10 Days Into The Woods; 10 Days Out Of The Woods (Ten Days To Read This Post)

"When Life Gives You Lemons..."
I'm not sure the post title always applies because, what if the person treads slowly into the forest, watching where he is stepping, and maybe pausing whenever he hears a twig snap somewhere ahead of him, to make sure it isn't a bear, but then, more familiar with the terrain, and knowing his destination, is able to make much better time on his way out?

I mention this because, after just 3 days free of alcohol, I feel like I have reversed all the negativity that the past year or so of drinking had helped bring upon me.

I am already savoring life in general much more than I was, when stumbling around with scattered thoughts and energies in my brain.

Things were just piling up on me, and I might have gotten nothing more done in a given day than cleaning up the mess from the day before, while the to-do list sat there on my whiteboard, untouched.

Saturday, I started the juice/water fast.

I didn't feel any hunger pangs for at least the first 24 hours. This was probably because my body was still wringing nutrients out of the beef liver that I had fried up the night before and eaten with a side of rice.

The prune juice, first thing in the morning, made me feel like I was performing an exorcism on myself.

Then, empty of food, I was already setting my mind on the accomplishment of some of those tasks, hoping to erase at least one off the whiteboard.

I started walking towards Rouses Market, to get alkaline water and more apple juice.

Seeing that the bicycle shop was open, I stopped in and looked at tires for the beach cruiser bike.

That shop is notoriously expensive, as it is in no way positioned to compete with the Walmarts of the world, or the Amazons.

The first tire that a tall young brown skinned employee (black and Cuban, maybe) showed me was 33 dollars. It was of the type that I could get through e-bay for 26 bucks, I recognized.

Those extra 7 extra bucks I would be compensated for by being able to ride the bike right away, instead of walking around the 7 to 10 business days while waiting for the cheaper one to arrive in the mail, That would save about 7 to 10 hours of time.

Then he showed me a 60 dollar tire that had a special Kevlar material involved that would make it puncture resistant. What a beautiful tire it was -there is nothing like virgin rubber with a thick tread with no wear on it. I really wanted that one. I always like to get the best quality tires, for some reason. 

I remember when I had a car and a decent job, putting Pirelli low profile tires on it which cost about a quarter of what the Pinto was worth. You can feel the grip of them as soon as you start driving, and it makes you want to slalom back and forth a bit, and take corners a little faster.

A very high quality vinyl...

I always want the best quality speakers, too. Tires and speakers are the types of things that sting you once when you pay for them, but then over the course of time, you start thanking yourself for having paid twice as much for higher quality. "What was I thinking when I almost bought those lesser speakers?!" I might think, after cranking up some Steely Dan.

Marathon Cycles

That bike store has $2,500 bikes in it, and plenty of them. The cheapest new bike I saw in there was a one speed beach cruiser for $350. But, for $420 I could get one of those super fast bikes with the super thin tires that seem like they would be almost flat resistant because they are mostly thick rubber with just a thin bladder, like the lungs of a snake, to hold the 90 pounds of air pressure that you are supposed to put in them.

After leaving there, I went and got more apple juice and alkaline water, still not feeling weak from the fast as I walked the mile back home, carrying the stuff.

I got home and flipped on the TV to see the Tour de France bike race going on, and there were all those $2,500 bikes doing 50 miles an hour in a sprint to the finish line. Synchronicity like that seems to come with the territory of water fasts. It's easy to understand why fasting and praying are mentioned together so much.

So, on this third day of it (today) I left the house, still not feeling weak, and headed for the Fresh Market for what I had determined would be a large bag of lemons. I would do the lemon/cayenne version of the "cleanse," I decided.

I learned about this particular cleanse from another inmate in the Jacksonville jail when I was in there, probably in 2000, and was fasting.

Hector Berlioz; my latest obsession

I was getting a lot of criticism from some of the other inmates about the fasting. Most of them were young African Americans (in line with the statistics from almost any jail in the country) and some of them were telling me "man, you gotta eat, you're gonna starve to death!" with one guy adding that he was himself already ravenously hungry, 3 hours after the last tray had come, and couldn't wait until the next one.

I can imagine where such beliefs come from -the beef and dairy cartels; the same corporate interests that might pay off the media to quash dialogues about the virtues of a vegetarian diet, and buy the services of "experts" to advise the FDA to recommend that every American consume 70 grams of protein daily. There would be no solid scientific research to back this up, but, having billions of dollars invested in ranches and slaughterhouses and processing plants, etc. the lawyers were worth it; the health of the nation be damned.

One young black guy once told me "One day you're gonna be walking down the street and the bones in your legs are just gonna snap in half" after I told him that I didn't drink milk.

Yet, all through school, we lined up around noon in the cafeteria to get trays containing "the 4 food groups" with a carton of cold cow's milk occupying one corner. That some things are harmful to the individual but lucrative to the heads of corporations is something that I learned about in school.

There are even forces trying to ban kratom now because it is a good substitute for pain pills, and a replacement for the methadone that is trafficked to those recovering from narcotics addictions. It's getting in the way of big business, in other words. Another case of Big Pharma paying off "experts" to find something wrong with kratom, in this case, in order to propagate a narrative against the stuff...

I have even seen commercials about the dangers of vaping advising all to tell their kids about these dangers. Big Tobacco weighing in with their own brand of misinformation, I'm sure. 

Of course it is inadvisable that your kids start vaping, and maybe unethical to market that product to them, but it is probably a hell of a lot better than their kids smoking cigarettes. Instead of suggesting to parents that, if their kids have started smoking, maybe steer them towards vapes if they are finding it hard to quit that habit, the message is just that vapes aren't safe.

But, there I was getting lectured at the jail by young inmates who believed that it only takes 3 days without food to starve "to death."

I had a hunch that the completion of the puzzle would coincide with my having gotten my life "together." It has taken just about a year to get this far...

The prevailing wisdom at the jail was to eat all of the food that they gave you, and then to work out as much as possible, using certain features of the cell block as an improvised gym. Two heavy trash bags, filled with water and tied around each end of a mop handle would become the barbell that many would take turns lifting, in order to turn those 2,000 calories into muscle.

They were, of course, trying to stay in fighting shape, in case they would ever need to defend themselves. There was probably a fight about every 10 days in the pod where I was placed, and very often it broke out on the days when we were to be served chicken in the evening, right before the chicken arrived, when the smell had preceded it from whatever other part of the jail was being served dinner trays before us. 

It may not be that the fragrance of baked chicken incites violence in young African American men, but more likely stemmed from the fact that the evening dinner tray, whatever it was to be, was often gambled over in a card games.

But, when the smell of chicken wafted in, the loser often attempted to re-neg on the bet. "I didn't know it was gonna be chicken, otherwise I wouldn't have bet my dinner tray!" type of thing. "We never get chicken on Wednesday, It's usually Thursday. I'll give you tomorrow's tray!"

"No, man, a bet's a bet; you owe me your tray, nigga!"

And, then the fight breaks out. 

The guy who doesn't want to give up his chicken would throw the first punch. This would bring the guards rushing in with their Tazers and pepper spray to break it up, while ordering everyone else into their cells, so the danger of a chicken riot would be minimized. 

Dinner would then be served with everyone safely locked away in their cells instead of out in the common area. This is what the guy who threw the first punch intended. Then he would get his chicken slid through a thin slot in his cell door, and wouldn't have to worry about the guy who thinks it is owed to him, trying to grab it. He may have gotten the worst of the fight, before the guards arrived, but a shiner is a fair price to pay for a piece of baked chicken, in jail.

Conversely, I wasn't even eating for up to 15 days at a time.

You might think that I was making myself vulnerable in this way; letting myself become physically weaker, and more at the mercy of the other inmates, but it was actually the best form of security I've ever discovered while incarcerated. 

The Muslims in the population venerated me as someone on a spiritual quest, reminiscent of the Ramadan fast that is integral to their religion. 

A lemongrass and sage scented candle that I found right after buying the bag of lemons. Synchronicity is where you find it...

Others might have thought: why attack me, when I was going to be dead of starvation in less than 4 days, anyways? 

And, furthermore, after I got the chicken (and every other meal) that I wasn't going to eat, I would present it to the biggest, baddest, and meanest guy in the pod "Here, you want this I'm not going to eat it?" which would tend to turn him into my protector, and would give him some extra "chicken strength" to help him stay the biggest and baddest and meanest guy in the pod.

Then, when I did start to eat, it would be nothing but apples for another week or so; after trading all the other items off my tray to other inmates, at the cost of one apple. On a chicken night, I might come away with 12-16 Red Delicious ones, depending upon how the bidding went. "Ive got a piece of chicken for 4 apples; do I hear 5? Going once, going twice..." type of thing.

Other inmates would trade things off their trays -maybe even stuff off the next morning's breakfast tray- for apples, in order to meet my price.

But, it was during one debate that I was having with a few guys who were trying to tell me that I couldn't live off of apples that a Latino guy stepped in and defended me, saying that his girlfriend, a couple times a year, would embark upon a similar cleansing routine, whereby, for 10 days she would consume nothing but freshly squeezed lemon juice in spring water with a pinch of cayenne pepper. "There, you go guys. See, I'm not crazy, this Latino guy's girlfriend does something similar! (and you don't see as much obesity and high blood pressure in the Latino community, do you?).

And so, that is what I decided, as I walked towards the Fresh Market -a Latino run store. I would do the 10 day lemon and cayenne cleanse.

I got back to the apartment building and was greeted with the sight of a shopping cart laden with food of the kind that is often donated to people in the building -powdered potatoes, rice, peanut butter, cereal, canned beef. This didn't surprise me because, if fasting is indeed a spiritually rewarding endeavor, then I suppose the devil needs to make some kind of play. 

I'm finally starting to feel the hunger after this, the third, day. And, boy, wouldn't a box of Kix cereal in coconut milk, with maybe even some peanut butter stirred in be good right now, type of thing...