Last night I picked up something at Whole Foods marketed as "True Cod". Dredged in flour and pan-fried in ghee, it was amazing with just a bit of salt and pepper for seasoning. It cooked up easily, flaky but firm, tasty but not too strong. Research suggests this was actually Pacific cod; naturally, it's a bottom-dweller so I'm not supposed to eat it. (Most fish is off my diet--don't ask me why.) Still, it was damned tasty, and it's more important that I cook for myself than that I eat strictly, though that is still important. The cooking part has something to do with putting my own energy into food that I eat; I'm not really sure how it's supposed to work, but I can feel the difference.

I bought myself a nice black t-shirt of this comic, with white writing and red hearts. Yay.

I'm watching less TV (I'm less interested and there's also nothing on), and spending a bit less time with the computer, but realizing that my lifestyle is not easy to reconcile with the sort of spiritual centeredness I rediscovered last month. There's a lot of distraction, a lot of activity and things to do outside myself, and it's easy to get drawn in by all that, and lose that internal focus. Ironically, that internal focus, the sense that I don't need anything outside myself, pretty much guarantees at least one woman showing up to cause trouble. In the past that's invariably led me off-kilter, like a smoothly spinning top that finally loses its balance and spins out of control; this time, let's see what I can do differently. (I could turn them down, but what's the point? I like girls. Might as well go with it.)

There's something transforming and energizing about the simple discipline of not doing something I'm trying to stop doing--eat sugar, for instance. And each such act makes the next one easier, and the process makes me slow down and think and consider everything that I eat, which is really the important thing.

I started reading my copy of Lin-Chi:

    Followers of the Way, as I look at it, we are no different from
    Shakyamuni. In all our various activities each day, is there anything
    we lack? The wonderful light of the six faculties has never for a
    moment ceased to shine. If you could just look at it this way, then
    you'd be the kind of person who has nothing to do for the rest of his
    life.

    Fellow believers, "There is no safety in the threefold world; it is
    like a burning house." This is no place for you to longer for long!
    The deadly demon of impermanence will be on you in an instant,
    regardless of whether you're rich or poor, old or young.

    If you want to be no different from the patriarchs and buddhas, then
    never look for something outside yourselves.