In that blog post from 2008, I write about the three Hindu gods sometimes employed to personify the creative cycleIII: Brahma, “the creator,” is the electric excitement you feel when you’ve found the perfect idea, Vishnu, “the maintainer,” represents the actual work, and Shiva, “the destroyer,” ushers in a period of chaos or inactivity in between projects (or having to scrap the work altogether, Heaven forbid). These three show up very differently for me nowadays: my experience of the Brahma phase isn’t a phase at all; it’s a constant. And as for Vishnu, I go back and forth between days and weekends at the library followed by late-night typing in bed (as I am doing now) and more “reasonable” hours. And Shiva doesn’t destroy, he clarifies—though you might say clarity is a form of destruction. As Bernard Shaw writes in Major Barbara, “You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”
Visual artist Jolynn Van Asten, who teaches transformational art workshops in Phoenix, Arizona, tells me going vegan has eliminated creative block for her too and that there’s no need to “summon the Muse” anymore: “Now I can access ‘flow’ with just an intention to do so—instantly.” I can’t guarantee that if you go vegan your creative growth will be as dramatic as ours has been—“your mileage may vary” and all—but it’s certainly worth a thirty-day test run, don’t you think? I’ve explored my creative potential as an omnivore, a vegetarian, and a vegan, and I feel too full of joy and purpose ever to go back on option three.
I From the Orbital song.
II In cases of clinical depression, a plant-based diet may work in concert with medication and other therapies.
III I hope the point I’m making here is insightful enough to justify the cultural appropriation.
A knitting lesson at Sadhana Forest.
Better Than Celery for Dinner
Like we said, everything you could ever want to know about eating vegan is instantaneously accessible. So, start poking around! Search the #vegan or #plantbased hashtags on Instagram and drool over all the colorful and beautifully presented food photography, read nutrition primers (see resources on page 259) look up vegan versions of your favorite dishes, and search for any unfamiliar ingredients. You don’t even need to make or change anything yet. Just see what’s out there.
Secondly, after meals and snacks, jot down a few notes about how you feel. How’s your energy? Your digestion? Your mood? Let yourself feel more curious about what’s going on in your own body.
Sticking point #2: “Sometimes I feel totally self-assured, and other times I dislike myself so intensely that I can’t lift a finger to make anything.”
When I was a child, I loved nothing better than to draw. You could give me a small stack of typing paper and a boxful of markers, and I’d be content for hours. My parents sent me to drawing and pottery classes at the local arts center, and my teachers were very encouraging. I had ability, and I took pride in that—maybe a little too much. Our elementary school art teacher used to hang our work in the hallway outside the cafeteria, and I remember waiting in the lunch line, looking up at a row of still lifes—apples, done in pastel—and playing a game of “which drawing is the best?” I’d choose one, and when I got close enough to see the signature, I’d remember with such pleasure that it was mine.
I played this game most lunchtimes until our teacher took down the apples.
I have another clear memory of the South Valley cafeteria. Picture me: seven years old, all knees and elbows, with awkwardly cropped hair thanks to a classroom lice epidemic. I am sitting in front of a Styrofoam tray with a cheesesteak ready to be washed down with a little carton of 2 percent milk. Only this isn’t a proper Philly cheesesteak with shredded beef, onions, and peppers topped with melted American or provolone. This thing is a rectangular slab of reconstituted meat with a blister of lard studding the gray-brown surface. This is by far the most disgusting thing that has ever been presented to me as “food.” I don’t want to eat it, but I do—and then I feel disgusted with myself.
There are specific reasons why we remember what we do out of all the ever-vaster catalog of life experiences, even if these reasons never consciously occur to us. I believe that in these grade-school memories two irreconcilable attitudes about myself are encoded: the self-assurance I would need to pursue a career in the arts and the self-loathing that arises out of a sense of helplessness. Now and then I had my petty rebellions, but for the most part, I was a polite and obedient child; it wouldn’t occur to me for many more years that I could choose not to eat that cheesesteak.
Over time this bifurcated sense of myself became more pronounced. I was assigned to “gifted” classes, and I always scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests. Yet I was defective. My parents’ acrimonious divorce and ongoing custody battles were a consequence of my inadequacy. My physical imperfections horrified me: mysterious knobs of flesh on my skull, the gap between my two front teeth, the dark leg hair that began to grow before I hit puberty. Physical symptoms led my parents to bring me to the doctor—stomach trouble, an ache in my lower back, shooting pains in my feet—and no doubt the doctor wrote them off as psychosomatic. I went to a series of therapists. I lay awake reading Nancy Drew mysteries well past midnight, the anxiety mounting that I might fall asleep during school the next day, which, of course, pushed sleep off even later.
I started high school, and the symptoms got weirder. The skin on my arms peeled off in swathes, and my fingernails fell out one by one. But I reacted to these developments with curiosity. I was molting, and I took that as a good thing, because by this point I’d become obsessed with the idea of metamorphosis. I watched the 1994 adaptation of Little Women over and over to hear Winona Ryder say of Jo’s writing practice, “I gave myself up to it, longing for transformation.” And I remember sitting in my mother’s car in the library parking lot, feeling her dismay as she noticed the title of the book in my lap: Seven Days to a Brand-New You.
“What’s wrong with you the way you are?”
“It’s fiction,” I huffed—as if I hadn’t wished it weren’t.
I was also fascinated with Sylvia Plath, as sensitive, self-absorbed white girls tend to be. For a senior year English project, I drew a sarcophagus lid with a female effigy in a blue-striped nemes headcloth inspired by “Last Words (Crossing the Water).” Phrases from various poems curved along a chest plate and covered the background: “Morals launder and present themselves,” “Blameless as daylight,” and “I shall hardly know myself,” a reference to the poet’s shining newborn self after death. In Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence, David Holbrook writes, “The psychotic delusion is that what is necessary is the destruction of an old self, and the rebirth of a new. In truth she won’t be there to know herself.” As I read this analysis, I wished someone could have coined “mansplaining” a few decades sooner. Oh well, I guess that makes me cuckoo too!
I grew out of that preoccupation with the morbid poets—though I never stopped identifying with them—and, by the end of my