Laura Loves Houston

I'm Laura. I live in Third Ward, Houston, Texas. I seek reconciliation, renewal, and redemption. I blog photos, thoughts, quotes, music, and videos about who I meet, what I do, and what I learn.

[the-broken-bread]

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eye candy, body candy, happiness candy

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“We believe in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. To this end, we produce collective portfolios, contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets—all while offering each other daily support as allies and friends.” justseeds.org

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Sugar Pie Honey Bunch Fig Almond Balls

1 C Almonds, 2 C Dried Figs, 1 Tbsp Raw Honey

Blend in food processor with a couple of tablespoons of water to help them sick together,

Roll in Raw Tahini aka sesame seed butter which curbs extra sweet toothiness. 

This recipe is high carb, low fat, plant based, organic, and raw. To learn more about what each of these qualities mean, click the links or ask a question! 

Peace

[veerideas]

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For a long time, i thought feeling LESS was the answer.  I started practicing yoga and eating plants because i thought it would work out unhealthy, painful things. Numbing, we know, is an old trick to dealing with the fundamental problems of pain, trauma, broken relationships with others, our enviornment, and our selves. I thought eating a ton of fruits and veggies and going to a yoga studio every day would feel like numbing on the beach. A year later, I have lost 40 pounds and a lot of habitually negative thought, but more than anything, I am feeling MORE : healthy, wonderful, vibrant things... and experiencing new ways to work the unhealthy, painful things out, out, out. Now i think feeling MORE is definitely the answer.

I am starting to wake up to feelings inside my body. Through eating raw food and yoga practice, I am becoming able to see light and recognize energy outside my body as well, beginning to recognize patterns and geometry in nature and in architecture. I’ve started to notice the light points in people’s eyes, and have been seeing how arrangements show up differently in the same person depending on his mood, and how excited he is about whatever we’re talking about. I am much more aware of body language, facial expressions, and how communication is a synthesis of thought, word, and movement. These shifts in awareness have all happened this year, 6-8 months after changing to a plant based diet and practicing yoga daily. 

Eating brings me more pleasure than i can explain, first with fresh food flavor, tasting like ancient awareness of health in my mouth, and later in my body when cells are receiving exquisite nutrition, and I’m feel full of strength, stamina and all kinds of positivity I didn’t know I had in me. Eating at least 1000 calories of fruit a day (in addition to regular meals) makes me feel more happiness for a longer time than any therapy or exercise class or other prescriptive remedy I’ve tried. I used to go to food for comfort. Now I go to food for power. I used to eat, feel grateful, then sleepy, and shut down. Now when I eat, I feel grateful, and want to get moving about it. 

My senses are healing as my body cleans itself of mucus and inorganic build up. I am starting to be able to feel the difference between 80bpm and 90bpm, 417 hz and 518 hz. I recently learned from a colon hydrotheraphy tech that some of the most common wastes building up in our colons are rubber, cement, and plaster. Why these are there to begin with is a question for another day, but suffice it to say a diet of fresh and organic plant matter is the best way to clean up a bit.

We know the food of the future looks different from grocery store aisles of processed wheat, soy, and corn. Vibrant, full life depends on vibrant, full life. We can choose to eat foods full of vibrant life, and feel more. 

Here’s a pretty picture taken by another raw vegan after all of those words. 

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In 2010 George Washington University school of medicine did a 22 week study of employees a major insurance corporation. Part of the group was given instruction on a low fat plant based diet, and part was not. These were the results. 

Producing and processing animals and animal products has damaged our planet and our bodies. 

Another way is possible, is happening, is improving the physical functioning, general health, emotional life, vitality, social functioning, and mental health of everyone willing to abandon the destructive industrialized food product complex we inherited and move on into the world of plant based eating for more wellness, vitality, and responsibility to ourselves and our environment. 

(Click through for full video on this study) 

[wallflower-musings]

I am happy when I eat fresh fruit, when I burst out laughing, when I discover a new song, when I finish a good book, when I wake up and feel relaxed. I’m glad to have friends, family, a home, food when I’m hungry, hot water when I shower. I love being able to live and see the seasons change, to have gifts at Christmas and at my birthday, to travel sometimes, to have a good education and a great access to culture. I’m flattered when people compliment me, when people smile at me, when people are polite to me. There are so many things that make life so simple and easy and I will always think about them more than all the bad things that will happen to me. I do not have time to be sad every day and ungrateful ; I have every reason in the world to be happy.

A few reasons why I’ll always prefer living (via wallflower-musings)

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The bike path in our neighborhood

is a great place to find pale people moving fast and avoiding eye contact. Usually i try to smile and say some kind of hello to everyone i come across, no matter where i am, which ends up being a kind of interesting experiment in social behaviors in different parts of town. One of my favorite spots to notice our cultural complexes is the portion of the Columbia Tapp Rail Trail between Pierce Elevated and Braeswood Bayou. Geographically, it's not far from the spine of Third Ward, a thoroughfare of people and messages and thoughts and conversation and street art, a kind of long, narrow playground, or fishbowl, for public life. There's a field with horses in it, a parked-in-the-grass-for-someday speedboat, three outdoor dominoes "courts", a Y103 fort, muraled corner store, Texas Southern University, preschool back yard, church vegetable garden, benches, benches, benches, and finally, a piece of evermurky but moving water egrets and sunflowers and i love. The bike path in our neighborhood is a good place to learn the lesson of what moving fast or slow does to us, our ability to interact with one another and the worlds we're in. I have the best interactions and enjoy the most beauty when i'm least blinded by the importance of what i'm doing or where i am going. When i forget my sunglasses and headphones and even my bike sometimes and am simply passing through Third Ward common space for a time. Unhurried by selfmade importance. Available to feel, respect, and practice honoring the body of life this long, white pavement spinal column holds and receives. I wish i knew how to shout this at fastmovers in their way through the tre. I wish segregated histories would give way to newcomers approaching slowly, with respect, a desire or at least willingness to learn from the oceanic wisdom of the long suffering steady in the veins of the ghetto. The communities of uncommodified wealth, the Compton, Camden, Bed Stuy, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 9th wards, the birthplaces of a new America, are where we have to slow down long enough to feel through some new-to-some ideas, let them travel up our stubborn spines to our hearts and brains, and learn our way to unity.

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OK so obviously my presentation and photography skills are not the highlight of this salad, but ohhhhh my, was this SO delicious and SO in need of sharing.

This salad is so good, when I was eating it I was thinking of what to call it, and the only thing I could think was just, “Oh Wow”.

13 ingredients and mayyybe 15 minutes of cutting and blending time.

Dressing: 1/3 C each of almonds and cashews, blended/food processed to crumbs 1/2 C fresh basil a couple blades of fresh lemongrass 1 teaspoon of dried mint 1 Tablespoon coconut oil 1/4 - 1C water, depending on how thick you like yo sauce ...all blended or food processed or cut and stirred up into one marvelous gathering of nutty yet bright, herby goodness...

((Now is when i shamelessly brag about the joy of using all herbs -- and cukes -- from the garden! You can toooo!!))

Salad: 2 C red cabbage (eeeee!! the yummiest) 1 C zucchini, julienned, kinda 1/2 C cucumber, also kinda julienned 1/2 C carrots, shaved 3 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 a thumb of ginger, similarly minced or pulverized

AND THEN the top secret extra shnazzy ingredient making everything taste like it was born for the occasion of coming together in one bowl/mouth...

1 teaspoon (or less) sesame oil 

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I’m gonna start a line of decadent treats called Vegan Baed Goods

Not really but i thought that would make a good blog title.

Here’s a recipe for Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups I copped from Running on Real Food and made better by doubling the amount of chocolate (duh), skipping the salt and using (the stupid dry end of the jar of) awwwwl natural almond butter:.

Chocolate:

1 cup melted coconut oil

2/3 cup maple syrup

1 cup raw cocoa powder (Equal Exchange has Fair Trade in bulk!)

Peanut Butter Filling:

1 cup natural peanut butter

2 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp maple syrup

Because I am feeling especially decadent, I added blackberries in between layers on some of them and it led to a mysteriously extra gooey (& a bit messy) twist, like some of the maple syrup was so happy to see the berries it ran out of the chocolate to greet them.  

And here’s the proof

The rest is in the pudding.. er, peanut butter cups. 

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Yesterday 7 second and third graders came in to the food coop

and recited the 7 principles of Kwanzaa in unison and then used their money cooperatively so they could get the big bag of chips. 

OK cool when I was 8 I was learning how to play four square. Jealous.

(For the rest of us: 

Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle. )

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Kendrick Lamar is teaching our students to read

How many of the 8th graders hearing King Kunta will have read Roots? Beyond being told we should spend time understanding a novel published 40 years ago, careful Lamar listeners may find ourselves needing to brush up on some American history to understand what he means when he raps, “Now I run the game, got the whole world talkin', King Kunta. Everybody wanna cut the legs off him.” 

Later, he invokes the power, politics and agricultural history of the yam. Quite the can of worms for independent knowledge seekers. 

Kendrick inspires his students to selfmotivated extension of immature understandings. This is the essence of what teachers across the nation have been struggling for, for decades. 

So I did a Google search to prove the theory that Hip Hop is beginning to receive respect for its value in educational currency. (After several Not all artists can , though, Kendrick packs with an especially lovely punch, as in:

Kendrick Lamar 101: Georgia Regents University English course -- 

What would it look like if, especially in our most underrepresented and thus misunderstood neighborhoods in our country (historically paired with the failingest schools in the country), we listened to the wisdom and history of the streets? What if instead of uniforms, a set curriculum, everstandardizing tests, twenty seated students in a sterile room with one standing professor, we understood learning not as a process, but living and breathing experiences.  

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I have this recurring dream

where I'll be in some fancy opera house or convention center, not sure what the performance is or how I got there. Usually, it's a Colosseum -- the seats stack up, up, and away into the sky, and I'm sitting either at the top most section or in the first few rows to stage left. Sometimes I'm with my family; most times I'm alone, and leave before the main event starts. Last night, the performance was incredible. Enormous ensemble of incredibly costumed dancers, integrated with stunning sounds of powerfully produced and engineered music I'd never heard before. The room felt more like a combination between a legislative chamber or UN conference room and Yankee Stadium. Some seating lay below the stage, some well above, and I was on a level equal with the performers. 

This time, dream gained a new story line. At some point, I left my seat and went down into some cavernous space underneath the performance area. I don't remember knowing where or why I was going, just feeling completely confident in belonging when I sat down at a table with the board of decision makers for whatever ambiguous organization this was. People started asking me questions when I sat down -- I don't think any were verbal, but it was nonetheless immediately clear that I needed to share information and understanding on why I was where I was. 

My subconscious must not know why I'm at the table with some impressive, ambiguously-purposed collection of people, together to discuss, debate, and make important decisions, because a friend/mentor appeared, introduced me to the group and defended my right to be there. After that, the board members relaxed and welcomed me freely, but I don't remember saying or doing anything but sitting there and letting her vouch for me. 

[insert dream analysis here... or not]

I'm not super interested in diving into the meaning and takeaways of the dream. For now, noting and acknowledging the spontaneous stories our minds create as we experience and live further into ever unfolding and changing realities -- paying special attention to the recurring themes and how they change as we do -- is work enough. 

Interested in reading more dreams? (Me too.) 

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Clementine Von Radics (image)

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Today I kicked ass

...But first I left my phone on the coffee shop table next to all of my belongings when I went to use the bathroom and it wasn't there when I got back. I don't have phone insurance, so I went into extreme recon mission mode immediately (read: googled "find my iphone" and prayed to the iphone finding gods) and saw a beautiful blue dot hovering two blocks away. 

I gathered my belongings and power walked to the spot, immediately spotted a woman nonchalantly scrolling through my phone, and had zero good ideas on how to get it back so I just told her, very loudly, "That is my phone," pointedly ignored her brilliantly constructed response ("I found it!"), decisively plucked it out of her hand and walked immediately back the way I came. 

The entire encounter covered probably 5 seconds and was incredibly empowering. Yay for nonviolent conflict resolution for my victim of theft self!

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Yesterday I practiced yoga behind a father with his son.

Toward the end of the class the teacher had us go into Bridge Pose, where you lie on your back, feet flat on the floor, and exhale your tailbone up and forward until the spine is in a straight line off the floor, leaving your feet and the base of your neck resting on the ground. The body from chin to knees becomes the "bridge", encouraging breath and blood circulation between the head and the feet. The pose can be practiced with eyes focused on the tip of the nose, which focuses the mind for heightened awareness. In this pose we experience the grounding support of our feet, from another angle. It's not a position we typically find ourselves in, and so, like most novel experiences, the physical posture can translate into new mindsets: thoughts, realizations, and breakthroughs. 

The father and son seemed to practice yoga often -- for the most part, the boy followed along well, and when he wasn't sure how to create the posture the teacher was directing, his father would patiently move his limbs for him or model in a way that made sense to him. 

With stunning purity, the child set up into bridge pose, held for a breath, and turned to his Dad to say, about nothing in particular and so, to my understanding, about everything within and around him, simply, "Thank You". 

His spontaneous overflow of gratitude was moving. In bridge pose, your heart lifts above your brain, which has metaphorical interpretations and literal physiological effects because of how the blood/breath/prana/"life force" is able to move through the body when the feet stand strong, tailbone lifts toward belly button, heart reaches up, shoulders wrap down to support the chest, and head rests at the bottom of the "bridge" the spine becomes. 

Sometimes I'll feel emotional sensations in practice -- usually when I'm especially relaxed -- and any time profound emotions surface, it is reason to celebrate. This boy's experience of gratitude was contagiously celebratory. My pose changed, from bridge to wheel to wheel with heels lifted, an expression of the pose I seldom, if ever, take. The manifestation in my body, as if directed by the gratitude witnessed within this child, emerged just before he voiced his "Thank You," and repeated it twice more across three creations of the pose. It was almost as if the boy was speaking gratitude in response to what was happening in the room, and it worked as a benediction, too. His words let me witness and understand the emotion I feel quietly strengthening as my the front of my heart opens and extends forward. Little by little, inch by inch, I will welcome gratitude as a wise friend and guide toward simpler, purer, fuller life. 

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What I learned taking Uber

Sharing a car with a different stranger every few days has started to teach me a few lessons about people. Small, even inane chats can reveal to me a paradigms I've been holding, however subconsciously, and assuming everyone thinks the same way I do. (For those keeping score on mindsets in the public -- no one has the same paradigms. Ever.) The way I see the world and attribute meanings to patterns in it is stunningly unique to my particular combination of eyes, brain, heart, personality, place of origin, eating habits, childhood upbringing, and on and on. 

You can't understand a stranger's worldview after a 10 minute car ride, but I've been able to see some of the ways I understand things differently from people I share a city with.

Last week, a driver couldn't stop talking about his sister's boyfriend -- how he stays home, "probably watches a lot of TV," takes care of the house, cooks, and cleans, while this man's sister does the actual work to support both of them. "He has a type of knee injury or something like it, and so he can't go out and get work. He says he will go out and get a job, but what kind of job are you going to get like that?" I thought about how, in a Capitalist society, if you aren't up on your feet, docking GDP-included labor hours, you are literally worth less than someone "working" -- driving a cab, selling oil, teaching math, serving burritos. I've learned this is a simplifying truth 

He carried on about how little was contributing and how his sister must be with him for reasons he could not see because he cant even get a job with some knee injury. I was wondering how many men have stay at home lifestyles and how difficult that is to defend and how many women dont have to defend the same to anyone. 

My driver says he has a good job and so he gets what he needs to live a nice, happy life. Was he talking about his income level? The health of significant relationships? A constructive sense of purpose and meaning in his being? His inner peace? They all seemed to be a big conflation of "a happy life" to him, and he was genuinely celebrating its simple rewards and satisfactions, and how this boyfriend of his sister's didn't understand the importance of "making a life for himself".

I don't understand it either. 

When I was 9 or 10 I did -- there was a reality show on MTV called "Rich Girls" about two young women of wealthy families in New York City and their outings of expenditure and how inconvenient and irrelevant $1 bills are. I was obsessed, made it a priority to watch every new episode when it aired, and note every elite detail of their nuanced prep school / party scene / ivy league college application balance. I remember my mom asking me why i liked the show, and instead of saying, "I love being able to witness part of the lifestyle of the rich," i just said, "I love rich," and she responded, "Yes, you do." 

Fast forward a decade point five and this is a funny exchange because I've got this idea that I'd like to protest traditional engagement in a capitalist economy. One way I try to do it is to not buy a car. To buy a car, I have to make enough money to buy it and pay for gas. If I have a car, I use it to get everywhere. I don't get to walk or bike. Without a car, travel is an activity where I am both visible and approachable to bump into neighbors or strangers. I get to say good morning to the bus driver or hear the story about a retired man's backpacking trip across Europe. I don't have to worry about wanting a nicer car or a moon roof soon. I can enjoy a nice sound system and leather seats with butt warmers when my Uber luck is good. And I depend on people like this man with no respect for his sister's boyfriend, who is, like me, entirely dependent on cooperative economics and with no interest in achieving productivity within the capitalist value system. 

Uber teaches me to share with strangers, to learn from differences in attitude or understandings, to enjoy laughter when we share ideas and experiences, and to value the extension of paradigms included in the price a capitalist system sets for just transportation. 

It is a strong example to me of how high value can hide behind a low price product or service. It is an innovative transportation marketplace I prefer to enter because it is a service, not a good. In a way, I am paying my drivers to remove me one degree from our car and gasoline dependence. I am paying my driver to worry about who is contributing to the system or not. 

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Why "I can do anything!" is a shitty thing to tell yourself

1. You can't.

You can do a few things. You can write and read and understand new ideas, care for a child, clean a bathroom, keep a garden, play an instrument, ride a bike, draw, dance, cook, go pee without turning the lights on, tell funny stories, replace a hard drive, and wake up on time. But if you tell yourself, "I can do anything!" then when you want to do things like live in a mixed income, socioeconomically diverse neighborhood with 100% literacy rate and no hunger, it can get confusing. The "I" bit really gets in the way of this statement being true. 

2. "Can" requires no action.

Future minded statements are so fun and easy to make. This is why I have three dozen to do lists scattered around my room. Some are scribbled on corners of receipts ("toothbrush, conditioner, vitamins"). Some ("go on neighborhood walks, bake cookies, visit elders")  are on colorful post it notes, all stuck to one place on a wall in my room, which I continue to think is great. It's like I think I'm going to forget what I care about if I don't write down an idea in the moment and at some later point require myself to follow through on it, even if it doesn't make sense later.

3. It requires repeating. 

Now I avoid making eye contact with that spot on the wall. Every pink, blue, purple, and yellow square reminds me of ideas I've already had and action I haven't taken. What if I do something every time I want to satisfy an idea by listing it and adding others to keep it company? Literally stop, when I find myself wanting to write, "To Do: Find interviews where Jay Z talks about the power of words". And find the freaking interviews. (Haven't found any except the one where he talks to Oprah about the N word, but he writes about it in his book, for those concerned.) Then, "I can do anything!" turns into "I did something, and it may be little, and I wanted to do it, and I did it, and now I'm ready for the next idea."

"I can do anything" keeps making its way downtown, walking fast & into my head anyway, and then I'm sitting at my (roommate's) desk feeling dumb is because I'm just eating oranges and trying to do shit. For the past 3 months, I've been trying to do indiscriminate semi-focused shit, all the time, for a living, and I'm not sure if I just don't know how to measure pay off or if it's really really not paying well. The good, middle America, well educated, millennial life I'm rocking has conditioned me to think if I keep pushing, the shits i keep doing will add up to anything, and all I need to do is continue to psych myself up to face the world with a single handed socially driven entrepreneurship war cry. I am living a realization of how debilitating a philosophy that is. And I don't know what to do. (Link to YouTuber thoughts in re this sentiment.)

If I were a high school guidance counselor listening to me talk about this, I would say something now like, 

"Have you considered changing the wording of this broken mantra? How would you finish a statement that started something more like, 'I will do _______' and maybe choose one small, simple thing to try out in there? What does that feel like?" 

And my angsty, confused-by-abundant-opportunity self would be angry at the questions and find some reason to dismiss the exercise, sitting in stubborn melancholy until impulsively choosing one thing and doing it all at once, right or not. 

Or, I can write about it. Which is what I'm choosing to do, right now. I've had an idea to keep writing, every day, about the angsty, confused-by-abundant-opportunity sentiment of not knowing what to do, as it ebbs and flows and as I do shit and don't do shit and fail at shit and try new shit and retry old shit and resist doing unsolicited advice shit people tell me I should do. I don't even have a "To Do: write about it" sticky note. 

So, for me, right this minute, I can't do anything, but writing every day is one thing I will do. And to give a not-so-stubborn-as-i-think-i-am answer my guidance counselor self's "What does that feel like" question? It feels a lot like starting a to do list, only more open ended and able to fail. And this is uncomfortable, and makes me want to make a list of things to write about so even if I forget or don't have time, I'll remember the ideas I had and still be able to congratulate myself. And I'm not going to.