11/8

I have a drug addiction — perhaps it does not seem like it on the outside to those unknowing onlookers, but what I desire most is an end to the seizures (the spells, the episodes, the visions).

Drugs make that happen, at least for awhile — hard drugs, not by traditional standards, but enough of them to be measured in grams per day, intense enough to keep me in a perpetual, paradoxical high, a great slowdown of the mind.

My waking, striking eyes are always in struggle against the tremendous forces of the anti-epileptics; yet, I feel when my body revolts, when it speaks to me and says for me to rest. I do not lest, for as the busy world goes, each day closer to strangling itself in the global chains and wires of its norms and infrastructure, about to keel into cardiac arrest, so too do I follow and drift in a drug-laden stupor, hallucinating dim images of future success and liberating peace among this catastrophe.

Sleep is never enough to shake off the effects, no matter six, ten, or twelve hours — it is a waking coma that I am in, unable to fight the burden from my consciousness.

10/19

Watching my ticking pocket-watch.

It’s going too slow, I’m going mad. Not quite eight yet, can’t take my drugs and bask in their effects. Drinking Captain Eli’s, reading Jane Eyre, wishing I had a real beer, that I knew what the French ladies were saying — that’d be true gorgeousness.

Impossibilities, I’m crippled under hundreds of pages of text — for what reason? What’s the expectation anyway? My hands are trembling, my jaw is jerking, I want to scream confessions into the open air and onto deaf ears. I pretend play that I’m in a cafe snapping my fingers to the heartbeat of expression — no more apprehension, depression, or falling behind the imaginary pack.

Cliff Bar, too much sweet in my mouth. Just swallow the pills.

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

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.

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.

Ghosts on the Screen

Politics on the national and international scales are broadcast across television stations in an endless drone. Estimations and over-dramatizations create a sense of urgency in viewers that the world has gone awry, and draws battlelines between nations, states and political parties. We trust that the people on the television are telling us the true stories, that the journalists reporting on current issues and politicians have some contacts on the inside and can reveal to us the entire picture. The media maintains an authority that makes us trust what we see and, more often than not, fail to ask questions or find the truth for ourselves. For as long as figures like Barack Obama or John McCain are figures on the screen, they are mere abstractions distanced from our everyday lives spouting their philosophies over the airwaves. Unlike a neighbor or a family member, they are as intangible as the waves they are broadcast on, and as depthless as the two-dimensional nature of television.

On October 29th, 2008, I was among hundreds of other eager collegians and local citizens in Lincoln Auditorium here at UMF, anticipating Howard Dean’s promised appearance and rallying speech. Having never met in person anyone that I’ve seen on national television, I took the opportunity not only in an effort to further my understanding of the Democratic Party, but to lift the veil that separates us who sit at home hearing about the world from our television sets and those who are actually out in the world making it on their own, making policies, and making national television. After a surprise speech by our state Congressman Tom Allen that resulted in a charged political hype reminiscent of what I’ve been told was the “1960’s”, Howard Dean appeared as promised.  As if transcending the hyperreality of television and depthlessness, there was the newsmaker, the screamer, the doctor, the former governor and most importantly the physical man Howard Dean. I caught him on my camera’s rapid-shot and saw him walk in through my viewfinder. Distrusting of technology, I lowered my camera to confirm with my eyes what I was seeing. He wasn’t an illusion or a hologram or some phantom of mass hysteria, but just a person. His speech was as eloquent as it was stern, playful, and determined.

After the rally while some guests and professors crowded on stage in a show of curiosity and respect, I dragged my friend with me so that I too could transcend the hyperreality of television. In a show of friendliness he made it over to us and we had a group photo taken. My hand was on the back of his nicely pressed and flawless suit, and I could feel the physical truth behind it all that immediately smashed all my doubts. He re-emphasized that he wanted us to get out and vote tomorrow in the early voting day going on in the Farmington town hall, and then quickly dissipated out of sight like a vaporous mist caught and spread by the wind.

This experience may seem trivial and my response not very well thought out. Of course Howard Dean is real, he’s on TV! Just as the French Post-Modern theorist Baudrillard claimed that the Gulf War never happened, I believed even just slightly in the possibility that somehow, much of what I was being force-fed was a lie, a mere illusion of life, and that either the characters that shake up our world were imaginary or so high and powerful that never could I come in physical contact with them or witness them without the aide of television. I am not alone in this notion. Excited by the rally and my picture with Howard Dean, I called my mother early the next afternoon. I proudly described to her my “buddy shot” with the politician she had heard so much about over television. At first, she thought that I meant I photoshopped myself into his picture, or even that I was with a cardboard standup, as I had jokingly done in Arizona with John Wayne. After telling her over and over again, I was finally able to explain that it was the real man, not an illusion. Without knowing it, she was displaying the same sense of doubt that I had been before all of this took place.

Since this rally, I’ve felt empowered in much more than the Democratic way. This is powerful evidence of the world beyond the television that is indeed tangible and real, and a powerful reason for me to discover these things and experience them in the real world. Don’t misunderstand me here: I almost never watch television, nor do I own one. However, I do frequent the internet. I am not a reporter on the front lines, so like almost everybody else, my information comes from electronic or other media where my only option is to trust it. Like the title of my blog, I’m going to be a wayfarer as much as I can and continue on breaking free from and transcending the hyperreality television and mass media. I’ll post what I can on here about my daily wanderings and discoveries of our Real World, on top of the poetry and art I already post on here.

Intertextuality

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