Grass Taco

To call my dad health conscious is just not saying it. Breakfast was a pile of vitamins and a pickled haring. And then for reasons much too complicated for the scope of good eatin' to explain, I spent a decade eating less than awesome. All that healthy food early on did set a bench marker for how good the whole system feels when the intake is high quality.

Today's dilemma is that I only have a microwave to cook with. My options are foods that are either super processed and bad (we're talkin your Hotpockets, etc), or raw.

Raw's, actually, taking the cake. Here's my favorite dish, super easy. I call it the grass taco. (And the name is all I can take credit for. Original recipe in Natalia Rose's "Raw Food Detox Diet.")

Cabbage, Dijon Mustard, Avocado

Cilantro, Chopped

Lay Cilantro on the Avocado, Fold, Eat Over a Sink

It tastes good, I promise... but then again, that's what dad used to say... NNNNNNOOOOO!

A Round, Deep Dish

You're looking at my "kitchen" window. That's a tiny bowl of water in a bonsai in the fore of the trees and office building across the street. It's a practice I read about in Rachel Naomi Remen's book "My Grandfather's Blessings." Her book is a collection of stories from her life as the granddaughter of an Orthodox Russian Rabbi, a medical doctor, a counselor for people fighting and dying of cancer, and as a visionary in the medical establishment. These stories are inspiring, and Remen is my professional lighthouse.

Her story titled "Breathing in and Breathing out," from My Grandfather's Blessings (correct english punctuation, always a mystery...) reproduced here with out permission....

"I begin and end every day with a very old ritual that was taught to me by a gentle elderly woman who is a Tibetan nun. Each morning, the first thing after awakening, you take a small empty bowl that you keep for this purpose and fill it slowly to the brim from a source of running water. Doubtless, the originators of this ritual had in mind some high mountain stream. I use my kitchen faucet, turning it on and letting it run for a while before passing my little bowl through the water to fill it completely.
As the bowl fills, you reflect on the particulars of your life, whatever they are. The people with whom you share your time, your state of health, whatever problems you face, what skills and strengths you have, your disappointments and successes, your worries, your personal gifts, your personal limitations, your home, all your possessions, your losses, you history as a human being. As the bowl fills, your receive your life openheartedly and unconditionally as your portion. Walking very slowly so as not to spill a drop out of the brimming bowl, you take it to a private place in your home, perhaps a personal altar, and place it there, dedicating all that it contains to the service of life. Leaving the full bowl in this place, you begin your day.
I find that this practice has been profoundly healing to me. The thought that all things can be used equally to befriend life seems to soften the edges of things, to break down the boundaries between one's sorrows and one's joys, one's wounds and one's strengths. They may be of equal value in serving life. Perhaps it is through such consecration that all things will ultimately reveal their true value and meaning.
Each evening, the last thing before going to sleep, you take the bowl outside and empty the water out onto the earth. Then you place the empty bowl upside down in its special place in your home, turn out your light, and rest. Perhaps this cycle of openheartedly taking on whatever one has been given, using it all to serve the life around you, then letting it go completely refers as much to the wisdom of living a lifetime as it does to the wisdom of living each day."

Studio Process

It's all a process yo. Everyday, just another series of actions taken to achieve a particular end. Day in, day out, passes of effort. A whole lifetime crafted by repeated construction. Romes, relationships, art, good food -- just everything that matters in life.
Oh, I'm sorry, all I'm blogging about is my studio apartment. But that, too, is process. I have nothing. Not even a plate. My fork and spoon are from a camping trip I took, like ten years ago; there's a knife that comes off the handle of the spoon. If not for the microwave, I'd be eating nothing but gram crackers (not true, but that's another blog).
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, process. It'll come together. Slowly, but surely. As paychecks come in, the weather warms up and garage sales sprout, it'll come together.

Pert Near All I Own

Pert Near All I Own in an Apartment

Hey, there's a crisper full of veg I'll have you know!

The Virgin Looks On

Buildings

Maybe it's not that big of a deal. Feels like a big deal. I've moved. Into my own place. Me, alone. My life crammed into one room (would that I had enough life to fill it), second story corner studio in the epicenter of the heart of this college town. Okay, this isn't a Madison, Wisconsin -- same feel, teeny tiny scale.

There she be, completely empty. Could be anybody's. And while this is by no means a final destination, there is a sense of conclusion in moving here. So, for my own happy reverie, I'm looking back at the places I've hung my hat.

2007, 123 W. Kent with the old chums from high school who put me up in their sketch basement hole for those two months before my freshman year of college. Considering I made the arrangements from San Francisco the day before I was going to be stranded in Missoula, I am grateful they gave me the room. Joe, Tyler, Brandon, all those guys are great. But the sayonara was swift. Packed all my belongings in a monster duffle (from when I played volleyball. It was blue, emblemed with an angry bulldog crushing a volleyball in its jaws, and only three legs...), and lugged it the half mile to my dorm room, Duniway Hall. The plastic where the strap met the bag squeaked the whole trek, and I'm surprised it didn't break.  

So then there was Duniway Hall, and there's a lot of good memories there, but lets soldier on. 

One year later I was bound for New Zealand glory, and that was an incredible trip I am so fortunate to have been a part of. Duniway was abandoned for the month pre-trip. My old friend Steph was gracious enough to rent me her floor in the second story studio over looking Hellgate High. Literally, a 6'x2' portion of floor. Then I came back and spent another couple months there. Good times. We drove each other nuts.  

She moved (I might have gotten her evicted, but who remembers anymore) to the North side, and me to the University District under The Groves, the family on North Ave. Five years I lived in their basement. First with the incredible bad ass that had gaged my ears just a year before down at Painless Steel, and then with a really nice pharmacy major from Alaska. You want names? If only I could remember them! Anna and ... hold on... not Bret... Not Mike, that would be every roommate after... Holy Ghod!

Five years in a lesson on boundaries. Slow learner, and I'm still in lesson. So me and What's-His-Name (I'm convincing myself it was Ian... pretty sure...) shipped out at the same time, but not together, to the Riverfront area of town. 

Thanks to the application to rent this studio I'm in now, I know that I was at the Riverfront with Mike, Badhu, and Nahlie (his huskies) for one year and a half. No defamation intended, living with an elementary school teacher as an adult has spun my view of my own childhood teachers on a top. My neighbors, JJ and Adam, taught me about the ways of New York City, extreme sports, and never being too old for nothin. Hope they're all doing great, dispersed around this state though they are now. 

There was that stint for a month with my mom. We eventually got on each other's nerves, but if not for that move, we wouldn't have seen the UFO during the hour and a half trip up north. And I'm really thankful she was there to save my butt. Thanks Ma! We saw a UFO!!!!

(Let me explain. While I had been packing that week, I might have, occasionally, watched some "Fact or Facked," hense the "all week" comment. Watch in the highest, best possible video quality to really see the lights)

Mr. Huberman, how I love him. December, while frantically trying to find an alternative to living with my mom, I came to the second to last house of a corner of this town. I was there, but the guy I was to rent from, Mr. Huberman, wasn't. The woman moving out obliged to show me the place. January sent me to Pablo, Mt, and Salish Kootenia College. Maybe it was the last week in January, I sent out a mass email and text for appointments to see rooms. All day I went from place to place disappointed but desperate. That night, mom and I are about to drive out of Missoula, pouring rain, and I get a call. "You've already seen the place. I think you should move in." Mr. Huberman! Because The Universe is squirrelly, he found himself still looking for a roommate a month later, and I was his eleventh-hour hope. For my part I had sent him a viewing request having completely deleted all of his contact information the previous month and not recognized the room listing. I met him that night at his friends house just to get to know my new roommate. 

  

The second to last house on Maurice with artists and hippies. I will really miss that place, and I will really miss Mike. He made that place art and beauty. Not that it was hard, it was begging for such care. But it was also begging for crowds to entertain, and it eventually got that as well, which was my cue.

The process of giving my 30 days, getting out of my lease, replacing a renter for my room, finding and applying at a new place, getting rent and deposit together, packing, final cleaning, and relocating was accomplished in one week. One week! And there's a lot of people I have to thank for all of their help to make that possible. My padre who totally came through, Sam for efforts far beyond just simply providing the truck (at midnight... in the bar district.... being totally dry himself, and having spent the entire day wrangling car trouble), Mom's wisdom and means, Coe's eternal support and patience, Calvin and Mike for their good natures.