Spring Break Hermitage

I've been in semi-seclusion for 1.5 days so far.  Here are some initial thoughts:

• I forgot how much I love to read fiction. I devoured an entire Dresden Files novel yesterday
• Fresh juice is crazy awesome.  My favorite so far is cucumber, pineapple, hot pepper, basil.
• If you drink a pound of carrots (and no solid food) in 2 days, your poo turns bright orange.
• Butternut squash juice is gross.  
• Juice fast is pretty easy so far, but boring. Turns out I REALLY like food.
• I have amazing dreams if I wake around dawn, read for an hour or so and then go back to sleep.
• My mother is now a glowing bodhisatvah made from cobalt blue crystal who lives in Chesed and looks like a weird cross between Kali and the Virgin Mary. (not at all like the picture to the right)
• Meditating is much easier when you're not sleep deprived.
• I need to sleep a lot.  Seriously.  Given it's druthers, my body seems to like to sleep for about 6 hours, wake up for an hour or two, and then go back to sleep for another 4 hours.

Spring Break

Next week is Passover.  Because I work in a Jewish school, that means I have off work.  I've pulled some strings and rearranged some other things in order to make it so that I have a week completely off, and the apartment to myself.  I'm going to try and do a seven day meditation/magic/healing retreat type thing.  I'll start off Saturday, my cleaning up the apartment.

I got a juicer on craigslist, so I'm going to buy a ton of fruits and veggies and make healthy fresh juice, which I'm in the process of convincing myself is a magical refreshing, cleansing tonic/panacea that eliminates all toxins (whatever that means) and rejuvenates the body and soul.  I have not yet been completely successful at convincing myself of this, but I'm getting there.  It definitely sounds healthy, and I'm a big believer in magical potions as sympathetic magic, so mega-dosing on plant potion certainly seems like a totally reasonable way to invoke Spring.  Perhaps I'll drink only juice and water, and make a planetary themed juice for each day.  Like, Sunday it can be orange/carrot/ginger and Monday can be cucumber/mint/melon, etc.  Or whatever.

I'm going to unplug the TV and all that, but leave my computer for playing music.  I'll also try to blog every day.  I'm worried that might slip into facebook and nonsense, so I might handwrite a journal, and then transcribe it to the web after the retreat is over.

So, Saturday night I'm going to try to go to bed early.  Without setting an alarm, I'll wake up whenever I wake up (which is probably about 8ish...I wake at 6 on weekdays).  I'll do my regular 20 minute morning meditation, and then do some belly dancing work out for 30 minutes. (I want to say the dance in the morning is also regular...I plan to do it every morning, but I actually do it less than 3 days a week)  After that, I guess I'll take a shower and then drink my juice.  If it's nice, I'll walk down to the pier and watch the water for a while.  Otherwise, I think maybe I'll read for an hour or so.  Midmorning, I think I want to do some kind of Sun invokation.