The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

On day ...what day is it...7, I think. Who knows .... of the 'cleanse' raw food thing, I'm really feeling how not so sustainable this is.

It's very anti-social, for one. I see my friends dodgeballing in from pubs and I think, "gee, that would be nice, but I'd just sit there craving beer and being hungry." Then there is the whole, "We should do dinner" thing. I've never been a big fan of salad. What did the Simpson's say? Oh yes, "You don't win friends with salad." [for the Simpsons geeks in the crowd, there was a tune and a dance that went with that]

Why don't you win friends with salad? Well, it's boring, for one. I think of salad as a 'starter' or a 'side' that I may or may not eat. I've always thought salad took up valuable stomach space when there was perfectly good sustenance to be enjoyed. So, if I'm stuck with the choice of one item on the menu: salad, I'm grumpy. And grumpy people don't make good conversation. And without conversation, what kind of friendships can you strike up? Exactly.

Raw food takes time that I don't have to prepare. It goes bad quickly, so I have to shop alot. It's surprisingly expensive (because I don't just want to eat salad). It would taste alot better with cheese. ;)

Either way, I'm still sticking with the post-cleanse plan, but not making any long term plans to go all-out raw vegan at any time soon. Unless I had a live-in raw vegan master chef...

But the base issue here is that it is extremely difficult to break out of what we know...and what we know can be really bad for us.

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion

That has been one of my mantras for years. I know myself too well. When I stop working and relax, I have a very difficult time getting back to work. Funny how the opposite is rarely true. I don't know about you, but relaxing seems to come quite easily for me. ;)

Eating well, working out, getting things done at work, getting organized, staying on top of the personal life, etc. - not so easy. However, once I get started, I can usually maintain all of these if I don't get 'distracted'.

Sigh. Distractions. They are so nice. Falling in love, good wine, yummy food, amazing music, art, sex, theatre, pretty shiny things - just some of the wonderful distractions we encounter in our lives. There are two things to be said for repressed societies here: 1. You don't know what you are missing and 2. when you do know what you are missing, you appreciate small amounts of each even more.

Not here in the land of the free. Nope. Here we get pleasurable distractions in abundance. Absolute abundance. And cheap, I must add. Sure, the really good stuff costs an arm and a leg, but you can find a reasonable facsimile for a rock bottom price anytime you need a quick fix.

Man, right at this moment, I wish I would have never tasted cheese...or at least never sat in front of a gigantic plate of international cheeses and got to try each and every one of them. Or that amazing steak at that place in Calgary (can't remember the name) where they seared it just right and it practically melted in my mouth...that was, after eating a lifetime of cow (being raised on a beef farm, it was a staple at every meal, so I know a good steak when I eat it). Fresh baked French croissants? A hearty Zinfandel from Napa? Pilsner beer right from the source in the Czech republic? Montreal bagels? New York Cheesecake? A dark Italian espresso? AAA Alberta Red Angus beef burgers? I've eaten myself spoiled around the world, sometimes without even leaving my own city. It's glorious to be in the free world.

But then I think about it historically, I wonder how glorious it is. I can barely survive 10 days on a raw food cleanse without cracking up. I want the memories of all of the meals before to be erased from my mind so that the third red pepper, shitake mushroom, tomato and avocado medley I eat today will taste like heaven. It should. It's fresh. The produce is amazing. But it falls flat for me. I've been overstimulated.

...and speaking of overstimulation...

Sex sells...

The other day, Chris and I counted the number of sexual inuendos in ads on the radio and found that roughly 75% of advertising has some sort of sexual reference or another, ranging from subtle to overt (there was this crazy arse pizza ad that led us to believe that you get more than just pizza with that delivery). Don't get me wrong. I love sexual inuendo. It's playful and fun and reminds us that, at the base of it, we are all human animals. However, what I'm concerned about is the same overstimulation happening that happens with food. As we move up the food chain of what is "normalized" in the public realm, will the next generations up the ante? Is that healthy? Maybe it's all part of evolution, but sex is such a loaded barrel of issues that I am hesitant to think so.

So, there you go. While Joe is achieving some clarity in his corner (and I do mean corner, because he's been sleeping at the office due to major deadlines - which is a whole other form of addiction breaking for me), I'm receiving more noise than ever. Sigh. I suppose nothing good ever came easily.

Do you know what would be a total bummer, though? If, like in Sleeper, that Woody Allen movie about the future, they discovered that all that stuff that is supposed to be bad for us is really good for us... then I'd be totally ticked.

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