The Macrobiotic Way of Life

My final contribution from the leaves of the strangely magnetic Spiritual Community Guide. During my student years, this whacky eating system held a strange power over me, especially with its kooky connections with Zen, spirituality, martial arts, asceticism, and general esoteric philosophical balderdash. Ho hum. Everything is the differentiated manifestation of one infinity as they say. After a short while of eating on the 10th Regimen of the macrobiotic diet, I became supremely serene. You could say, harmonised. The kind of joyful productive mood where if one of your friends asks if you'd like to help someone move house from Liverpool to London, you say "of course" out of great concern for every soul that inhabits the planet. I dutifully boiled up some chickpeas and brown rice, and took them along with me in a huge bowl.

Things got off to a bad start with the move; the woman who was moving had done exactly f@ck all to pack when we got there at 9pm (moonlit flit), so we were stuck waiting until 1am. But it was alright because I had my bowl of macrobiotics. Everything Changes. When we eventually got packed up and drove down to London, we got to the outskirts of somewhere Londony when the Luton van broke down. Maybe it was Luton, although Nothing is Identical. But it was alright because as we waited 3 hours for the roadside recovery to arrive and tow us to a different Londony place, I had my bowl of macrobiotics. When we arrived in the new flat, we had had no sleep but offloaded everything. It turned out the woman hadn't bothered to empty her freezer so it was dripping with defrosted junk food. This was offered to us as a derisory breakfast. But it was alright, I was able to refuse because I had my dwindling bowl of macrobiotics. The Luton van was left in London, and there was a saga involving procurement of a hire car. We only set off returing from London at about 9pm the next day, still with no sleep. What has a Front has a Back. It turns out the Bigger the Front, the Bigger the Back. I had run out of macrobiotics.

The journey back was treacherous as I remember it; torrential dark rain and squeezing through narrow gaps where trucks had strained neck and neck, offering only a narrow eyed hope of passing them alive in the fast lane. Without macrobiotics, the prospect of death was strangely polar, oscillating between Love for Everything, and concern for my ass as it waved goodbye to my descending blood sugar below. All antagonisms are complementary. What begins, ends. I never went back to Macrobiotics.