230 cranes

I had a very Zen evening yesterday. Patrick was out at his rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so I was left to my own devices. I lit some incense, fished out my origami paper, and found some mellow tunes to enjoy.

As a sidenote, before the performance at The Triple Door, a lady came onstage and said that the group was giving away four free tracks. You just needed to send an email to irpgift@gmail.com, and an autoreply would come back with the download link to the songs. I did so yesterday, and listened to them. They're cool, but they are solely from the Israeli Idan Raichel Project, not the collaboration that we heard live. The group is called The Touré-Raichel Collective, and the only album that I can find on iTunes is The Tel Aviv Sessions, which does in fact have several easily recognizable pieces from the live performance on it. So if you are interested, that is who you ought to go check out. The four Idan Raichel Project tracks are still available for free, if you want. Just email that address I listed above, and you can get them. Enjoy!

I've been thinking Very Deep Thoughts lately, which happens now and again. Usually it's stuff that seems really obvious when you say it out loud or write it down, but can actually be difficult to fully grasp, at least for me.

One of these is a natural extension of my conviction that bigotry is wrong: not only is it wrong, it is ludicrous. We are all so genetically similar that hating someone else because of their skin color or religion is bizarre. You're hating someone over a few amino acids' worth of differences. Further, those people in the foreign countries with their weird customs that you don't like and consider less than human? They're you, if a few changes had taken place. All those strangers we fear from Outside and tell ourselves aren't as important, aren't as intelligent, whatever, they're us. If matters had gone just a little differently, our roles might have been reversed. You may not like someone's religious practices or their behavior, but that is not the same thing as hating someone for who they are, where they live, what they look like, or anything else they can't help.

This probably came across as preachy, and if so, I apologize. But it's true, nonetheless. I don't have any good answers for how to help get rid of this problem in the world, except to suggest that we all try to think before hating. I'm guilty of it too, just lumping people into one irritating glob to be ignored or shut out. But those mobs in Syria could've been my family members. Those Indonesians killed in the tsunami could've been my cousins. You get me? Reviling other members of one's own species just for being who they were born only comes around to end in self-hatred, and that will eat you alive.

I've been feeling more comfortable in my own skin (bien dans ma peau is the French colloquialism) than I have in years, and I think a lot of it is owed to simply being happier in general. The anti-anxiety drug I'm taking has helped a lot with my nightmares, and I believe my general anxiety levels are lowered from their historical heights. Patrick is, of course, another major factor in my mental well-being. I'm grateful for him.

I still feel that I'd be better off with some weight loss, but I don't hate myself the way I used to. I'm more comfortable being me and sensing how my body feels when it moves to exercise or do housework. I'm a curvy girl, and I'm always going to be one. Fortunately, Patrick likes that about me. I've lost maybe a bit over half of that extra pill weight that had been piled on a while back, and that helped get rid of the bloated feeling. The exercise we've been getting has helped, too.

It's nice finally finding some peace and not having to feel at war with myself constantly. That can be so exhausting. I don't expect to ever be completely satisfied with myself, but that's fine. There's always room for improvement. This is just a happier, more accepting way to go about it.

Peace out, y'all.