Jumbled fascination

The grapes and M.

Pool sessionz

My light blue kurta is flitting to the movement of the fan above us, the little blue flowers dancing in broken rhythm  with the familiar melody of Stevie's 'isn't she lovely' swirling around the room. I'm zoning out on a Saturday morning to the smell of roasted coffee beans as dad puts on his morning brew and my brother sits perfectly content in his usual indention in the bed with his laptop and headphones to accompany him. I'm still floating in the post-yoga high when seconds seem to tick slightly slower and your thoughts weave in and out of each other instead of coming at you all at once. My eating routine's taken a change of course after being given a pre-op diet by the doctor. I already choose to whine about the restrictions in my usual diet - 'no wheat' being the most straining factor. But now it's no dairy, caffeine, green veg, cheese, wheat, nuts or alcohol. Doesn't that cover pretty much every food group excluding meat? I guess my decision on weather to go veg. or not has been made. But it's quite interesting having to have such self-discipline regarding what you eat (not that I stick to it very often). But when you do, you learn to be creative and combine different flavours to give yourself the same satisfaction that something you'd normally eat would give you. This morning welcomed me with porridge oats, milk and fresh berries, with lemon & honey tea - there are alternatives!
I'm realizing as I learn more and more about nutrition and food that there are 10000+ methods to follow diet-wise, whether you choose to go with what's best for your blood type (read my previous post called 'blood red munch' if you're interested), your personal preference (vegan/ vegetarianism etc), a Buddhist diet (where they tend to avoid stimulating/ heating foods like ginger, garlic, meat etc. because it keeps the mind too active during meditation) or your ayurvedic constitution.. I know this is a lot of information in one go but bear with me.

Double J

Recently I've become particularly interested in the last method I mentioned, and am learning about it slowly. Basically in ayurveda they split people into various 'types' or 'dosha's', this is based on all of your physical, emotional and psychological workings and once you've found out what combination of dosha's you are, you can adjust your diet or lifestyle based on what's 'best suited' to you. E.g. some people don't work well with a rabbit diet (salads and light foods) whereas some people do. You'll find that with all of these different methods, much of the dietary/ lifestyle advice overlaps so you can really refine what's best for you - if you're interested that is ;). (http://doshaquiz.chopra.com/) - if you want to find out what you are, check it out and see if it makes sense.

Besides dietary concerns, due to my temperamental tummy bug I stayed in bed last night, snuggled up under the covers after having been diversely remedied from both sides of the family. My mum lay with me and vigorously rubbed the never-failing remedy of Chinese oil on my tummy until it generated enough heat to kill the pain, and my dad brought over a cup of  dandelion and wild honey tea. I felt satiated with all the heat and my petals wilted down into bed with a big hoodie and baggy trackies; my eyes closing as credits from 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' scrolled down the screen. As my heartbeat slowed and I drifted into a dream-world, the motif of the movie (in response to the ever thought provoking question, and a common topic of girly conversation 'why do good people always go for the wrong people') danced around my head in italic font, 'we accept the love we think we deserve' - a deep message to conceptualize, and reflecting on it stings..
I'd read 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'  by Stephen Chybosky a few years ago when a best friend and I did our 'favourite book swap' in an attempt to get back into reading (I gave her '13¹⁄₂ lives of captain bluebear' by Walter Moers - amazing book). It worked - I raced through the book, connecting to the characters so easily. The movie lived up to more than I thought it would, the scenes of the protagonists lunacy being scarily relatable - they reminded me of those rare intoxicated/ delirious moments that happen when you feel like you're going crazy and you realize it's all in your own head.. or maybe that's just me :p. It was interesting seeing what brought on the lunacy though, the driving emotion being 'guilt' that is said again and again to be the emotion with the lowest vibrational frequency. Meaning harbouring guilt, causes pain, disease, injury, lunacy even.. So the mountain of thoughts, questions and worries continuously spun around my head, but darkness eventually prevailed.

We're baaack

The last few days in KL have seemed to blur together as I'm sure everyone's has. It's always like that when you're in the hustle and bustle of seeing friends and engrossing yourself in your old environment, parties, pool days, lunches, rekindling old flames, sessions here and there - it's all so fun, but it doesn't stop. Seeing how friendships have changed, who's adapted to uni life and who's still hanging on to our glorious past. You stop questioning and wondering how we're all going to stay intouch and what our future holds because seeing each other just makes you appreciate when it does happen. The Lumineers are strumming along to 'Flowers in your hair' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sb6LduFwRM) a song that was sent to me by a friend the other day. I'm wondering where I put my phone 10 minutes ago, this memory-loss thing is really starting to get to me, I almost feel like I should write a book on 'Alzheimers for Teenagers', but noticing the same trend amongst the majority of my friends makes me feel slightly better.

Oh Bush

Indulge me in a bit of reflection on the bigger picture. A few weeks ago I was told that our DNA is 94% identical to a fruit flies - yet that 4% still deems humans to be the top of the food chain? I was talking to my uncle D. about why this was and gained some rather interesting insight. I learnt about his business that he started himself a long time ago, with a typewriter in a dingy room. He expanded and worked his way up to own one of the most successful PR businesses in the UK, that he then happily sold on at it's peak. At the point of selling his business he was offered the most life changing job, to be the top CEO of some huge marketing company ladidadida, and after weighing the pro's and con's, he didn't choose the luxury, the parties and the girls but instead to drop his ego and focus on what he wanted, having a family and a lifestyle - which I commend him for.We got down to the thrawl of things and why you'd choose one decision over another and concluded that greed is what drives humans. A very real example of this can be seen in politics.. in a speech made my George Bush (who I don't particularly respect, but this point had a level of sanity to it) regarding the kyoto protocol (the climate change deal that he did not comply with). He believes the way forward is investing in technology as opposed to forest conservation etc. A seemingly ignorant opinion at first but his reasoning is that because technology has the power to do everything for us, and humans create technology because it essentially makes our lives easier. Hence technology benefits us and should be invested in because greed is what drives technology production unlike forest conservation. They've already proved that technology can take over from natural methods. Just look at the answer to the extinction of bees, they've now created 'robot bees' to pollinate flowers in a faster and more precise manner than real bees - is it the natural way of doing things? No. But that's another debate. So while Bush seems like a dick for not wanting to support the environment, his cynical view is quite realistic, and ruthless. Amongst all of the clutter that I've just mentioned, even if we are driven my selfish motives, sometimes in the hardest decision it takes a drop of the ego to make the choice to consciously stand at the top of the chain.. otherwise we may as well lose the 4% and join the fruit flies.

Sci-guy

Another blurry day

I'm still floating a little from all the thinking and the meditation, and I catch a passage from Guru Singh's lecture on how to ground yourself, what a coincidence! I hear him say in his laid back Cali accent "Buddha once said 'walk the middle path', I call that boredom, and that's what grounds you. 'Knowing' is boredom because when you know something, there are no more surprises, just guarantees. " That's something to think about, just in case you didn't have enough ;). So I'm going to sit in 'knowing' for a bit as I come back down to an overcast KL afternoon. I can see little children running around and laughing downstairs in the pool.. it makes a change from the usual giggles that escape the mouths of a group of teenagers sitting in a circle with a few beats and a steady stream of smoke. My brain feels fed, now it's my tummy's turn - lunchtime!


Recipe of the day: Overnight oats

http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/overnightoats

Stars always follow a setting sun

To Tisbury we go

The sun's lower than it should be at 12:30pm as I sit and wind down, allowing all of life's little worries to slowly slip away as a stress-free family ridden weekend lies ahead. The weather's doing funny things now, 2 days ago I couldn't feel my fingers beneath 2 pairs of gloves and today I'm only wearing a T-shirt and cardigan. It fills me with slight dread knowing that in 8 days I'm going to step out of the aeroplane to be greeted by an intense wave of humidity. Acclimatizing to the tropics is going to take a few days of lots of pool and AC action, as I welcome frizzy hair and bikini's.
It's a bit of a shame really, the pain of the cold is worth it because it's leading up to snow and Christmas - the first part of that is something I just seem to have missed, out of sheer bad timing. The first 3 times it snowed in our area I was dead to the world, recovering from heavy nights - I woke up to the picturesque image of rooftops and gardens blanketed by a light layer of the soft, fluffy white stuff - the reflection of the low altitude sun was making it glisten and the pale blue background blended in perfectly. As for Christmas, I'm lucky to have been here for the build up. Watching the trees go from lush to naked - standing in rows and clumps with odd, bumpy, angular branches. At night they look like weeping willows from Harry Potter that are about to come to life and wrap their arms around you, trying to keep themselves as warm as possible by pulling you into their bare and magical worlds. 
Walking down the street, the few green plants and berries all stand frozen and preserved and a light layer of glittery frost covers everything. I picked a curled leaf off a branch the other day and it lay frosty and unchanged in my hand, a tiny piece of art. The lights are forever increasing in quantity, strung over trees, bridges and windows. Walking home I spot the tops of Christmas trees peeking through the windows, ours is spread out comfortably in the corner by the front door. M and I were leaning out our window the other day, braving the outside air to lift ourselves with a few puffs of an old friend. She described London as being muted in winter, and that was the perfect adjective to describe it. The usual buzz and chaos that London's so known for is reigned in a little, the light is dimmed, the temperature dropped, the layers added and the vibe softened. It's not such a rush.
I've always spent Christmas in the tropics and I feel so lucky for that, my Christmas' consist of tinsel wrapped around palm trees, drunken jams in swimmers and seafood lunches on the beach - it's special and different but it'd be nice to abide to tradition for a change.

So the countdown's on and the 'portals' have opened as of 12/12/12 -- that's what I was told by my my madre so I did a bit of reading and watching to get inspired and understand what I was preaching. So basically, the sun goes through a precession wherein every 72 years it moves backwards by one degree, journeying through all the zodiac planes - the 'age of Aquarius'  might ring a bell, this is the new astrological age that's begun, as the sun's equinox has moved from the Piscean constellation to the Aquarian one. So at various points in time, the sun is between its highest and lowest points in the sky, also known as an 'equinox'. One of these is to take place on December 21st - aka the December solstice, when the sun is positioned at the lowest point in the northern hemisphere and the highest point in the southern. It's in the centre of the milky way while crossing the galactic equator, and on December 21st at 11:11 (deep breath!), the precession of the equinoxes occurs. This happens only once every 26,000 years and the alignment will take place along the plane of the entire galaxy. This, as you can imagine, causes a huge physical change on earth..  
Just a few little random examples of how the movement of the moon/ sun affect our physical reality, to keep everything in perspective.. 1) That temperamental time when emotions run wild?  A woman's menstrual cycle is dependent on the position of the moon, affecting us both physically and emotionally 2) The movement of the tides (and given that the majority of our earth, and body consists of water, I'd say that's a pretty huge source of control.) 3) The migration and navigation of animals based on the position of the sun and sea etc etc etc. 
So during this shift, in spiritual terms, the 'portals' are believed to be open from 12/12/12 - 21/12/12,  the portals I refer to are "Places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun's atmosphere 93 million miles away." In turn, creating different energetic fields and particles on earth, and in humans, allowing for concious growth and awareness. (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/29jun_hiddenportals/).  It's a time to keep your heart open and your eyes wide. If I were to sit and breathe into this shift, the only image I could use to describe my inner experience is a wet cloth being tightly rung out. The emotional and physical changes happening right now are immense, and I'm using this 'shift', and my recently prescribed Microgynon (eek) to justify it. 
But what I seem to be picking up from all these spiritual sites and groups that I'm involved in, is the concept of 'unity conciousness' that's so important right now. We're so used to being individually wrapped up in our own worlds, yet we forget that we grow from others, so if this is a time for growth, it's important to feed into that. I, like many others, find that I get stuck in my own head a lot. Your problems absorb you and you lose perspective - other people bring you out of that. A recent source of inspiration, has come from a man named 'Bruce Lipton'. In one interview on 'the power of conciousness' he speaks of how we all have the ability to consciously change our realities if we emerge out of our habits that are controlled by our subconscious mind. His main message being that if we were to make the effort to live consciously for a larger percentage of the time, we could have anything - watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk). 

I'm looking over a green hill at the tip of a rainbow, the rest has faded and the very end where the pot of gold resides is lingering in the afternoon air. I'm daydreaming about the walk we're going to take later, past the little church at the bottom of the hill, up across the fields where the oak trees lie surrounded in a bleak mid-winter mist, and then up and over the gate that leads us back to the path, eesh I need to stretch my legs. But my monkey mind never hooks to one thought for long..
My bucket list is slowly being ticked off, but time seems to be, as it always it, the most limiting factor. Seeing family, godparents, old friends and new, buying Christmas presents, going to art exhibitions, markets, shops and restaurants  that I never saw and giving it all to the nights out that have to happen. Finishing the Crimbo rush and enjoying the last few days of a winter fling that's just started heating up; wondering what would have become if the flower girls adventures weren't so far away and if it were as easy as to hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks x

The smell of manure and sheep just wafted through the carriage - we're in the countryside!

Recipe of the day: Venison pie (had it last night, ah.mazing)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/venisonpie_89770