Food

I've been eating well, lately. Perhaps too well. Probably too much.

OF course, you are what you eat. What we eat or have eaten recently has a direct bearing on how we are being, our chi, and our consciousness. The environment is the source and the creator of all our food, providing the ingredients of soil, air and water. As we cook and digest this food, it becomes our blood. Half of our blood is made up of plasma, which regenerates itself every ten days. Therefore, it is easy to see that if we change our diet for ten days, it will affect how we feel and perceive the world around us.

After last Saturday's great dinner at Floataway Cafe, I had a grouper sandwich the next night, following the Rebecca Martin concert, at the Treehouse Lounge with my friend Jeff. Monday, a bunch of my co-workers and I went to lunch together, and I ate a far-too-large chicken burrito at Pappasitto's. I was still full at 9:00 p.m. following the evening service at the Zen Center, so I passed on going out to the unfortunately-named Thai Coon for our customary after-zazen meal with the Monday Night regulars.

However, that night, L. - not a Monday Night regular - stopped by the Center to join us for the sitting, and we went back to her place aferwards, stopping at Wild Curry to pick up two orders of chicken panang. So even though I was still too full from my lunchtime burrito to eat at the unfortunately-named Thai Coon, I wound up eating a full Thai meal that night anyway.

The Thai theme continued into the next day. Tuesday, I met sensei for lunch at Harry & Sons in Virginia Highlands, and I ordered the pad prik, but when it came, it was basically the same dish as the chicken panang. However, I still enjoyed it and ate all of it.

As long as I was out and about, I had made an appointment at my doctor's office for a routine check up. It was small wonder then that my weight was up a few pounds. The doctor raised his eyebrows as he looked at the results, and asked if I had stopped working out. "No," I wanted to reply, "I've just been on a marathon eating binge, and if fact just came from Harry & Sons with a belly full of chicken pad prik panang!" The good news was that my weight was still in the "normal" range for my age and height, although my BMI was one point (one point!) over the "recommended" zone.

But the binge continued. That night (last night), my office had a business function at Pappadeaux's, the cajun cousin of Pappasitto's, where I managed to gorge myself on a full plate of crayfish etouffe, followed by a huge slice of key lime pie.

I managed to show a little more restraint today, taking only a half plate of Dave's barbecue as our business meeting continued. However, I'm still eating, even right now as I'm writing - in this case, a Whole Foods thick-crust pepperoni pizza. The good news is this should be the end of the binge - I don't have any social or business meals planned for the next 48 hours or so.

Moving my focus up a few chakras from the stomach to the face, everyone's been reacting to my newly shaven chin. The consensus at the office, where four of the five males have goatees, is that shaving was a mistaken. "You should grow it back" seems to be the consensus. "It makes you look like a Republican," Dave viciously noted.

The cruelest comment, however, came as I picked up my morning coffee. The 20-something kid who serves me nearly every day did a triple take when he saw me and said that he didn't recognize me at first. "You look 15 years older," he offered by way of explanation.

There are few things less unkind to say to a man my age.

Personally, I think I look pretty much the same, only, well, somehow less intelligent. But maybe that's the same thing as Dave was trying to say.