Evan’s Coronavirus Celeryroot Soup

   I developed this recipe based on the situation at hand (stay at home, lots of time) and the simple materials available to me. 

  This recipe has a zen quality to it. Do not try to complicate it, this recipe is about letting simple ingredients shine. 

   The key step which requires some explanation is the dice. The celery root must be chopped in a fine dice, less than a 1/4 inch dice, but maybe a little more than 1/8th of an inch. 3-4 mm 

With the other vegetables you can be a little looser with your precision, but basically this is the same dice for all the ingredients. Don’t try and use a food processor, you won’t get the evenness of the cut vegetables. 

As with most soups it’s better the next day, if I make it to eat for dinner I usually try and start in the kitchen 3-4 hours before I wish to sit down to eat. 

Ingredients:

Celery root

Onion 

Leek

Carrot

celery/parsnip/sweet potato/ something else?

Split peas (yellow, dried)

Cooking oil 

Olive oil

Paprika 

Salt and pepper

• Set some water to boil in a kettle

• Clean and chop your auxiliary vegetable, or two, set aside into a med/large bowl as mise en place

• Peel the celery root, use your chefs knife and not a peeler. Turn the root sideways and take a thin slice about the thickness of your dice. Set the root aside and lay the slice down on your cutting board. Make cuts along the root that go 90% of the way through, but don’t cross through the back end. The cuts should be parallel and very close together. You should now have something that looks like a white circular comb 

Now cut cross ways, to make your dice. Voila! You’ll have to cut up that last bit of the slice that the score cuts didn’t go all the way through. 

   Once you’re happy with the contents of your cutting board, transfer over to the mise en place bowl, and work on another slice. 

Yes this takes a lot of time, but you have nowhere to go right?

• Now dice up that onion and add it to the mise en place. You can be less precise here. 

A word about how much.  I usually use one small celery root for a batch serving two. Or a half of a larger celery root, the remaining half will keep well in the fridge. 

(If you make a double batch using a whole large celery root there will be a lot of chopping, consider recruiting help. )

For onion, a small onion or maybe half of a large one. For the other vegetable, just a bit, maybe 1 medium-small carrot, 1.5 stalks of celery, 1 parsnip, use your judgement 

The ratio should be about 

         60       /       20       /        20 

celery root / onion & leek / other veg. 

• Choose a pot (stainless preferred, double walled preferred, any pot will do) at least double the volume of your prepared mise en place. Add a healthy dose of cooking oil ( 2-3 tbsp) and place over medium heat, when the oil gets hot add the vegetables and turn down the heat to med-low, stir every 15-30 seconds for a few minutes. 

We’re not trying to get anything browned, but we do want the vegetables to get oily and shiny and a bit translucent (for the onion).

After about 4 minutes add the split peas,  at about the same amount as the onion, or a little more. Not too much though! Maybe a half cup?  Keep stirring another minute or two.

• Add the hot water until everything is covered by 1/2 inch of water. Stir.

• Add a tablespoon and a quarter of paprika, and stir. (Optional) (smoked recommended)

• Bring to a simmer and turn the heat down to low, cover and simmer.

• Stir every 10-15 minutes. The kitchen will start to smell wonderful. If the peas absorb a lot of water you may need to add a little more water. 

• After 90-120 minutes the vegetables will begin to break down. You’ll open the lid and notice that there is layer of water that has risen to the top, as you stir you’ll see that it’s drier and gloppy on the bottom. At this point you must stir a little more frequently to reintegrate the water and keep the bottom from scorching. I use the back of the spoon to forcefully press down on the soup against the bottom or sides of the pot to help break apart the vegetables and peas. Then stir again and cover. 

• after another 30+ minutes your soup is done. Add salt and stir in. Take off heat. 

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top and sprinkle with finely ground black pepper. Serve with a warmed chunk of hearty bread with butter. Other side ideas, bok choy, potatoes, tomato salad. 

After initial cooling it is a good idea to keep the pot covered and place it in a plugged sink full of cold water to help lower the temperature. Transfer to sealed clean containers. Keeps for about 5 days. Or you can freeze some. 

Smacznego!

Living Life with ‘Mo Regrets

    Often the opposite is said... a trite repetition in The Culture... a misplaced remembrance of a song lyric comes to mind, “Don’t look back”. 

I want to consider the value of regrets. 

There’s a huge asterisk here of course. For most people embracing and sitting with regret is a ripe context for the arising of self-hate, shame, worthlessness, and guilt-tripping. This molasses filled swamp envelops you and causes only pain and turning-away. I don’t condone any of these unproductive yet sticky & habitual mental states. 

But if you come to a place where you can at least recognize and discern what is the constant voice of self-hate and what is your intrinsic emotional flow. And if you can resist the loop of re-hashing the latest example of your worthlessness Then it’s time for you to consider the power of regret. 

Like all of our universal human proclivities, love, fear, gossip, and so on, it exists as a kludgy mental process which serves us in some way. The power of regret is not to mourn or commiserate the past. The power of regret is to help shape our future. 

This week I awoke one morning From an unpleasant sleep and felt a familiar feeling. The comedown from a slumberland sugar-high. Soon I identified within me the feeling of regret for my actions the night before. I am at a point in my life where I feel the winds of change around my main vice of binge eating. Feeling bad the next morning, both in body and mind, is not new. But this morning was different. 

I had the presence to avoid the well trod path of shame. The piling-on my present self for all the unwise actions of some previous Evan. I saw that I regretted my actions. I forgave myself. And I contemplated how I can respond to sugar craving in the future. I realized that this was the healthy path of change. That my regret would help me to make better decisions for myself. 

It was a revelation to see the positive process of regret in action, after so many years of exposure to the opposite message.  

I recalled another example of how regret can help us to make better decisions in the future. A while back I had dreamed to help coordinate a final reunion of my grandma and her best friend when they both were dying. Had I been living close to family at the time it probably would have happened. But I was across the country... and life is so busy as we make it.  When I got an email from her son to let me know that grandma’s best friend had passed away I knew the opportunity for a meeting had passed. I regretted not having tried harder to make it happen. At the time I was deeper in the swamp of self-hate. While I don’t recall how it went at the time, it’s likely those feelings of self-loathing and failure led me to an evening of dullness and binge eating. 

Years later when I was back home I spied an opportunity to help my maternal grandmother. Nana grew up an only child. When her family moved into a new apartment building, Beatrice, the girl who lived down the hall became her big sister. They spent the better part of a century living in the same neighborhood, raised kids, lost husbands; always the closest of friends. As Bea’s health worsened she went to live with her son out in the suburbs. She and Nana often talked on the phone, but they hadn’t seen each other in years. 

  Here was my chance. I had a car, and the nose to prod Nana a little to invite herself out to see Bea. The reunion was a joyful moment for all involved. I have no doubt that my priority and drive to help grew from the experience of regret with my other grandmother. 

So if you can, keep one mindful eye open to look for regret in your life. Watch for that pull towards the guilt trip, stay on center and see what power regret can put into your life. I know that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. 

Take 5: A trip to Burning Man

    There are few things in life as dear to me as the community of wonderful crazies I have found through Burning Man It's almost not enough, what I've just said, but it will suffice, for the magical special thing about Burning Man is, I believe, incommunicable.

    Here I am (below) all ready to leave the farm in North Carolina. I had about 10 days to buy, register and wire-up a truck, and prepare everything I was bringing. There was a lot of running around, fixing up the trailer, bamboo harvesting, shopping etc. The only piece of available flat land for the trailer was was down at the bottom of the farm. The farm house is at the top of the hill, up a quarter-mile gravel drive. Packing day was a lot of up and down.

    You may notice the blue tape on my travel trailer, a tribute to my friend Andy, with whom I traveled post-burn in 2014.

     It may also catch your attention that the bed of my pickup is not piled over the top and strapped down with gobs of supplies. It is a tradition drive to the Burn with a vehicle that is maxed-out on payload by volume and moderately to severely overloaded by weight. It felt strange to be heading out with the bed of my truck virtually empty.

    Part of the reason I was so lightly loaded was that I was driving alone. I wasn't able to convince anyone from our Virginia-based art project (The Mega-Cake) to drive with me. Jamie and Chris were driving out from Norfolk a day later and we hoped to meet up in Wyoming to caravan together the last thousand miles.

    I'm pretty new to towing a trailer, so a solo transcontinental trip felt like a challenge. However given my cross-country experience I was confident in my ability to do 500 mi days. I planned for two rest days in my schedule to break up the monotony and to leave room for any unforeseen incidents.

    Day one was a great success, despite the lack of Air Conditioning driving was manageable without the use of the cooling suit I had brought with me. It is a t-shirt with tubes sewn into it. You connect it to a cooler with a special pump that pumps ice water through the shirt. Some cloudy weather helped on many days of the trip so I didn't end up using it while driving.

    Another big aide was the use of some old-school cruise control. That is, my steering wheel lock ("The Club") jammed between the accelerator pedal and the driver's seat cushion. Highly effective.

   Carbondale Illinois was reached before sunset on the first day. Visiting my friend Raine and her daughter Sequoia. Rest Day: Working out, breakfast, emails, sanitizing the trailer's water tank, cooking dinner, moon viewing, fixing generator.

    Day 3 took me up to St Louis, and then across Missouri to KC. (This map might be helpful now) Stopped at a Home Depot for a part to fix the kitchen sink in the trailer. Discover that even with my two generators my AC in the trailer still isn't working right due to high starting amperage. I made it to a lovely campground in Nebraska City. Camper life is really enjoyable if you find a peaceful campground. Of course I had to get to work draining the bleach water out of the camper's tank, fixing the kitchen sink, and researching the AC problem. I learned that all AC units might benefit from a hard start kit. In short, the part I needed was in Omaha.

     Day 4, detour to Omaha to pick up the AC part. And a stop at Home Depot to try a few more parts until the sink finally got fixed. Driving across Nebraska takes all day. I passed my first fellow burner, he too was towing a trailer. I waved, but I wasn't sure he got the message, my taped on decoration was facing the wrong way. He had a little burning man logo taped on the back of his trailer, this was something I would have to emulate.
      I pulled into Cheyenne Wyoming after dark and realized that my dim headlights would need fixing. Called a handyman to arrange the next day to have the help of a ladder to fix the AC on the trailer's roof. I plotted a pre-dawn run, brushed my teeth and checked the Facebook Mega-Cake group chat where I discovered that Jamie and Chris had broken down in Denver. With them the camp trailer with all the tools, tents, clothes and kitchen supplies wasn't going anywhere : (  I knew what this meant.

    Day 5, after an early morning run, breakfast, meeting an interesting retiree handyman who had a ladder. [He keeps busy writing google reviews, even for places he's never been to, and exploring old mines and hunting for gold.] At 8:30 am I called Jamie:
           "I heard you'all broke down"
     "Yeah"
           "Should I come down to help?"
     "Yeah"

      So off I set. (Fun Fact: Cheyenne is only 90mi from Denver) Along the way Jamie and I worked out various details of how I could tow his trailer.  Jamie wanted to know how high my trailer ball was off of the ground, because "this trailer is really low, and we gotta have it level."  At 8,000 lbs I knew there was no messing around with anything other then level.  Jamie told me he was running with the top of his ball 15 inches above the ground.
    I pulled over to measure mine, I called Jamie up:
         "I'm at 21 inches off the ground"
    "That's alright I'll give you my adjustable level ball mount, We'll just swap it out of the hitch"
         "Uuh, my truck doesn't have a hitch."
    "It doesn't have a hitch? Then what are you towing with?"
         "Its got this thing bolted to the bumper, its got a ball but its not a hitch."

    I had to look it up. Ladies and Gentelmen, this is what a you call a Pintel Hook.

       I told Jamie to figure something while I got back on the road. He cruised the internet and found a hitch that has a plate on the back with four bolt holes. You can bolt it to a tractor, you can bolt it on a wall, you can bolt it to a truck. I told him Amazon wasn't gonna cut it for our timeframe, I said:
         "Find it in Denver"
     He did.
          At Trailer Source, and I drove straight there.
     The friendly associate had pulled the part aside and I was all smiles as I got the part I needed. I walked outside held the hitch up to the bumper to see, and . . . F*¢K. 

     The bolt holes didn't line up. Immediately I realized that this was gonna have to be welded. I went back in the shop, spoke to the friendly associate. Spoke to the mechanics in the shop. Spoke to Jamie on the phone. No one had any answers. 
      There was only one problem with the idea of welding the hitch onto the bumper. it was a Saturday! By divine guidance the first welder I looked up on google answered the phone, listened to my problem, and said he could weld it in the alley behind the shop. I didn't like the sound of it. Some random dude, welding it in the alley, and I'm gonna trust my truck, all of the camps equipment, and potentially my life that this hitch doesn't shear off at 65 MPH.     But I had no other options. 

      I drove down to the welding shop. Mica the welder had a shop full of race cars, which is why he had to do it in the alley. But in the end I trusted him and he did a beautiful job.
     Now all I had to do was get a new ball mount, hook back up my trailer and park it somewhere. Luckily Jamie had located a fellow burner in the Denver area who happened to have a free yard to park my travel trailer, his name was also Evan. Then back down to finally see Jamie! By this time I had driven through the teeth of Denver traffic three times! I was pretty beat. 

      But we weren't done yet, I had to get Jamie over to the tool store so he could get a transmission jack to change his transmission in a Lowe's parking lot. Then to the named parking lot to tow Jamie's stranded truck away from the trailer and push it into a parking space. Then to finally hitch me up to the camp trailer. Whew! What a Saturday! we crashed hard.





    Jamie was going to have to wait a whole 'nother 24 hours for Monday morning to start calling shops to find out about an expedited transmission so he generously gave me his co-pilot Chris to help me get the camp trailer out to Burning Man.


Day 6: Chris Revels takes this triumphant picture of me getting ready to leave Denver. 

     With the 32 foot 8,000 lb trailer securely hitched I gingerly drove north out of Denver. I had Chris back out of the gas station. Maneuvering a rig this big was a whole new ballgame. 
      I got back behind the wheel, My truck had plenty of power to tow it, but we were being conservative, no overdrive on the transmission, 60-65 MPH max. At that speed, all of the Semi-trucks were passing us. When they did, their wake first pushed us aside, then sucked us in close then pushed us away again. I was learning quickly how to corrective steer against these forces. 
     We made it back to Cheyenne, where I had been a day before and set out west across I-80. We stopped at the summit rest stop at 8,640 ft of elevation. I drove west to Laramie and picked up new headlights. As I drove into the late morning the electronic signs on the highway warned "CAUTION: WIND GUSTS UP TO 45MPH", Chris drifted off to sleep. When he woke up the electronic warning had become all too real. I told him I had been white knuckle driving for the past 40 minutes. Just then a truck blew by and the gust pushed me to within inches of the edge of the pavement. As we came to our senses, a blue sign offered an oasis, Rest Stop 2 mi!  

    We pulled over at about 11am and waited, and waited, and waited. Plenty of time to have lunch, take a silly photo, change out the headlights, meet fellow travelers, and put retro-reflective tape and a little burning man logo on the trailer. 

     It came to me, the trailer was 'The Black Beast' and my truck 'The White Knight' to save the day. The rest stop seemed to know of the omnipresent condition.

    By the time the winds died down it was near sunset and we had been stopped for 8 hours. We drove on into the night, wary of the transmission. With no temperature gauge for it, we stopped from time to time to crawl under the truck tap a hand to the hot transmission and see how hot it was getting. It was hot, but the cool night air was helping. Chris' eyesight was no good after dark, so I drove on until my eyes gave out. We stopped in Evanston Wyoming, at the very west side of the state. We had made it a solid 440 miles. We did 2am laundry and slept. 

     Day 7: As we breakfasted and packed up Chris gleaned from the locals that the climb up into Utah was a reckoning. I wanted to plan a stop to cool off the transmission before the climb, but we couldn't figure out where the grade was, despite its mythologizing by the locals, so on we went. After cresting the summit, and a transmission temperature check on we went into more bad news. The gentile I-84 route down into Ogden was closed, so we'd be forced down the steep I-80 grades into Salt Lake City. We made it into town and did a little shopping to buy food for the weeks ahead. I drove out of town to an overlook on the Great Salt Lake to let Chris take a stint behind the wheel. But before we could set off, another misfortune. The transmission was untouchable, it was scorching hot. We sat in the narrow noon shade of the trailer and waited for the transmission to cool. I bathed in self-recriminations. 
      Eventually I looked to see about a mechanic in the last town on the edge of the SLC metro area. I called up Pete's automotive in Tooele. Pete answered the phone and dropped everything he was doing to come rescue us. He towed The Black Beast to his shop and we followed along. His inspection turned up nothing wrong other than being a quart shy on tranny fluid. After a few test drives up steep hills he pronounced our transmission good to go. By now it was the hottest part of the day and we again chose to wait untill conditions were better for driving. I set off into the cold star-filled night. When we stopped, only 400 hard miles had been accomplished. We were a couple hours behind schedule. and we felt like for sure we could make it. 

     Day 8: We woke and hit the road early, meeting more burners along the way.

Stopped at the last town in Nevada for food and ice and gasoline, and then headed up the beautiful and narrow country road that leads to the Black Rock desert. We checked the transmission temperature many times, and things were staying cool enough. At 2pm a stroke of intuition told me to check the tire pressure on the trailer. The tires registered 95 PSI!!! The Black Beast had thrown up one last challenge. We let air out of the tires and drove on. Reaching Burning Man for two weeks in a bubble city apart from the world. 

Mega-Cake was the art project we built. One week of work, four tiers, 6 flaming candles, 2000 Watts of power. It was open for 48 hours, and then we burned it down in a fireworks spectacular. 

Here is a timelapse of the week of building it. 

And Some shots of the Cake

And of course there were a few weddings at the cake. 

I Love this perspective picture showing the Cake and the city beyond.

Yours truly and Jacob (one of our Mega-cake Crew, 11 years old) just after finishing the Flaming Candles, Jacob is holding the box with the 6 buttons that fire off the candle poofers. 

And The Burn

There's so much more I could write about the Burn, The trip afterwords to Portland, selling the truck and trailer, visiting old friends and the three part train ride PDX-OAK-LA-KC back to North Carolina, but I'm out of words, and I'm sure the pictures are what you really wanted anyway.

-Evan

Buy Nothing Month: Getting Social

Soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/realfaustus/sets/choral-music

One week done and life has been really wonderful. Challenges so far:

• Using the TriMet ticket app doesnt work if your phone is out of power. My phone died literally seconds after I shoved my valid day-pass ticket.
• My life is similar to my college life in the following way: I walk around with a thin wallet with an ID but no money or debit card. I did this in college to avoid the temptation of buying food that was off-mealplan. The challenge presented itself this past Tuesday when I had to take my debit card with me to Science On Tap at the Clinton Street Theater. I was feeling sad and was feeling the temptation to buy an unhealthy snackfood. The temptation was present because I had the plastic in my pocket. I had the power. 

Discoveries

• Volunteering is often accompanied by free food. I have eaten more pizza this week than all of 2016 prior. I guess there are two ways my life is like college. 
• Having meals with friends is another way to be social and share and eat and not spend money. A picnic-in-the-park was a $0 way to do lunch with my friend and far mor pleasent than a trip to the carts. I have a few more social meals on my schedule as way.
• Solve the problem with the things you have in the room. This is a strategy I have been experimenting with for months. An unlearning to counter engineer-brained perfectionism. I have been using this strategy much more it seems this month. 
• Baking - How little I have done these past few years. This morning I made polenta with breakfast and had a lot left over. Polenta doesn't keep well... so I threw together a poor version of cornbread.    

Buy Nothing Month: Day 0 & Day 1

     I have challenged myself to Buy NoThing in April. 

   I took a few days this week to stock up my pantry. Rice, Quinoa, Beans, Sweet potatoes, Tofu etc... I probably spent about $150... which is at least $100 less than I would spend on food in a typical month. Because the dry goods pantry is communal with my roommate, he is rightly worried that by the end of the month the pantry will be emptied out. 

    I also filled up my gas tank. 

   Oh, and the one in my car too!

  On day 0, before the challenge month even began I was already begining to experience some 'think different'. I have a typical 1'x3' mirror in my room. I was thinking to buy those screws with plastic nubs on them to hold it onto my closet door. I saw that I already had 3M Extreme Mounting Tape. If you haven't used this double-sided foam tape yet, you might want to check it out for your next project. It is ridiculously strong. In short I saw that my life was rich with stuff... and I needen't go buy something else to solve my problem. 

  Another insight from day 0. I've been puzzling over ways to get to my therapist combining Bus and Bike. However the office is where Lake Oswego, Tigard and SW Portland meet. Right along the 5. Easy to drive to... no bus lines run there. I discovered that there is a rush-hours-only bus which goes right there... so by shifting my appointment times from mid-day to 4-5pm I can get there without driving. 

Day 1 was mostly uneventful. Cooked lunch with the roommates, they contributed Tofu and veggies, I contributed Soba noodles. Scored 2 awesome vegan burritos from the free food porch and dealt with a lot of pain and sadness in my heart.      

I'm just a Thinker, who already blew his shot

I get along with old timers

'cause I don't wear blinders in a world thats goin to pot

I can't find a girl, no

'Cause I don't lay game too much

I treat 'em like friends but it always really ends

feeling lonely without touch

Top of the Pop

OK, so I admit it. I like Pop music. I indulge in it from time to time, and when running. The only portable music device that I feel comfortable to drop while I'm running is a $7.99 AM/FM radio straight from Shenzen. Today while running I tuned in to a fuzzy signal from an in-between radio station for a part of Carson Daly's 'Daly Download', which is today's version of the Casey Kasem Top 40.
Through the static it sounded to me like they were playing the songs from this weekend's countdown that got the most listener votes/Tweets.

They Were:

    5. Pillow Talk - Zayrn

         "'I love to hold you close, tonight and always

         I love to wake up next to you

         So we'll piss off the neighbors
         In the place that feels the tears
         The place to lose your fears....

         It's our paradise and it's our war zone"

    4. I Took A Pill In Ibiza - Mike Posner

         " I took a pill in Ibiza

           To show Avicii I was cool

           And when I finally got sober, felt 10 years older....

           I drive a sports car just to prove
           I'm a real big baller cause I made a million dollars
           And I spend it on girls and shoes

           But you don't wanna be high like me...

           And I can't keep a girl, no

           Cause as soon as the sun comes up
           I cut 'em all loose and work's my excuse
           But the truth is I can't open up"

    3. Work From Home - Fifth Harmony

          "Put in them hours, I'mma make it harder

            I'm sending pic after picture, I'mma get you fired...

            Let's put it into motion
            I'mma give you a promotion"

   2. My House - Flo Rida

          "Welcome to my house

            Baby, take control now
           We can't even slow down..."

   1. Work - Rihanna

    

    [Indecipherable]

Top 5 on the Pop Charts from the first week of March 2006. 

   5. Be Without You - Mary J Blige

          "Anybody who's ever loved ya know just what I feel

           Too hard to fake it, nothing can replace it"

   4. Temperature - Sean Paul

       How could we forget this hit?

         "... I wanna be keepin' you warm

           I got the right temperature for shelter you from the storm
          Oh lord, gal I got the right tactics to turn you on, and girl I...
          Wanna be the Papa...You can be the Mom....oh oh!"

     

   3. Grillz - Nelly

        "Rob the jewelry store and tell 'em make me a grill...

         Ya see my granmama hate it, but my lil mama love it...

         Had a whole top diamonds and da bottom Row's gold"

                   And for topical Fun this line:

        "Gotta bill in my mouth like I'm Hillary Rodham"

        I truly must hand it to Nelly for being consistently hilarious. 

   2. You're Beautiful -  James Blunt

        "I saw an angel.

         Of that I'm sure.
         She smiled at me on the subway.
         She was with another man.
         But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'        Cause I've got a plan."

     [That last line is the part where I almost vomit into my mouth]

   1. Check On It - Beyonce

        "         [Slim Thug]

         Good girls gotta get down with them gangstas
         Go head girl put some back and some neck up on it....

                   [Beyonce]

          Ladies let em check up on it, watch it while he check up on it

          Dip it, pop it, twerk it, stop it...

          I can tell you wanna taste it, but I'm gonna make you chase it
         You got to be patient, I like my men patient"

So by Now you're wondering: Evan Whats the Big Freaking Deal with these Pop Songs?

     At 27 it's more than a little disheartening to hear your spiritual teacher say: "War wont stop, there is no messianic age coming where we all coexist in peace." I had to hear that on Sunday. I wont make a prediction as to the future... but I will say that I detect a cultural shift, NOW, today. And I would like to read it as a sign that the world is moving towards love and harmony.

    So what did we have ten years ago? In 2006 the top 5 had: 2 songs about sexual attraction, 2 songs about love, and one about Materialism. Nelly's 'Grillz' is the classic: "Get money, flaunt your gold, get girls" plot line. Mary J Blige is singing about love, but also about attraction and longing. James Blunt's 'Your Beautiful' definitely has a tone of 'Men owning women" that I find unwholesome. 

   Beyonce, all respect to The Queen, has a mixed message, twirling up sexual attraction with a few messages about female empowerment. She later went off the deep end with "Put A Ring On It" Really? Women can be reserved for exclusive use by the application of a valued rock?

    What do we have today: Still 2 on love and 2 on attraction, but there is a shift of tone. Flo Rida is playing the sub and inviting the women to take control, when was the last time you heard a rapper take that stance? Zayrn sings about the connection and challenges that revolve around sex, without being raunchy. It's a much more balanced and big picture view than the traditional me-focused pop song plot line "I fell in love... I got my heart broken."  Now what of the fifth song:

    A song about a profound trip and realizing that everything we're told to want is empty and lacking fulfillment. WOW! For a song with that subject matter to be getting top ten airplay and Youtube views is powerful. It is anti-materialist and speaking to the deep sadness in many peoples lives of self-disconnection. Damn!
    This resonates powerfully for me because of my own journey which grew from body-blindness and self-disconnection to a place where I can practice empathy, spirituality and acceptance.

    Amzingly the top Google suggested AutoComplete was "I Took A Pill In Ibiza Meaning"  

For all of the other 9 songs the top AutoComplete was 'lyrics' or 'Mp3' or some such. To me this demonstrates to me that people are curious about this different pop song and searching by the hundreds of thousands for what the song means.

This 5 v.5 example is a case study in what I've been observing as a cultural shift the past couple years. Look for a future post examining this issue again. 

Bonus: I heard this beautifully themed pop song on FM today, and while it hasn't yet cracked the top 10, it is also a good sign in my book:

What It Looks Like

What it looks like for me to be depressed, down in my hole.

Now more than ever friends of mine are seeing as my family already has... what it looks like.
To you perhaps it doesn't look like something so much as it looks like the absence of anything, no presence, no communication, radio silence, a radar scope with no hits.

I will try in this post to add some information to this void, by sharing what it looks like from my perspective.

I would like to have titled this post, "What it Feels Like", however I cannot really say how it feels. When I am down in my hole I am disconnected from feeling anything at all. Mostly I am trying to block/disconnect from feelings of shame/inadequacy/failure.
It is sometimes a conscious choice but more often than not it is a reflexive 'self-protection' process whereby negative emotions are sensed triggering almost immediate blockage.

The mechanism of blockage is not selective, it is a complete shutdown. A mindless dull place. Habits I frequently use to perpetuate this mindless dull state include masturbation, binge eating, reading wikipedia or a book, watching TV shows or documentaries, closed-eye fantasies and sleep.

Movies seems to be a bad choice because the magic of a movie is that it triggers emotions in you.
This past month I did watch Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, which is a real tear-jerker in its drawn out finale. Emotion definitely came through for me, however it wasn't a torrent like Niagara Falls it was like spurts of water rising through a crack in the ice during the spring thaw.  
Communication requires awareness to process and respond, touching it breaks down the armor and allows feeling to reenter. Thus talking and engaging are the most helpful things. The instrument of blockage knows this, thus it keeps me away from communication as it keeps me away from meditation and anything else that might break it away.

The past few days, slowly coming to (thank you to everyone who I have allowed in to help), I have seen this even more clearly, engaging in moments of awareness of body sensations I cannot help but be aware of everything else I have blocked, mainly feelings of shame and thoughts of real world responsibilities.

So for me it is not endless crying or physical pain, it is endless dullness and lack of sensation, lack of awareness of all the things we are normally aware of.

I am capable to rejoin the world of my own impetus, usually If I have some obligation to which I feel attached. For example, I once spent a good few weeks down in my hole before I got back up because of a Bike Tour I had planned was looming and I had much to do to prepare. Another example from a couple of winters ago, it would not be uncommon for me to shut down for a few days until the 43 minutes I needed to get up and make it to work on time. Sometimes these jolts will move me in a new direction, sometimes I fall right back in my hole.

Other times It seems like it runs its course because it is so boring to be endlessly dull that the craving for feeling overwhelms the protective shutdown.

One thing it isn't is constant mental voices of shame and failure, they may come from time to time but are almost entirely blocked. In the past I was less practiced at shutting down and these negative voices would arise more. It could be that I generate these negativities less than I once did.  Maybe they are still there in equal measure. Sometimes I feel them below the surface (i.e. without thinking them) and it will cause me to thrash for a few seconds.

Another thing that isn't present are thoughts of suicide or self-harm. These used to come up for me in college when I was first learning to deal with depression. I think my experiencing the dharma these past couple years has removed the delusion behind these thoughts.

So I choose each moment, each hour, each day not to deal with anything: my emotions, my friends, my responsibilities. Like an unpaid credit card, the balance grows and seems more overwhelming with each deferment. It never is though.

For me, this is what it looks like.

Mostly I feel badly that I contribute to the worry and suffering for those that care about me, Also for the time I have lost, I can do so much in an hour... and yet I lose months out of the year.

I Love You All, even if you don't know me or I don't know you, even if you're not reading this post, I Love You.