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"They say every man needs protection,
They say every man must fall.
But I swear I've seen my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall."
-Bob Dylan
"Why so hard?" the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. "After all, are
we not close kin?"
Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my
brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-
denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?
Do you know your destiny? Do you know what your soul dictates? We all do to some extent, and we all live our destiny to some extent. But how far will you extend it? Have you allowed yourself to be soft and pliant? Probably. We rarely make our own decisions, or make up our own minds. We check the clock to see if we're hungry, and we check with society to see what we should eat. We check with 'greater' men and women, assuming they hold our answers. We'll check with God, Mom, Coolio and Thoreau before we check with ourselves.
I felt that I had made my own decision about college. I passed over school after school until I found mine: Marlboro College. And I was right, it was just the school for me. But it wasn't until I was at school that I realized that I had never made a decision to go to college. That part of the decision was not made by me. So at school I decided that I would like to go to college, but in light of my plans for the future, it would not be a good idea. So I left school. I had considered the idea while in high school that college might not be for me. But I had been too soft and too pliant. I didn't harden myself against society's wishes.
Why be so soft that others can mold you? Why listen so hard to others that you can't hear yourself? Make a stand for your life. Defend the dictates of your soul against the dictates of society. Society has created a 'good man.' "Oh these good men! Good men never speak the truth...They give in, these good men; they give themselves up; their heart repeats and their ground obeys; but whoever heeds commands does not heed himself." Don't be a good man. Be something greater: yourself.
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you
triumph with me?
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut through, how
can you one day create with me?
For creators are hard...
This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: become hard!
People live such meager lives because they are afraid to be themselves. No one has ever been a great person by following someone else's creed. And no one has been great while being afraid to let their soul flash and cut. When you deny yourself for others, you get nothing in return. Yet you lose your only treasure. And at the same time the world loses the only treasure you can ever give it: a unique soul.
The most amazing thing you can ever create; the greatest gift you can ever give; the greatest life you can ever live. That is the soul perfected. They say each person has a talent; it's true. That talent is to be yourself. No one else in the history of the world has been able to do that. So refuse to be timid. You have something great to give; have no reservations. Flash and cut, be hard.
Live by your inner laws. Not by your desires, that's merely playing slave to a new master. Freedom is living by your soul's commands and nothing else. The effort is in discovering these commands among all the rules, wishes and desires buried in your mind. A wise man is one who knows what he needs in life, and a happy man is one who does it. Being a discoverer of the soul is lifelong work, and a lifelong adventure. But the first step is to become hard, and to have destiny in your eyes.
p.s. All quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
The answer to America's dietary problems is a lot simpler than they make it out to be. There's no need to create an intricate schedule of meals, vitamins and supplements. There's not much need to chart out your nutrient intake or to calculate percentages. And there is certainly no need for Pepcid AC, Nutrasweet, or whatever other wonder drug they're coming out with now. I'm sorry to say that all there is to eating healthily is to eat good foods.
What are good foods? Well, let's see. What have the Chinese people lived on for thousands of years? Mostly rice and a variety of vegetables. What about North Africans? Cous cous and a variety of vegetables. How about the Europeans? Wheat and a variety of vegetables. Native Americans? Corn and a variety of vegetables. It's not too difficult to figure out. It would be a rare event for you to find a civilization that subsisted mostly on meat. Or one that eats mostly synthetically-created foods. Human beings live off of grains and vegetables, with a side-order of fruit. We should stop running from our destinies.
I'm not going to rip off a two-hundred page discourse on the nutritional benefits of this diet. There are about a million books on the subject. I was initially enlightened in a course I took, called Holistic Nutrition. Since then I've encountered more evidence to support a grain and vegetable diet than I could ever remember. Pay attention to all those highly-touted health studies on the news and you'll notice that through all the crap, they each advocate the same thing. Eat more vegetables. Not too tough to remember.
Let me illustrate the logic behind this diet. Consider early man, in his hunter and gatherer stage. This is the stage at which physical evolution left us, and thus it is the state for which we are best adapted. The hunter-gatherer was mostly a gatherer. Put yourself out in the forest chasing animals and you'll soon find yourself an advocate of gathering too. Those carrots are a little easier to grab hold of. So it makes sense that these people would mostly consume the grains, vegetables and fruits that they can collect. And these would be eaten raw, in small meals throughout the day. Meat would be a meal only on the occasions where a kill is made.
This is the diet which the human body is prepared for. The farther we get from it, the less healthy we are. When we cook our vegetables, eat larger meals, eat more meat, exercise less, and consume synthetic products we hurt our body. If you want to eat healthily, eat like a gatherer. That's all there is to nutrition.
I have already written about my vegetarianism, so it's obvious I don't recommend the meat portion of our natural diet. This is based on my belief that we now know enough about nutrition to safely do away with meat in our diets. If you choose to not eat meat, there are certainly nutritional effects that you should be aware of. But even if you did nothing about them, I feel you would still be healthier than the rest of society. Meat is a very small part of the natural diet, and hardly noticed in its passing. The modern habit of eating meat at every meal is a much larger affront to the body's health.
Although I believe that eating healthy is a simple thing to do, it's certainly not easy. Not in this time and place. Most everything our society suggests to us as an eating habit is wrong. To eat a natural diet takes an effort that eating crappy doesn't. Eating natural requires special shopping, a garden, some knowledge. Once integrated into your life however, it can be as easy as eating fast food. A raw carrot plucked out of the garden takes little prep time, depending on how fast you can brush it off. A natural diet requires a conscious choice to eat differently, and the will to learn what society hasn't taught us.
It's hard to imagine how a natural diet can not make sense to someone. Our biology shows that we are meant to eat certain foods. Lions eat meat and cows eat hay. It would be folly to try and change their diets. Yet, we seem to believe that we can tinker with our own. I can guarantee you that the human body has not been waiting tens of thousands of years for the creation of high fructose corn syrup: the nectar of the gods! It's silly to think that any food we concoct *now* is going to match the digestive system we've had for millennia. Our food is one thing which we needn't have worried about. Now that we've screwed it all up however, we probably should.
Ever notice the connections that the brain forms? It tends to connect experiences in your mind, so that one can conjure the other. Anything can be associated with a memory or feeling in your brain. Certain smells can bring back a particular memory every time you sniff them. A song can conjure up a memory as well. Even a memory can bring you back to another.
But the strongest associations are with feelings. They can be so sweet, or bittersweet. It's because they are so undefinable, yet so strong. A memory hauls with it a whole web of feelings, which strike so deeply, yet have no single meaning. The first cranberries album always makes me think of Marlboro College. I bought it right after I came home, and when I listen to it, it makes my innards purr with emotions. Good or bad, I can't say. It brings up too many feelings for me to be able to define them. It brings up so many that I have no idea what I'm feeling. Maybe it conjures up my entire emotional state at that time. A chunk of thoughts, memories and feelings too huge to digest.
This is what amazes me about the brain, more than the way you can get sad when you hear your old song. It can recreate much deeper emotions. I had a set of blocks when I was little that you could form into all these scenes from Winnie The Pooh. When I think about those blocks I get more than a happy memory of playing with them. I think I recall everything about being a kid. That memory is like the picture on the front, and beneath it is a depth of memories I can't even access. But I can feel their residue and their power. Describing the memory is of no use, because I can't even think about it. All I can do is feel it. The image of the blocks is the tip of an iceberg. I can feel the weight of the whole iceberg, but the tip is the only part I can put into words.
If cities and towns wanted to do one thing to make life better, here's my suggestion: get rid of the cars. Imagine this please. You go to a city, say Boston. You park your car in a lot or garage outside of the city. You then take the train or bus downtown. When you get there you notice that all those streets once filled with engines, honking and exhaust are now filled with people walking, riding bikes and rollerblading. You might see a bus occasionally, or a train go by. But you can casually stroll down any street, with room to move your elbows, and a whole hell of a lot less smog to breathe.
Even smaller towns like mine could use the improvement. How much nicer it would be to not have to listen to the whine of engines all day. To ride your bike down the middle of the road, with only the occasional bus to look out for.
I'm sure everyone will now start complaining that this isn't going to make their life any easier. They'll complain about how they won't be able to get where they want when they want, even with superb public transportation. But that's exactly my point. That's what's going to make your life better, when you stop rushing all over the place, trying to cram a lifetime into a day. When you stop zooming out to McDonalds to get your Adult Burger for 12 cents before the sale ends. When you start walking and start experiencing peaceful moments, then your life will be better. And you'll get where you really need to go anyway. Even if it doesn't help you, it would make my life better!
Well, so far this newsletter thing has accomplished one thing. It's gotten me to write several pages a week. Which is something for me, who's work ethic fades like the fabric of my jeans. My usual cycle is to go on occasional writing binges, accompanied by a purge of all work whatsoever from my life. That still happens to everything outside of the newsletter, but those few pages have stayed constant.
I'm thinking that this might be a new method for me, to get myself to stick to those things I want to do. It kind of goes along the "sign yourself up for something, then you'll have to do it" routine. Tell everybody you're writing a newsletter, then on those off weeks you'll feel like you have to do it. They say that's the key to exercising too. Get a group of people organized, then you'll feel like a putz if you don't participate. I'm not sure how healthy this motivational technique is, it's kind of back-to-the-50's. But I guess if you bring it on yourself then it's OK.
"When they came for the Communists, I did not speak,
because I was not a Communist.
When they came for the Jews, I did not speak,
because I was not a jew.
When they came for the Union Leaders, I did not speak,
because I was not a Union Leader.
When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak,
because I was not a Catholic.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak."
-Martin Neimoeller
The End