Greetings from Muskegon. Holy shit does it rule here! I went thru an energetic, exciting-as-hell week at my job, full of positive energy and people digging raw food and wanting to learn more, and in general myself learning (as always) the workings of food service! Saturdays for me is almost always farmer’s market, beach with 2 amazing ladies (though only the canine one today) and fasting on water. Other things are woven in and today it is writing and reading and bicycling and watching documentaries/movies.

I’d like to talk about challenge; I have felt so challenged in the past few months, it has really rocked my core and caused some discomforts that are proving ultimately rewarding. Confronting deep down parts in me that were blurry before and are becoming clear now. THis shit is exciting, and I just watched “Enlighten Me” which is a documentary on yoga, and the dude in it comments how yoga has opened a black box of emotions in him and made him crave time with his momma. l love this idea of clearing your head and taking time to simply breathe and stop your thoughts. It seems the negative, harmful ones can be weeded out thru this and thru refusal to let the negative ones reign. You only have room for one thought at a time, and if you fill your head with positivity, then duh, you’re full, and you can’t be thinking negative. Testing my own patience is something I am very into. It is said “You’re testing my patience!” in angry ways, but I was at work the other thinking of an individual who did indeed test my patience on a regular basis, and another one, very different than the first, but they each truly tested me. This is very good in seeing how patient I can be and how ready I can be for any challenge. I was deeply offended in the first case and made angry, and simply annoyed and anxious in the second from a excessive talker, and I really thought about both situations and how eager I am to be adaptable to many situations. In the sense of my diet this has been of concern, as I was in kalamazoo over the weekend in much discussion with Kirsten, my only other all the way raw food comrade. We agreed how we don’t like to be picky, and how maybe we’d eat cooked food (only animal-free, ever, this was of course, almost needing to be unsaid, as animals as food is just disgusting, wrong, unthought of, etc…) as opposed to stressing if we couldn’t find raw foods. To worry about shit as simple as food seems silly, but even since this discussion as I thought, yeah, I love supporting vegan foods, like the girl in chicago who made tostadas and brought them to the show! She was selling for super cheap, and I tried a bite of Kevin’s, and I love to support people doing things like this, but it’s simply a taste, feel good factor to me. The ease of digestion, the energy, the lightness, all the great shit about the simplest, mosta natural way of eating is just fucking fun! Ha ha it really is! And it seems that raw food is the ultimate fast food! Picking fruit, eating mulberries off of trees, munching on cucumbers. It is just so instant. Mashing an avocado with some hot peppers and tomatoes, throwing it in a lettuce leaf and squeezing orange juice on it is pretty unbeatable in my mind, fucking delicious, instant, cheap… I thought maybe raw foods were limiting at first (just like i thought vegan foods were limiting at first) but I soon discovered 2 things; there is a ton of variety, from blended things like smoothies and puddings, to fresh juices, to green leafy salads, chunkier veggies salads, marinated salads, dehydrated foods to make breads, crackers, chips, cookies, and simple instant veggies and fruits. Oh I forgot all the cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, frosting combinations from nuts and seeds. Oh and soups. Instant blended cold and warm soups.

Oh and wraps, of the nori variety and lettuce leaf/collard leaf/kale leaf variety. Oh and coarsely blended bars, chunks, macaroons, etc… Banana/cashew ice creams.

There is a lot. But even with their being a whole variety, I have thought about how important variety really is in my own life. I definitely don’t want to eat the exact same thing for 3 meals a day, but I have found that I really like certain foods and eat them almost every day (kale, avocados, chocolate) and never ever get bored. This is written truly from my passions and what I’m feeling so I don’t watn to seem reactionary, but I am reminded when I think of the variety in uncooked, undamaged foods, the words of people who fear it’s limits, and how the standard american diet is so filled with the same things. Corn, gluten, potatoes, meat, dairy. Lots of starches and animal flesh/secretions. And there definnitely are tons of ways to prepare animal flesh, but many people eat fast food, which is the same shit over and over. I definitely don’t get upset, offended, or anything like this, because I know from personal experience in the past and present how fucking difficult it is to imagine new habits, to break old habits, and to even get motivated to begin to change habits. It’s a mountain that is scary to even think of climbing. I struggled with drinking almost a 2 liter of mountain dew a day up until July 14th 2008! It was the day of the Dead Friends show in the basement of the house I now live at and I was drinking it and just got so fed up I poured it down the sink and that was my last time ever, and I was fucking ridiculous! It truly was a drug to me and a substitute for food! The first sip would always be so good and the next few would be nice, and then it would just lose it’s taste but I would drink it cause it was funny or it made me not have a headache, or different reasons depending on the moment at hand. I really feared I would be drinking mountain dew forever, and I know there’s waaaay worse things, but it really made me feel like shit, made me not want to get out and move around and use my body, and it just in general made me get into habits of self destruction which is something I struggle with and am trying to rid from my life. Old habits die super hard but they can die and I only think of this as people bash on certain ways of eating, living, approaching things. Everything you know may be wrong. We must keep this in mind. Towards an open minded lifestyle of being challenged; surround yourself with positive, forward moving people and you’ll draw from that and be inspired and you can in return do it for them and keep this cycle of creation and challenge and care going. I think people are so beautifully different that it is important to remember how your savior can be of no use to another, and another’s great mystery revealed is inapplicable to your existence, but it’s rad to always hear all ranges of viewpoints out and consider where things are coming from and to just be patient and let things unfold and arrange in front of you. Down with dogmas and hastiness up with patience and open mindedness!

This is my cheers to not burning out on punk, food, relations, life, whatever. Be a fucking warrior, be in it for the long haul. Be unique and not another cog!

p.s. – fucking A two vegan sxe punx bands in the area on Thursday that weren’t all dudes! Woo! Two ate raw too! How rare, how exciting! Contend and Distressed from Reno, Nevada. Both have great records. Contend has a 7″ and Distressed a CD and 10″…