Pen-

hey you! i was totally going to post and then i got distracted by the letter. its totally tragic about the tree by the way. does your city have a free tree program? granted mine is shade trees. but that would be awesome and cut the expense down. get some more blossoming things, nothing that will timber in the storm. and thank you BABY jesus! for not hitting penelope's car. also i kinda love the cabbage bed and i hope you eat the lettuce cuz why not. and totally responsible for the awesome. i'll take it! so below, the long lost acu photos. sitting on them- for-ever.

so here is the awesome medicine chest he never gives me anything from. i think he suspects that i'm a westerner and not hip to his healing ways. though i secretly yearn for mysterious concoctions to take i will not complain about his massage or bone crackin' ways as they are awesome. the acupuncture itself is a mystery but let me tell you my knee feels so much better. i think i need a little more circulation from my mid back to my quadricep (as he says that's where the problem lies) and he himself has a pragmatic? is that a word? view of it, saying well- maybe you should wear a brace on your leg- as if he doesn't believe that after 4 sessions i'm not fixed then maybe never? silly doctor. no. its going to take time. and i'm going to go back after a while when i start to feel more tweeked. the sinus headaches ive had this week have given me pause so maybe its time? eh, not yet. lets not rush to healing shall we. also below you'll see i finally coped to wearing the gown, which i hate. something that makes me feel vulnerable and sick? actually sick? its bad. but anyway at one point i might as well have leeches on me. i think from the suction cups and the pin pricks he actually did bleed me? I can't say for sure. I just know that for $60 i get almost 2 hours of attention- chiro adjustment, time to 'relax'? and a doctor who sometimes tells me how the body is connected. It's win/win.

m.

The Purple in My Eyes, by M

The problem or good thing about going to Muriel is that she's a cash and check only kind of girl. Sort of limits the crazy I can get into and we can literally say, if God wants me to do this, he needs to provide the money for it. Which is something I've been trying to work on. Instead of purchasing first and figuring it'll come somehow someway. So I scaled back a high creditcard payment figuring that's where it would've been going anyway and coughed over the $175 for an hour diagnostic session.

The first thing I loved was the new patient form which included 1. was my birth traumatic? 2. what are all the major injuries you've ever had? (I love talking about myself) 3. categories: PAST/NOW: mild/moderate/extreme- and I got to circle how i construed each of the sections from family life to vocation to financial and lifestyle. I also got to answer: what i do to keep healthy, what my intent was, and generational ailments. Awesome analysis good times. Oh and dur, what sort aches and pains do i have currently- hips, knees, kneck... a crick in my shoulder.

She then informed me that though she is called a chiropractic office there's actually no physical adjustment involved and all her language swims around the term 'energy'. It's a term I'm comfortable with because I like to talk about energy I sense in rooms. And um whatever. So anywayz first we talk about the form and if I have any sort of residual issues from childhood traumas and anything I think I say, I'm suspicious, will be confirmed or denied by my body. So I say, mmm, no? She also tries to figure out what exactly I do for work which somebody, please tell me! I say well i was at this desk job for a year and then, I went on vacation, then i got laid off then i wasn't working for 4months, then i got a 3wk desk job, followed by my wacky art dept job... she's like hmm, ok. Clearly she's going to have to look elsewhere. But did I explain my frustration about the weight thing?

So I'm on the table and she's holding up my left arm and asking my body questions, and holding up my right arm and asking my body questions... and by that I mean she says "resist" the push of my hand and she touches a point on my body and if that part of the body is blocked somehow my arm goes weak. I've had this done to me before since '97 or so when this wacky guy named 'sunshine' gave me a tape to watch and then he died a few years later but i never watched the tape until i dug it out and it was all about energy realignment. So that when I got into a car accident the chiropractor was able to help the neck that got hit by the wave and now had whiplash from the lady who hit me, was able to work on me and not freak me out about it... . So she's muttering and making notes and checking here and there and everywhere and then she says, i'm feeling inspired. Is this a spiritual issue? And my body says yes. A what!? A spirit? Something something something... she's like I don't know what it means, i never ask this question like i said, you're going to have to ask God.

Hmph!

So I go back the next week for a follow up session. Hand her my food diary, lay down for my healing tweaking session which involves laying there for a 1/2 hour and her intermittently poking and reflexing me. And toward the end in the back of my eyelids I see the most beautiful color purple. Its this purple tinged with darkblue and it would just sort of morph into a few forms really slowly that I just enjoyed watching it. I didn't even honestly question why it was there. But just took for granted that it was something I was seeing. I get up and I am super relaxed. I say that if nothing else that's what I am. Muriel then says, well you were healing too not just relaxing. Yah yah, mmm hmm, whatever. I am sooo relaxed. She's like, did you see something? Yah i said. The color purple. She's like, that's a spiritual color. It's coincidentally the color of the folder I'm giving you, too. She then hands me the diagnosis of me and a plan-

yeast+ toxicity = a. h2O retention, low metabolism, elevated insulin levels which results in = hormonal imbalance. b. junk in the joints, sinuses resulting in aches, congestion, allergies.

My plan is to tune up the diet, heal the intestines, tune up the spine, detox!? the body (maybe), and then she put in a box on the page as if even to her it was important or at least unusual she wrote "spiritual healing"... upper cervical (so in my neck, where i got hit by that wave when i was a kid)... and I'm like hmm? Hmm.

Still I am all HMM, about it.
But again she says there's a disturbance. Says that people who are sensitive are often physically and spiritually beat up because of it. And that my body needs to know it can function beyond survival. That I need to feel safe in Gods arms- i suppose even when being beaten up by waves at the beach... but still what might that look like and feeling pretty sure you have it... though that color I saw swimming in my eyes must mean something. Because it was a calm sure place that was really beautiful, if nothing else, if anything that's what it was.

Prelude to: The Purple in My Eyes, by M

After procrastinating for about 2 years, I finally was like, yes, lets do something about this whole, I can't lose weight no matter how much I'm working out or eating right thing. I have friends who just automatically assume that I'm eating a lot of horrible things or that I have no idea what healthy food might mean. What is this? A carrot? I reject you carrot! Which I ocassionally do but nothing that should warrant a zero drop in the scale. Considering that when I work out 4-5x a week and am eating right nothing happens. I suppose I don't articulate that well but then its like, sure, right, uh huh, sure you're eating right. Sure you're getting all that cardio in.

So then I go on this volcano trip and I lose about 13/14 lbs. Which is about 2+lbs every week I was gone. What did I eat you ask? What I wanted. I had canned peaches, eggs and bacon every morning, almonds, dried fruit, chicken, broccoli, whatever looked good on the menu- burritos, fries, ocassional burgers even. Granted the pace was so vigorous that my body was no longer able to ignore the fact that I was being active. I came back in better shape. My lung capacity was improved- look out world. Then having acclimated to the vigors of travel I kicked up my workouts. I jogged. I almost got back to my 15min mile pace I had in college (which for me was fast, and when I was working out 5/6x a week). I hiked. I swam. I severely curtailed my addiction to breakfast mcmuffins. 4 months later the scale hovered a little above a little below where I left it. THEN I get a job for 3 wks where I'm on my feet for 8 hours a day, moving here, there, and everywhere, up and down ladders, or just sitting for 5 hours painting grout lines and I lose 3/4lbs. What was I eating you ask? Whatever I wanted. I even every week indulged in chicken nuggets and fries. I ate eggs and potatos and bacon and sausage everyday. I ate chicken, roasted vegetables. Nut and fruit medleys. Ocassional kitkat bar minis and fruit.

There's something obviously about what I chose to eat myself here in the real world that must be sabotaging me. So finally, I after all this time, about musing about my thyroid going haywire or whatever it occurs to me that instead of paying a lab +doctors fee to tell me whats wrong ($400 w/out insurance) then I'll go to this holistic healer person my friend Danica and I know. And see if she knows.

And Danica is one of the straightest shooters I know, so if she's willing to give this whatever it is a try. Then why not.