Flora is good. Bacteria can be good (or bad). Friendly stomach bacteria (also known as your flora) is really really great. I am a bit obsessed with getting high quality flora in my tummy but since I don’t do dairy and soy yogurt is too high in sugar for me, I rely on pills.

But recently, I found out that one could culture coconut water making a pretty damn fine coconut kefir. I have spent the last two weeks getting the process down for making it homemade and I think tonight, I can declare my coconut kefiring ways a *success*. It has been an arduous, sometimes bumpy process for sure: Where to get the kefir starter, finding the best means to open the coconuts (drills are magic tools), and then there was the pesky problem of finding the “right” supplier of the brown spheres of joy. Most places around the mission sold them and sold them cheap but a good one in three were rotten. And one rotten nut will spoil the bunch.

But Rainbow grocery seems to sell a steady supply of high quality not-rotten coconuts so I am sticking to them. Today, I drilled a bunch of them, poured the water, added the bacteria, and vuallaaa tomorrow I hope to have some good tasting fluid to deliver my high quality flora. Flora which really is fauna! Here is the recipe if you would like to try at home.

John F Kennedy was one sick motherf*cker. No, literally, he spent his whole life ill, disease brewing at the back burner or front burner of his existence. He suffered from a range of illnesses from the auto-immune, to chronic pain, to infections. As a young kid he suffered terribly from colitis which got him started on an relentless course of steroids which probably contributed to a whole cascade of other illnesses and problems from Addison’s disease (an adrenal disorder), excruciating back pain and bone loss (that led to two surgeries), insomnia, and countless bladder and upper respiratory tract infections. He took an average of 10 medications per day, his whole life micro-managed to deal with illness and keep this ordeal from the country. I read about this article in last month’s The Atlantic Monthly and if you can get your hands on the article, it is worth the read. It is astounding that he did not suffer just from “a chronic illness” but really the genre of “chronic illness.” The medical management of his illnesses shows just how the medical establishment of his time was poorly equipped to deal with chronic illness and well, it does not seem like they have made many leaps and bounds since the 1960s either.

Which is why so many patients now seek alternative therapies and rarely tell their doctors about such “transgressive excursions” as they would in a word not-approve. JFK lived in a time when alternative therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and nutritional therapies were less visible and socially acceptable. It made me wonder whether if he lived in this era, if he would indeed choose another path from that of carrying a small doggie bag of pills to survive the internal demons of his pain and illness. Today, I was thinking just about that, what leads a person to make a gestalt switch from one way of thinking or doing to another one, especially when it comes to health and healing. And my acupuncturist helped to answer that question when she told me about a patient who was quite skeptical of acupuncture, but was *so desperate* with her pain she was willing to try anything , even something that she did not believe in, at ALL. It is funny to think that desperation can be the condition of possibility for some forms of gestalt switches but so the case.

So, I want someone who is really desperate in the department of love, to make that faith-based switch and try this love potion and let me know, does it work?

So, the other day when my throat was feeling kinda scratchy and itchy, I was given watermelon frost, a powdery substance that I basically snorted down my throat with a little straw for relief. I can’t really say if it worked or not although I completely fell in love with the name of a medicine called watermelon frost. So much more evocative and compelling that something like prozac or contact or mylanta. But I don’t think that they were really going for a cool, evocative name, as it really, honest to god, happens to be made from watermelon rind although I am not all that sure where the frost comes in (come on, the rind is not that frosty). Luckily, my throat is no longer sore, and I am feeling better so I don’t have to use watermelon frost. I can just think about it instead.

There is not too much that is stable in my life these days except there is this one weekly anchor point, my volunteer shift at Quan Yin Healing Arts Center. Despite my travels I amazingly have avoided missing my Thursday shift, choosing to leave Thursday evening or Friday morning and returning by the following Thursday. At this point, it seems like it is one of the more centering things in my life. I look forward to the simplicity of completing my few tasks there: pulling needles, providing moxa therapy, and changing sheets. The energy there is very calming acting like a weekly oasis, allowing me the space to recenter after the fragmentation that travel sometimes causes. I have been there over a year and it saddens me to think that I will be leaving there sometime during the spring or summer. Part of this is entry is to let local San Franciscans who might read this (not many I believe) that they are now accepting volunteer applications. If you have the time, I say grab this opportunity. It is a wonderful place to spend three or four hours of your week and you will learn something about Chinese Medicine and acupuncture too, treat lots of people with moxa and be reminded of the important things in life. So, if you have sometime during the week, drop on by and apply!

This last Thursday seemed a bit more special than most, although a little more sad than most too. Patients tend to come to see the same acupuncturists. As a result I have come to know some of even them though verbal exchange is kept to a minimum. There is one large treatment room so it is important to be quiet. Every once in a while, a patient decides to be chatty or the room is empty so conversation flows. This last week was one of those times. One woman brought in her photos from her trip to Chicago knowing I lived there for a while and that I have a soft spot in my heart for the amazing cityscape that is Chicago. That was really thoughtful of her. My second conversation was not quite as cheerful. I am not sure how I even began talking to this other patient, who I have seen over the last couple of months, starting up at the ceiling very calmly while I treat her with moxa. Oh, wait, I remember now. She was surprised that moxa could be smokeless. She then basically told me that she was so glad that we used smokeless moxa because she suffers from MCS –> Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. It is an illness that simultaneously fascinates me, breaks my heart, and scares me . Those with MCS are sensitive to manufactured modern industrial chemical products ranging from perfumes, plastics, dyes, smoke and other caustic chemicals, so much so, they often have to shield themselves off from the environment and people, creating a “Safe” space away from that which makes them ill. Illness, as a social state is or can be an isolating experience. MCS brings this state to another more harrowing level of isolation.

With chronic illness, the body as it regularly functions ceases to be, unraveling one’s ability to conform neatly to the normal rhythms of life and relationships. The experience of and moving through time, space, and social relationships must change to accommodate this state of dis-ease. Healing often is a reconstitution of self, place, and time so that one can reintegrate the self back into the everyday rhythms of life as much as possible. Chronic illness never allows the same full type of reintegration although there is usually some level or form of reintergration. But with something like MCS, reintegration is nearly impossible as long as the chemical sensitivities exist so that the self cannot exist outside of it self, so that one remains a prisoner to oneself:

“You are inside most of the time…. The inside, brought about by built environments of late capitalism, provides your habitat, the milieu for your environment. Then one otherwise ordinary day your throat begins to constrict when you enter your newly renovated office building. Or your chest tightens at the photocopier. Or you notice you’ve been overwhelming fatigues and foggy since they fumigated your apartment. A nebulous constellation of symptoms grips your body and will not let go. Your doctor can’t find anything wrong, yet your body seems to have run amok. The built environment, so familiar, that pervades your daily life becomes the site of your suffering” (Murphy 2000:87).

The patient at Quan Yin at one point confessed to me: “I can’t work, I can’t do what you do here. If some patient walked in with perfume, I would choke.” Here I was doing something I absolutely love being told that there was no way that she could ever do such a thing. It is not easy to hear those words but it is important to hear them.
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So, just as I say goodbye to an old addiction (caffeine), I already have another one lined up on my doorstep to replace it, IRC…

In Defcon, I didn’t really have a chance to chatter away on irc nor partake in another one of my passions, riding my bike. On Monday, when I returned to SF, I happily rolled out of bed and logged on to my favorite irc channel but after a couple of hours, I decided that I really needed to get out of my house. Once on my bike I got a taste of the difference between passion and addiction. Of course, there are passionate addictions : ) but the sense of balance and enjoyment I get on my bike is quite unlike some of the more frantic qualities of my past and present addictions. I think it is the simplicity of riding a bike, in which the sole focus is getting from point a to b while smoothly stroking away at the pedals that makes riding such a comforting act even while I feel the pain of climbing up a steep hill. On a really good ride my body extends into the frame and out to the landscape blurring the lines between in and out, self and environment and even pain and pleasure. You are in between it all, just sort of hanging in that nice warm space in between hot and cold.

Unfortunately, these days I don’t have all that much time for biking nor casual reading but I managed to finish “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life” by Lance Armstrong who just won the Tour de France, for the 4th time. Though the book can be very cheesy at points (like he when he calls his wife “a stud” over and over again), his account about his battle with cancer at the age of 25 and then his subsequent return to cycling was pretty incredible and moving. The dude was…. SICK as hell. Cancer had spread from his testicles, to his lungs, and even into his brain. Yet, as the cancer ate away at his body and then the chemo choked the cancer cells and poisoned him in the process, it also planted the seeds for his emotional and psychological growth, one which gave him a much deeper appreciation for life, taming his Texan brashness and machoness with a kinder more reflective disposition.

I was surprised to find out that he rode when he was undergoing cancer treatment at least before his last round of very harsh chemo:

“Why did I ride when I had cancer? Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. You can go out there with the weight of the world on your shoulders, and after a six-hour ride at a high pain threshold, you feel at peace. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain. At least for a while you have a kind of hall pass, and don’t have to brood on your problems; you can shut everything else out, because the effort and subsequent fatigue are absolute.

I spent a 3-4 month period of my life trying to figure out why the hell my body was giving out on me, wondering in the process if I was dying. The one quality that never seemed to leave me alone at the time was anxiety and it was when I let go of the deep anxiety that I could finally get around to figuring out what was wrong and do something about it. I guess riding during cancer was one means that he was able to reach that state of peace and let go of the anxiety that tends to creep in and really overpower you when you are deathly ill. He never really talks explicitly about the lack of anxiety although it is the unstated theme of his healing path. Nearing the end of his narrative, he talks about how children with cancer have higher cure rates than adults, which he credits to their “natural, unthinking bravery.” In other words, they are totally in the moment with what they need to do which is to get better. They may be scared, sad, but are less prone to the cynicism, anxiety, and sense of and for failure that adults fall into later in life.

Though the experience of illness has innumerable facets, many of which are difficult to capture through words, one of them is that the path to end illness, that is, healing, is a map or metaphor for living a not a dis-eased life, but a healthy one. And I think that is why I liked this book so much. It beckons you to approach illness for what it is, and give yourself over to healing with passion, dedication, and sincerity just as you would for anything else you love to do.

So, I have been in the process of minimizing my caffeine intake and today I finally pulled the plug. Needless to say, I have been in a haze-like fog but thankfully no headache, at least not today. When I was talking to my friend on irc today about quitting coffee, I asked if he was addicted. His reply was that he did not have an addiction to caffeine but had a cult-like dedication to it. Nice. I do love the stuff, the taste, the smell, and the way it makes by brain feel.

Speaking of the brain, this is cool. There is a science to cuddling and touching. No wonder it feels so darn good They think that touching helps to release pleasure hormones like oxytocin and activates certain regions of the brain:

MRI scans of her brain revealed that the stroking activated insular region of the cerebral cortex associated with emotional response.

I bet caffeine activates that part as well as every other inch of my brain.