“Super” blasted

So I recently started trying the so-called green “Superfood” powder called “Amazing Grass” – http://www.amazinggrass.com/greensuperfood.html and the shit made me completely sick.

Seriously.

I’ve been stricken by about 4 different illnesses this week. Talk about ridiculous.

I don’t know. Anyway, the reason I am suspect of this so-called “Green superfood” is that I had a nasty case of diarrhea for the past couple of days. And I noticed that my diet hadn’t completely changed, or anything, and I’ve been perfectly healthy and eating well for a long time now.

Just a word to the wise though. It’s possible that I may be allergic to some ingredient in the formula. Kind of a scary thought – but before I dump the stuff out completely I figured I’d test a dose perhaps in a week or two.

Hope I prepare well for it.

Anyway, back to one of my original points – this week has been a fucking joke. Seriously, every time I feel really good about life and feel like I’m ready to begin advancing my life in large strides, some stupid shit happens to me.

Every time I come back from a trip from Mexico, for example. One of the biggest problems (and the reason I went down to Mexico on my own twice in the past two months), and perhaps the biggest thorn in my side is when my brother comes home. Everything, for me, is fine when he’s not around – I’m at peace. Obviously, things are far from perfect, and while I have grown accustomed to staying at my mom’s guesthouse these past several months it’s still not my ideal situation.

But I manage. Del Mar is a great town and a great place to recover when you’re down on your luck. I can walk a block and dig my toes in the sand. I can take my dog out and wander along the train tracks, to the village or to fields of yellow and white flowers.

But – and this is a big BUT – when my brother Joey comes here, life is hell. The guy knows how to make his presence felt, and he prides himself in being as annoying, noisy, and bothersome as possible. He spends his time drinking and doing stupid shit. He always requests money or some other favor. He’s loud and obnoxious, and doesn’t respect people’s personal space.

And of course, most annoyingly, he brings over other annoying kids who are very much like him. And that’s not even the heart of the matter. As I alluded to – he doesn’t respect my space. He thinks he can come home, remove all of my things, move himself into my room and lock all the doors.

So anyway, as a result of my previous return from Mexico, I came home and I wanted to get a few personal defects from my room in the guesthouse (which, upon my arrival, Joey had gleefully moved into and was smoking pot with a few friends). I politely asked Joey several times to let me take a look to see if I had anything in the room.

Well, being who he is, it’s never fucking simple. “What do you need?” he kept repeating in a hurried tone over and over again, clearly intent on giving me the run around and not letting me look through the drawers for my personal items. So, after several minutes of this, I broke the room’s only window and attempted to get inside, badly cutting my kneecap with a 4-inch long laceration. The glass cut me all the way down the bone, and the skin around the wound became useless flaps of flesh.

So that was fun. And now I have a gnarly scar. Thanks Joey.

Oh… and THIS time he’s back for the summer, so I’m really lucky now. First, I went to Mexico to avoid him, and then upon my return left immediately for a friend’s house in San Marcos / San Elijo area, and…. the place drives me insane.

I can’t stand the neighborhood. It’s a vast sea of suburbia – and everything I hate about it. All of the houses look identical, as far as the eye can see. It’s sad and depressing. The roads are crammed with road-raging SUVs and mini-vans. Consumption, consumption, consumption is the name of the game. Running down the Joneses with the newest widget, iPhone, Wii, whatever other shit you can spend money on but don’t really need. Reproducing and filling the homes with screaming little monsters and a dog. I can barely stand it.

After two nights of staying there I knew I had to escape. So here I am. I still need to go back there at some point – but I need a break.

I don’t really know how in the hell I was reduced to the poor dilapidated state that I was in this week though – although I have made several attempts to analyze the root of the cause. Stress? Food poisoning from a so-called “superfood?” Evil siblings? Painful break-up (I was dating a married woman for the past few months which I finally had to put an end to)? Not having a place to live?

I really don’t know what the heck was wrong with me, but it seemed the floodgates had all but descended upon me, washing me away into oblivion. This was the week from hell for me. Headaches, neckaches, insomnia, narcolepsy, stomach flu, diarrhea, depression… you name it, I lived through all of it the past four days.

And it’s interesting because I was in such a fine, calm, and collected mood when I left Mexico.

Gives me a lot to think about…

We’d do well to eliminate the bad and replicate more of the good in our lives, yes?

So how can we start?

Because the frustrating thing is, everything seems to be a Pandora’s box… or… a baited hook, if you will. I go out and purchase green “superfoods” because I want to be healthier, so that I can live a more active, productive, happier life. Instead…. WTF happens: I become deathly ill?

Isn’t that the whole point, though? That life is nothing but a cruel paradox… an amusing and bittersweet irony, full of sick jokes such as this? I mean, seriously – you’d think that finally getting out of my mom’s house after living here for the past 6 months (after 5 years on my own) would be the best thing for me and would make me feel great again, instead I get fucking depressed and hate my new temporary home, despite how badly I wanted to experience the romanticism of living “on the road,” without a permanent home address?

Oh… and don’t even get me started on dating, and how much of a twisted, backwards concept that is.

That’s a topic for an entirely different blog post.

But you see my point though.

Everything we humans try to do to improve ourselves, our lives, or our world in general, gets blasted into dust. Look at the story of the “Tower of Babel” as an example – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel. I mean seriously, is anything worth striving for if all of our hopes, ambitions, goals, yearnings, are dashed into the wind like some kind of cruel game?

Well you know what, I don’t fucking care. If the universe wants to keep throwing me around every single time I try to change myself and improve things for the better, I’ll just keep trying again, and again, and again… until shit works.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Hopefully in a blog post soon, which will elaborate upon the glorious details of my hopefully semi-successful endeavour.

But we do know Life to be a cruel game. But we humans can’t resign ourselves to fatalism – we laugh, cry, blush, envy, hope, wish, and so very much more… when really our lives are but a fleeting seam in an infinite, absolute timespan within a universe upon which we are less than a speck, where all of our ambitions have but the most minute and miniscule meaning.