Chia Seed Guy

 

chia seed pud in jar x 2

Try as I Might I Cannot Think of an Appropriate Title for This 

Did you hear about the guy who had to have a wad of chia seeds surgically removed from his oesophagus? He’d washed down a dry tablespoonful – half the recommended daily dose - with a glass of water. Looking after your health is a mind field, who knows what’s the correct plant-based milk to warm with your nightie night time celebrity chef-endorsed mushroom powder before you stalk Gwyneth on Goop. Who knew Turkey Tails aid gut health and regulate your prebiotic bowel microbiomes until next week. What even is Kefir. Bat’s milk? If you’ve ever made chia seed pudding you’ll know those thirsty little black eyes absorb up to 27 times their weight in water. Chia-seed-guy was only concerned for his daily omega 3’s but on the way to his stomach those seeds, from the Salvia Hispanica (flowering mint) plant native to Mexico and Guatemala started to swell and swell into a gelatinous obstruction surgeons could only remove, not by cutting him open and fishing out a plug worthy of a selfie and a formaldehyde filled jam jar on the mantelpiece but by pushing it through into his stomach with a paediatric probe. He’d be glad he was anaesthetised for that sort of pain and embarrassment now with its own medial term – Esophageal Impaction with Chia Seeds. A good reminder to all health junkies – the proof is often in the pudding.

Go The F@*k To Sleep - my version

St Lukes Hospice Shop, 20 cents

Rust Never Sleeps

 

These days I go to bed to stay awake half the night but I don’t feel alone

I have the gravelly honey tones of ready steady sleep App guy with me

I’m not listening to his instructions - get yourself comfortable any position is fine

I like to lie on my back with my hands on my stomach croons Dave with whale

backing music. I get my breathing - in for four, hold for seven, out for eight

all out of kilter because I’m imagining Dave is right beside me whispering in my ear

as I massage my belly swollen with spaghetti bolognese and hokey pokey ice cream

doused in go the fuck to sleep CBD oil. He’s a dark knight in the darkness. Solid

buff shoulders, slight dad bod, upper crumpet British accent with a hint of lad.

Comforting. He’s my radio all night jock telling me the only girl in the bed

room that I can go to sleep at any time. Anytime. The whale parps, I’m feeling drowsy

holding your breath all the time really reduces your oxygen saturation levels causing

sleepiness and the hint of a headache. I roll onto my side and tuck my hands under

my silk lavender-scented pillow.

 

But my brain has detached itself from weariness, it won’t shut up if only it was

this active in daylight. Dave is still whispering to me but I start thinking about

Jayroam on swiftly softly back to sleep, I’m whittling a poem, a fantasy, I imagine

JayRay with a wide white beard down to his belly button sitting by a campfire in

tights and a gherkin-coloured jerkin belted over his round tummy, legs crossed

reading from a book as thick as Grimms Gruesome Fairy Tales 1st edition.

Jayroam my lil gnome smoking a bone pipe filled with nutmeg-flavoured tobacco

rolled on the strapping thigh of his homely wife who is a giantess named Gladdest.

I would share a pine-scented calico yurt with Jayroam any day in an ancient

redwood forest, I’d lie snug in my wool sleep-sack while JayRay read tales of beasts

and maidens with the bloody sexist scary bits left out. All the princes have to go

in search of professions instead of murdering dragons and pashing bored princesses

who they now can’t locate because they’re away with cool covens learning how to

be boss bitches.

 

After two PC tales, I’d be sucking my thumb while circling my left nostril with my

willow feeling like a babe back in the womb - my luxury waterbed - twenty-seven

degrees of amniotic fluid weightless warm, drift dreaming on mother love and

future REM sleeps.

 

I heart you sleep App guys.

Jane Bloomfield

Collection 2023

The Witches In the Willows

 

A Family of Witches
(Close relations of mine)

The Beginning Before

(A prologue-in-progress)

It was love at first sight when Petulia Picklewhip’s parents, Pablo and Sophia-Paloma spied each other across the lawn. The Priory’s feted Cauldron Casserole Fiesta was boiling at full bubble. The day was brilliantly sunny. But as soon as the couple ogled each other, lightning flashed, tree tips fizzed and a shower of warm rain sprinkled down. A purple rainbow even appeared, in a perfect arch over the experimental topiary garden.

Pablo was a well-known wizard of twenty-five years.

Sophia-Paloma was a well-known witch of twenty-one. 

That afternoon, Motherwitch McMinty won ‘Best Potion’ for the 500^th year in a row, with her Bewitching Belladonna Youthful Forever Formula. Meanwhile, Pablo and Sophia-Paloma were concocting a spell to make the cherry tree they were sitting under in the Bonsai garden, burst into blossom. Pink, papery petals soon unfolded and they discovered their lifelong ambitions were the same! They both wanted to make good witchcraft. The world as they knew it was becoming increasingly filled with untidy, land grabbing witches. Forests were being cut down willy nilly. Crystal lakes were being polluted. Witch-castle prices were through the turrets! False nonsense by the way of misinforwitchmation was being spread across the land.

While the couple chatted, Pablo studied Sophia-Paloma’s features. Her long hair was as shiny and as black as a raven’s. Her eyes were the softest silver-grey. Her skin the softest ivory. Her high-necked, black taffeta gown was extremely flattering. And she smelt fantastic. She was wearing the latest and most hypnotic witch-fragrance on the market – Poisonne by Cauldron Klein.

At the same time, Sophia-Paloma studied Pablo. She admired his dark hair, slicked back into a wizard-bun. His smiling moustache waxed into two, upturned tips. His ruby red lips, which revealed a mouthful of pearly-white, slightly pointy teeth, when he talked. (Pablo had a slight lisp, witch she also thought cute.) His eyes were as green as green glass bottles. Pablo wore a snappy black suit and a white shirt with a very stiff collar. His boots were black lace-ups with sharp pointy toes. In fact, everything about Pablo was sharp! Especially his wit. That was razor-sharp! 

The priory bell rang. It was time for supper – share plates of meaty cauldron-casseroles. 

Pablo fashioned a ring from a piece of gold thread and the skull of a blackbird that he found in his pocket. He slipped it on Sophia-Paloma’s ring finger. ‘Will you be my best-witch-wife?’ 

A smile crept over Sophia-Paloma’s face, and the apples of her cheeks turned a rosy blush. ‘If you will be my best-wizard-husband?’ she replied. 

They held hands and said together, ‘I will!’ While unicorns pooed glitter in a far-off unicornverse.

‘We’ll live a long happy life together casting make-better spells on all the wicked people,’ beamed Sophia. (She’d recently won Kindest-Eco-Witch-of-the-Year.)

‘And we’ll have a happy family with lots of little witches and wizards running about,’ said Pablo. (He was an only wizard-child and had longed for siblings to turn into moths.)

Then they kissed, a very polite but very electric witch-kiss. The sky went dark. Cloud-sized, golden fireworks crackled and fluttered out of the sky. Hand in hand, they ran back to the crowd to share their magical news.

They had set a date for their wedding. It would take place in exactly one year’s time. On exactly the same day. The sixth day of the sixth month, June 1866.

Sophia-Paloma already knew their first child would be a girl, and they would name her Petulia Paloma.

Unfortunately, Motherwitch McMinty knew too …

PLEASE NOTE: This work of fiction (like all writing) is protected by copyright. This simply means do not copy it in any shape or form. If you do your hair will fall out! Or you may turn into a mouse. You have been warned.

I've Just Discovered Nora Ephron, an essay

**

If you haven’t read Nora Ephron’s middleaged bible:

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK

AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON BEING A WOMAN

Find yourself a copy, and a deckchair on a sunny tropical isle and start reading! Then try very hard to stop yourself from laughing out loud through every chapter. This fine collection of hilarious essays on all important-things-women. Hair growth. Hair loss. Handbags. Anti-aging-creams. Food. Fashion. Family. The joy-of-reading. Diminishing eyesight. Sex. Necks. Teeth. Turtlenecks. Everything! Is a riot. It will have your girlfriend beside you in a state of major FOMO until you read the last bath-oil-filled chapter and pass this light, yet weighty tome, over.

“Everything goes with black, especially black,” Nora instructs.

I’m sorry, Insta-Influencers, but this would have to be one of the most sensible pieces of advice I’ve heard in a long long time.

Born in New York to Jewish screenwriter parents, Nora took on board her mother’s advice ‘everything is copy’ and became a journalist after college. But not before she interned, in that white house on Washington Hill for none other than J F Kennedy. Did-JFK, or did-JFK-not, make a pass at Nora? You’ll need to read Chapter 7: Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told, to find out.

Nora’s writing went on to include, fiction, playwriting and screenwriting. She received Academy Award noms for her groundbreaking romantic comedies, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle.

NOW had Nora written about elbows in this book, I’d be in a more stable place today. Minutes after falling in love with her writing, (thanks to my daughter Lily and her Sydney flatmate, Sara) I felt the need to get my hands on her every work past, present and future. Then thanks to the online Reader’s Digest Wikipedia, I discovered Nora Ephron died in 2012.

Honestly, I was in a flap. Literally. A barren, layer-mash-munching-hen falling off its roost. Me. Because I would be fan-emailing Nora right this very minute to ask advice. Help ME! PLEASE! Nora!  I’d write … I need to make a confession. I feel bad about a lot of things. From my shoulders up. Under-eye pillows. WRINKLES. General greyness. Sag. Well. I won’t go on. But, Nora. Nora, I apologise. I feel fine about my neck!

(Breaths out. Breathes in. With brown paper bag over her mouth and nose.)

However, Dear Nora, I feel bad about my elbows. Really bad. Hells Bells, I caught sight of these curious objets just last week, when I was trying on a silk silver fashion garment I’d had knocked off by a charming tailor in Sanur, Bali for 250,000 Rupiah. Twenty-five dollars! Good god almighty, the elbows in the mirror may appear closer than they are. The elbows in the mirror, in fact, may appear altered. Said elbows are no longer elbows. They are a new breed of miniature dog. Teacup-Shar-pei. Mottled-tan. What’s one to do? Has any middleaged journalist-du-jour written a self-help booklet on elbows? Please! No amount of Kiehl’s Crème de Corps (Superb All-over Body Moisturizer of Superb Quality) is going to fix these puppies. These what-cha-ma-call-its? I’ve searched a lot of weird shit on Google. But never before have I searched ‘skin over elbow name’ to discover: Your Wenis is the Epidermis on the Peripheral Epiphyses Dorsal of your Humerus (the SKIN of your elbow.) You’ve got to be kidding me! Wenis! Does this mean that when discussing both elbows they should be referred to as wee-nigh …?

I think not.

My only saving grace is that I did not, once-upon-a-long-time-ago, get large eyes tattooed over my wenii after a magic-mushroom milkshake in the Gili Isles. Because any winking, open-eyed, long-lashed orbs would now look triple-hooded, reptilian, crows-footed. Much the same as my very own eyes on a bad morning. The ones I’m currently anointing with *Dr Dennis Gross Ferulic + Retinol Triple Correction Eye Serum. Apply to entire eye area, including eyelids, the results will be transformative, Dr D an NYC dermatologist, claims. Goodbye eyelid crepe. Bring it. Or sucked in! Again! Cah-shing.  

Curiously, Retinol or Retin A is the current in-vogue anti-aging-must-have ingredient. But its many guises have been around before. I laughed very loudly when I read Nora’s chapter titled Maintenance. Broken into subjections, and listed under Skin, were all the potions I for one have slapped on my visage in vain. And vanity. And at vast expense. I recalled driving across LA with my sister, in her beat-up blue beetle, to buy a tube of StriVectin-SD in the early 2000s. We may have well have been buying a kilo of Class-A-dope from a dodgy dealer, such was the drama and mystery surrounding the purchase of this tube-of-eternal-youth. It turned out to be simply skin lotion, noted Nora. The only thing Stri-Vectin-SD gave me was red, raw, itchy skin. So I stopped using it. 

I really do feel bad about my elbows. Nora. And fine about my neck.

But having got this off my chest, is my neck now going to huff and puff and turn into a Bernard-Mathews-boneless-lamb-roast (thick, greasy chub of sweaty meat) in a couple of years? Tomorrow? Nek week? I know that whatever’s in store for me, the chicken, the turkey gobbler, the elephant, the wattle (as describe in Chapter 1) is already pre-programmed deep within my DNA. And no amount of money or time is going to change a damn thing. Mayhaps in the not too distant future, Instagram will have developed an App which applies filters to necks as well as faces. Should one be inclinded. To employ it.

As my fan girling of Nora Ephron reached fever pitch, I went to purchase her published works via Amazon. The postage was prohibitive. Redic. Where can you get a decent priced book these days I pondered? Aww, I know. The library. After a trip to my local, I discovered Central Otago had an okay N.E selection. I requested her novel Heartburn, the fictionalised retelling of her marriage breakup with Carl Berstein. It was also made into a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in 1986. It’s a sad and funny book. Heart breaking in places.

I yarped so much about the enviable writing skills of N.E that long-time librarian Sharon was on to Wheelers toute-de-suite and has since supplemented the QT Lakes District Library shelves. It felt good to be doing some fellow-authorly-kindness. I hoped her children receive her royalties.

Yet I must credit the Z Generation for spreading the Nora E love. I only hope that reading a middle-aged woman’s bible can install in these beautiful young women of today a huge love for themselves and the skin they’re in. I for one hated my body for a way too long a time. I was pretty much on a diet from age 12 to 28. The Israeli army diet was one of my first, thanks to the informative pages of Cosmopolitan magazine. It was also thanks to Cosmo (as we so lovingly referred to it) that I discovered/realised I was pear-shaped, at age 13. Yep. My arse, hips and thighs were wider than my frame. Too wide. From that moment on, all I saw when I looked in the mirror were my hips and thighs, like an ugly, yet ripe human-sized William Bon Cretian staring guiltily back at me. Even when I grew First-11-hockey-shoulders. Then breasts. Those thunder thighs haunted my five foot four, fifty-seven odd kilo frame.

Nora said, “Oh how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini and don’t take it off until you’re 34.”

I’m 55 and I still wear a bikini. For the first time the other day, when I as getting out of the pool on that tropical isle, I wondered for the first time in while that perhaps I shouldn’t. What are the rules? I’m smaller than I was in my youth. My three children did not give me stretch marks. Thank whomever, big time, for that favour. I did receive major muscle separation with my third baby. Post birth, I could fit a sideways fist in the grand canyon running from my belly button to just above pubic bone. Thanks to 15 years of Pilates I’ve kept the crevasse narrowed to a few centimetres and my lower back in okay health. But back to the bikini. Nora? Anyone? I’ve decided, aged sixty orta do it. I’ll probably be in a skin protection suit by then anyways, such will be the size of the whole in the ozone layer. Or just the ground-heat of the planet will be enough to burn. Hey, we might all be in fire-fighting kits, with full face masks. Who will see all our devotion to eternal-yoof? Then.

Hopefully, by sixty we won’t care ... I know of course we will. So in the meantime, let’s hang on to another bit of excellent N.E advice: “If the shoe doesn’t fit in the store, it’s never going to fit.”

In praise of Nora Ephron (1941 – 2012). "There are no secrets." Thank you, Nora!

*Available from Mecca.

** Photo taken while lying on a sun lounger at Pondok Santi Luxury Resort, Gili Trawangan, Bali