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Monday, December 31, 2007

for the Love of Jay on the eve of my 20th anniversary as a vegetarian 

In the spring of 1987 I met Jay Pinsky at a poetry reading at THE MIDDLE EAST, a restaurant and club owned by Philadelphia City Councilman Jimmy Tayoun. We poets had just been moved from the second floor to the fourth floor, far away from Mr. Tayoun's "real" patrons because of a fist fight at a previous reading. At the microphone I said we belonged on the fourth floor because it was closer to the angels, which received equal parts booing and cheering. My friend Sharon and I had done pain killers, pot and whiskey before the reading, and we laughed at nothing and everything like a couple of idiots all night.

Jay introduced himself after the reading, told me he liked my poems, and then asked me what I was on. At first I thought he wanted to get high like most people who asked what I was on, but he shook his head NO and laughed. He invited me to have a macrobiotic meal the next night.

It was almost impossible in those days for me to listen to anyone about changing. I liked my life, in fact I thought it was a marvelous life. All I wanted was to write poems, read poems, and go to parties with my coke dealer boyfriend. I WAS NOT INTERESTED IN CHANGING! My diet consisted of candy and meat, booze and drugs. But Jay had a knack for seducing with health, making clean blood sound sexy! It's true, hard to believe, but true.

No one but Jay could make the invitation to a macrobiotic meal sound like THE MEAL THAT WAS GOING TO CHANGE ME LIFE! It was irresistible, but I still brought a couple of candy bars with me, just in case!

That first meal with Jay was in fact life changing, taking an hour to eat our small bowls of brown rice. It was the first time I had completely chewed my food. I know that sounds stupid, but before that meal I had never taken such care and interest in the taste of a few grains of cooked rice. Our rule was that we would take an hour, eating a few grains at a time, chewing until the grain was water in the mouth. We were not to talk for the hour, just chew and chew, look at one another, smile, and chew. What a peculiar, intimate hour it was.

That rice was the most delicious rice in the world to me! I felt slightly odd after it was finished, I mean to say I FELT MUCH MORE AWAKE! Meaning literally. Meaning that I felt like I had just woken from a good nap! The rice had FED my blood, really FED me! I wasn't used to it. I was used to pizza and candy and meatballs. I was used to the more lethargic sensation of highly processed and chemically injected food.

For the rest of the year I took measures to wean myself off all meat, sugar and chemicals. Dairy was the hardest for me to give up, but soon enough I hated the taste and smell of it, and liked how my allergies and asthma disappeared, my lungs filling with air like I never realized they COULD! That first year was amazing, discovering so many things, like how cutting processed sugar from the diet makes the sweetness of carrots come to light after a few weeks. Everything tasted NEW and it was absolutely exciting to FEEL better, to FEEL awake and STRONG! And I felt less and less depressed, and realized for the first time JUST HOW depressed I had been.

On January 1st, 1988 I made the transition complete! It was my birthday, and it felt right for me for THAT reason more than the fact that it was also a new year. I wanted my birthday to be the marker for total transition into this new understanding of the body and blood and nothing was going to stop me by that point. I had (corny as it sounds) fallen in Love with FEELING good and healthy and strong.

For ten years I remained macrobiotic, never drinking alcohol, never taking drugs, not even aspirin. I had completely cured the onset of arthritis, and cured my depression, no longer thinking of suicide or needing medication. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING, and there were many, many other changes, but all of them due to recreating my body with clean, whole foods. And none of it would have happened without Jay. He changed my life, in fact it could be that he saved my life. The day I thanked him, and told him he saved my life he shook his head NO! He said all he had done was show me how I could change, and that the work was all mine. My health was my responsibility, and he had made it clear that it was in my hands.

When Jay died (about eleven years ago) it was a sudden, violent bump in the road of discovery. I packed up my shit and moved to New Mexico to take classes in healing herbs. Frank Sherlock FOR SOME REASON had convinced himself, and others, that I was moving to New Mexico for a sex change, which is very funny when I think about it now! Then there were others who had convinced themselves that I had AIDS (maybe because of my boyfriend Tommy who had died of AIDS?) and that I was going to New Mexico to die. GEESH! I much prefer Frank's idea of a sex change!

I was only in New Mexico for a few months, but that's all it took to throw me off macrobiotics. The climate demanded a different diet and I hadn't prepared for it at all. Soon enough I was craving spicy foods. Then I started eating cheese. Then I started hanging with a pack of punk rock lesbians who insisted I do shots of tequila with them, BUT I NEVER ATE MEAT!

Animal rights has kept me away from meat, as well as a healthy understanding of how the production and upkeep of animals for meat and clothes is a much larger contributor to global warming than car emissions. I'm drinking alcohol on occasion now, and smoke cigarettes again, but this consumption is not out of control like it was when Jay and I first met.

Macrobiotics is often on my mind. My life was never better. My mind never clearer. Not just my mind but (this is also going to sound corny) my Soul, or do I mean my Higher Self? My spiritual body felt much more limber, totally aware of everything and everyone around me when I was macrobiotic.

Tomorrow I celebrate 20 years of being vegetarian, and will be thinking about Jay, grateful that we met when we did. It was an honor to be on the planet the same time he was, it was a bounty and a blessing. I Loved him, and miss him, very much miss him until it feels painful and ridiculous.

CAConrad

Tiny Tour News 

This Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer gives Big Ups to Dottie Lasky's Tiny Tour. Check out the article here.


- Frank Sherlock


Tiny Tour bathroom photo from top, clockwise: Stan Mir, Dorothea Lasky, Laura Solomon, CAConrad.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

THE MERRY CHRISTMAS HOUSE newest photo by Zoe Strauss as part of her PHOTO OF THE WEEK SERIES 



This and other photos by Zoe Strauss are on her blog.

THE MERRY CHRISTMAS HOUSE is my new favorite!
CAConrad

Friday, December 21, 2007

The Lakota Nation Declares Its Independence! 

SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING NEWS LATELY!
With all the ringing of the cash registers drowning out the sound of our war in Iraq, it's nice to see such a stand taken!

Here's a link, and I choose this one because of all the strange and interesting comments left by readers,
click HERE

On December 26th I am going to walk through the city ringing a bell declaring, ONLY 365 SHOPPING DAYS LEFT UNTIL CHRISTMAS! (365 because 2008 is a LEAP YEAR! GOOD OLD LEAP YEAR!)
CAConrad

Monday, December 17, 2007

new issue of GLOSSOLALIA 

(VIDEO AND MUSIC BY BRIAN HOWE, poems by CAConrad)


The following is an e-mail announcement from editor Brian Howe. I'm honored to be incluced in the latest issue, and blown away by the work they did! CAConrad
-------------

Dear friends, a variety of new material is now available from Glossolalia. It includes:

BALLET: New video and audio featuring CAConrad reading from Deviant Propulsion

HEDGE MAZE: New audio featuring Allyssa Wolf and Jon Leon. HEDGE MAZE first appeared in Spaltung, a multimedia publication of the Atlanta Poetry Group.

A video for SUDDEN SPIDER, featuring Rod Smith reading from "The Spider Poems."

A video for ELLA FINDS HER VOICE, featuring Ella Vowell.

As always, this material is available at http://glossolalia-blacksail.blogspot.com/

Best,
Brian



Tuesday, December 11, 2007

ixnay reader volume three now available -- reading & release party this saturday 


Friends :

volume three of the ixnay reader, featuring new work by Christophe Casamassima, Stan Mir, Susana Gardner, Noah Eli Gordon, Jules Boykoff, Jen Hofer, Mark Wallace, Divya Victor, Harold Abramowitz, & Graham Foust is hot off the press & available for order. $6 includes shipping -- please email ixnaypress@gmail.com to order.


& if you happen to be in Philly this Saturday, December 15, please join us for a reading/release party featuring Christophe Casamassima & Stan Mir at Chapterhouse Cafe, located at 620 S.9th St (btwn Bainbridge & South). Reading begins at 8.

thanks!

jenn mcc
http://www.ixnaypress.com/
facebook group (no, really. it's not just for teenagers & pedophiles anymore!)




Monday, December 10, 2007

Daybook of Perversities & Main Events by Frank Sherlock JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS! 





                                      Resume the illusion of sovereignty as

              a rebel victor in an abolitionist state

                                                 It is called a privilege to grow

                          skeletons that grow to become

                           something    Introducing a child you'll love



BE SURE TO ORDER YOUR COPY OF Frank Sherlock's AMAZING NEW BOOK FROM CY GIST PRESS

check out the CY GIST holiday special

(posted by CAConrad)

poets having babies! Sylvie Beulah Berrigan, daughter of Karen Weiser and Anselm Berrigan 

SHE'S SO CUTE!

Sylvie was born 5:15 in the morning
November 28th, 2007
SAGITTARIUS
(posted by CAConrad)

Saturday, December 08, 2007

THIS SUNDAY! JENNIFER COLEMAN'S B63 BUS READING! IF YOU'RE IN BROOKLYN, DON'T MISS IT! 

FROM AN E-MAIL BY JENNIFER COLEMAN:

Hi, friends! As part of the "9 Poets 9 Cities" project I invite you to attend the Brooklyn B-63 5th Avenue bus reading!

This Sunday (December 9), from 10 AM until 2:30 PM, *poetry will happen* along the B-63 route -- nine poems, that is, by nine poets, each read at their own unique location... by Jen Coleman.

If you want to bear live witness to this historical happening, see the times, locations, and poems to be read at this blog site:

http://brooklyn9by9.blogspot.com/

And if you wish you could see the poems by nine poets from around the world, as read on the street in Brooklyn, but you don't want to wander around in the cold from Fort Hamilton to Park Slope all day on Sunday December 9, stay tuned:

the YouTube version of the reading will appear on January 1st!

(posted by CAConrad)

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Broken News... 




Just in from Maria Raha...

Breaking news from the New York Times reports that the C.I.A. admits destroying videotapes of "harsh interrogation techniques" to protect agency officials from a "greater risk of legal jeopardy." As Brett Evans says, "I love this American way of life!"

Read the full story here.

- Frank Sherlock

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

THE GRAND INQUISITOR: Tony Torn, Lee Ann Brown, and others! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!? IT'S AMAZING! 


While visiting Tony and Lee Ann not long ago I got to see a sneak preview of this WILD SciFi mini-series directed by Tony based on Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor. I LOVED IT and am happy to report that it's now available on the web!

Click HERE for the main site, and click HERE for the MySpace Page!

GET FEELING THE WEIRDNESS!
CAConrad

Monday, December 03, 2007

from Runaway Country by Guillermo Saavedra 

Click HERE.
In particular I like "Ditch" and "Water" especially "Ditch" it's a place we're going to be going to, it feels.

CAConrad

Sunday, December 02, 2007

HOTEL a new lit mag! 

Just heard about this new mag HOTEL looking for poems! The editor is Alex Abelson, one of these cool young poets with a fresh crack of the whip! OUCH! GOOD STUFF!

CAConrad

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