Mcleod Ganj, the Dalai Lama, and a Comedy of Errors

I am with Anna and my friend Stephen and his Tibetan friend Tenzin in Mcleod Ganj, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile. It is a very spiritual place, but far from peaceful. Car horns honk here as if engaging in routine conversation with pedestrians. Monkeys clamor up tin roofs and smash them with wide palms, behaving like children who know causing a ruckus will help them get their way. Tibetan monks and nuns awake around 5AM and recite mantras around the city. In the evening tourists watch soccer matches and scream when their team makes a goal. Even a walk to the waterfall was filled with the noise of cars and motorbikes screeching by each other while old wise men play the sitar and watch the comedy of errors unfold.

Nun praying at Tsuglagkhang Complex, home of the Dalai Lama

Prayer flags on the kora, or ritual circuit, of the Complex.

One of the most ridiculous comedy of errors for Anna and myself has been the epic search for India-appropriate pants. We both assumed it would be relatively easy to find pants while here. It makes the most sense, since Indian clothes are made in consideration of the extreme heat. Also, we both kind of wanted to dress up as Indian princesses, perhaps myself a wee bit more than Anna. But the pursuit of Indian pants is just as difficult if not more so than the pursuit of pants in the United States. Besides my extreme pickiness, my body is just too bootilicious for Indian pants. I found a pair of straight-legged linen pants that I couldn't even yank over my thighs. TAt another shop owned by a Kashmiri man, Anna and I tried on pretty much his entire inventory. Surech (the phonetic spelling of this man's name) was very obliging and appropriately sarcastic as we tried on the "most boring" pants in the store. Some girls, they like fashion style, he explained straight-faced. Some girls, no. It's a problem. We quite obviously fell into the latter category. In my defense, he really wanted to sell me a pair of pants straight out of MC Hammer's closet that he called "funky." 

Salsa Dancing in NYC

Times Square reminds me of Callao por la noche en Buenos Aires, except with more lights. Large screens flash advertisements for bank of America or Nike and they are honestly so bright that it feels like day time. It's glitzy and choked with tourists that stand like deer in headlights everywhere.

When I told Cailley the address of the salsa club Laura had suggested, she almost rescinded on her offer to accompany me. I hate Times Square, she explained, visibly shuddering. We had just eaten pizza and ice cream and investigated design ideas for my first tattoo. After a day spent walking 8 miles and eating, eating, eating, it was hard to extricate ourselves from Cailley's bed.

Finally we decided to go and in a whirl of old spice and vigorous gum chewing we raced out the door. Club Cache is a basement club nestled between an Italian restaurant and a parking garage. The floor was intimate, and surrounded by slightly elevated booths and bar. The dancers were, over all, better than in the Metro Detroit area, but I still think we have a few of the best dancers (Randy and Louis come to mind). My best and last dance was with one of the most smooth and subtle stylists I ever met, and he had a big smile on his face the whole time. The best dancers in my book enjoy dancing with everyone that's receptive, regardless of their level of experience.

Katz Deli

I love visiting New York for a day. Any longer and I feel stifled and nervous. I spent a year feeling like the world was going to cave in around me in Buenos Aires, and after that I promised myself never again. But New York for a day is perfect. Just enough time and money to eat the most delightful treats and gawk at strangers.

The hands-down best meal that Cailley and I had was at Katz, the Jewish deli where Meg Ryan had her most public fake orgasm with Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. There's even a little sign that hangs from the ceiling over where she sat, hoping "you get what she had." I did. The food is simple and mouthwatering. Corned beef, pastrami, salami or reuben sandwich layered with sauerkraut on rye topped with stone ground mustard and served next to new and old pickles. Cailley and I split a corned beef (they were $15!). The walls were covered with photographs of Katz, the original owner, and celebrities. Katz seemed a perpetually oldish man, with a heavy nose pulling his neck into his chest and an apron which, for the frequency that he wore it, must have been grafted onto his skin. He only wanly smiled in the photos, as if mildly amused at his own celebrity and slightly annoyed at the distraction. The tables were all family style. We ordered at the counter from cappucino colored Spanish speakers who called me "my love" and gave us samples of the corned beef on plates. We took the food on a tray to a table next to an Asian woman with the strongest Jersey accent I've ever heard. This, I thought mid-way through my sandwich, is New York City.

Really, You ate MORE of the Stuff that Makes You Sick?

In a fit of what I now see is utter foolishness, I ate more of that roasted red pepper and tomato soup. It was an ah-well-the-cleanse-is-almost-over-so-whatever kind of moment after having to badger the Office of the Registrar about my out-of-state residency, which they've given me again. Then I ate lots more trail mix. Really? I wanted to say to myself. Are these really the choices we make when we're angry? Yes, said badger-Kat. So what?

Our garden is a magical place and I live with a goddess.

Packing Until the Bitter Burning End

It's taken me a week to pack my shit and I'm still not done. I don't even have that much to pack, but there is something about the process that is intrinsically therapeutic, meditative. My housemates all tease me because under the influence my two favorite things to do are clean and stretch, which I tend to do efficiently and effectively. Packing is similarly therapeutic, but takes at least triple the time it needs to. Cleaning and stretching are synonymous to physical and emotional maintenance for me. Packing is a trip down memory lane where I never know what ghosts from my past might pop up. I am easily distracted by old to-do lists, sketches, articles of clothing I thought were lost and remind me of what I was doing the last time I wore them or took them off. Then I have to stop and write, or listen to a song. I've been listening a lot to Bon Iver's rendition of I Can't Make You Love Me, which I discovered on my sisters' facebook profile. She has such great taste in music and I am so grateful to have this song accompanying my rainy Friday of work/pack/reflection time.

Chris and I just smoked a rolled cigarette on the porch. It's something we've done on and off all year and I really have grown to cherish those 10 minute moments of stop-time. It's hard for me to just be, and I feel like the cigarette is always a good excuse to watch life unfold without feeling like I have to be the agent of it's progression. As usual, I smoked the nub til the bitter end. I love smoking until I can feel the heat on my lips, until it almost burns.

My First Cleanse Attempt

Inspired by the Gerson Therapy, and my friends Elizabeth and Brenda, I began a cleanse this past Monday. I removed gluten, dairy, sugar, eggs and supposedly alcohol and coffee. I say supposedly because I never actually stopped consuming them. I rationalize this by pointing out that imagination is the first step towards action. One day, if I just consider it enough, I will have the will power to not be crazy before my morning cup of joe or race home to my nightly glass of wine. Besides removing typically unhealthful foods, I have supplemented my diet with a superdose of vitamins, minerals and healthful, non-dairy bacteria. My meals have consisted of fresh juices which I have made with the help of Brenda's amazing juicer, rice, beans, and fermented radishes, kale, and onions from the farmers market and our backyard garden.

Besides my lack of will power over addictive beverages, I keep accidentally cheating! On day two I was so hungry that I just heated up an organic roasted pepper and tomato soup without reading the ingredient label on the back. My first bite tasted so creamy and delicious that I purposefully put the box into the fridge so I could enjoy each bite without remorse. In the morning, when I felt strong enough to handle my obvious failure, I read "CONTAINS MILK" in bold and all caps. Whoops. In another deliriously hungry moment I stumbled into Cherry Republic thinking I would buy some cherry jam to bring on my upcoming trip to India as an emblematic Michigan gift and was of course overwhelmed by free samples. I devoured about 10 chips with cherry salsa before examining the jar's back label and finding SUGAR written all over it. I know most salsa contains sugar but I have realized that memory is selective and not nearly as convincing as hunger.

Besides accidental slip-ups, I've also made some really bizarre dietary choices. I went to lunch yesterday at Olga's with two coworkers from Greenhouse Montessori. Olga's is a chain restaurant that purports an Eastern European image through it's name though it's food suggests more of a McDonald's version of Bulgarian peasant cuisine. I had some veggies sauteéd in a mystery MSG sauce and a side of grainy hommus. It probably would have been healthier to just order a sandwich than to get that superdose of congealed, processed slime. This morning I had an especially uncomfortable bowel movement due to an inordinate amount of trail mix I ate last night. After a quick trip to REI yesterday where I bought a mosquito net hammock for when bugs attack me in the backwaters of India and I curl into a defeated ball between two trees until rescue or death comes, I popped into Whole Foods. They had some trail mix on sale and, desperate for protein, I got a whole pound. Three fourths of that pound were gone by morning, and my bowels are not happy.

Another unusual component to the cleanse is the coffee enema. The Gerson Therapy is a cleansing method used primarily by people who have seemingly incurable cancer. Practitioners are cured through the removal of unhealthful foods and all their latent affects, paired with a superdose of vitamins and minerals from juicing and eating a mostly raw diet. The practitioners also undergo coffee enemas, administered by medical professionals, various times throughout the day. Dr. Gerson, the founder of Gerson Therapy, discovered that caffeine and palmitates (the chemicals in coffee) work together to stimulate and cleanse our blood and liver. The coffee is absorbed through the bowel wall where it is directed to the liver. The liver and bile ducts expand as a result, increasing the release of diluted toxic bile. Peristalsis (intestinal muscle contractions) then expel the toxins. The liver is now less congested, allowing space for future filtering. Though drinking coffee can loosen our bowels, it has none of the detoxification properties of coffee enemas.

When I first read about this in the Gerson Therapy, it reminded me of my childhood as a reticent pooper. Fortunately I am no longer squeamish about natural physiological processes, and when I decided to do this cleanse I was actually pretty excited about the idea of administering a coffee enema for myself. It was a little awkward, though, and I had to practice a couple of times in the shower with water before I wasted some of my prized dark roast. I used an old camel back which I will never drink from again. I held the enema for a grand total of 15 minutes, as is recommended, and then had an amazing detoxification experience. The first time I did it at around 8:30pm. Poor choice, as I was up half the night with the shakes. Now I do it once in the morning and I feel energized and clean the rest of the day.

In general, I feel much better due to these dietary changes. Drinking vegetables is actually more effective than eating them, since the digestive enzymes in our saliva break down much of the vegetable before it has time to deliver it's health benefits to our system. And in the past week I have had about 10 pounds of carrots, 6 pounds of apples, 2 bunches of spinach and 1 bunch of chard, not to mention all the bacteria that I ate in the fermented foods. I flushed out a lot of toxins that I was just carrying around needlessly in my digestive tract. I would like to do this twice a year. Though I was initially considering doing the cleanse for two weeks, my boss invited me out to brunch on Saturday at one of my favorite restaurants and I absolutely cannot imagine eating something besides cheese-bread-grease-sugar delightfulness. I guess it's a good thing to prepare my digestive tract for the food poisoning which seems an inevitable initiation for anyone who has ever traveled to India.