I know she’s everywhere right now but this article is a diamond in the rough. Great writing by Liel Leibovitz.  Enjoy!

The Unbearable Lightness of Girls

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The last three or so months have been a whirl of extremes.

All it takes is one day of being seriously sick of something or someone to make you crave a change and our impulses start nagging us to break-up, leave, stop, begin, cut out, or introduce.

So maybe there are simple solutions to complicated issues.  But the solution itself is just in theory;  the practice itself is what’s challenging.

It’s because we become so used to our conventions that the small repetitive patterns in life are hardest BY FAR to break.

In practice we rarely challenge our daily routine. ’Old habits die hard,’ to put it mildly.

Some time in July I went to my doctor who told me I would have to stay on a pill for an indefinite period of time because my hormones were “off”.  I had been on it previously and HATED it so I never continued taking it.  Randomly one day I purchased a book on natural healing and became kind of inspired by it.  It’s main message  was: your diet is slowly ruining your health and vitality.  I never thought to worry about my diet, since weight was never a big issue for me and I  never had to deal with a serious disease, but I figured what do I have to lose.

Let me tell you what my lifetime eating habits were. I’ve been a vegetarian for almost twenty years now, but 85% of my diet consisted of refined starches (pastas and breads) and dairy (CHEESE!!), add to that the cooked oils, milk chocolate, and yummy pies – I was definitely giving vegetarians a bad name.

When you hear about the positive impacts that healthy food has on mood, thinking, energy and behavior, the first thing that comes to mind is  “obviously” – an instinct quickly forgotten or ignored.  In reality the effects are not enough to sway the average diet – we are surrounded by an abundance of food, plus the millions of brands, diet fads, and clashing professional opinions etc. – how do we know who to trust these days when we are constantly being bombarded by false claims and paid off research studies.  The supermarkets are filled with foods that aren’t ‘real’ – stuff that is made to taste and feel like food but is really just goo of artificial flavors and textures – toxins, put simply. Fresh vegetables are either eaten as a side dish or cooked to death before they can be considered an entree.  Learning of the linkage between mild and serious ailments and what we put into our bodies is definitely an ‘AHA!’ moment.

So I went vegan. I went unprocessed.  I went completely plant-based. I went Green Juice. I went 75% raw food. Call it what you want, I prefer ‘rad healthy’.  Truth is, I still feel like I’m climbing a huge mountain. Here and there I succumb to certain cravings, but for the most part I no longer want most of the foods I used to love.

Clearly it takes more than a few months to undue damage that has been done over a twenty year period, but put aside the physical changes (all for the better in my opinion), my energy is better, my mood is much more stable, and my mind seems much clearer. The best part -  knowing that I may not have to take any medications in the near future or hopefully EVER.

My pre-med cousin says it could be a placebo effect, and I’m sure there’s something to that (I’m all for mind-over-matter), but if there is one sure way of knowing anything, it’s when you experiment on yourself. My body doesn’t lie to me and until it tells me differently, I will keep feeding it only the best.

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Ma splendid metaphor

Allows her to crawl out of her skin every now and then

to experience the thrill of existence in alignment

with her inner-most

Outside-in.  Ma nature

Leaving a dry layer behind so

her pores, supple and aroused, can dance to the waves of fresh air.

A fresh perspective

Prospective organisms. Listen to her hissing.

Ma splendid metaphor.

Her skin sheds. And those who *adore* it stay behind.

Ignoring the works of her flesh they hold on to a peeling flake. A fleeting gesture.

She goes or chokes. And yet somehow she still had a choice. You didn’t .

Ssss.

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On the edge of a tongue

of a mind

an impression of something that isn’t really there

like the tree that flipped the bird

the hero who debunked

who now, himself

projects personality where there is none

I am tempted to take you apart

or what do you see in my face

you have not already shed

in your own mirror

an impression of something that isn’t really there

a glare

to develop wrinkles over

the prototype of modern ambiguity

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Better than a warm meal is when you tell a friend about a frictional interaction and she breaks it down into subtexts, eventually ending the conversation with a comforting “that’s all this is”.  Sigh.

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The *problem* begins when connections that at first seem personal and exciting become conventional and worn. Infuse this notion with a whole lot of passion on the giving end and you’ve got yourself Blue Valentine, the new romance with Ryan Gossling (!!) and Michelle Williams.

The dynamics of it are similar to Revolutionary Road; both with leading female characters who gradually fall out of love and both of which allow the audience to witness the potential extremities of relationships – the happy beginning mirrored against the tragic end.  The men they were crazy about become completely estranged to them for incalculable reasons, and their relationships fall into spirals of human follies and desperation.

Anyway, this isn’t a movie review (although I did truly enjoy both).

It brings me, just for a second, to Alexandra Bachzetsis; a Zurich based performance artist and choreographer. To quote Chus Martinez on her: “She explores the process by which we commodify images, gestures, social attitudes and language”.  Using very basic experiences to show the emotional forces at play in our interactions, she brings to light how the once exciting turns into the repetitive and sometimes unstimulating, leaving us dumbfounded as to what may have happened.

Apply this observation to the failed marriages in both Revolutionary Road and Blue Valentine and you could come to the conclusion that that same learned behavior, if applied to love, can be destructive. And by love I mean ‘in love’ not ‘to love”.  No offense to the institution of marriage, it’s more a criticism of the vow;  the promise of everlasting love seems hollow in hindsight when you consider emotion’s fleeting reactions. What happens when you’re no longer in love? through good or bad seems a harsh sentence for the involved – both, the unenthusiastic participant and the lover who hopes it’s just a phase. That’s what makes these movies so depressing.  And in their case I’m not sure what is more upsetting, the unhappy wives who are *dying* to leave but feel terrible about feeling that way or their husbands who *love to death* and can’t believe this shit is happening to them.  Who’s got the bluer blues here?

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