rosina rubylips's blog

a healthy soul resides in a healthy mind & a healthy body

I see your point, Shinigami, but does that really mean I can't have eggs or cheese?

What I signed up for when I started this detox diet:

• Drinking a shit-ton of water.
• Eating only fruits, veggies, nuts, fish, chicken, eggs, whole wheat pastas & cereal, yogurt and cheese--you know, the healthy, nonprocessed stuff.
• Pooping a lot.

What this detox diet actualy entails:

• Drinking a shit-ton of water.
• Eating only fruits, veggies, nuts, fish, chicken, eggs, whole wheat pastas & cereal grains, yogurt and cheese--the healthy, nonprocessed stuff minus wheat (even the whole kind) and dairy.
• Pooping a lot.

I don't know if I'd have signed up for this if I'd realized you weren't supposed to eat wheat or dairy.  The wheat, okay, I can live without even though that leaves me without the options for toasted concoctions or pastas of any kind.  But no dairy?  Fuck. That.  Since I don't eat vegetables this chops my dietary options in well over half.  So, basically for the next two weeks all I can eat is fruit, nuts, fish and chicken.  (It doesn't sound as terrible when I type it out as it does when I'm thinking about all the days there are in two whole weeks and how fucking bored and hungry I'm going to get after a few days.)

I suppose I could use this next two weeks to suck it up and start eating veggies, but if it was that easy to just eat them without gagging/vomming after two or three bites I definitely would have done it already.  I suppose I could also use this next two weeks to experiment with whole grains and shit, but you know what that requires? Money. Cause healthy shit don't be cheap.  Detox diets are definitely not for the poor.  Which kind of makes me want to not do it at all because fuck all that bourgeois noise.  But that would just be self-defeating and oh-so-typical-Tiffany.

So, now I'm like...do I say fuck it and keep whole wheat pasta/bread and dairy in my diet for the next two weeks and just mostly detox, which would stll be a vast improvement? Or do I try something new and rough it like a hardcore health ninja?

I guess, like most everything else, I'll just take the hardcore route one day at a time until the inevitable day that I either break down and give in or realize I've won.  

nothing but a number

I feel like I should start by saying that I am not afraid of getting old. It's like being afraid that you're going to take a next breath--you are, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Except die, I guess.

I'm going to enjoy the shit out of being old. I fully intend to be wise and lavender-haired and more than a little bit batshit crazy. But cooky batshit crazy. Not, like, let's-put-this-crazy-old-bird-in-a-home-before-she-stabs-someone batshit crazy. I will be kind but sassy, full of amusing Zen-like anecdotes and always ready with a cup of tea and/or a talisman or herbal ointment for what ails you.

So, I'm pretty okay with getting old. But for some reason I seem to have a problem with the 30-40 year-old span.

As ages go I liked 25. If one had to choose an age to remain forever there are definitely worse ages one could pick than 25. And over 40 is okay, cause then I can officially be a cougar (because though my IRL tastes (not to be confused with my celebrity tastes) already tend to run to younger men, like Holly Golightly with her diamonds, I just feel that--for me--calling myself a cougar before 40 would be tacky). But every year I get closer to 30 I can't help but think of all the things I was supposed to accomplish in my 20s that I just really, really haven't. And if my 30s were supposed to be the growing and continuation of all that stuff that I was supposed to, but didn't, accomplished in my 20s then what the hell are my 30s actually going to be?

The answer: whatever they are going to be. It's an insufferable answer, but it's the only one I can come up with that satisfies my desire to not stress over things that don't matter.

So, in keeping with this desire to not look at every year closer to 30 as one year closer to 10 years of fail, I've started using math to put each year into a non-depressing perspective.  Like so:

Right now I'm 27 which is 3 x 9 which is awesome because 3 and 9 are two of my favorite numbers (3 being a magic number and 9 being three 3s). So instead of 27 just being three years shy of 30 the entire year I'm 27 becomes a representation of the blending of 3s and 9s, which I can then incorporate into my entire outlook on the year. 

In July I will turn the decidedly not-divisible-by-three old age of 28. I used to look at 28 as the year of my high school reunion, which means I've been out of high school for 10 years, which means 30 is only 2 years away--ugh, gross and sigh. But actually 28 is a perfect number because it is equal to the sum of it's parts (okay, proper divisors, whatever), and I can totally run with that. 

And when I turn 34 I'll be the sum of the first two perfect numbers! I don't know what that means yet, but it sure as hell sounds better than "the age when I should start worrying about whether or not my womb is going to dry up".

as above, so below OR: (undivided attention?), the delicate art of

So, (appropriately, just as this leg of the tea party was winding up) I finally finished season 2 of Babylon 5. I absolutely believed before that I would finally get around to watching this show at that rarest of times--the Exact Right Moment--and I was not wrong. It's kind of nice when that happens.

Tonight's (Garden of) Moments of Babylon 5 Zen courtesy episodes 0221 (Comes the Inquisitor) and 0222 (The Fall of Night):

How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person. In the dark, where no one will ever know or see. I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries looking for you.  Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest man willing to die for all the wrong reasons. At last my job is finished. Yours is just beginning. When the darkness comes, know this...you are the right people, in the right place, at the right time. - Sebastian

(ASIDE: The "thought that counts" might be a needle in a haystack, but at the very least i'm pretty sure it's a 3.) 

Home needs a (Space) Zen Garden.

Sheridan: Every race that was in the garden saw something different,  yet the same. A being of light.

Delenn: Yes. Each according to his or her type.

S:  But it was Kosh, wasn't it?

D: *nods*

S: That's what he meant when he said if he left his encounter suit he'd be recognized by everybody.

D: For millions of years the Vorlons have visited other worlds, guided them and...

S: Manipulated us? Programmed us so that when we saw them we would react the right way?

D: It is, as you say, a matter of perspective. What matters is that he has revealed himself to those who understand: you, and me and those who have been watching.

Every once in a while aspects of this show remind me of a dream I had one night during the summer of 2003. It was one of the best (truest) dreams I've ever had.

I want this cross-stitched and framed near the door in my room:

"This body is just a shell. You cannot touch me. You cannot harm me. I am not afraid." (Delenn)

*click*

{47, 69, 36, (47, 36, 69)}

"See, something has gone your way today. It's the way the Universe works. Wait just a little while and the wheel turns." (Delenn)

Trees, right? The ones with the big fat roots that tear up their sidewalk oppressors. The even older ones that have ceased fighting their sidewalk oppressors and have instead settled into a beautiful kind of symbiotic urban fantasia. If you're ever in Lake Charles you've got to meet Ed. Best tree for writing under I ever did meet. I'm long overdue for a visit to the crazy little pocket of Tulgey Wood I stumbled across in City Park. 

"Only at night, alone, would I open that small door in my mind where I kept the memory of you and listen to your voice. Listen to you sing me to sleep." (to Kosh)

'Muhammed, my friend' - Tori Amos feat. Maynard James Keenan

"And Moses I know
I know you've seen fire
But you've never seen fire
Until you've seen Pele blow
And I've never seen light
But I sure have seen gold
And Gladys save a place for me
On your grapevine
Till I get my own TV Show"

...and one to grow on.

"Abso-fraggin-lutely, damnit!" (Delenn)

And that, I think, is the last of that particular that (no, not that, that). At least for a little while. (Sit a spell. Take your shoes off ["put dirtballs in your pocket and take off both your shoes"].) Anyway, a girl can dream.

Pretty much.

 

stop.

It's a trick someone taught me, but it doesn't seem to work as well for me as it does for him.

Moments like this are my least favorite moments of all. Appropriately, they always seem to come shortly after periods of really intense really good moments.

Big fat fucking cosmic stutters.

Because sometimes the downside to seeing clearly is seeing clearly. You don't get to pick and choose.

Stop.

I'm really, really trying.

Begin again.

confessions and lamentations

I feel like if I even attempt to describe the past week or so of my life something somewhere is going to unravel somehow, ("and i haven't felt so alive in years"), but I will say this...I have never seen the cogs so clearly in my entire life. Every once in three or so blue moons I get a glimpse of rotation or interlocking parts, shadows of movement and colored streaks of direction (or is it intensity? I haven't quite figured that part out yet.) and every time it gets a little bit clearer. But time, as it is wont to do, marches along and the colors fade and the shadows lose their shape and the light that illuminates the infinitesimal spaces where the pieces lock together dims til all I can see is that there are forms that mostly(ish) resemble cogs in the first place. So when they burst to life again and I get my first new, clearer glimpse at the weave and the colors and the constantly-shifting patterns I momentarily (or two) don't know what to do with myself. I don't realize what's happening. And every time, just like the last, I have to re-learn what I'm seeing. And I have to re-learn that, above all else, I've just got to roll with it.

So, roll with it I shall. Past the Rim, through the unexplored edges of Neverwhere (and the seven layers of the Candy Cane Forest) and back. ("The ride does not require explanation, just occupants.")

Tonight's moment(s) of Babylon 5 (and general television) Zen are transcribed directly from the Big Red TV Quote Notebook of Love and Infinite Seeking:

the orin

(Babylon 5, ep 0218, Confessions and Lamentations)

"I didn't know that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion." - Delenn

"Don't look away, Captain. All life is transitory. A dream. We all come together in the same place at the end of time. If I don't see you again here I will see you in a little while in the place where no shadows fall." - Delenn

"Everything to you is a problem to be solved, a test to be passed. But you know...sometimes the test is not to find the answer, it's to see how you react when you realize there is no answer." - Lazorren

"What happens? What happens is we honor the memory of those who are no longer with us b y using what we have learned to save others. To exercise faith and patience and charity. To reach out to those who are afraid. If we can do that then their passing will have had meaning, and we will grow from it." - Delenn

***

("the trouble with the trouble is the trouble in you." - hope sandoval)

***

From the files of "Go With" Lt. Col. Jaye Frost:

"Conceal nothing and watch the fool search forever." - The Psalms of Kosis Vedran Archives, Lot 0049, Andromeda, "Saving Light From a Black Sun"

"Contrast is the wellspring of desire, a double-loop matrix within the eternal continuum." - The Metaphysical Conclusions, All Systems University Special Collections Devision, CY9030, Andromeda, "When Goes Around"

"Beneath the web-thin simulacrum, inundating and fecund, live myth and manifold truths. Not one point of view can embrace them at a glance." - Council of One, CY2333, Andromeda, "The World Turns All Around Her"...

...The Frost: Cause she's the sun.

Me: Of course she is.

The Frost: But I mean, like, literally.

***

"Should I stay here at the zoo or should I go and change my point of view." Alphaville, Big In Japan

Here endeth the lesson. (For now, obvs.)

"The fiery sun of my passions evaporates the love lakes of my soul, clouds my thoughts and rains you into existence. As I take flight on bolts of lightening. Claiming chaos and my concubine and you as my me. I of the storm you of the sea. We of the moon. Land of the Free." - Saul Williams

06 - Saul Williams - Untimely Meditations

"Mere language is profanity. I'd rather hum, or have my soul tattooed to my tongue."

G'night, space cowgirls and boys. ♥

listen...

I'm trying.

Sheridan:  Why are you here?
Kosh:  We were never away. For the first time your mind is quiet enough to hear me.
Sheridan:  Why am I here?
Kosh:  You have always been here.

That is all.

Begin again.

learning to swim

We all go a little mad sometimes.

Sometimes we just go madder than other times. The key is recognizing what kind of mad you're going. Cause if you know what kind of mad you're going you can bend it and shape it and mold it into the best kind of that particular kind of mad it can be. Like any art it's a fine one. A wrong tweak here, too much empheses on the wrong syllable there and the rabbit hole you fall down may be filled with creepy crawlies instead of floating parlor decor. And if there's one thing I've learned it's that the rabbit hole says a lot about what lies at the end of it.

There's a hole I've been floating down for a while, and I think I'm about to reach the bottom. What took me by surprise is that it's almost but not quite exactly like a combination of three distinct holes I either regularly or have once fallen into. So for a while I thought I had a grasp on what kind of hole it was traveling down. But I don't. Or I didn't. I think I'm finally starting to catch on (it takes me a while, but I get there eventually).

So instead of letting it batter me in waves until I give up and just let it take me (as I've done in the past) I'm going to try to remember to swim with it. To let my cosmic fin unfurl and float through the little locked door ready to meet head-on whatever lies on the other side.

I've known for years that there is a line at which I can exist indefinitely in a state of rolling, wonderful turbulence--right at the very edge of a series of drop-offs. Some of these drop-offs are painfully familiar, some remain unexplored. I'd like to strengthen my ability choose, when the line inevitably becomes too thin and I topple over, which hole I fall into. Or, at the very least, be better prepared to navigate whatever hole might choose me. Knowing when to float along and when to swim.

i don't know when, i don't know how, but i know something starting right now....

 

trapped in a tangerine tangent of my own design

Attempting to pull the last few pages of this Act I assignment out of my brain while The Frost watches Season 6 of Smallville. Lois Lane just yelled at Helo from Battlestar, "REMEMBER, ME!!!" And, after a momentary brain spasm, he did.

This got me thinking.

A) That would be so handy. Say something goes down and the Frost don't know who she is or which way is up much less who the hell I am. I could just be like Dude. Come on, remember [insert zany bonding moment we shared here]? Come on, dude. REMEMBER ME!!! and she, somewhere in the depths of her mind, would hear my voice. And she would recognize it, and she would remember. I like that.

[i just looked up and some fucked up Supernatural-style shit as going on and then Lex Luthor busted in.]

B) It made me realize one of my worst fears. Like I told that stupid Facebook app I was wasting time on earlier, I sure as shit am not gonna reveal that here because our digital words just might be forever and I am not gonna have Big Brother knowing what to break me with someday. But suffice (it?) to say I now know to remember what not to forget.

Wait.

Strike that....reverse it.  ?

(pssst...a little bit scary is a little okay. the edge of a little bit scary is a lot more than a little bit thin. but when it's done, and it's done right? Yes. Please.)

I've never seen a full episode of Smallville in my life but, seeing and occasionally hearing it underneath Phantogram in my headphones, I think I dig the tangents it inspires.

"can't feel my legs anymore, but i'm still running"

It's not actually wasting time if something comes out of it, right?

"Yeeeah. Keep telling yourself that, Kristy."

Okay, okay. I've got three pages left of Act I, maybe 2. IcandothisicandothisicandothisiwishibelievedthisnoicanDOthis!

aaaand, scene.

*sigh*

tanta kringle's cosmic sewing circle and research society

I like nights that end with a moment of Babylon 5 zen.

Delenn: We Minbari believe, as do some humans, that souls travel together. Some groups of souls are drawn, one to the other, in life to relive good relationships from the past and, if possible, to make right the bad ones.

Garibaldi:  So you're saying these other people and I run into each other lifetime after lifetime because our souls have some sort of cosmic sewing circle going?

Exactly.

Now to sleep, and dream, and implore the spirits of screenwriters past to lay their phantom hands upon me while I sleep that I might wake tomorrow with the bones of Act I firmly in my grasp!

07 - You Are The Ocean

Phantogram

(Tonight's lullabies sound like Phantogram.) ♥