an incredible effect on our world. The US has gotten in the habit of shipping food. Bananas in Ohio? No problem, they're coming on a plane from South America. Strawberries out of season? Maybe a bit pricier, but they're available for that moment of extravagance.

There are a lot of issues that I care about, but I guess that we all have to choose a few stories that we want to stand on and put our time, thought and energy into. I chose to act on the issue of health. The health of the planet that we're lucky enough to have, the health of ecosystems and individual personal health.

So when my brother sent me this article, I got really excited.

All the food we buy comes with a price in fuel from shipping. Buying food from far away and out of season leaves a larger carbon footprint. Sometimes it's easier to ignore those added costs than it is to monitor our own gas mileage. And the labor conditions aren't always fair either. And once again it's really easy to disassociate and ignore these hidden costs, because they're not right in front of you. When you don't experience the miles that the food is travelling to get to you or have to taste the exhaust from that truck, it's easy to forget about. When you don't have to see the people who grew the produce and lack the opportunity to asses they're working conditions, it's easy to forget about them. But the farmer, truck driver, merchant, all of those people and steps are part of the story of the food.

With local food though, those fuel costs don't exist. It's minimal impact and it's eaten in season at the peak of flavor. That's an edge that a lot of other countries have over the U.S. when it comes to the amount of emissions. In Thailand, most of the eggs I ate, it wouldn't be too difficult to find the chicken that laid them. Often that chicken was in sight at the restaurant or food stand. That's really cool. I see projects like this as an awesome step for the U.S. toward cutting emissions and building a more sustainable lifestyle.

I also love the idea of being able to go out and pick your own food from this forest area even though you live in the middle of the city. The outdoors is good for people. It makes people happier to have sunshine and greenness and fresh air. I think it would be fun also to be a part of the story of your food, to have that connection with it.

I think that the impact of this kind of project could go deeper than that though. As far as individual health, this place would create a place for community and developing relationships in the community. America can be super gung-ho on the individual success story, it's you making your way in the big wide world. But people, people need community. We need other people to be with, to smile with, to laugh with. Those relationships are what really makes life worthwhile and this project hopefully will help a lot of new relationships happen.

Anyways, a lot of times I'm kind of embarrassed to talk about local foods, because it's kind of hippie-ish. And the word hippie has a surprisingly stinging negative connotation sometimes. But it is an issue that I really care about. I am kind of hippie-ish maybe. Here's a project that I've been working on and hope to get more involved with as far as local foods go as a solution for some of the disparity between rich and poor.

I guess I can't deny it. I've chosen this story to stand on and try to make a change every day. I still have a long way to go individually towards meeting the way that I think I should live, but I'm headed in a good direction. I try to do my best to make people consider it quietly. I bike to school, church and the seven miles to my kickboxing gym on the West Side when I can. And I hope that by seeing me on the road, that I can make even one person consider getting on their bike to get somewhere instead of hopping in the car. I hope that I can make a difference in the way I live.

Snow Camping

You know, I’ve always loved camping. Immersing myself in the beauty of nature, freedom from material concerns - a certain happiness comes from that. But I’ve also always felt deep in my bones that snow camping is one of the best things in the world. It gives you that special kind of happiness that comes from waking up to find that you are still alive

Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Sometimes, friendship is as simple as saving that peanut butter sandwich. When you are both full of strength in your legs, but left with empty heaving bellies, one can turn to the other. Without question you tear the sandwich in half. It doesn't matter to me which side you take both say to the other. Because it's not about self.

It's about the concrete steps that you sit on together, chilly on your butt through your leggings. It's about the sunshine and the remnants of conversation strewn between the both of you and the miles you just traveled - free as the steps you pound out on the sidewalk and as rambling as the paths you run.

*For about a year, my friend Sam and I would run together every day. Long runs, to prepare for cross country season or long-distance track. There was always a peanut butter sandwich - actually given to Sam by Emma (another friend) during lunch because she didn't like them. It became tradition for Sam and I, every day to wait until after our tiring run to split the sandwich in half and share it - continuing our conversations. 

Why do you bike?

I remember just a few months ago, when running was like a this balloon that had inflated inside my head, leaving room for nothing else. I just started my career as a distance runner on the track team. I loved running and I found I was good at it too. I two relays in my first varsity meet. My balloon was popped though after about a month when I hurt my hip badly and couldn't run competitively the rest of my season.

It drove me insane when it happened. At first and all I could think of was how much I wanted to just run and run and run for miles and miles and hours and hours. But something equally amazing grew out of that misfortune. Even flowers can grow from where just dirt used to be.

It was during those weeks of injury that I began to bike like no other, trying to replace my runners high with even more miles of cycling. To be honest, biking never has replaced for me what running gives. A run ends in this weary drained feeling, like all those busy thoughts in my head have been pounded out, leaving only dizzy contentment. A bike ride never leaves me that way.

If running was like a balloon in my head ever inflating, biking was like roots shooting out. I still remember the first time I rode to church and crossed the bridge over the river. It was like a door opening to a whole new world. All these remote places that we would drive to, like kick-boxing, the art store and church were accessible. And there was something more tangible about the journey on my bicycle where I could feel the miles beneath me and inside of my limbs.

The further I go and the more I explore on my bike the greater the feeling grows. I feel like I am part of the landscape; I belong in the painting. And the roads, telephone lines and Ohio countryside belong in me, inside my thighs. I have lived over those miles and felt them by the power of my lungs and legs. Each time I go further or discover a new route I feel myself and those miles inside of me grow.

Last Sunday someone asked me why I biked to church. I didn't know how to say all of it then. And just like the miles, the reasons keep on growing.

The short answer is simply because I enjoy it.

Picasso

I've always thought that Picasso was over-rated, until this....

I was in New Orleans with my friends at an art museum. I saw this painting and was struck by how his almost sloppy brush strokes captured the realness of the objects so well.