Last Sunday I was reading and thinking about things and I had this moment where I realized that pretty much all I had done since I got here was think about - and write about - how I'm sleeping, what I'm eating, how I'm finding things to eat, how I prepare the various things I find to eat, how I get around, and how I'm feeling about these essential Nikki's-general-happiness related items; and I was embarrassed actually. I decided then that I have to get outside of myself and start doing something that matters to someone else in my free time while I'm here. It's easy at work because we have something big going on and that's my focus. But on the weekend and after 5:00 every day when it's just me (and the Chinese man sometimes) it's different. It could be connected to the fact that I had just finished this awesome book and it had concluded with the following quotes. "Judge no more. If you're desperate to use your keen sense of judgement, use it on yourself." & "There's no time left to delay. You've already wasted so much of your life. The hour is hard upon us. Wake up! Stop sleeping through your own life!" I know, kind of intense! The whole book wasn't that way, but the end sure was. Well, under this influence I had a momentary freak out and started looking for things to do to be of help to somebody besides myself while I'm here. The result of the temporary freak out has actually been good. I'm paying much better attention to people around me and I'm having lots of really nice small moments here and there.
I only tell that story to set up my latest epiphany this morning. I was experiencing a moment of deep satisfaction while I was buttering my toast. I mean really, like sincere pleasure because I was buttering toast, and anticipating eating the warm freshly-buttered toast along with this amazing new cereal I found from New Zealand (see pic below) with real-life cold milk (not powdered hot milk). I had to chuckle because no matter how hard I try, my thoughts here just do keep coming back to the basic necessities of life.
Weet-Bix! Why do we not know about Weet-Bix in the U.S.?
I am absolutely bringing some home with me.
So then I was thinking about an email I received from a friend this week telling me that I could go a little easy on myself because it was probably okay to worry about that stuff here since figuring out how to eat seemed pretty important. (Thanks Lauren, you are a true food-friend) Anyway, here's the epiphany... This is how it works! This is one of the things travel does to us and for us. It makes us put the brakes on and have to focus on things that we just do on auto-pilot at home. I can't recall a time I've had a moment that special with my toast in Laramie.:-) Yesterday I rode the bus to town to try to find a couple of pillow-cases. The pillow situation at the guest house has been a little frightening, and oddly it wasn't until yesterday that it occurred to me that I could do something about it. Sleeping on newly-purchased soft and lovely pillow cases last night was heavenly! Duh! This is why I love backpacking so much. The sensory experience of it all is so overwhelming, and you are so busy trying to just meet your basic needs (including the need to not get eaten by a bear) that all of the silly life-stresses just disappear. Perspective brought on by a change in location. The more drastic the change in location, the greater the need to slow it all down and shift your focus. Thus the Paul Simon quote in the title. I've also been surviving on music... lots of it. And it's been back to the basics with that too. Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Paul Simon in particular has provided the soundtrack for everything that has happened here. But I digress.
I think this means I've just given myself permission to continue to write extensively about food. One could argue that no matter where I am food remains this important. You may have a point. For sure you have a point. But I'm standing by my toast-epiphany regardless. Speaking of food... Sangeeta and her husband bought me a coconut from a street vendor yesterday. We brought it back to FNU and the lovely fellow below hacked that sucker open with a giant cleaver. He's the nice guy who brings me flowers in the morning.
In this pick he is gently cutting off the top to get the juice out. The violent hacking that happened next was difficult to capture on film.
The tiny coconut inside the giant impossibly hard to chop into coconut husk.
They made me drink all of the juice and eat the whole thing. I liked it and I thought of you Mom! Also, no one here has ever heard of the "Lime in the Coconut" song. Weird.
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