To Indulge? Me?

Task # 12
Completed July 26th, 2007

So, as mentioned here, I don’t indulge myself often, so I visited the Olympus Spa (http://www.olympusspa.net) in pursuit of the goal of feeling alive, indulged.

Alive….the lusty sugar of honey seeping into my skin, the coolness of the cucumber releasing the callousness of those facial membranes…
While experiencing the moisturizing body wrapped, which involve cocooned in some honey mixture, I felt that I am body, I don’t have a body, I AM it. And I remembered those lines in Beloved: “She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That is they could not see it, they would not have it.” The passage goes on to speak of loving our flesh, our hands, our mouth, and nourishing it on our own and not despising it as the world does.”

Oh, the hands briskly swaying across my chest, my swollen belly, my core…
Alive

The solitudeness of being single sometimes means a forgetting of the sensuality of nature, of connection. The denial of my sensuality so pervasive that the hunger now is so palpable.

On that table, I didn’t become “more acquainted” or “more connected” with my body, because that would mean again that it is something I possess or external to me. More like, I became aware of my aliveness.

And the honey, womb-like, desperate to penetrate and stick. Incredibly freeing….

So then, I visited the café, because the body wanted what it wanted: nourishment. Again, the mind of shoulds attempted to reign, but the body won out this time…
And oh!

Alive!

I ordered a Tofu Red Soup…and it was perhaps one of the most delicious meals of my life…

Spring onions sweetness dances with the earthiness of shitaki mushrooms, the soup ase briny infused with chili oil and garlic, the tofu bathing wontly, crumbling off in waves…the tiny cucumbers, smaller than half peanuts, yet crunchy….

Alive!

And, a lover of condiments, am I! Perfection! From Right to Left, Top to Bottom: The flamboyant pickled radish, flavored with sweet mirin, soft and chewy bean sprouts, chili dusted fried cucumbers (So pliant!) and a firm ponzu laced tofu, then (oh! There-is-a-God) sweet black beans, half like a fig and beans with a plum afterbite…so amazing! And a seasame seed slaw, very sweet….

Alive!

Yes, this task will go down in infamy! Hard to top…

Because this is one night where I will fall asleep knowing that if I died, I lived….