Tanque Verde: Desert Heaven

I’ve been to heaven. It’s a dude ranch located in Tucson, Arizona. Surprised? Don’t be. It makes sense once you understand what this desert gem offers. What it signifies to us as individuals and social animals, as youngsters and not-so-youngsters, as singles and family folk, as gluttons and fitness freaks, as Team America and Team Finland (Olympic hockey eviscerations notwithstanding).

My family first went to Tanque Verde Ranch for Thanksgiving when I was two months old. We spent our next 25-odd Thanksgivings going back together, meeting a group of other like-minded families each year. It wasn’t just the food – bacon, eggs and pancakes and a fresh fruit buffet for breakfast; buffet lunches with carved prime rib and an epic dessert table; followed by a gourmet dinner. Well, okay, the food was pretty important. But not all-important.

The place is magical. It starts with the ride from the airport: forty-five minutes down a scorched desert highway that stretches past the Pima Air Museum's rusty hulls of thousands of decommissioned military planes, all set within a bowl of mountains ensconcing a sandy ocean of giraffe-sized saguaros and stout golden barrels and prickly pears and cholla cactus. The extreme scenery change always shocked the dreary Seattle November blahs out of me as a kid. I experience the same pleasant shock last week; even after nine years away, even after flying approximately 6.66 million miles to Tucson from Finland with my wife and our six-year-old and four-year-old. We all felt it once we gazed into the Sonora Desert, the greenest desert in North America. What “It” is I can’t exactly say, but it is magic and it makes six-year-old Finnish-American girls make up epic 10-minute songs that they sing with their little brother while their father, sitting behind his own brother, looks at the kids and remembers, “That was me, 30 years ago.” And ahead of us all rides grandpa, staring out the window with his own serene smile despite a long day's travel. Tres generaciones. It's always a beautiful thing.

It was my kids’ first time at Tanque Verde. I wasn’t sure how they’d handle it. Their first language is Finnish, although no one would know that from speaking with them. But still, it's always an adjustment. They’d never worn cowboy boots on a horse before, and they’d never been in a kids’ program with real cowgirls serving as their wranglers and supervisors. They’d never seen rattlesnakes. Or played Sharks and Minnows. They’d never even roasted smores at a cookout. They were far from home, left to play with American kids most of the day while my wife and I rode horses on dusty trails surrounded by cactus and the occasional rattlesnake or long-eared rabbit or coyote or white-tailed deer. And it was hot, 89 degrees, hotter than it ever gets in Finland.

My kids loved it. Every second. They made friends, they had favorite horses (T-Rex for my boy, Arizona for my little girl), they caught fish in the lake. Tipping back a prickly pear Margarita, I watched over them one night from the guest ranch’s Dog House Saloon as they played a capture-the-flag type game with a score of other kids ages 4 – 19. Everyone ran and screamed and jumped and climbed the way I remember doing at that age on those same sport courts: un-self-consciously, free, in-the-moment, in the only place on Earth I wasn’t concerned about being cool or tough, but just with being a kid playing with other kids. I found myself talking to the teenagers and being struck at how genuine and interesting they were, how much they had to offer in spirit and curiosity when they spoke to me as just another rider at the ranch, rather than as a teacher or just some goofy adult to be tolerated. Again, the memories. That used to be me.

The adults were cool, too. Each day I met another interesting, bright, friendly person. This gregariousness differs from my life in Finland, which is perhaps Europe’s most introverted country, a place where smiling and saying hello to a stranger marks you as either an idiot, a cheat, a foreigner, or all three. I can go days without having chitchat of any kind in Finland (which carries its own advantages as well, to be sure.) But here, in Arizona, within a day I struck up a real community of people with whom I could imagine sharing a tradition with indefinitely, watching their children grow against the timeless backdrop of the desert. All by starting sentences with: "Where'd you come out here from?"

The real world and all its concerns stays far away from this place. At the ranch it’s about family, horses, people, and food, in roughly that order. Every day we’d ride out on the same dusty trails, jokingly fighting over the best horses in the corral. How you handled yourself in a Western saddle topped the way you handled yourself in a boardroom or a classroom. Riding was paramount. And for those who don’t ride, it was about tennis and hiking and biking. Or maybe just sun and food.

As an adult, I can better define the magic of Tanque Verde Ranch: it’s community. It’s serenity. It’s tradition. We can lose sight of those things as we get stuck in the zig and the zag of teenage social pressure, of college choices, of career struggles, of maintaining our families and our marriages. We can have falling outs with our friends and loved ones; but at the ranch, all is forgiven. We can make mistakes in our life choices; but at the ranch all is momentarily forgotten. We can have failures; at the ranch, all is renewed. We can get caught on the hamster wheel; at the ranch, all is slowed down. You achieve perspective in such a place. You remember what’s really important.

You remember how good it feels to just ride a horse at a gallop. How tasty a steak tastes fresh off a wood-fired grill. How fun it is to catch a trout.

To have such an extended moment of peace, without cell phones or iPads, without worry over groceries and daycare – where all physical and emotional needs are met, and all undue expectations are erased—is to achieve a brief glimpse of the royal life, only without the paparazzi.

And, therefore, Heaven.

My understanding of the Great Ranch in the Sky is that it’s supposed to be a place of boundless love, an endless green desert populated by electric guitar-strumming angels, where cold cerveza is always on tap for you and all your departed friends, family, band-mates, teammates, brothers in arms. All together again after a long, long journey apart. It is a final rejoining of your community. It is the ultimate reunion, the limitless ride into the sunset, the never-ending feast with a table set for two or two thousand, if it pleases.

Until that ethereal sky ranch happens… I’m cool with Tanque Verde.

Free Short Story: TURF RAM VENTILATOR

With the Seahawks facing off against the Broncos on Sunday in what will most definitely be an epic Super Bowl, I would be remiss to not share with you all a short story I wrote concerning football, of the American variety. In it, a man's dark, mysterious past replays before his eyes as he climbs the ranks of the Finnish football world. I enjoyed writing this story two years ago. I plan on publishing it some day in some form, but I have no idea where. Until then, enjoy. Consider it a thank you for tuning in and showing your support.

Some things to consider when reading this:
1. There is an American football league in Finland, and it's surprisingly extensive.
2. Tough dudes play in it.
3. I broke my pinky finger playing receiver for the Pori Bears. It reminded me that:
4. I am too old, slow, and unskilled to play receiver for the Pori Bears. Or any other team, for that matter. And I have no business being on a football field with young, fast, strong people.
5. It's really hard to write with a broken pinky finger.

Turf Ram Ventilator

“Never die easy. Why run out of bounds and die easy? Make the linebacker pay. It carries into all facets of your life. It's okay to lose, to die, but don't die without trying, without giving it your best.” -- Walter Payton, Chicago Bears Running Back

           

            The pads click on and I am ready for the hurt. Been a while. Been too long. I missed the smell of sweat and fear on grass and chalk. The crack of plastic on bone and the feel of pigskin all rough and light tucked inside my arm. Seeing the linebacker’s eyes get wide and scared knowing he’s getting burned or blasted or both.

            And I keep pumping, baby. Like Walter Payton, Sweetness, said: Just keep pumping. Thick head down and rumble them tank treads. Don’t stop until you at the bottom of the pile or dancing in the end zone. Back in the day, no one wanted to take me head on so I’d go looking for contact. Always looking for trouble. Cost me yards on every play. Cost me a career. Cost too much. I know better now.

            I came a long ways to step back on the field. My plane out of SeaTac punched through the clouds and chased that sun all the way to Helsinki. That’s in Europe, by way of the North Pole. Then I bussed three hours North and some big towhead named Petri with eyes like them thousand lakes and skin like them birch trees here throws me a ball and says, “Welcome to the Pori Bears, Ray Graziano.”

            Funny, because I was named after the best Bear my daddy said he ever saw. And I dig bears. Always have. Them big fellas rise from their caves all lean and hungry for the sun after long, dark winters hibernating. And good Lord, that Finnish midnight sun. A man can run forever in daylight that don’t quit. Even a man like me. A man who ain’t what he says. A man who needs to rise from one dark cave.

            Give me eighteen inches of daylight. That's all I need. Gayle Sayers said that. No doubt. The Kansas Comet found daylight no matter where he ran, Kansas or Chicago or otherwise.

            I’m from Tacoma, myself. By way of Chicago, by way of a whole mess of couches in neighborhoods no kid should have to endure. But I keep pumping, baby. Just keep pumping. My baby boy understands.

            A shark stops swimming and he stops breathing. He dies, because he’s a ram ventilator. My baby saw it on Shark Week. I like that. I’m a ram ventilator, too.   

            First game, first play from scrimmage. I get in my stance and flex them tattoos and scars on my arms. Dudes on defense look scared. It makes my belly boil, like lava. Snap comes, they come in hot, so I use quick feet. Slide and spin, patience baby, wait for the hole, wait . . . daylight. Explode! Stiff-arm the linebacker. Get off my jersey, son, cause I’m breaking free. Keep pumping . . . I’m loose.

            I still got it. That extra gear kicks in and I’m into the secondary. The safety’s got cocky eyes, and I’m lowering my shoulder to knock some respect into this dude’s world the way I always done.

            Time freezes. I see my baby brother, hands folded across his chest, first time he’s worn a suit since we was kids at Sunday church. He looks pale, but peaceful. I’m sorry Sugar Ray. Sorry baby brother. I didn’t know how else to take care of you. Am I my brother’s keeper? No doubt.

            I fake left, plant, juke right. Knee don’t give, and I’m gone. So is baby brother. Touchdown, 85 yards – or, my bad, meters. I don’t know what a touchdown’s called in Finland, but I score three more and roll up 260 meters by the final whistle. The 50 people in the stands clap politely.

            Keep pumping, baby. All season long. Keep pumping.

            I break a whole mess of records. We go unbeaten and jump to the top division. Nicer uniforms, better players, bigger crowds, even better pay. Team wants more from me this season. Maybe too much. But I got that fire and there ain’t no feeding it back home. Hell, what home? Home ain’t nothing but fire and ash and ghosts. I rose back up from the grave once already. I’m a lot of things, but a nine-life cat ain’t one of them. My ol’ lady, she used to call me a snake. No doubt.

            Everybody knows when a snake sheds its skin, it’s shed for good. That’s called ecdysis. People shed their skin every month too, just don’t nobody see it. My skin’s shed.

            I gotta keep pumping in Finland.

            Papers say I got a future in Europe. Owners and players are respecting me like a man. Like Uncle Sam never did. I just been letting my pads do the talking up to now. Came too far to let my mouth shoot my foot. I won’t beat myself this time. I won’t quit.

            I meet a nice educated girl named Kaisla at the gym. Thick black hair and icy blue eyes. She asks me out. I can’t say no. I know I shouldn’t kick it in liquored-up joints full of white women. But I like her so I hit my first club in Finland. Dudes up in that piece look like James Bond villains. Couple start jawing at me. I don’t pay no mind, but one dude drops a coin in my jukebox and talks nasty to Kaisla, pinches her, and I’m about to waste it all on this knucklehead, I’m about to get pushed back into the earth, when Kaisla lays into him so hard in that language of machine gun rrrr’s and hissing S’s that I feel kinda sorry for him the way he stumbles off, tail tucked between his legs.

            She traces my scars that night at her place. Asks me where they came from. Keeps asking all winter. Asks me again in the summer at her family’s little cottage on the lake. They call it a mooki, or something like that. A place where we just roast in the sauna, swim, and listen to the birds. We watch two swans gliding on the lake, and we’re naked, waist deep in that cold blue water, her skin’s pink and hot with steam coming off it still from the sauna. She tells me that when swans mate, they mate for life. They are monogamous. She traces my scars again. Asks me where they came from. Asks me if l like it in Finland. Asks me if I could stay here. Stay with her.

I don’t care for lying to her no more. I tell her my real name, Gayle Graziano, and who and what I really am. She cries and cries, and I think she is leaving me when she lets herself slip under the water. It’s so quiet when she’s under water, nothing but wind and birds, and for the first time I see that nature is beautiful, just like my baby boy always said it was, even though he only saw nature on the TV. Then Kaisla comes back up and wraps her arms around me, all cold and wet and clean. She tells me my scars are beautiful. Tells me I’m beautiful. Tells me she loves me. She makes me feel clean again.

            New season. First game. We get stuffed by the Helsinki Wolverines the first series. And the second. And the third. We’re down 14-0 at half. Dudes are getting down on Adam, our new star American quarterback.

            He thinks he’s too good for Finland. He be hittin’ the bars and duckin’ the gym. But kid’s got skills. I scouted his tape and told the Bears to pay him bookoo Benjamins to run the option. Meanwhile I said nuh-uh to the German and Canadian leagues and no thanks to the Helsinki Wolverines’ cash. Ain’t about the bling, no more. I missed my shot for D-I, I lost my dream for the NFL. That ain’t me no more. I represent them Bears. No doubt.

            Swing pass to me. Stutter step, cut, bounce to the outside, keep pumping -- how you say See Ya in Finnish, partner -- break loose . . . but I’m caught from behind after 35 meters. I’m the strongest I’ve been, rock hard, 100 kilos no fat. But I’m not 4.3 quick like Gayle Graziano was.

            First down. Pocket collapses and I see why Adam never went nowhere in college ball. He loses his swagger, gets jitterbug feet, tunnel vision. Adam gives up on his blockers, gives up on his talent, panics and overthrows his man. His fault, but he’s barking at our tight end, Petri. I grab that big Finnish boy’s facemask and tell him, “Head up partner, I got your back.” Fumbled snap and Adam gets sacked the next play. Next one he’s mad doggin’ his slot receiver, Nikko, for running a bad route. Adam’s body language oozes defeat. Head up, dawg. Got your whole life ahead of you. Keep pumping, baby. Just keep pumping.

            We go on fourth down. Screen pass to me. Bad play call. Them Wolverines pin back their ears. But my boy Petri crushes the linebacker’s skull with a real-man block. I spin, keep pumping, break through two big linemen trying to pull me down.

            I lower my shoulder and straight coldcock the safety and I hear the Helsinki crowd of a thousand say, “Oi!” But the cornerbacks surround me, the linebackers pile on, and they’re pulling me down, down into the earth. Petri and Nikko are holding me up, pushing me forward. One more meter. Just one meter for four more downs.

            Just keep pumping, baby. I been down in that hole and I ain’t going there now. Not just yet.

            I see the casket beside my brother’s. My baby’s sleeping. My little boy. Not so little no more, not much younger than his uncle, Sugar Ray, and they look like brothers sleeping in church in their black suits. I’m sorry little man, I’m so sorry sweet Baby Ray. I named you after my baby brother, who my daddy named after Sugar Ray Robinson, best fighter he ever saw and that’s what I tried to make you, fighters, when you was so much more.   

            My baby brother grew up trying to ball like me and when that misfired, he tried to be hard like me. I’m sorry Sugar Ray. I didn’t know how else to raise you when momma passed on. But you grew up so big and strong and bright, and I needed muscle, needed loyalty on my crew, and you represent, no doubt.

            I’m sorry Baby Ray. I shoulda took better care of you after your momma quit. Never give up, keep on pumping, don’t you quit on our boy. What’d you think was gon’ happen, throwin’ that lamb to the wolves? But Baby Ray looked up at the gray Tacoma sky like he was seeing jungles and Africa only he could see and he looked wise in his fresh-faced, bright-eyed way, and he said it’s alright daddy, momma ain’t got the maternal instinct, I seen it with lions, I seen it on Nat Geo with Uncle Ray.

            Them bullets were mine. My evils, my enemies. Keep breathing Baby Ray! Don’t you quit on me, just keep breathing! Keep breathing Sugar Ray! Just keep breathing! I kept pumping your chest, the blood pouring down my arms into the holes in your heart. Then I stopped pumping. You didn’t quit. I quit. I failed. And then I quit for real. My crew wanted blood for blood. Extermination. My baby would have called it the primal instinct. But I just wanted to sink down into the earth with you. No more ram ventilation. Just hibernation. So I sank. I died that day.

            Hard things crumble and burn. Even comets. My old man named me after Gayle Sayers, The Kansas Comet. They flash bright then burn up in the sky before they hit the ground. I needed a daddy, but daddy’s gone, too. I looked to God but he was quiet. Forget You, then.

            I thought about all them nature things my baby taught me. Like how when caterpillars go into their big, dark case, most of their old body dies. And they eat that old body so the new body can grow and punch through that chrysalis a butterfly. That’s called metamorphosis.

            And that’s the truth.

            Baby Ray, you were so smart, always watching them nature programs and teaching me about hibernation and ecdysis and ram ventilation and metamorphosis. And Sugar Ray, always waving that passport and watching that travel channel and saying it’s a big ol’ world, let’s go roll up on it. I never listened. I quit on you both like I quit on myself.

            I tattooed your names over the bullet holes on my biceps. I’m RayRay now. I’m what you would have been if I’d done things right.

            Some baby sharks eat their own brothers in their momma’s belly. That’s called adelphophagy. They’re born killers. My baby saw it on Shark Week. Told me about it all wide-eyed, like he’d just seen a monster movie. And he looked at me funny, like . . . I was the monster.

            I was. Now I’m a butterfly.

            I pulled my old tape and told them foreign teams it was last year’s. Told ‘em I’m Ray, not Gayle. I’m twenty-three again. Not thirty-three. Rejuvenation takes eight hours of sweat a day and bottled youth. It takes sacrifice. But I’ll do it Baby Ray, I’ll do it Sugar Ray. I’ll atone for my adelphophagy. I am my brother’s keeper. And I’ll be as beautiful as my baby was if I keep ram ventilating in this big new ocean. No doubt.

            The Pori Bears came knocking for Ray Graziano. But I had to be Gayle one more time. So I flashed Gayle’s passport in Helsinki. Then I gave the Pori Bears Ray’s passport. Metamorphosis complete.

            I’m down. But my legs are still spinning like the wheels on an overturned bus and I’m crying, roaring, screaming, “Keep pumping Ray, keep pumping, don’t you quit Ray, don’t you ever quit!”

            First down by a nose. I bounce off the grass and I’m slapping helmets, shaking shoulder pads, roaring and crying. My Bears look at me like the crazy man I am but I can tell Adam gets it, they all get it: You never quit. You just keep pumping. Four more downs. Two more quarters. Another season.

            Keep pumping, baby. Just keep pumping.

“I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.”  -- Gayle Sayers, Chicago Bears Running Back

Me and the Master Cleanse

In a slight departure, today I'll recount my experience going without food for over a week. Fasting is an ancient religious practice, and while I did incorporate it into The Last Ancient, this blog entry is really about the post-holiday-gluttony anxiety we all feel upon ratcheting down the top button of our blue jeans on January 2nd.

A few years back I woke up so bloated from a Thanksgiving orgy of turkey and chorizo stuffing I considered something crazy: fasting. We’ve all been there, mentally. But in the name of science and a good grade for grad school, I decided to go there, physically – all the way to starvation town. Hence, The Master Cleanse, otherwise knows as The Lemonade Diet, a daunting feat of self-starvation dreamed up by a quack named Stanley Burroughs in 1940 and which remains popular with celebrities still.

Yup, I did it: Ten days of no solid food. Just liter after liter of a wretched concoction of water, maple syrup, lemon, and cayenne pepper. I’ll post my grad school article about it after the holidays, but I thought you all might be interested in my experience with what is arguably one of the dumbest things a person could do to one’s self in the name of health, mental wellbeing, and body image.

The first day was fine. Like a camel, I’d stored enough calories over Thanksgiving to not be hungry for over a day. Still, choking down the formulae was laborious. It’s imperative to drink your portion of “lemonade” on a regular schedule, even if it tastes like Komodo dragon urine. When feeling frisky, I’d heat it up and pretend it was tea. Unfortunately, I never got the expected boost typical of my go-to hot beverage, black-as-tar coffee. By the end of the day, the coffee began calling my name from every steaming mug of Starbucks clutched in every student’s hand riding the Mass T. The coffee proved to be my greatest challenge.

Hunger set in by the end of the second day. All I thought of was food. Everything I smelled and saw that could be eaten I wanted to buy or steal or fight for. Even though I was downing roughly 1,800 calories a day in maple syrup (shudderwincegulp), the hunger grew by the third day into an actual emotion, a pure and primal drive that someone who’s always 15 pounds overweight like myself rarely feels. Worse, however, was the caffeine withdrawals. Not headaches, I rarely get those. Just a general sense of impending world-ending doom, a darkness staining my soul and a thorn in my mind. Yes, my name is Eliot and I am a coffee addict. It’s pathetic, but oddly acceptable by society.

The fourth day my tongue turned white. I stared at it in the mirror for a long time, wondering if this was how tongues were supposed to look or whether I’d just spiraled into full-blown malnutrition. I had woken up feeling as though someone had funneled kitty litter into my mouth and then given laxatives to a constipated calico. Some heavy toothbrush scrubbing removed most of the grit. Turns out, according to a doctor friend of mine, the accumulation of bacteria on our tongues is normally scoured off by the act of eating. No eating, no cleaning of the tongue. Go figure.

By day five, my senses grew heightened, particularly my sense of smell. For instance, I was gagging at the scent of something rotten in our kitchen that my wife literally couldn’t detect. I sniffed the air around the refrigerator and cupboards like a hound. It was killing me, the stench of something dead and rotten. I pinpointed it with my nose, followed the line of offensive reek like a Looney Tunes animal, and discovered an onion that had turned soft and black in a kitchen crevasse. So awful was that smell, I would have puked had anything solid remained in my digestive system (I’d stopped going number two by this time, if you’re interested). Moreover, the scent of coffee was killing me. Every cell screamed for the black nectar of Starbucks.

While my senses were heightened, my mental faculties were dimming. I couldn’t balance two thoughts at once. As I was still working at the Harvard Health Letters, I kind of made that work for me by focusing extra hard on whatever task was at hand, while swigging from a 2-liter bottle filled with a ration of dirty rain-water colored “lemonade.” I found myself staring into people’s eyes with heavy concentration when anyone spoke to me. I had to, otherwise I’d miss the conversation, and I didn’t want to screw something up bad enough that I’d have to explain to these people of science and high professionalism that I was experimenting with starvation on myself. Not sure if anyone was freaked out by how intense I was. No one mentioned anything.

Well, one person did. My professor knew what I was doing and by day six she looked at me in class and said, “Eliot, I have been watching you throughout this crazy project and there is some kind of a demon growing inside of you.” Uh-oh. They’re on to me, I thought. My professor is highly attuned to the pitfalls of eating disorders and the grave threat of malnutrition they entail. She wasn’t happy about my choice, and kept reminding me that no one in Boston University’s Master’s of Science Journalism Program had ever died for an assignment. She demanded I keep that streak alive.

Okay, actually, my wife might have noticed something was up, too. I was short-tempered. I mean, Rob Ford-after-being-cut-off-at-an-Irish-bar-and-buffet-table short-tempered. I knew as the anger built that it wasn’t a rational argument I was inciting (unlike Mayor Ford), so I’d try to bite it back (also unlike Mayor Ford), but sometimes the spleen would shoot out anyway (exactly like Mayor Ford).

I was waiting for the lemonade cleansing spiritual Nirvana around which Stanley Burroughs built a whole empire. Many internet testimonials report a spiritual uplifting from the act of fasting, a self-induced high. I remained at the edge of miserable throughout my experience, my only Nirvana experience coming from Kurt Cobain in my iPod to drown out the sound of my growling tummy.

Well, it wasn’t Nirvana exactly, but around day seven I noticed a mental change. Walking through a supermarket, I found everything in it absolutely beautiful. It was like seeing red apples and green broccoli and gold pineapples through the eyes of a child. I realized that I was looking at food that I would not consume, that I was free from the constant judging of whether or not to eat everything I saw. The hunger within me sublimated into a profound appreciation for the shape and color and texture of food—for its natural beauty. I see now why cultural anthropologists say that the evolutionary function of our faculty for beauty relates to food selection (as well as healthy mates and suitable shelter). But I wasn’t thinking it over too clearly at the time. I was just experiencing the rush of being in control of this most basic of drives.

That appreciation extended to my sense of smell. I would stand and sniff the air long enough to probably look like a weirdo whenever I’d pass a restaurant, processing the individual ingredients floating onto my olfactory system. It was amazing how good certain foods smelled, such as Indian and Thai restaurants full of their spices and vegetables, and how brutal other foods reeked, such as the chemical fast food slop and even the charred meat from the BBQ joint below where we lived in Brookline Village (this is coming from a devout carnivore, by the way). A new connection between mind and stomach was being established. My sense of smell was helping me appreciate food that I knew would be most suitable for me.

My stomach, by this time, was without any pain for the first time in years. I’m sensitive to a multitude of grains, even in trace amounts, so not eating pressed the re-set button on my stomach as all the wheat and whatnot was processed out.

By the end of the cleanse, fifteen pounds lighter,  I realized I could keep on going but didn’t see  the point. Some hard-cores swear by the 20-day challenge, but no thanks. So for my first meal post-cleanse? Thai food. It was sensational. Each spoonful of Tom Kha Gai was like a drug. Not only was my stomach excited to get real food, my brain was igniting with the coconut milk and spices. The mild curry put me into a cloud of serenity. It felt like coming home.

This is in no way a promotion of The Master Cleanse. It’s really a stupid thing to do. Which makes me… well, I’ll let you decide. Aside from the re-established mind-tummy connection fasting provided, and the joy of that triumphant meal (and the reprieve from chronic allergenic pain, which I’ve since maintained through smarter eating choices), I would recommend this diet to no one. For a hundred reasons it’s not a good idea. If you really wanted to do a hard-core juice diet, I could understand blending healthy smoothies and drinking things with proper quantities of protein and electrolytes. But after the inevitable moral hangover of holiday gluttony, I urge you to not take drastic measure other than the most sensible thing: eat less, exercise more.

Stay tuned for more on this topic after the holidays! And feel free to share your most extreme dieting attempts.