Writing in the Dark

"It's not that difficult.
Anyway, it's necessary.

Wait till morning, and you'll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light,
and you'll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen, ballpoints don't always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There's nothing
shameful in that much prudence; those are our tools.

Never mind about crossing your t's, dotting your i's-
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from the depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again."

- Denise Levertov

Romancing the Bean

Both chemotherapy and antibiotics tend to throw off the balance between beneficial bacteria and yeasts in the body. I am finding that my body is not in harmony and in need of some re-balancing, evidenced by the presence of various unwelcome fungi! I have begun a Candida albicans-eliminating diet this week. The diet allows absolutely no sugar, no milk, cheese, bread, or vinegar, very little fruit, and lots and lots of vegetables, beans and meat. This disallows many of our traditional North American, calorie-dense foods, and in consequence I am hungry ALL the time! My stomach isn't used to handling the bulk of food required to find enough energy for the day. It has also been shocking how few commercial foods are truly real- sugar free, without nasty substitutes!

The beauty of this diet is that it demands utter nakedness in your relationship with food. I recently picked up Joanne Saltzman's cookbook, "Romancing the Bean". It is an intimate introduction to all sorts of beans, including ancient history and cultural cookery nuances. It has struck me that "romancing" beans, or anything else, requires bareness and simplicity. This Candida diet cuts out the sugar and other distractions with which we tend to douse true, nourishing food. I have been startled by the joy of eating, for breakfast, a bowl of plain, raw oats with sunflower seeds and unsweetened soy milk in all of its beany glory. How wonderful, to roll the texture of the oats over my tongue and really taste their flavor! True fuel in the tank.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote an incredible book about the Soviet Gulags called, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". This supper scene is etched into my mind:

“It was at this evening count, when they returned through the camp gates, that the prisoners felt most weather-beaten, cold and hungry – and their bowl of thin, hotted-up cabbage soup in the evening was, for them, like rain in a drought. They swallowed it in one gulp. The bowl of soup was more precious to them than freedom, more precious than their previous life and the life which the future held for them.”

“Shukhov ... began to eat. First of all, he drank just the watery stuff at the top. As it went down, the warmth flooded through his whole body – and his insides seemed to be quivering in expectation of that gruel. Goo-ood! It was for this brief moment that a prisoner lived!

I will be beginning to understand true nourishment when simple, unadulterated meals become as precious to me as gulag gruel.

Our Friend Neigh