You Gotta Die Of Something!

I came to the Rouses Market to use their wire-less, this time, bringing my laptop -that I'm already worrying about, sitting with it in the almost direct sunlight of a ninety degree afternoon, when it is used to sitting in a modestly air-conditioned high seventies temperature place.

Alas, I can feel my body temperature heating up, in the same way that can make me eventually get out of a  hot bath, even though, when I had slipped into the water it had felt marvelous.
So, it is into the air-conditioned little lounge with me, the one that had its two televisions taken out of it recently -too many people sitting there, watching TV all day, and not buying anything, perhaps...
...much better; and they have put one TV back -it's on "News With A Twist," right now, a local looking station.

Rouses Market is the "Louisiana Owned" supermarket, which is across the street from the huge, national chain, Winn-Dixie, so it is fitting that their TV has news with a local twist to it, on it.

And, Rouses is supposed to be friendlier and cleaner -the special attention you get at a little family-run store- than the behemoth across the street. The fact that the Rouse family owns fewer stores than the national chain and thus, the likelihood of Mr. Rouse himself showing up unannounced at any time, factors in to this.

It is still staffed by almost all African Americans, like the one who was working in the produce department who took his earplugs out, giving me a look like I was disturbing him and said the simple: "I don't know," allowing him to return the plugs to his ears and veritably get rid of me, after I had said: "There's no price on the cherries..."

I am six days into the "water" fast. I had deemed myself too physically weak to go out and play the past few nights. In the past, I had gone out in such a famished state, and had done very well, I recall. It was as if the tourists could not smell food, or the metabolism of it, on me, and became fascinated on some level. This may have had something to do with the fact that the biblical Daniel, who was a vegetarian, survived being thrown to the lions, as I think it was. To the lions, he may have smelled like he had onions on him. Even my cat Harold will turn his nose up at liver and onions, but not liver alone.

Right now, I have just spent my last cent, not counting a bunch of pennies that merchants are apt to refuse to take unless I roll them first, on cat food.

I want to be convinced that I am not deceiving myself into thinking that I need to go out to play so I will have cat food and money to use to prepare for my trip, when that might be the tobacco and kratom monster inside me, telling me: "Hey, you need to go out and play, or you won't have any of us!"

I'm not really sure about that. I'm to the point where starting to eat again would be an intellectual decision, not influenced by any gnawing cravings in my stomach. The healthiest meal in the world (a green salad with olive oil and vinegar, no dressing, no bacon bits, no croutons?) would taste delicious to me now, so that is good, and will help me revise my diet but, I'm also going cold turkey from kratom, which had become just about a daily habit, with only a couple missed days the whole previous month, and I'm going to have to see what the upshot of that is...

A fast starts out as being something that you are not doing, namely eating, and then, becomes something that you are pro-active in, namely meditating and doing stuff like yoga, relishing your freedom from all appetites, of which, hunger is at the top of the pyramid, but which extends to the emotions. It actually requires energy to be angry or judgmental and, especially confrontational. The faster finds it easier to not attach himself to such things; as if hatred needs some nourishment inside you, for it to live off of.

There is a point, during the 2nd or 3rd day usually, when it becomes the main task at hand.

Getting up from the couch to walk to the kitchen to get another glass of spring water might sound boring, but after 3 days of not eating, the light-headed and dizzy feeling and the stars you are seeing can hold your attention, as you take deep breaths, getting high on the oxygen, waiting for your head to clear.

Once sure that you aren't going to faint, you can go and get your glass of water, glad that the fast seems to at least be having an effect.

"Let Them Eat Cake"

Tuesday night, I grabbed one of the books out of my collection of about 125 of them, almost all of them gotten for free off of "books for the homeless," shelves in my various guises as the homeless man, and later off of "books for the disabled veterans" shelves at Sacred Heart.

Tim Cullen, my caseworker, deserves kudos for his involvement in procuring books, and probably even the cases that they are displayed in, by keeping tabs through Craigslist and other websites, on books (and book cases) being offered at the sole cost of hauling them away.

The book I grabbed was a Reader's Digest compilation of "Great Biographies," which I randomly opened to the fourth chapter of the story of Marie Antoinette.

This, I found interesting enough to backtrack to the beginning of, and read entirely in about 3 sittings, going through about a gallon of distilled water in the process.

The end of it had been kind of spoiled for me because, (I think it was) in "A Tale of Two Cities," by Charles Dickens, that the "historic" veracity of that story was corroborated, in part, by the inclusion of the atmosphere-setting information that just about all of Paris had turned out on a particular day to watch the beheading of that hapless ex-queen.

She did not coin the phrase: "Let them eat cake," -the phrase was already in use in France before Marie showed up- but maybe she parroted it. 

First Bite In Days

I ate a grapefruit, to give me the energy to do this blog post, and am sipping on yet another new energy drink product to have hit the market, Celsius "healthy energy" drinks in the 12 ounce can.

It will soon be decision time, as to whether I go out to busk tonight, or not.

Having no money kind of forces my hand, in a sense, but this would probably mean that I have to break my strict water fast, as I'm not sure I am up to the task of toting all my gear to the Lilly Pad, in such a state as I am in.

I would be doing it for cat food and for traveling money. Or would I? I have one can of food for Harold, enough to get him through another night. I might just buy a bag of lemons and have lemon juice squeezed into my spring water with a dash of cayenne pepper added. This is another variety of "cleansing diet" that some people use.

When I do intense yoga stretches that involve deep breathing and the expansion of the lungs, I can feel the soreness in my upper chest which is undoubtedly a result of having smoked cigarettes forever. That's the next hurdle for me to get past in the cleansing process, and the hardest thing I will ever have to do in my life, it seems. To be able to one day say: "One year without a cigarette!"

Right now, I can't seem to get out of the "You gotta die of something" camp.