"... Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day ..." / "Rule #24: When you eat real food, you don't need rules" / Winter Solstice 2023

As someone who struggled with an eating disorder from age 10 to age 37, this book serves as a gentle reminder that my nearly two decades of war with food are long over because instinctively I began to eat in the way that is suggested by Michael Pollan's 83 general rules.  

Rule 83:  Break the Rules Once in a While

Enjoy every sandwich.

(Warren Zevon)

Then there is Rule #52:  Have a glass of wine with dinner.

There is one personal rule I don't ever break and that is that I don't drink alcohol in any form anymore.  I used to drink wine and had no trouble stopping after drinking a small amount, but that small amount always resulted in an unbearable craving (a sign of alcoholism) that made it virtually impossible for me to stop eating.  I didn't want to be an alcoholic and so I turned to more and more food instead of more alcohol.  Of course, food couldn't stop a craving for alcohol. It was astounding to discover that my eating disorder disappeared when I stopped drinking alcohol -- that my eating problems were actually alcoholism.  Wine is a delightful healthy food for most people throughout the world but for alcoholics like me it only led to insatiable craving for food and years of unrelieved depression that ended 36 years ago in May 1987 when I had my last drink (a champagne breakfast in a restaurant with my parents), followed by my last bout of suicidal depression.  

*

Winter Solstice.

The sun rose here at 8 a.m. and will set at 4:16 p.m.  

A turning point.

Celebrating the return of the light with friends near and far, while enjoying the improved quality of sleep I enjoy during most, but not all, of the long dark winter nights.  

Calendar Series:  28th Month (Return / The Turning Point)

-- am's painting from 1988

"... It stays pretty green ..."

(Joni Mitchell)

Tall Tales / Stories That Could Be True / "... the circus is in town ...) / All the light

We phantoms are assembled at the end of the Rolling Thunder tour.

We started out trying to recover America.

We discovered a certain amount of truth about ourselves.

Old friends who thought their loves had been lost were able to get together and, uh, face each other eye to eye and sing over an electrical microphone to please the desires of myriad young yearners who had been seeking some kind of union and community and saw therein an image of that community.

…

You who saw it all or saw flashes or fragments, take from us some example, try and get yourselves together, clean up your act, find your community, pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity.

(am's note: Allen Ginsberg is shown speaking these words at the end of the film.  He then bows in the Buddhist manner)

Click to read this:

Dylan is confronting us with the difference between the stated idea of America and the present reality of it, in the process asking why, after 200 years, we still haven’t gotten our shit together. The question stands.

(am's note:  Now, in 2019, it's 243 years since 1776. My income doesn't allow for me to subscribe to Netflix.  I am grateful to a friend who made it possible for me to watch "Rolling Thunder Revue:  A Bob Dylan Story")

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

BY William E. Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

A view of our beautiful earth and our beautiful sky from my porch, and then there is:

"All The Light We Cannot See."