aloha!
	for my 2nd post to veg-raw, i'll give a somewhat brief overview of myself and my
eating strategies.

	my mother prepared her womb well with five years of the good life on a small
commune located northwest of vancouver.  while on the mainland of british columbia, no
roads led to the hippie hide-out.  after an hour of driving from vancouver, an intrepid
traveller would take a large public ferry for about the same length of time.  from the
ferry dock it takes 45 minutes to get to a marina, where a small speedboat will get one
to the sheltered bay in 1/2 to a full hour, depending on the motor and weather.  back
then my ma would canoe from the marina, an all-day outing.  i provide all these details
to give you an idea of the seclusion in which my ma grew virtually all her own food
while maintaining a regular meditation & yoga schedule.
	the man my mom loved & lived with had had his tubes tied, so his best friend
donated the sperm for my procreation.  it took three times, but finally i acheived the
state of conception.  my mom had stopped smoking herb (and all the other activities she
deemed harmful) when she decided to have me.  she continued her organic farming,
watering the veggies & orchard, tending the bees, hauling seaweed for the soil.
nutritional yeast & molasses she took daily (both cooked), and kept up with iyengar's
_light on yoga_ 300-week program.  at 10pm on january 18th she ended a meditation by
opening her eyes and having her water break.
	after almost 14 hours of labor, a nine-pound four-ounce boy slid from her
exhausted body.  the few dozen people scattered around the log cabin, some of whom had
chanted "ooooommmmmmmm" for hours, noticed that the overcast sky had let through the
first sunlight of the day, threatening to hit my tender eyes.  a bird alighted on the
log windowsill and chirped a short tune.  once my aunt/midwife/godmother
severed the umbilical connection and the afterbirth slid forth, the smell of onions &
placenta frying away permeated the environs.  my ethical-vegetarian father ate some of
the suffering-free flesh.  others passed.
	breast fed for over two years, i got that full complement of beneficial
bacteria.  playing in the forest, some of the earliest pictures capture me foraging on
wild huckleberries in the nude.  naked fruit foraging continues to rank high on my list
of preferred leisure-time activities.  my first solid food came fresh from the earth.
my first swimming took place in the cold waters of the pacific ocean.  the most
technology i saw came in the form of the occasional airplane winging high above.
	from the age of two to ten i survived the civilized city of vancouver, along
with the civilized tastes.  my favorite food became bacon.  mcdonalds became a reward
for good behavior, with "chuck-e-cheezes" fun house/pizza parlor reserved for birthdays.
 poached eggs in the morning, lamb chops in the evening.  often i skipped buying lunch
at school so i could blow every cent on comic books.  and yet, every weekend i went to
my dad's, where vegetarianism ruled.  i remember pleading with my dad on occasion to buy
me a hamburger, but for the most part i enjoyed the lentil soups, burritos, salads,
pancakes, and plenty of milk.
	1986, at the age of ten, i moved to palo alto, california.  my grandmother
became a daily presence in my life, perpetually encouraging cow milk guzzling.  soon my
breakfast settled into a rut:  cream-cheese based omelet, multiple cream-cheese covered
pieces of toast, and the ubiquitous tall glass of milk.  i ranged from one-half to one
gallon a day!  positive reinforcement worked well with me.  my comfort foods invariably
appeared as haagen daaz or fruzen glazen (sp?), (no ben & jerry's back then).  many
memories find me with a bag of candy, a can of pringles, cheese puffs, and cheese dip.
two or three pieces of cake at parties wouldn't satisfy me.  i also had a weight
problem.
	always peripherally expecting to give up meat, the excuse didn't find me until
the summer of '91, when a girl i liked decided to go veggie.  there at summer camp, she
announced to the group one day tbat she wouldn't eat animals for the next two weeks.
many of her friends joined in, and they decided to sit at a seperate table for the
herbivores.  i gave up my carnivorous ways and sat with the girls (i the only male!).
from there i just didn't stop.  that new years i experimented with tequila, licking the
salt, downing the liquor, and sucking the lime.  after my step-bro & i had done many
shooters, we finished the bottle.  i had just swallowed the worm when he inquired,
"aren't you a vegetarian?"  in my drunken stupor, i had simply forgot.
	the next summer, '92, my step-brother & i worked together building a cabin with
my mom & others off at the commune where i began.  he talked of health food and i
noticed he ate fruit a half-hour before his salad.  one day i asked for some of the bee
pollen he ate.  he gave me a film-canister full of the soft golden grains, and another
full of powdered spirulina.  i threw it all in my mouth and nearly coughed up all the
green powder!  somehow i managed to blink away the tears from my red eyes and keep it
all inside.  waterskiing on a friend's boat that day proved exceptional.  every time i
fell, my skis wouldn't fall off, and i'd end up popping into a good stance.  after many
pseudo-falls, the boat stopped so someone else could have a chance.  i'd never held on
so long in my life!
	i admitted that "maybe there was something to all this health-food stuff" and
told my step-brother that i'd read one book he reccomended.  he replied: "i haven't
actually read the whole book myself, but from what i've heard the author really walks
his talk and changes a lot of lives.  read _diet for a new america_ by john robbins."  i
did.  overnight vegan!  literally, since i walked into the kitchen upon completing the
impressive tome to announce that my days of eating eggs & dairy had passed.  this didn't
please grandma too much.  mom just accepted.
	summer of '93 found me again at the commune, now more of a seasonal home for
the aging counterculture.  browsing a local healthfood store in town, i picked up a
small booklet by herbert shelton called "food combining made easy".  that made sense to
me.  i started eating a lot of raw food and steaming potatoes, carrots, broccoli, et
cetera.  a book by the thinktank *littlegreen, inc.* called _the transfiguration diet_
had me hot for cayenne and lusting after dr. john r. christopher's red clover
combination.  i soon claimed 100% rawness.  much of the time i didn't lie.  but sooner
rather than later i would end up down at the local taqueria with a super-veggie burrito
steaming between my paws as my mouth inhaled the forbidden fruit.  forbidden in my own
mind, but not in anyone else's that i had met.  all my encouragement to follow the
living foods lifestyle came from pages written by arnold ehret, ann wigmore, viktoras
kulvinskas, gabriel cousens, and others.  i finally met all those listed, save the
first (long deceased) at the first annual living foods symposium in santa cruz during
late october of '93.  ann died in a house fire before i ever got to meet her again.  ray
kent convinced me to not shave my head for halloween (i wanted to "be gandhi").  he
assured me that all hair on my noggin' served as "antennae for your sinuses."  ray
looked so healthy that i didn't question when he offered me his stage-prepared
guacamole.  i took a bite, not realizing that i had just eaten the only food i *hated*.
 someone must have given me a taste of over- or under-ripe avocado as a child, with the
result that i listed it as my only allergy on medical forms.  from that moment to now,
i've more than made up for all those years living avocado-free.  katherine clark &
viktoras kulvinskas convinced me to sign up as a super blue green algae distributor.
i've never regretted it.  at first i couldn't believe that viktoras advocated something
in a bottle over fresh wheatgrass!  the guy running the symposium, steve hurwitz, had
just sold me a new image #49, stainless-steel wheatgrass juicer.  viktoras
enlightened me to the *wild* nature of the algae, along with many other amazing
characteristics.  the only fractionated food i still ate came from my love for all
things linus pauling: vitamin c.  i'd written the two-time nobel prize winner a letter,
detailing my daily ritual of drinking 23 grams (23,000 mgs) of the magic white powder.
his reply termed my level "a little excessive".  happy day!
	summer of '94 had me abandon the ways of a surreptitious fired-food eater. on
august 20 i joined the yes!tour and ate all-raw for nine months.  john robbins founded
earthsave.  his son, ocean robbins, founded youth for environmental sanity (yes!).  i
had just graduated from high school and wanted to travel the country with yes! more than
attend ucsc.  i visited healthfood stores across the country, discovering morris krok's
masterpiece _fruit, the food & medicine of man_ in, of all places, detroit.  on long
island we stayed with a young man who had eaten raw for five years, but kind of faded
out of it.  his bookshelf held many delights, such as "raw gorilla" by da free john.  he
had an acme juicer & a water distiller.  he also opened my mind to the face on mars, the
pyramids on mars, and all that jazz.  too many date/avocado meals, with the consequent
gas.
	summer of '95 had me experimenting with a bit of cooked fare, "just to see how
my body will react."  i got sucked back into my addiction while assuring myself i simply
wanted to investigate.  off-and-on until the new years, when i got sick & tired of
feeling sick & tired on cooked fare.  all of '96 i've easily stayed raw, with no plans
for further experimentation in fired food.
	i followed a different eating strategy each year of high school.  carnivore as a
freshman.  vegetarian as a sophomore.  vegan as a junior.  high-raw as a senior.
all-raw the year after that.  i think junior high (7th & 8th grade) took me as far from
my true being as i've yet to venture.  my early foundation in the wilderness has helped
me make it through all the years of dietary abuse relatively unscathed.  i feel i've
awoken into a bright, new day.  years of needless pain & low energy i gladly leave
behind as i embrace a future that keeps getting better.  in 11th grade my friend, who's
family followed the mcdougall plan, asked me to help him start a nutrition-oriented
club.  we came up with the acronym "see" (students for educated eating).  as the
school's only vegan, i attended meetings regularly and encouraged others in their health
quest.  when i graduated, five students ate veganically.  i had moved onto the raw path,
which exasperated some of the newly converted vegans.  "bodhi, you'll never be
satisfied!"  i couln't argue...
	early '95 in ashland, oregon, i learned from a native who'd opened his home to
the yes!tour that the white buffalo calf came into our world on august 20th.  this
harbinger of good, prophecied by white buffalo calf woman long ago, shared his birthdate
with my "rawdate".  i loved ashland.
	so what about the summer of '96?  what great dietary shift manifested?  red hot
chili peppers!  _capsicum_ by dr. john r. christopher got me back on the cayenne
bandwagon, which i'd fallen off somewhere along the line while reading nightshade horror
stories.  i.e.: cattle fed on nightshade lose calcium so quickly that their bones break
easily.  picture a rib punctured lung and blood-frothed mouth.  i had long ago decided
to eschew eggplant, potatoes, peppers, even tomatoes!  i mellowed a bit this summer, but
still don't eat much of the first two.  peppers and tomatoes seem everywhere.  community
gardens, family backyards, friends, strangers... everyone's growing!  i started out
taking 1 teaspoon of cayenne three times a day, sometimes taking nothing else but
lemon-honey water.  stanley burroughs and his _master cleanser_ inspired me to fast on
it.  he gets down on honey, but doesn't consider the effect of over-cooked maple syrup.
 anyone ever hear of eating maple sap straight from the tree?  i think fresh juice
companies, like odwalla or naked juice, should test the market for fresh maple
tree blood.  i have a dream of low-temperature dehydrated maple syrup and powder.  how
about low-temperature dehydration of sugar cane juice?  sugar beets?  i seriously doubt
that sucanat could bear the raw label.
	attending the university of california at santa cruz seems my lot at the moment.
 i enjoy & appreciate it.  i also recognize the fundamental drawbacks to this existence.
 my body feels a little worked from my first dance class today, so i'll call it quits
for now and play a feldenkrais tape.  i've also got to get that $5 bill in the mail to
ward for the "sample" m2m (i can't imagine reading just one!).  if anyone wants to
sell/barter their old issues of m2m's, health science, or other living literature, feel
free to email me.  thanks for your attention.

om,
   bodhi