Eating after fasting

So, the Fast went well, although I was still hungry every evening. And Saturday evening we broke the fast together at the Dojang. Everyone who is making a test- 18 people in all- fasted and then spent the day sitting in meditation. Like for 12 hours. Which almost no one in the room had done and which amounted to a great heaving beast of fidgeting, snoring, rustling, water drinking, window gazing, sleeping, and suffering. I was not there, but this was Nic's report. Poor thing. However, she did say she had quite an opportunity to practice, and the the insight to practice, having a larger field than the beast within which she could actually relax, in the silence around the noise. Also, she saw what a good training we had of the mind and the body while living in aforementioned zen center. She and only about three others were left sitting upright by the end of the day. Everyone else had succumbed to gravity and were lying about strewn on the battlefield of their own minds, having been totally slain by their egos, and lay limp on the Dojang floor. To be fair, almost none of these people have ever meditated and there were a handful of girls under 20 who had to be there- without their cell phones, maybe for the first time ever except when they are sleeping. This was a really hard thing they all did, and I am proud of them all for doing the best they could. And, wow.

 It is always interesting to start eating again after not having done so for a while. I ate a bowl and a half of soup and got a belly ache. It helps me to understand why, when people who have been starving receive food aid, for example, they often still die from malnutrition. The stomach has shrunken and the ability to get food into the body is diminished, let alone to digest it and deal with it once it is there. It takes awhile to build up to a normal portion and one must eat so little. A few snacks here and there, only about a cup of food each time. And this time both of us felt dizzy after we ate and I had such pain in my stomach when I ate just a little too much.  And after juicing, which is a larger ratio of of calories to substance than food, which is filled with fiber, the calories one can eat at one sitting are not so many. I think we had five small meals on Sunday. Listening to my body to see exactly what it is that it wants to eat, not what my mind wants or what my mouth wants to taste. And also when I am full, not eating more because it tastes good, or because I ate too fast to notice I was eating and enjoy it. I eat so fast!!!

Eating is so much a cultural thing, so much of a tradition that comes from a place. All of the feelings that come up when we do not to eat with people, or to eat in front of someone who cannot, or chooses not to. Or to eat more than we need or less. Usually the traditions of food teach us, without our knowing, how to eat to maintain health and vibrancy. What happens when we eat foods from other places removed from the culture that the food tradition is borne out of? What happens when we start to eat too fast? When we stop preparing our own foods? Last night at dinner, Uncle Richard said that there was a time in Germany, probably during the war, when they would put little styrofoam beads, the size of blackberry or raspberry seeds into the jams in the factory with aroma and water and only some actual fruit. Cheaper that way, and no one ever noticed they were eating styrofoam! So much arises around the food itself. How our food comes to us and from where, and whether we must grow it or cook it. How much we have, and can get and not get. Flying avocados here from Peru, for example. Or buying things out of season, or that don't grow even on this continent. Eating really is a political as well as a social and cultural event.

still no pictures from the computer. i wanted to give you a sunflower.