My diet & detox journal

I mean that, a Ferris Wheel…

Around and around you go….and sometimes you just have to hold your breath because you are at that spot at the top, just before you drop, and you anticipate it so hard, that you bite your tongue…

But then you are spinning backward, and the air around you is filled with laughter carousel organ notes, and lights, and up you go, back again, till you top the wheel once again… and you laugh and smile at yourself for being so timid.

And then you tip over the top again, looking down as the ground comes up to greet you, and you rock and rock, and then you go back again till the top.

And then the operator stops the ride.

And you sit.

Teetering.

Looking back you see one thing going, and looking forward you see another thing upcoming. And again you bite your tongue, because you are not sure which is better.

What is it about life that can be so incredibly confusing? Just when it seems like you have it all figured out, then the operator starts the whole wheel turning again. And you want to just sit back and enjoy the ride, and the sights and the sounds and the voices of the rest of the riders…

But , of course, you realize you are on a wheel, and what seemed so exhilerating, is just your motion in what amounts to be a stationary spin…And what seemed like fun, becomes tedious and boring and you want off.

I used to love going on the ferris wheel. It was one of the few rides that didn’t take sharp drops, or turn me upside down, or pitch me such that I was in need of a barf bag… :^) But it still provided laughs, and a tremendous view, and enough mental and physical stimulation that I could still feel it for ages afterwards..

Sitting at the top of the Ferris wheel back at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, (that’s where I grew up, by the way, Santa Cruz, California,) I loved watching the seagulls flying around, listening to the rush of the wind and tide, the splash of the “Log Ride” and the whirl and beep of the kiddie bumper cars. Then there were the Vallies (stereotypical name refering to the beach tourists from the Valley) on the beach as they baked in the Central California sun, and ate voluminous amounts of junk like hot-dog-on-a-stick, cotton candy, and soda , and smeared themselves with vats of sunscreen, playing with beachballs, rafts and boogie boards. They were like ants to me, as I looked down from the Ferris wheel. I can still smell the taffy from the candy shops, and the fry oil from the funnel cakes. All of those scents mixed with the faint coconut smell of tanning oil, ocean kelp and hundreds of bodies fighting for a place to be first in line for the roller coaster or tilt-a-whirl.

Rides like rollercoasters can bring up angst and stress instantly when I think about them. In fact, I recall at one point round the age of 7 getting ill just looking up at a coaster that had a double loop…But in life, isn’t it the excitement that makes things more interesting? I mean, how can we appreciate anything, if all we know is safe, and non-threatening.

Does that make sense?

I mean, it was that very disconcerting feeling I felt when sitting there at the top of the wheel that makes the memory so precious. At the risk of sounding like Adrian Monk, what if a bolt had come loose? What if the ride operator suddenly decided to take a lunch break, and left us spinning there diliriously? What fun it might have been, could have been, it was…

If it were tohave been so bland and boring as to not stimulate an emotional reaction, I probably would have just discarded such a memory with the rest of the turmoil that made up much of pre and teen years. Memories that I pray I will forget, lost in a jumble of teen diress…I wish I could just eject certain things from my memory…Like pictures torn from a scrapbook, a journal burned…

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk, had many faces: a summer paradise for tourists and spring breakers..A fanciful nightime jubilee for visitors from a far, a cold dreary beachside playground, providing work for low paid preteen students, immigrant workers and high school dropouts…A flash of fun for a foreign tourist, a beach volleyball player, a single parent on a night off…

But no, the Boardwalk, as plastic and as false and as flashy as the image was, would still be a place that shaped my childhood: Birthdays, rainy weekends with teen friends, riding the rides at rock bottom prices, running the length of the boards, shooting skeeball and water balloons… it held my favorite escape:

The Ferris Wheel…

And as I ponder the experience, and FEEL life at at its face value, I can see that the ferris wheel has much more to tell me. Now if only I could just sit back and listen…

Cassy
Photo Credits for ferris wheel and boardwalk pictures above:
www.photo.net/equipment/nikon/775 and http://www.geocities.com/mg12a/photos/indexof200photos.html

ps. Today I brought in young green coconuts to share with my students. We made coconut smoothee with just the meat and the coconut water…we sprinkled in some cinnamon…It is like heaven in a glass. What was strange, however, was that some of them didn’t seem too excited. I don’t understand how anyone could not SWOON at even just a mouthful of that delicacy…There are few things finer than a young coconut blended in the blender. Maybe mashed mango & banana pudding? :^)

Tomorrow I decided to bring in hemp seeds & hemp protein. Perhaps it will open a few people’s eyes. I guess I get a kick out of sharing such things, perhaps I share too much? Perhaps I should ask one or two of them what they think about that…Am I beginning to act like my mom in the classroom! Egads! Oh well. At least one of them (based on how this person talks about things) probably wouldn’t get the opportunity to learn about such things if it weren’t for what I mentioned…We started to chat in class about hemp, but I feared for what it might digress into, so I stopped the discussion midpoint. Not to be too PC, but I didn’t want to say too much. You know how that subject can go!

Till later.