The Gastro-Intestinal Path To Enlightenment

So Katie came to town and man, did she get a good plateful of LA deliciousness: dolphins at Little Zuma, stumbling upon movie sets with recognizable actors, Disneyland, riding bikes on the Venice boardwalk, witnessing car accidents and calling 911, extreme and unbearable heat, camping out in movie theatres and watching several movies in a row to avoid unbearable heat, Mulholland Drive, Sunset Strip, Melrose Ave and only the briefest, long-distance glimpses of the Valley, impromtu BBQs in grassy backyards, film cast and crew wrap parties, drunken karaoke, and some hours in a coffee shops where everyone is writing a screenplay on their laptop.

Part and parcel of all this was some serious LA eating: Pink's the day she arrived (I had a heart-burn-wrenching spicy polish with chili, cheese, and three strips of bacon in a tortilla, she had a foot-long jalapeno dog with chili and saukraut), quickly followed by Pinkberry and when we got home that night, a dinner of popcorn and frozen, chocolate-covered bananas. And whiskey tonics. We ate at El Coyote, El Cholo, Loteria, Swinger's, bought pie from Du-par's, had more Pinkberry, had frozen chocolate-covered bananas in Disneyland (and meat on a stick in Adventureland), made pancakes, ate barbeque at picnic benches, drank poolside cocktails in our bathing suits at the Avalon Hotel and Irish car bombs at Tom Bergen's. And then had more Pinkberry.

Last month I did the Master Cleanse, which is the state of shutting down your digestive tract by only feeding it a concoction of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and grade B maple syrup, with intermitant gluggings of salt water to flush away all the evil stuff that gets sloughed off. I read a whole book on it before I did it, so I was reasonably assured that it 1) wouldn't kill me and 2) it might have some health benefits. It was a weird experience, totally turning off food. For one, it totally changed my schedule. Making food for myself and then making time to eat it takes up a lot of time, it turns out. Not to mention buying groceries and managing the whole do-I-have-enough-milk-for-tomorrow thing. But it also made some things a little awkward. When I got to campus early, killing time by getting a tea was no longer an option. Meeting people for dinner didn't work so well. I wasn't ever hungry per se. I did miss food a bit at the beginning, but that was soon replaced by an aesthetic smugness (which can sustain me for quite a while). I did have to make sure I had a bottle of The Concoction with me at all times, otherwise a serious fatigue and inner hollowness would set in that didn't feel quite right.

By day four (of ten prescribed days), I was watching Abel Gance's Napoleon at LACMA and decided to throw in the towel. It's not that I was watching a four-hour-long silent film from 1927 because the film is actually mesmerizing. It's more that I felt that the encroaching dizzyness and the skinnyness were better suited to some shopoholic fashionista anorexic that I was not. I had some delicious broth and a heavenly glass of orange juice that evening.

What did I learn from all of this? That food is spectacular. And also that I can go through phases of monkish discipline and emerge with wisdom. A wisdom that can support chasing a meal of the most insane hotdog ever with ice cream, popcorn and chocolate.