Yesterday, I was in a little corner grocery buying organic lemons and limes to juice. I brought 20 to the counter (and nothing else), so I felt a need to talk to the cashier. "I'm doing a cleansing diet," I explained, telling him a bit about it. When the words "Master Cleanse" escaped my lips, a young lady, one of the few other people in the store, came over. "You're doing the Master Cleanse?" she asked. I nodded. She'd done it, she said, but only made it to Day 9.

"Day 9?" I asked incredulously. "How do you make it to the second-last day and not finish it?"

"I just couldn't quite do it," she seemed embarrassed. "I cheated and then couldn't go back. How's it going for you?"

I told her some of the highs and lows I've had, with the generally positive spin on the whole experience that I've been feeling.

"You look great," she offered. "It's like you're glowing. Your face is glowing. Your eyes have a twinkle."

"Wow, thanks," was all I could think to say. She was cute, too. I guess I don't only feel good, I look good. Thank you grocery girl!

Back in the warm sun, feeling blessed, I met up with Daimian, Jon, and Beth, and some Israeli friends of theirs. We played a really good hard game of soccer there in Mission Dolores Park. Yeah, feeling good good good.

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Update. I was just talking to my roommate Maria, and she suddenly interjected: "You look good today." She paused. "I mean, for a few days there, you were kinda pale, kinda tired-looking, like your body was going through something. Now you look healthy, you look good."

So the grocery girl was right.

--tony

I concur with Daimian. This fast is an exercise in the 'c' word: commitment. Can I be content with one of something -- food, person, job, lifestyle -- when the universe produces so many different enticing versions?

So far so good. I'm rocking the lemonade, loving it, and staying faithful. This is a promise I will not break.

But as Jimmy Carter confessed, I have sinned in my heart. My dreams are of a slice of really good, dense, healthy, whole grain bread, toasted, with a little real butter on top. Other times it's peanuts and raisins and brazil nuts -- yes, brazil nuts. Or cooked kale with sauteed onions. And tam kha soup, spicy and coconut-milky. Oh, and grapefruit juice! And, OK, sauteed almonds & red peppers on brown rice.

And so I see the power of commitment.

Generally I've just felt great these past two days. Hunger now crops up only in the evenings. And I'm noticing changes in my skin and hair and appearance. My skin is softer and smoother. And skin imperfections -- I've occasionally over the years had athlete's foot or other little fungal things -- are totally utterly gone.

I like what Burroughs says about skin imperfections:

Lumps and growths are formed all over the body as storage spots for unusable and accumulated waste products, especially in the lymphatic glands. These accumulations depress and deteriorate in varied degrees, causing degeneration and decay. The liver, spleen, colon, stomach, heart, and our other organs, glands, and cells come in for their share of accumulations, thus impairing their natural action.

These growths and lumps appear to us as forms of fungi. Their spread and growth is dependent on the unusable waste material throughout the body. As the deterioration continues, our growths increase in size to take care of the situation. Fungi absorb the poisons and try to take the inferior material from the organs. This is a part of Nature's plan to rid the body of our diseases. When we stop feeding this fungi and cleanse our system, we stop their development and spread; then they dissolve or break up and pass from the body. They will not feed on healthy tissue. There is a simple set of laws which explains this action. Nature never produces anything it does not need and it never keeps anything it does not use. All unused material or waste is broken down by the probiotic action into a form that can be used over again or eliminated from the body. All weak and deficient cells, caused from improper nutrition will also be broken down and eliminated from the body.

We spend a good portion of our lives accumulating these diseases, and we spend the rest of our lives attempting to get rid of them -- or die in the effort!

It's amazing to realize how busy my digestive system normally is. During waking hours of normal life, my body is constantly dealing with food -- either cooking, eating, digesting, or generating hunger for the next meal. And now, like a factory that normally runs 24/7 taking a week off, my internal body is at rest.

I've lost about five pounds. As Burroughs says, "For those worried about losing weight [on this diet], remember, the only things you can possibly lose are mucus, waste, and disease. Healthy tissue will not be eliminated."

--tony

Something all of us humans like is variety. Variety is generally pretty easy to achieve. Each day is always going to be a little different. If you love pizza, each pizza place is going to be just a smidgen different, if not immensely so. However, what seems like a difficult task for us is to forge a comittment with one thing. Whether it be a relationship, a routine, a religious practice, it becomes amazingly trying to place value on the one thing above all else...to not get bored. In a way I believe that is one thing I am really coming to terms with on the fast - to not only appreciate the one thing, but to look forward to it. I have read in many places that as people leave the MasterCleanse they then have cravings for the lemonade concoction (lime/lemon, maple syrup, cayenne pepper), and I am sure the simplicity of the diet.

With all that being said, and as both myself and Tony are only human after all (okay, maybe super-human), we were both beyond excited to find a juicer so we can start using real lemons rather than our organic lime juice from a bottle. Therefore, we scavenged Thrift Town and the 17th Street Community Market to find something to juice all those lemons. We both scored and I am excited to use the juicer for future juicing endeavors.

Afterwards, with yesterday being such a beautiful day we met some friends in the park for a little playing in the sun. We tossed the football, threw the frisbee and played some futbol with our new Israeli friends. Lots of fun and lots of energy. Something I look forward to learning from the incident, though, is how my lower back will heal as it was kind of sore after all of the running around (the same area as a horrible bout I had last year after working full-time where I was debilitated for awhile, and actually still haven't really had the ability to run since - it actually has been quite a bummer). We will see how my sore back fares with only the lemonade concoction. In the best possible scenario it will actually have a chance to heal everything around it and remove the pain for life (go super-human strengths!).

Quick Romantic Sidenote: At the park within a 10-yard radius of where my friends, Jon Astman and Beth Oelberger, were sitting, within the 2-hours we were there not one, but two, ex-girlfriends wound up sitting there with their new boyfriends - Nicole Bliss Califano and Emily Pamela Macy. Strange, huh?

Well, poop ya on the flip side!

--daimian