Have you ever had a craving for something but didn't know what it was because maybe you had never actually had it before and you must have a blood memory of its taste because when you finally know it, it sets a piece of your life into place which had been hollow before? That is how I feel here.
Goiaba has a skin that tastes like it contains some vitamins that I need. Last night, I cracked open roasted cashews and ate them from the shell. I've tried raw cacao fruit. It has a slimy white substance that surrounds the seed, which I think may not be considered a true seed because you can open it and the inside gets turned into chocolate.
Something interesting: I had been waking up with a slimy white film in my mouth that I've also had years ago. It's a reaction to yeast/inflammation, which has been brought on now by my conventional foods experiment here- processed white rice, breads, and sugar, meats, flours, cheese, and eggs is pretty much all I was eating for 3 weeks. It took about 10 days of eating like that for the film to develop and it happened every morning. Except this morning. What's changed? Farm food. Just 2 days of fresh farm food- lettuces, vegetarian beans, brown rice, fresh fruit shakes without sugar, no sugar in general, dips and spreads made of plantain, and homemade grain breads did the trick. đđ This is my optimal diet. Aaand the slimy white of the cacao fruit could very well be an antidote to the slimy white reaction in my mouth. Medicinal food often works like that.
Happy. I have a distinct passion for eating communal meals of farm food with lots of people. When it's with other people, it's as if all of the joy and pleasure that everyone is experiencing while eating is going into the food. And so with the love of others, it is more nourishing. Also it forms family bonds faster than any other thing I know of. I want to stay here. I once had a dream or maybe it was a day vision in which I came upon a medicinal nut/fruit which was shaped like the yin-yang symbol and which could cure nearly any ailment. I have found this symbol here. Not yet the fruit-nut. But the symbol is everywhere. I was considering how I could get more money to stay, how I could spend less money per month- just use what I need. I do want to go home though. I don't feel rushed but I take into account that I want optimal healing space this year and the next. I am working on my body from outside-in. And on my mentality to allow for change, to release heaviness.
I would learn so much here. The Mestre is older. He has years ahead of him but to study with him is gold. And so I should return soon. Here, I create with the land and with my body bending for capoeira and with my infantile knowledge of song and language and rhythm of these the people of my ancestry. I come with almost nothing but my own voice and a willingness to create with them. And this, I find, is enough for now.
It's hard to be un-experted (made it up). What's the word for this? To be stripped of what I know so far and return again to step 1- learning my ABC's in farming, sentence structure, playing new instruments, following behind. I can say that I would not have been prepared for this kind of humility were it not for the 7 years I've come through. Starting with the death of my mother and then spiraling into my own anger, the breakdown of ideas I'd built, the betrayal of friends and lover, the slowness, tiredness, behaving out of depression, desperation and need for comfort. One thing I have learned in it all is to trust my intuition in spite of having no reason to give anyone. Go with force of intention. I wrote a song today as a way to get my thoughts out and into prayer. Sometimes it is just for me and the beings who listen in that moment- the trees, the visiting ancestors, the spirits, the faeries, any people who happen to be present. And the cosmos, as Baba put it. Song is my connection to the cosmos. And so I sing out, let it ring as a universal patronage.