Nineteen days and then some

I am on an extended break from my university with months ahead of me, free from just about everything but idleness: no work, no class, no plans.

I never realized how tiring nothingness can get. Days are insignificant – even weeks are depraved of their meaning. I was told that it was a big day on this coming Thursday and that I had plans – I wondered what they were and then realized my birthday, another insignificant event. Business for one day, then idleness for the rest of the spectrum of summer.

When I lay down in a lounge chair outside, or simply collapse and sprawl out on the grass or on the wooden planks of the deck, basking in sunlight, it feels like there is something to do. I then realize there really isn’t, and drift guiltily on into a nap or my thoughts.

Wayfaring will eventually start eating up some of my time, and getting on my bicycle and travelling around the lake, perhaps writing, reading, and music, too – nevertheless, there is a drone in the back of my mind at all times that speaks of lazy summers, of going into the woods for the sake of punching out old, punky and rotten trees, of weeding Japanese knotweed and watching carefully, day by day, by basil grow large enough to make it on its own in the garden. Perhaps poetry will spread its roots amidst all this fertile, tilled soiled.

Television is not a provision

Something’s missing. It’s Saturday and I’m alone in my living room with my steamy ramen noodles. The cats are quietly hawking over me. There is the occasional slosh of passing cars, the click as the gas stove turns on to warm the hearth, and the faint sound of the sump-pump clearing our 19th-century basement of water. It is a lazy late afternoon characteristic of my weekends here back at home.

My parents went to visit relatives, and I am here with the mission of doing homework. However, I find my once-familiar environment disturbed somehow. I have been thinking about it every moment since I came back. We didn’t lose a family member or a pet, but rather a commodity.

The dark, reflective face of the television, sitting dead upon its stand, looms in the corner. The room is so quiet I find it unsettling and peaceful all at once. The television cable has been unplugged from the wall and the box removed. There are not even rabbit ears sticking up from behind its massive, bulky plastic shell.

In an effort to become more economically efficient we decided that our talking box was not worth over fifty dollars a month. I am used to having no television in my room on campus and being bogged down with work. According to my paranoid standards, TV watching would mean academic and social failure. On weekends I went home and breaks, though, there I was, enjoying shows like Battlestar Galactica and Mission Impossible. I even started watching Deal or No Deal.

I do not intend to criticize the good television shows out there right now. What I had a difficult time realizing was that even when I wasn’t cheering on my favorite characters on an episode of Battlestar Galactica, for example, someone else might be watching their show, and so on. The background noise was always there, and passively, through sight or sound, I have seen hundreds of episodes of Judge Judy, Judge Mathis, The People’s Court, and others. I have left the news on for three hours while only watching half an hour of it. I have heard thousands of commercials and remembered the advertising but not the source. It is a strange situation knowing what’s on TV, even though consciously you don’t think that you “watch” TV.

It feels like I have lost a family member, but one that was not necessarily well liked and valuable. While I lived for years without cable at all, the most recent portion of my life has been with the TV there by my side for every moment of it. The power it has to transmit images and alter the way one thinks is almost unrivaled. Creativity and imagination are stifled.

Last night, as tonight, I will sit here comfortable and warm in our room designed for “living” and not watching TV. The radio might be on low as I listen for news from the G20 summit in London taking place now; after, only the silence of an old house and thoughtful discussions which have been impeded by countless nights of TV-dinners and overwhelming volume using flashing lights and colors as our guide for family time. The house feels alive now, the sound of settling and its squeaky pine floors no longer muted by the box that teaches, talks, and intrudes.

Food and Vegetable Politics, oh my!

Following my experiment in consumption earlier in the week and the proceeding discussion of food politics on Facebook, I decided to continue my exploration of taste and desire by comparing and contrasting the high-fat, highly-industrial burger meal by spending three days eating well-balanced, nutritious vegetarian meals. The difference is tremendous.

In my average, daily diet here at college I do not consume a great deal of meat to begin with. My only meat comes from either the pepperoni pizza I eat occasionally or turkey or fish in a sandwich. To go three days without this food was not too much of a challenge. Instead of getting the chicken and chicken gravy in the shepherds pie, for instance, I opted out of both of those and replaced it with a delicious potato and leek soup.

The following two days, I satisfied my cravings for something heavy and dense in my stomach — such as a burger or some other sort of flesh, per se — with a lot of complex carbohydrates from grains or whole grain bread. Beyond this, milk was an adequate source of protein and nourishment. One evening, I had egg salad. Some vegetarians would dispute that eating an egg is non-vegetarian and carnivorous; my response is that I am an experimenter and in no way a purist.

To summarize my diet of the past several days, I enjoyed big bowls of fresh spinach leaves and other greens and colored vegetables that I ate raw and, generally, with my hands. No dressing is required to bring out the full, bold and earthy flavor of spinach. On my brown rice I used olive oil and added a few veggies. This was completely satisfying, easy on the stomach, and incredibly healthy. I did not miss meat in the least.

Last night I broke my three day journey into the vegetable life when I encountered ham salad at our deli bar here on campus. This is a rarity. When I was little my mom would made ham salad quite often for my lunches to be spread on sandwiches. I really enjoy the combination of mayo, ham, and relish. Unable to resist, I had it on my sandwich. My enjoyment of the meat came only in the value of nostalgia; I could remember the times in the past and the fond feelings towards my mother, her cooking, and being a kid. The ham by itself was sub par.

Another one of my favorite foods as a kid was bacon. One morning while coming back from a few days lodging in Bar Harbor, my family stopped at a breakfast buffet. I was so overwhelmed with the options that I loaded more than a pound of bacon into my bowl and went back to our table, intent on eating it all. Not only did I feel dehydrated a little ways into the meal, I was sick to my stomach and not even the combined appetite of the four of us could finish it off. I felt terribly wasteful. I’ve cleaned my plate and taken only what I can knowingly eat ever since.

Remembering this, I tried some bacon this morning and ate it slowly, thoughtfully, and inquisitively. Nothing. As my friend commented: “translucent” flesh and fat. Salt. There was almost nothing worthwhile in it. While bacon is not as pervasive as McDonald’s, for instance, there is a similar hype about it. That savory feeling in the mouth comes when images of bacon are on television or in print. Even just discussing the smell of bacon is sure to make one hungry.

To finish off my survey of food qualities, before writing this I ate a bag of Lay’s kettle cooked chips, the Jalapeno variety. Kettle chips are one of my weaknesses. I prefer brands other than Lay’s, but I figured that these would do. On the back of the bag, I noted the presence of MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) in the flavor powder coating the chips. MSG embodies the fifth flavor picked up by the human tongue, called Umami or “Savory”. It took me about fifteen minutes of intermittent snacking to finish off the bag. As I neared the end, my mouth felt otherworldly; my salivary glands were in high gear. All of my mouth was tingling and my gums felt inflamed. The savory flavor so embodied by MSG had overtaken my taste receptors and the flavor of every other ingredient to create a wild explosion of saliva and confusion.

The Findings: I am going to permanently reconsider my choices as I am dining. While I have been interested in nutrition for the past year or two, learned myself in some basics of organics, health foods, food additives, and other key components relevant to our modern diet, it just isn’t enough.

I will not align myself with any restrictive food ideology beyond my own, be it vegetarian, vegan, or any of the multitude of diet plans being sold on the market. I can feel clearly that burgers and a bowl of spinach affect me in distinctly different ways, and will use this instinct to eat as much as I can, rather than buying into the consumer market.

My hard earned money and yours ought not to support corporate giants who use food as a means of control and domination. A dangerous loss of culture, health, and liberty all result from buying into the lifestyle of soda, fast-food, and Western convenience. While I cannot escape the system, by being knowledgeable and open-minded in my choices, I can combat it, do my little part and be healthy within it until the day when we can all farm our own food.

An Experiment in Consumption

Recently I visited the art gallery at the University of Maine at Farmington, where I go to college. On the second floor of the gallery, part of a larger exhibit called “Here to There,” is a sculpture entitled “Complex”. One of the features of this sculpture are McDonald’s cheeseburger wrappers reborn and folded into flowers, sitting on various levels of the snowflake-shaped, multi-leveled construction.

When I saw the cheeseburger wrappers, immediately my mouth watered and the flavor of a perfect combination of ketchup, pickles, onions, and cheese filled my mouth. I wasn’t hungry at all, but just by seeing those wrappers — even in their new form — I instantaneously wanted a McDonald’s cheeseburger. The drive was almost like that for food, water, shelter, sex. The irony here is I despise McDonald’s and don’t care for any of their food. Still, the messages that the advertising has inundated me with for my entire life persist and have become so powerful that just seeing an image related to one of their products keys a savory feeling in my mouth.

I love cultural studies and criticism, so tonight I did an experiment in consumption. For one dinner, I diverged completely from my normal high-fiber diet of water, vegetables, lean meat or fish, and whole grains for one of the trademark American meals. I wanted to see how the delicious ideals I was left with would stand up to the real thing.

Too cheap to actually buy McDonald’s, I went to the dining hall and loaded up. I had three plates of food, totaling a slice of pizza, a cheeseburger with all the condiments, a large serving of fries, two plates of chicken nuggets with BBQ sauce, a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of oreo-style custard, a 16oz milkshake and a 12oz glass of coke.

My mouth was dripping with excitement for the cheeseburger. I knew very well the ingredients in the yellow cheese product that characterizes that ubiquitous American burger, and didn’t care. I shoved it in my face, shoveled in fries — ate the entire burger and was completely unsatisfied. However, because my mind recognized me eating a cheeseburger, my cravings subsided.

Next, I hastily ate the chicken nuggets. My teeth tore off the golden, fried breading around the mechanically separated chicken and I saw, for the first time, direct evidence of chicken mutilation. There is no part of a chicken that is shaped like a nugget, and the metal teethmarks in a symmetrical pattern beneath all the fried golden-ness spoke to its past. I sucked on a nugget for a long time, and there was no flavor. Dipping sauce was the only thing that excited my tastebuds.

The buttery, slightly-burned grilled cheese had that same narcotic, yellow, rubbery cheese substance that excited me like a beautiful woman. I struggled to get it down, to find flavor in an abyss of hydrogenated fats. I spooned down the warm custard, the yolky mass jiggling down my throat. I sipped about 6oz of the coke and then had to stop so as not to vomit.

I hope you can that this article has lost its journalistic integrity. My angle ought to be clear. In the five minute walk from the dining hall to my dorm, where I am composing this, I felt bloated and sick. My sides were cramping up as I ascended the stairs to the second floor of this building. My stomach is like a broiling pot of potato and trans-fat mash. This has made it clear to me the difference I feel after eating a bowl of fresh, crisp spinach and after binging on fast food. Even after only a single helping of fries or chicken nuggets, there is something intrinsically negative about those foods that, rather than rejuvenating and nourishing my body, it harms it in more ways than one.

I cherish and enjoy locally grown and organic food, especially that which comes out of my own garden back at home. Whole grains are like my life-blood; the hot cereals I cook in the mornings make most people run in fear of fiber. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a purist. In college, especially, who can be? I’m also not a vegetarian. I would prefer to eat only meat that was grass-fed and grass-finished, but again, that’s not practical at all right now. I also don’t want to pretend that I don’t like french fries; when it’s only on a “sometimes”, those types of foods are great. But because of my experience tonight, I will learn to value my health and my food a little bit more, and buy into advertising a little bit less.

So what about you? Does this image arouse your desire?

For those who would like more information on the excellent artwork on display at UMF right now, including the exhibit that inspired my experiment, go here: UMF Art Gallery Press Release

Lapse Into Soul

The sun sets on
the silence of
another evening.

I see fingers of light
mingle through the
trees, I feel wind
freeze my beard.

The billowing
glow of stoves
and wood smoke
drifts on the breeze.

The moon peeks
through the wavering
clouds, cold, diffused.

People walk before
and behind me on
their way through
insubstantial space.

I stand in the middle
of space, now, the torrent
of blustery existence,
smiling for just a
moment at all the
world now around me,
harmony in complexity,
curiosity in simplicity.

Then, I am gone.

-hrafn

Desert Wakes Up

The expanse of lights fills up my vision;

I am awakened flying higher than Phoenix and

in the darkness of midnight I recognize no one

in the deserted city. We descend and drive through

the dark blurry streets that criss-cross the city’s wings

and soar on towards death in the Sonoran Desert.

The landforms that took a hundred thousand years

or more to form are recreated in sterile plastic for

a passing travellers palms to pass over, the palms’

leaves void and disperse the city lights in shapes

of sharp feathers out across the through-fares.

Beneath, the dark asphalt approaches the Colorado Plateau,

and begins the ascent out from

this endless circus of fiery lights.

The mimicry of a heart quakes beneath this city,

frightened, sustaining a thousand new refugees

each month — yet in a hundred years this place, fated

to become a wispy dune, will be a stronghold only

populated by dusty metal bones and mummified memories

of life, cracked and dried like those in Pompeii, trapped

in eternal gridlock for a drop of water, a drop of life.

There is oblivion outside my window as we drive the

steep mountain passes away from the immortal city.

Only phantoms of people and cars roam the street;

hope is  rumored to be forlorn, the grace of the modern city

is about to spontaneously combust –

and as the old desert sun rises and gives hot breath to a new day

I can see the ravens playing in the burning crimson light.

Meditating in the Attic

The room is quiet,
there is nothing here but
the silence of sacred candlelight,
the drafty air of an old New England
house, and that barely audible sound
in my ears when there is no other.
It is in this moment that
I can hear my beating heart,
feel the pulse of life within
my veins, wonder about all
those who have gone before me,
those who will go after;
within, without, they are all a part of me.
It is in this moment that I am alive.
Worry shimmers away into flames.
There is no need for merciful concern;
only peace is present here because
as I breathe, I nourish my soul,
and that is all that matters.

Drowsing Out Poetry

As of late, shifting among new medications and environments, the sudden workload of returning to college after a month off, the in and outs of the hospital hustle and bustle in a cognitively and physically excrutiating rush to get my symptoms under control, I have had much time to reflect and imagine. I might sleep for eight, ten, or eleven hours; none of it is enough to supercede the exhausting battle against epilepsy or the tranquilizing effects of medications. There is hope even here, in the place between drowsing and waking where reality doesn’t seem real, and my dream-consciousness is more awake than my own, and it is in the spirit of life. This poem is one of the many products my artistic drive has captured.

Untitled Verses While Waiting In the Hospital

My life is almost like in
those for-television-dramas:
the little boy is bald and
hairless and cancerous and
fighting for his life
in a medical ward in
some fictional hospital.
He draws with colored pencils
and speaks weakly to the
nurses and all their aides.
His smile is full of life but he
fears the condition that ails him
might be terminal; the concern in
everyone’s eyes might be
subliminal, but it’s there –
the raucous fear that flashes
inside of him like lightning,
takes his breath away,
stifles his spirit when
he most needs it.
Somehow, I’m different;
life is mostly merry and
the days are growing and good –
I, the patient, am still sitting here
wondering, wandering through
my thoughts like a human machine
transfixed on the organic world outside
my window. Flesh is an
anachronism here, a place of healing
where wires and blood converge.
My brain is no longer like the perfect vacuum
of outer space where theories and mysteries can
formulate, permeate, remain undiscovered when
the doctor shines his pen light into my eyes;
I’m plugged into the wall, a trendy
electric car, charging my batteries.
My sensuality is connected to electrodes,
connected to cybernetic nerves that pinpoint
and glimpse at every thought process
and heart-stopping, seizing suspicion of something
wicked yet to come, all fixed up among
my anxiety in the harmony colored electrical cables
that, in its empty inanity, looks almost like the stars.

Haikus for lonely New England

1
Winter in Maine is
a butterfly in stasis
preparing for life.

2
Once, the elms were here,
the great walnuts and chestnuts;
time, it took them all.

3
In the old man’s field
the birches, pines and maples
drove out all the cows.

4
The typewriter sings
in the middle of the woods;
the writer’s gone home.

5
On the summits of
the old Appalachians, a
raven will greet you.

6
A few forgotten
streams can inspire one to
imagine, wonder, go.

7
Atop Great Mountain,
challenged by thunderer,
you will find yourself.

8
Crow travels among
valleys and people; here,
there, home is everywhere.

9
The darkness settles,
the candles are lit, the storm
closes the shutters.

10
Harvest rushes in.
Corn, squash, oats, blueberries, all
people are merry.

11
An empty quarry,
a raven’s nest, rocky path,
New England, my temple.

A writer’s winter

The typewriter sings
in the middle of the woods;
the writer’s gone home.

He’s traveled back from
a sojourn of hiking trails
smoothed soft by snowfalls.

In the autumn he
searched for a little something,
came back with nothing

but rough hands and a
pair of broken boots,
broken ambitions.

The pages of his
novels were sundered by the
wind, cast adrift in

sullen storms, into
the upheaval, soggy, bleached,
unrecognizable;

if all his tales are
just allegories of the
long passed, he would write

them again, on a
typewriter inside a warm
cabin, through the winter.