[Fasts have long been a part of contemplative tradition. Monastics abstain from food to achieve greater clarity, embodiment, and spiritual vision. They change your physical reality, which in turn affects your emotional and spiritual realities. Indeed, the whole reason we do them is to bring about personal transformation. This series of blog posts—"Beer Fast"—documents the experiences of a pair of Artmonks as they undergo one western monastic fasting practice: consuming nothing but beer and water. With that in mind, these entries are raw, containing a higher-than-usual dose of intimate reflections.]

Learn about other Artmonk Retreats here. Full text of this story available here.

Some observations about my fast:

• Guiness is the easiest to drink of all the beers. Beers that I adore, like Chimay and La Rossa, have come to gross me out.
• Adding a lemon to my water has been revolutionary.
• My tongue feels weird.
• I got cold more easily.
• My sense of smell is far more acute than normal.
• It takes all of about 3 breaths to get deep into meditation land.
• I am more aware of my habits. Or, my tendency to talk myself out of doing what I said I was going to do (anything other than work: drawing, meditating, dance of the seven directions). These are things that I love and I feel good while I’m doing… and yet I tend to talk myself out of doing them. I think of Nietzche: “He who cannot obey himself is commanded.”
• I drink water whenever I think of drinking or eating anything and whenever I notice my back (which aches now and again) and whenever I see my water bottle. This winds up being a lot of water consumption.
• The experimentation with not avoiding the delicious scents of the kitchen or discussion or even thinking about food, has proved fruitful. Not the kind of fruit I can ingest on a physical level, but fruitful nonetheless. I’m in a much calmer state about other people eating food. I can enjoy the smell of coffee that wafts in to my room in the morning. And leaving my door open invites in not just the aromas, but also my dear, sweet Artmonks, who come to see what I’m doing in my room. A quick and simple demonstration: avoiding threatening or unpleasant sensations actually cuts you off from connecting to other people. Riiiight. This is why this is such a big concept in meditation. Rather than avoiding your emotions, go into them, experience them in your body, witness them. In the process, you face your demons, sit and have tea (or beer) with them. Either they turn out to not be so bad, or they turn out to be just as bad as you feared but then they go on their way. Either way, the only real way to get away from them is to go to them. One of those lessons I have to take in in so many different ways on so many levels to learn and re-learn. Got it. Until next time.

Other fun facts about the friars of Neudeck ob der Au, the Paulaners whose fault it is that I’m doing this crazy practice:

• They were vegans.
• They drank a variety of beers on their fast, not only dopplebock.
• They would have broken the fast for Sundays, St Patricks Day, and other feast days during lent. (CHEATERS! No, not really. I mean, I’m only doing this for 14 days and now I’m sneaking lemon into my water. Who’s the cheater now?)

“I regard monks and poets as the best degenerates in America. Both have a finely developed sense of the sacred potential in all things; both value image and symbol over utilitarian purpose or the bottom line; they recognize the transformative power hiding in the simplest things, and it leads them to commit absurd acts: the poem! the prayer! What nonsense! In a culture that excels at creating artificial, tightly controlled environments (shopping malls, amusement parks, chain motels), the art of monks and poets is useless, if not irresponsible, remaining out of commercial manipulation and ideological justification.” – Kathleen Norris

From Liz

Non-Beer Fast – Day 8

Wow. I’ve gone a week without ingesting any food. I told that to my friend Francesca’s goddaughter. She blinked and said, “How come you’re not dead?” And there we are, back at the point. There is a lot about this fast that is about death. About showing me and my body that I can face things like hunger, discipline, and letting go.

Last night during my Vigils midnight sit, I tried out a death meditation. After a moment of settling in, I started with a vipassana-style body scan, paying attention only to my skin and the specific sensations that I could notice on each square inch of my body.

When the route from the tip of my head to tip of pinky toe was complete, I began again, this time following the same path but tuning into the muscle. The muscle round really brought up Reggie Ray for me and his wonderful lessons about how all you have to do is bring your awareness into the tension in your body and your body (muscle, tendon, organ, whatever), will suddenly find this tension unacceptable and release it. So there’s a real gentleness in just bringing your attention to each part of your body, patiently, and seeing what’s there and letting it do whatever it’s going to do. Which probably is to release the tension.

And the final phase was the real doozy. I began again from the top of my head, this time tuning into my skeleton. One bone at a time. At this point I was already deep into the meditation. I had really taken my time with the first two rounds, so my body was buzzing with aliveness. I could feel the heat and energy and whatever other waves a human body emits radiating multiple inches from the surface of my skin. I was in it. So bringing my attention to my skeleton, and this was particularly powerful with my skull, was a shimmering paradox. Are you sitting down? There is the practically universal symbol for death, the skull, inside me, right now. (And inside you, by the way.) I have a skeleton that looks like the specimens in morgues and more or less like the epitaphs I photographed in the church in Labro. This skull is what will remain (if I don’t go the cremation route), long after my skin and muscles have offered themselves to the great mulch of the world. Inside this vibrating radiating living body is death. Silent. Still. Waiting.

I read somewhere that the definition of death is something that ceases to transform. We, and the world, are in constant flux. To want a sort of stasis from our lives (some might call that stability), is to want death.

On some level, the fear of death is in everything. Avoiding death seems to be at the foundation of a lot of what we do and the choices we make every day. So much of our conflict and personal weirdnesses are a byproduct of our egos doing whatever they can to stay alive, to keep the grip they have over our conscious minds, and therefore our lives. The idea “I’ve got to prove my point!” comes from the ego, because if the ego is wrong, it dies a little death. And what happens to You? The You that is bigger than your ego? The You that every once in a while witnesses you going off on some diatribe, or getting swallowed up in some emotion, or operating in habit or reaction. That You, that awareness that sits behind or above or underneath, that deeper consciousness that isn’t so emotional, that isn’t caught up in the details, that You is the source of real connection with any other living being. That You is the source of a lot of good stuff. That’s my suspicion anyway.

I get the feeling that enlightenment is somewhere in there. And I get the feeling that the path to enlightenment is to slowly and steadily spend more time with that You. And I get the feeling that in order to spend more time with that You, the ego must suffer hundreds if not thousands of small deaths.

So maybe I will experiment (I’m not making any promises) with not avoided scents that come from the kitchen this week. When the rest of the gang is eating meals, I’ve been closing my bedroom door to seal out the coffee, the pasta, the peanuts, the curry, the oranges. Throughout my life my sense of smell has been pretty dull. I’m the last person to notice when something has gone bad or someone farted. But this week, well, it makes sense that my body would be putting more energy toward survivalist skills. Like my stomach calling up to my nose to say, “Would you get her attention, please?” and then my nose saying, “You realize that is edible right? You see that? You smell that? You could ingest that.” Yeah, thanks guys. I get it. Hang on for another week.

I’ve been starting to think about what I will eat when I finish the fast. The idea is to step out in the reverse order of how we stepped in. So my first day ingesting food will be all liquids. No salt, no caffeine. I can imagine that I won’t want any beer. I might not want beer for a really long time.

This experience does make me really curious about juice fasting. Also not for a long time, but maybe next year… It doesn’t have the same humor to it (juice fast? everybody does those! BORING!), but I can see how the health benefits would faaaaar exceed those of the beerfest — fAst, i mean! Beer fast.

-Betsy

Day 17 (of quitting smoking) - Would have been Day 7 of the fast

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From Charles

Day 15 of smoking / Day 5 beer

Last night was another rough night. I went to bed feeling quite nauseated again, but I thought I’d make it. Then, at 3:30 this morning, I woke up with my stomach in knots. I was literally moaning. I felt like a fermented tide was rising in me, and I didn’t think it would be pretty. Unfortunately, I was right. I’ll skip the details, but it felt like someone was wringing every bit of liquid out of my writhing shrunken stomach. That was the moment I decided that there was something wrong, either with me or with this fast. I’d crossed the line. This wasn’t a dehydration headache, this was my body telling me that it was literally sick from beer and water. I no longer felt like I could justify what I was doing to my body. 

So, now its 10am, and I’m drinking the most conflicted cup of coffee I’ve ever known. I ate a guilty banana earlier, and I might have some ambivalent yoghurt in a minute. I don’t know if I can say I’ve learned my lesson. I’m willing to consider trying this again one day. I would probably put a bit more serious time into getting the ideal beer(s) for the journey, though. That was an element that just didn’t quite come together like we’d hoped. It’s one of the downfalls of living in the idyllic Italian countryside. Great wine, lousy beer. That’s one of those things that makes me miss California. Well, beyond what I “learned,” I’m really more interested in the processes I began, and the states of mind that altered my routines, my values, and my whole sense of self. When I removed all the time and thought that goes into food from my day, there seemed to be so much space. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like I had the energy or mood to use it in all the ways I would have liked. I did finally start building new kinds discipline into my life, which really was one of my primary goals. 

I will say, again, that I think this is probably not the path I would recommend for others who are trying to quit smoking, but it does seem to have sufficiently distracted me for at least a week.  Oh yeah, today I am 2 weeks, tobacco-free! 

All in all, I’m pretty bummed out that I decided I needed to exit the fast track, though I think I gave it my best shot. Even the 4 days of fasting I did make it through, not to mention the 4 or 5 days of dietary preparation, will probably be memories that stick with me for a long time. I have renewed respect for the value of every calorie and what I’m able to do with that energy. I’m a seriously lucky man to have lived a life where food is such a given that I have to make this huge concerted effort NOT to eat. So, I’ll finish with a bit of gratitude to serendipity, or whatever name you would give the power that has given me all that I have. I’m also so grateful to my fellow Artmonks, who were so critical in watching over my health, and making it easier for me to ask for help. I’m also grateful to all my people back home and abroad, who’s ever-curious and supportive hearts and minds have continued to fill me with the courage to continue challenging myself in new (and ancient) ways. 

I found incredibly varied information on several of these beers, so I would not take these numbers as gospel. They are reasonable estimates, I think.

websites I used:

www.beertutor.com

www.ratebeer.com

www.foodfriend.org

www.fatsecret.com

www.myfitnesspal.com

www.livestrong.com

Grimbergen (Dubbel) – 12oz. – 6.5% – 201 Calories – 18.5g Carbs – 1g Protein

Paulaner Hefe-Weissbier – 16oz. – 5.5% – 240 Calories – 23g Carbs – 1g Protein

Guinness – 12oz. – 4.2% – 125 Calories – 9.9g Carbs – 0.3g Protein

Chimay (Rouge) – 12oz. – 7% – 212 Calories – 19g Carbs – 1g Protein

Franziskaner Weissbier – 16oz. – 5% – 165 Calories – 16.7g Carbs – 1g Protein

Eggenberg Urbock  – 11.2oz. – 9.6% – 276 Calories – 22g Carbs – 1g Protein

Wolf 8 Dark Ale – 24oz. – 8.5% – ? Calories – ?g Carbs – ?g Protein

Tabachèra (Double) – 16oz. – 9% – ? Calories – ?g Carbs – ?g Protein

Maltesse (Triple) – 24oz. – 7.7% – 231 Calories – ?g Carbs – ?g Protein

I’ve emerged enough to be able to type again. In the middle of the dark moment there, I muttered aloud, why am i doing this? Speaking aloud to yourself really helps. Or at least it helps me: I heard the question as though some else was asking. Why AM I doing this? Let’s check in with the intentions. I started this thing to connect with monastic practice, to experiment with what happens when you try on a monastic exercise and apply it, in a secular way, to creativity and art making. I have been fascinated by this fasting experience. I have made a lot more room in my life for meditation. I’ve been drawing too. The thing that’s the most noticeable about the drawing is how much I look at the paper before I sit down and my inner resistance is going off: what’s the point of drawing anything right now? you don’t have a really good idea. it’s not part of a larger practice. it’s going to wind up looking New Age. 

But, following the idea that the point of PRACTICE is to just show up… I’ve been pressing myself to at least show up, even if the schedule is messed up and I only have 15 minutes. I remember my zillions of years as a synchronized swimmer, I remember how much it sucked when it was one of those Buffalo winters and I’m peeling off my layers of sweaters and mittens to place my already chilled toes on the frigid tiled locker room floor, to put on a swimsuit, of all things. I remember dragging myself to the edge of the pool and standing on deck, my arms wrapped around myself in some last hope of being warm. My dear friend Lura (and the best swimmer on the team) was always already in the water. How cold is it?  “Doesn’t matter.” She’d call back, “It always warms up once you’re swimming. The worst part is standing there looking at it.” She was a wise woman even at 14.

When I was 9 and had just joined the Buffalo Swimkins synchronized swimming team, I was all skin and bones, with huge long hair that wouldn’t stay inside my cap. I was a terrible swimmer, what with no muscles. The water was cold, the coach was loud, and every night I arrived home, a shriveled shivering sliver of a girl. My dad would dry my hair, brushing it at the same time. He did it in a way that made my hair stay wet longer but I didn’t tell him, because I loved the tenderness of those moments. And I loved the hot air from the blower. One night, after I’d gotten yelled at by the coach a lot (I really was a terrible swimmer), I told Dad I wasn’t sure if I could do it. He said, “You can stop if you want, but you have to wait until the end of the season. For now, you made the commitment to the rest of the team that you’d be there. So truck on through and you don’t have to do it next year.” I think I might have said this to him every year. And every year before the season re-started, Mom and Dad would sit down with me and ask me if I wanted to swim this year. Every year I said yes. At some point, maybe when I was 15 or 16, everything changed. I came into my body. I got strong. I started choreographing my own routines. Synchro became my art form. I began to love it. I went on to compete all over the world (in Atlanta, Copenhagen, and Paris) I coached in Connecticut, New York, and California. Synchro was an enormous part of my life and it required a very long pushing through phase to arrive at a place where it actually felt good.

So I have this huge example (and lots of others) of the importance of pushing through. Of putting my head down and digging in and having it really, really pay off. The idea of PRACTICE, of showing up even when you don’t feel like it and standing there on the pool deck, the action of holding to your commitment that actually shapes you as much as the workout does. I find this fast to be a distilled highlighting of that lesson. That even if I don’t have a single new realization in the next 10 days, the fact of keeping to it will be the lesson. So it is with this same idea of practice that I am goading myself to show up at the page and to draw, even when the inner critic sounds like she’s got a megaphone.

So how can I talk about practice and discipline and pushing through the hard stuff and not talk about the fact that I am in the process of a divorce? *Sigh.* The days preceding the fast, when Charles and Molly and I were stepping down to no caffeine and then just raw foods and then just liquids… especially that just liquids day, it felt like the fast had already begun. I felt the hollowing out beginning and was swept with sadness. I found myself laying in bed, remembering what it was like to snuggle with Christopher, or thinking about the time that Christopher and I did the Master Cleanse together (and how totally un-spiritual our goals were), and just remembering his chuckle. I remember how he said my name every single time I walked in the room. With 100% glee. It is very hard to walk away from those beautiful memories and that beautiful tenderness. And yet, after the pushing through together for five years, it became clear to me (over and over, every time I went on meditation retreat) that this relationship wasn’t right for me. I love this man. He loves me. And still, it isn’t right. He disagrees, which makes the whole thing a lot more painful. I’m not sure what I want to say about it here. I am really strong and really stubborn. I can be very determined. So it is very hard for me to turn away from my marriage.

part 2:  Day 13 of quitting smoking / Day 3 of beer fast

9:30pm – I feel like the earth under my feet is a twig, swaying and cracking in the breeze. I only hope that I’m a little closer to the center tomorrow. I feel so exhausted by this. I think its a kind of stress. I feel shaky and only mostly coherent. I don’t even know if my ramblings are coming out in English. I don’t exactly feel holy. I feel like I’ve got a big hole in me. Unwhole. There is so much of me that feels missing right now, and yet I do feel intensely sensitive, in all sorts of ways. I won’t say they’re good or bad. I just feel like I am far more easily moved than usual. I feel sad, delirious, ecstatic, confused, overwhelmed, giddy, needy, lonely, crowded, and effing hungry. I don’t really know if I can accurately say how much of my hunger is in my stomach compared to my mind. 

Have I mentioned that I’m the chef at the Art Monastery during most of the year? Yeah. Food is important to me, whether I like it or not. Ok, I like it. A lot. I looooove eating. Smoking, too. There’s something about both of those acts that is just so wonderfully indulgent. It’s sustaining and yet its almost pure pleasure. Ah well. Keeping up with my other roles here is as hard as letting go of feeding everyone and myself. That includes all of my interior roles. All the things I do that I think define me, and that I’m working on to be a better me. To my credit, I have kept up with my work, though its twice as exhausting as usual. Betsy, too, has impressed me with her tireless drive. I don’t know how that woman does it. It always seems that no matter what she does, she feels great, and can keep on no matter how much she denies herself rest and sustenance. 

There is one thing I have done, which I feel pretty good about. I’ve begun my discipline practice. This is one of many ways that I have taken the opportunity of being at the Art Monastery to engage myself in new (ancient?) and challenging (monastic?) ways. This whole beer fast is one, which I would NEVER have done otherwise. I have never done any kind of weird diet before (ok, I was vegetarian for 6 months once), let alone fasting. For some time, I have known that I needed to engage my creative discipline. By that, I mean that I feel the need to buckle down and refine my knowledge/skill-set in a concerted and conscientious way. I am beginning this process by beginning proper and meditative practice sessions on my trumpet, usually during everyone else’s lunch. I hope this practice can develop into stellar habits that could transform my performance and creative abilities. That’s part of what this whole thing is about: habits. I waited to quit smoking until I knew I would be here at the Art Monastery for a while, in order to create a new daily ritual, new habits. I’m on this fast for, among other reasons, the purpose of facing all of these food habits that feel so necessary, but that we’re proving aren’t quite so. I’m building in proper training, beginning with trumpet practice, to my daily life. I intend to continue, once I’m eating again, with a rigorous physical regimen. Somehow, that always feels like my body’s first desire, whenever I quit smoking. It says to me, “What the F have you been doing all this time?!?!? Go out and get fit!” It just feels good. Anyhow, it all starts with the thought, which turns into a word, then an action, and into a habit. Before you know it, you’ve built a life. Just hope that its one you really believe in.

Day 14 of quitting smoking (Day 4 of beer fast)

9am – I wake up from a really strange dream, that was something like an action movie. Like many dreams before, I get into some nightmare situation, but somehow overcome it, and come out just fine. I’ve been dreaming like crazy recently. 

Anyhow, once I’m starting to feel consciousness slip back into me, I’m immediately thinking about the fast, my physical state, and food, glorious food. Last night I laid in bed for several hours feel horribly nauseated. That is now 2 nights of three that I’ve gone to bed feeling like death, not that this was nearly as bad as the migraine from days earlier. I hear that the first few days are the worst, much like giving anything up. I’m in food withdrawal. Oh man, I cannot wait to get over that hump. 

I wonder about the beer we’re drinking. I know that these were just about the best of the options we had “easily” available to us, but I fear that they are not actually beefy enough to provide us the nutritional content we need, without having to drink so many that we get drunk. Reminder to the audience: nobody’s trying to get drunk here.

Well, maybe that’s a good lead in to speak towards what I AM doing here. I think I wrote earlier about this being one of the things that I would never have done, if I were still living my urban life. This is also one of few ways that I’ve found, so far, to connect directly with literal western monasticism. Another one of the reasons I had (that I am currently not so sure about) relates to the fact that the organization has taken on a multi-year cycle of themes. This year’s theme, Vigils, is really about death and the void, for us. It is being in that vacuous space of the unknowable. Anything could be there. Nothing could be there. Also, it is the living’s recognition of the transition into that place. I had the thought that we are basically mirroring that, as best we can, by emptying ourselves of that which normally keeps us alive. Betsy and I are in a different world from the rest of our team, and quite different world’s from each other, I imagine. I suppose I’m still an infant in the life of this fast, so I’ll not jump to any conclusion, but needless to say, I’m definitely not feeling like I’m past the withdrawal stages yet. Something in me is holding on to life with an iron grip. I wonder, too, if I feel lousy because I need food, or if its because of harsh things my body is processing to get rid of. Fun fact: I have not had any bowel movements since we started this thing. I wonder at what point I should do something about that. Well, time to have “breakfast” and get working. What shall it be? Maybe, a little Guinness (officially my favorite breakfast beer, so far) to settle my stomach, and a large jug of water to ease my headache. 

10:30am – I was thinking a little more about what I said earlier this morning, regarding the analogy with death and the void. I wonder if there are more parallels to what I’m going through than I previously admitted. Not only do I feel like I am caving in, but I am somewhat afraid of what the next week and a half will bring, entering into the unknown emptiness. I’m less than 25% of the way in, and it has been ROUGH. Maybe, this is me, shot on the battlefield, knowing that death is taking me, but still stuck in the brutal reality of letting go. Well, here’s to what lies beyond.

4pm – Today has gotten a lot better. I feel alright. Although, the middle of each day has been ok. It’s those pesky mornings and nights. I’m just about to go on my daily walk, another part of my current practice, walking from the monastery to our house. It is an AMAZINGLY beautiful 2.5 miles, literally uphill both ways (ok, uphill AND downhill both ways). Each day so far, the minor bit of exercise has gotten me a little more buzzed, and has made everything glow. While I don’t think anything is actually more beautiful due to my fasting, the whole process I’m going through has gotten me to do this walking. Normally, I have trouble walking. I’d just as soon run and get it over with, but I’ve been really enjoying embracing the Italian countryside in full Spring bloom. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It is obscenely beautiful. So, there’s that, which is nice.

5/10

11am – 12oz. Grimbergen (Double) 6.5%

1pm – 4oz. Paulaner (Weissbier) 5.5%

5pm – 11oz. Eggenberg Urbock 9.6%

8pm – 12oz. Grimbergen (Double) 6.5%

10pm – 11oz. Eggenberg Urbock 9.6%

10 AM – When I was meditating yesterday day I felt this bubble of fury build up in me. A sphere of fiery red energy ballooned up and I was surrounded by anger, defensiveness, and fear. Could it be that as the fast proceeds and my body consumes the as-of-yet undigested burritos still stored in my intestines for God knows how long, that I would, on a parallel track, work through as-of-yet undigested emotions?

Today was hard. Sitting at dinner with everyone last night was hard. Sitting at breakfast with them this morning was hard. Sitting on the train back to Terni with Liz while she snacked. Doing the grocery shopping when we arrived back in Terni. By the time we arrived in Labro (the door-to-door trip was something like 6 hours), I was exhausted. I have only had one beer today, which I imagine is part of the problem. But I also feel more drunk today than yesterday. And I don’t feel like drinking any more beer. I find myself fantasizing about weird beverages like SuperFood. I sometime stand in awe of the weirdness of my inner workings.

I do see how one gets through these sorts of challenges. When I first walked into dinner at Doug’s, it smelled so good I almost got dizzy. I thought I might not be able to do it. I gripped the back of the chair. What if I cry? What if I get up and run away from the table? What if I scream and bury my face in that platter of arancini (in the meantime freaking out our excellent new friend and collaborator)? Something inside me shrugged and said, “Well, let’s see.” I pulled out the chair. I sat down at the table. I managed to not eat the little crumbs that fell on my napkin from the platter sitting directly to my right. The smell subsided. I passed the dishes when someone asked for one. I drank my beer so slowly I didn’t finish it until an hour after dinner ended. And slowly, but surely, I let go of concentrating on the food and let my attention be on the people. The dinner got easier and I survived.

6 PM – I feel like I want to crawl into a hole. Or my bed. I have not a single reflective thought in my brain right now. And I’m typing this while both Liz and Charles are on Skype calls with their family members on either side of head (Liz is in full-on laughter hysterics with her brother, Charles having a sweet moment with his mum, telling her he hasn’t smoked in 14 days). Still, I wish I had a cocoon to crawl into.

Oof. Weren’t the first three days supposed to be the hard ones? Why would Day 5 be the hardest? This is hands down the hardest day so far. I’m drinking a Chimay right now and I’m not particularly enjoying it. When does that ever happen? Chimay is the ultimate treat!

I think I’ve been consumed by that bubble of dismal feelings that came up when I was meditating.

Also, I got my period. I guess that’s not irrelevant.

9 PM – I got home and immediately flopped on the bed. I lay there, unmoving, listening to Charles and Kelsey (our first worktrader of the season!) prepare dinner. I lay there curled up wishing I could cry. It might help somehow, to wash out this feeling, but nothing came. Josie, the world’s best cat, sauntered over and meowed at me. I explained how I was feeling. She head butted me. I mustered the energy to sit up and dragged her onto my lap. She started purring so loudly that I had to smile. How could I not smile? But, also how could I smile from the middle of this dismal feeling? I buried my face in her, wishing that all those people who think I’m obsessed with her for no reason could experience this moment. I breathed into her fur, her purr drowning out my queasiness and exhaustion. A few minutes later she was over it and walked to the other side of the bed. I sat up and checked in with myself. I felt significantly better. Purring heals, I tell you. It heals.

-Betsy

Part 2 of Day 12 of Quitting Smoking 

Its kind of shocking how much I feel all of these activities (or lack thereof) actually change my personality. Beyond being a little short of patience and whatnot (from all sorts of withdrawal), I am simply not interested in… well… a lot of things. I don’t really seem to care about what anyone else is doing. I don’t really seem to care about making new friends, even there there are bizarre and fascinating new people here who happen to be leaving tomorrow. I just don’t have it in me to care right now. There’s something about all of my social habits that has been stripped from me, making me wonder what all of my social habits are. I suppose, when people gather, they tend to consume together (unless they’re engaging in some sort of sport or something). They go out to eat. They sit at the cafe with espressos and cigarettes. They play cards while eating peanuts and sipping on something or other.  Even when they go out dancing… always drinking. Consuming. Digesting. I have no judgement for this. I don’t look upon it as a negative element of consumerism (though there are many). Its just interesting to me that consumption is so connected to so much of social living.

Day 13 of Quitting Smoking (Day 3 of beer fast)

Well, its 7:30 in the morning. I’m not usually awake at this hour. I do seem to feel ok, physically speaking, but I am definitely not on the right side of the bed, if you know what I mean. I can’t say for sure that it has anything to do with the fast(s) I’m in, but it sure feels like its probably harder to deal with because of the lack of distraction and… food, cigarettes, and coffee. It’s weird to me that coffee is even on that list. It has never been a thing for me before. I’m not sure how much to blame on the fact that the coffee is just really good (and strong) here. The rest, though, I think has something to do with the isolation. Being so removed from so many of the typical joys that I used to have in the city, or even in less urban America, I find that the few little extra pleasures we have out here become that much more significant. There might be something to be said, too, for the fact that our home lives and work lives, states of rest and motion, are so interconnected that there really feels like no separation. To that end, it often feels like we’re working every hour that we’re awake. So, a little extra coffee to keep you going strong helps out. 

Well, for whatever reason, I appear to have become, I think for the first time, truly addicted to coffee. I’m definitely not excited about that fact. I had thought that when I give up smoking, I’d be addiction free (at least for a while). 

So, there’s the coffee thing. I guess I aught not rule out the ritual element of it. I think that is actually one of the hardest things about the whole fast experience, given our particular life out here. We have such a tightly knit (while ever-changing) community, based on our core team of 4 who live here almost year-round. We all have our own agendas through most of the day, but we always make each other coffee, we always eat our meals together, we always share those stories from the day that you might or might not have actually NEEDED to know, but make you feel like you know what the other person has gone through. We talk about life and art and the cosmos. We make stupid jokes. I guess this all goes back to rituals, social living, and food.

1pm – I’m not sure quite what tools to use to do this. I am having a really freaking hard time focusing on anything without being distracted by thoughts of eating, not to mention smoking. I suppose, in some ways, this might be a great distraction from quitting smoking. Food is occupying so much of my waking mind that tobacco doesn’t really have much space to torment me. To some degree, the fact that I’m steadily ingesting small amounts of alcohol may actually be helping me feel a bit more lighthearted about it all than I might otherwise be. Its so hard to say. I don’t feel like I’m on solid ground at all. Every part of my life pattern is so up in the air. I’m in a new house, working towards relatively new goals, living a completely new kind of moment-to-moment existence. The absence of all those things I usually consume has created more of a void in my mind and my schedule than it seems to have in my body. Once I got past the several day long migraine, I’ve been physically… ok. Not great. Maybe not even good, but not bad. Nothing hurts. I just feel incredibly unfocused and emotionally weak. Well, maybe weak isn’t actually the word. I feel like I don’t really have it in me to sugar coat anything. I feel like my “filter” is down. I’m even more rough than usual. Additionally, anything new that gets introduced to my world, my schedule… seems like a hassle. 

I have strong mixed feelings about something that happened last night. It was the last night for some super great visitors we had (Cirque en Deroute), and we generally would have had a Gratitude Circle for them, except that we made a rule last year; that we only do Gratitude Circles for people who are here for more than 1 week. When Liz came to me to suggest we do one for the clowns, I reminded her of this rule, since I was not feeling like I was ready to pour out some gratitude. I feel like that was a selfish moment for me, brought on by this emptiness and excuse for weakness, yet I also feel like I have recently been trying to stand for our agreements. Ever since we took vows earlier this year (Gratitude, Resourcefulness, and Fidelity), I feel that I’ve had a new perspective on community and personal agreements. For better or for worse, I’m trying to stand for them, so that we actually have a chance to see if they work. I suppose that’s also part of why I’m trying this fast, to see if it “works.” So far… well… I just don’t know. I guess I’m writing. That’s pretty new for me. I don’t do this. I am also beginning my discipline practice (properly practicing trumpet – for the 1st time ever). I don’t know. Its so hard to separate the parts of the fast that I’m struggling with from the quitting smoking. All of it is stressing me out and making me feel much more fragile than usual. At least half of my normal coping mechanisms have been stripped away, leaving this raw, frustrated, doubtful, yet cautiously optimistic, minstrel walking on empty roads, gazing upon green monoliths, singing to nobody, and wondering why.

-Charles

Today Liz and I took the train to Florence for a meeting with an excellent new friend of the Project, Doug Platt. He just happens to live in a former convent. It is a beautiful home with stunning grounds. It might have been the biggest challenge to the fast yet: sitting at the dinner table with Doug, Liz, and his three kids, while they ate what smelled like delicious arancini (traditional Roman fried rice balls stuffed with a variety of different things), ribs, green beans, porky somethingerothers, and salad. Luckily, I had a really good beer.

It feels like there are a lot of changes going on right now. Changes in me, in the people around me, in the Project, and in the world. I feel at the edge, the beginning of a new growth spurt, particularly for the Project, but also related to my own personal and spiritual growth. The beer fast is weird. Let’s face it. I’m a little bit buzzed a lot of the time. I can imagine how doing this same thing but with juices would yield that much more clarity. But still, the humor in it, the paradoxical nature of cleansing with intoxicant, of finding clarity through unfiltered cloudiness, I find this fascinating as an experiment all in itself.

One thing that is true about this fast: I feel permeable. It seems like if I spend a moment opening myself to anything, it will pierce me. The room we’re sleeping in, for example. Lovely arches, monastic cornices, impressive art collection. I took a moment to lay here on the foldout couch and appreciate the ceiling. Mesmerized by the lines, I feel held by the room, cradled. I feel energetically connected to the room, like I have expanded to meet it and it has reach down to encompass my body. I wonder what function this room had in the past lives of this building, if the nuns who spend time in this room embedded any messages in the bones of the structure, either consciously or unconsciously, and if I could receive them, either consciously or unconsciously. Or do the messages come from the architect? Or from the Architect?

[Part of this was mistakenly posted yesterday. If you recognize what's below, check Beer Fast ~ Day 3.]

Day 12 of quitting smoking (Day 2 of the beer fast)

Holy crap. Last night was the culmination of several days of building up the terrible feeling.  It basically ended up that I got one of the worst migraines that I’ve ever had.  I couldn’t feel anything but the blinding dark sharp-edged sledgehammer inside my head.  A truly unfortunate other consequence of my migraines is that I usually become nauseated.  Other than my head, I had mostly been feeling alright until then, but I was suddenly unsure of whether or not I would be able to keep down the few calories I had in me.  I was writhing in my discomfort for quite some time until finally Liz and Molly helped me decide it was time to eat something.  I felt equal parts relief at the thought of a possible end to the pain as I felt bad at the notion of giving up on the fast.  Ultimately, it was weird to eat, but I immediately started feeling better, and I was ultimately able to get to sleep.  

Now, I’m awake.  I feel a bit uncertain as to where I’m at and what I want.  I keep hearing a quote I heard recently: “Always we begin again.”  Somewhat ironically, St. Benedict said that.  So, what to do…  I suppose I shall try another day, and see what happens.  The fact that getting the beer, itself, may still prove to be a huge annoyance might help me make my final choice, but for now, I’m getting back on the horse.  Fingers crossed.  Beer I come.   

1 beer in. Feel ok. At a clown workshop sharing session. Reflecting on the notion of tenacity. I’m really glad I’m trying again, though I seem to have released my attachment to doing this “right.” I feel really relieved by this. The other thing is that I have so many feelings about how all this is working along with the quitting smoking thing. Mostly, I think I’m proud of myself (and Molly) for doing this, and still doing this. This shit is hard. So many things about this are hard. I think about my father, who after 50 years of drinking and smoking, got lung cancer. When he/we found out, he quit his drinking and smoking. He was about 60 years old, and going through both of these kinds of withdrawal all at once. I don’t know if I’ve ever given him due credit for his success (I was definitely not brought in to the process at the time). The point is that after 60 years of living and all that entails, and giving up a life of alcoholism, quitting smoking was the single hardest thing he ever had to do. 

 So, its about 4pm.  Somehow, I seem to have bounced back.  I’m keeping my hopes high that this lack of terrible pain will last.  I’m definitely hungry, but I feel strong enough to go on, for now.  I’m struck by how crazy this must have been for the monks of old.  I wonder if they had a step down process.  Somehow, I doubt it.  What did they do if someone was freaking out?  Was it ok to “fail” the fast?  

I’ve been thinking a lot, too, about my free time.  This place always makes me think about my free time.  There’s so little of it, usually, that it feels like this precious commodity that must be used only towards the best of ends.  It has been especially difficult since quitting smoking, since any time that I’m not actively focused on something tends to lead to me thinking about having a smoke to think about what to do next or process what has just happened or simply muse on life and living.  Anyhow, I’ve had a hard time deciding what to do with that spare time.  I feel like I owe it to myself to be working working working on music.  Do I or don’t I want to be building a repertoire of original songs and recordings?  There are, however, many frustrating hurdles particular to being here that make it so difficult for me.  I feel so conflicted, too, because I feel like much of what I call a hurdle is also what I would like to be calling inspiration, like isolation; from the rat race, my friend networks, from the perpetual whoosh of cars echoing off of San Francisco apartment buildings.  There is something else here.  There is focused thought.  There are ideas of the heart, rather than ideas of my people’s city life.  I guess I feel like I’ve become one who finds it so much easier to take inspiration from the grittiness of the city than the purity of piety, nature, and isolation. 

Well, there is something about this fast that makes me feel somewhere in between.  I feel like this is a place that I can connect to both worlds, and where both worlds connect to me.  I am the emptiness.  I am the void.  I am pure.  I am full of fermentation.  I am hungry.  I am full of hot and cold.  I am in withdrawal, and I am proud of it.