What's Up Part I: Weight Loss (Rant?)

Well, not really a rant, per se, although not a post about the happiest of situations. Weight loss...yikes. Heck, I COULD write a rant, but that is not really my style, at least, not so far, as I like to put a positive spin on things, which IS my style.

I feel like I have a peculiar relationship with this blog, in that I don't write steadily and also have no set "subject" matter like "successful" blogs are supposed to do (write steadily), and have (a set subject matter)...which, thus, in their case, builds a following. Me, I write when I feel like putting something down in a public (but semi-anonymous) place...and have the time to do so (which seems to be a big problem, lately). I also do write in a hand-written journal (much more there, actually), things that are only for me and my eyes (for which, I am sure, most of you would be thankful).

A friend of mine sent me a message that simply said, "Wazzup?" and that got me to thinking about what HAS actually been happening lately. You know, sometimes you simply slide right through it all in real time and don't really reflect on it, but there is a time when looking back at it as a whole is valuable. In fact, I think that "journalizing it" in this case would be a good thing, so I realized that I would write my friend a comprehensive answer to his question and that a lot of my answer may be worth posting here, too.

I started what I think could be a pretty long answer, but as one of my "New Year's Resolutions" (ha ha, have I EVER been successful with them?) was to NOT stay up all hours of the night working a project that I hadn't completed yet (that is to say, to WORK on getting enough sleep and creating a steady circadian rhythm), but to put it aside and come back to it in the morning, that this section that I did complete kind of makes a whole entry by itself, so I am posting it now.

Since most readers come here by way of a particular tag search, I think that this section (weight loss) may be of broad interest.

I have also made a second "Resolution", and that is to strengthen the character of my will and steadfastness, which means to actually FINISH TO COMPLETION my ideas rather than put in a good start and then move on when the time or energy runs out and never finish it. I have known since my early 20s that I am what I call a "comprehensive doer", which means that once I start, I don't want to have to stop before I am finished. But if I DO stop (or am forced to), then it is very hard to get back to it and very often I just never do. (Interrupting that creative energy flow makes me lose interest.) Paramahansa Yogananda used to talk about what he called "monkey mind," which he said interrupted a person's meditation. This refers to a mind that just jumps from one thought to another instead of focusing one-pointedly onto one thought. Well, I have a subset of that, in that my interest in something can jump around, too, but only when situations interrupt my will to "comprehensive doing". Like having to go to bed.

A good example of what I mean is that once upon a time, I wrote a novel. I would have been perfectly happy to write it all at once at one sitting, if that were possible (and sometimes it is), but my novel, which was nearly 400 pages long, could not have been done that way. As it was, my energy pattern was that I would write for 36 hours straight, then sleep for 8 hours, write again for 36 hours, sleep for 8, and so on. This meant that I had NO circadian rhythm and often had no idea whether it was AM or PM (at certain transitional times of day). It worked for me; it seemed to keep me in that creative space for several months. I successfully wrote the whole thing, and even got an agent for it. However, she was unable to find a publisher for it, that is to say, she got tired of looking for one within whatever was HER level of sustainance, and surmised that the book, while interesting to hear about, needed to be rewritten in order to sell it. She may be right, I don't know, but the point was, my mind then moved on to something else and I couldn't abide the idea of sitting down and writing it again.

I was thinking about that book a couple of weeks ago, realizing that it actually still DESERVES to be rewritten (is worth doing) and I feel bad that I had not done it all these decades. So I have resolved to not let projects be shoved to a back burner where they get ignored and then forgotten.

So, with this, which is supposed to be a comprehensive answer to my friend's question, which I had to interrupt, I hope that I DO follow my New Year's Resolution and finish writing, and posting, the rest of it beyond here.

* * *

So, what's up? I could just say, oh, not much, you know, same old, same old, just work and stuff, blah blah blah. And on the surface of it, that would probably be the truth. More or less. Oh, there are some good things about work, and also some bad things, but the bad things are pretty much not all that bad compared to most other people’s situations. I have it really very lucky, actually. I am developing quite a good reputation (in a small circle of people) for doing amazing work with truly awful things, things nobody in their right mind would ever want to deal with, and I don’t want to either, but I do seem to have a particular knack for it and while each new project along those lines is awful, I do end up making it fun for myself. Most of it has to do with constantly-increasing and unreasonable government regulation to the point of absolute insanity, nothing that anyone should ever have to deal with since it is all negative and destructive and makes me feel that my job is doing nothing but digging holes and then filling them up again and then being asked to dig yet new holes. In other words, in the world of universal meaningfulness, it has no meaning whatsoever…it just keeps our enterprise alive, that is all.

But since I enjoy figuring things out and setting up processes and procedures to solve the issues and to comply with them, I view it as a campaign of sorts, like a military campaign and perhaps organizing a great adventurous journey through “systems”. (It’s sort of how I imagine some people might love writing computer software, except at least in my case, it is slightly less abstract than that.) So once I get into it, or maybe around the time I successfully complete one of these “campaigns”, I realize that it has been fun. (A kind of scary fun, but fun nevertheless.) And THAT amazes people, especially those who are my bosses, or immediate co-workers. “We’re so glad that it is fun for YOU, for us, it would kill us.”

But, is it the best use of my time and talents? Is this the fulfillment of my lifelong dreams? Is this an acceptable way to spend the remaining years of my life until I become frail, senile, unable to care for myself, or dead? No, not at all!

I had thought that this past Christmas break (for which we get, I am most thankful, two whole weeks off…which is in addition to the two whole weeks we get off in the spring and then whatever time we get for vacation in summer, which for me is three weeks), was rather depressing. Looking back at it a month later, now, I see that it actually wasn’t and that what it really was quite wonderful, even though it didn’t conform to what I thought had been my plans for it. But to explain all that, let me just go back to a little more than a year ago, well, actually more than a year ago. This sort of sets the groundwork…maybe!

Let’s go back to October of 2010. The big thing that happened in that month and year was that I became a patient of a particular doctor whom I understood to be a GENIUS in weight loss. Weight, or to be more specific, obesity, was a problem that was very much bothering me. I was after all heading toward weighing 300 pounds (I had actually gotten to 275)…I will let you convert that to whatever other mathematic system communicates those numbers to you. And the problem was, I simply had no idea what to do about it. That was because by then I had tried everything, in fact, so many things that worked reasonably well, but nothing worked perfectly well. And even those things that worked reasonably well were nevertheless a huge struggle…a struggle that actually completely takes over a person’s life during the time that it is going on. And to have all that effort not really BE THE ANSWER is worse than a disappointment; I think it genuinely counts as a form of trauma.

So in the years and months leading to October of 2010, I was a traumatized person. I had doctors of every stripe continually haranguing me over that issue, “You HAVE to lose weight” (as if I needed them to tell me), but my answer back to them was always “you tell me how and I will do it,” and they all would tell me what they THOUGHT was “how”, and I would say, “no, I KNOW that doesn’t work.” So they always knew that I should lose weight, but they never REALLY knew how I should actually do it, but that wouldn’t stop them from making it a constant refrain, so I would “fire” them…that is to say, I would stop going to them and start over again with a new doctor…and then fire him when he got to be too much on that subject. Don’t bother me over something you have no genuine solution for (and you KNOW you have no solution, since not ONE of your patients that you make this demand of is able to do that, and that I can win a bet on).

My attitude was (still is), there IS a way to do it that works, and I think that somewhere deep inside me is the knowledge of what that method will be, but so far I don’t consciously know what it is anymore, but when I hear it, then I will do it.

And that’s what happened prior to October 2010…a friend of mine at work (this happened in August, actually), happened to tell me that she had lost 60 pounds by working with a particular doctor who works in the town where we live, and she described how it worked and something inside me of said that this was IT. She loaned me her copy of the book the doctor had written, and I read it, and I even more knew that it would be the diet that worked, but it also looked like I would be suffering terribly throughout all of it, so it took me from August to October to finally get up the energy to actually go to him and get started with this “misery”.

To my surprise, it really wasn’t miserable at all…in fact, I say to people that it was the easiest and most pleasant weight loss program I had ever been on. Sure, there was always what I think was an emotional sense of deprivation associated with it, but it didn’t feel like physical deprivation. The program was really pretty strict…I was limited to 40 grams of carbohydrates and day and 1,100 calories per day. The theory behind it was that keeping carbohydrate ingestion below 40 grams a day, there would be no insulin response (since there was not an over-abundance of sugars), and with no insulin response, nothing would block the burning of my body fat, and with eating only about half the number of calories that my body needed to sustain itself, the other half would be coming from my own fat stores. It would be like having a constant “IV-drip” of your own body fat, feeding you 24-hours a day, so you would never be hungry. No cravings. No misery. Your own FAT would be making you THIN! (In fact, that was the name of his diet, “Your Fat Will Make You Thin”, although in medical circles, he called it “a Ketogenic Diet”.)

In order to eat like that pretty much meant eating only what I prepared at home. I found that I COULD eat out from time to time by having some kind of meat dish and then vegetables, forgoing all other foods, but that pretty much made eating out not really worth it, so the particular fun of that was out. Also, parties were pretty much impossible; oh, maybe there would be one food item that was acceptable, but usually not, so I pretty much understood that if I went to a party at all, there was going to be no eating and drinking at all. Sure, one can enjoy other things at a party, but essentially, it is the near total elimination of the fun of parties and eating out that contributed to what I refer to as the “emotional” deprivation, when there really was no accompanying “physical” deprivation, since I wasn’t really bodily hungry, per se. I maybe WANTED to eat other stuff, but I didn’t HAVE to.

So, I was losing so much weight on this program, so fast, that it was obvious to any and everyone who ever saw me. The results were exceedingly dramatic and impressive and every day was exciting…looking in the mirror was exciting...constantly moving down in clothing sizes was exciting. Since I work in a school that has around 500 families, I was a very visible weight loss success to a huge number of people. I’d say that every single day I would have three or more different people pointing out the impressive weight loss, asking me about it, saying that they wanted to go on the program, too (but almost nobody ever did actually do it. Maybe about five others attempted it, but only one of those has stuck with it).

I was my doctor’s “star” patient (and, to my knowledge, the ONLY one to ever show any true demonstrable success) to the extent that he would take me as an example to lectures that he would give. He even made a video tape of me that he shows to new or prospective patients. And, I, of course, was floating on cloud nine.

By July of 2011 (I had been on this program for 9 months), I reached the weight of 173 pounds. I had lost 102 pounds. According to my body composition metering scale, I had a fat percentage of 9% and the metabolism of a 14-year old. My body was defined as “athletic”. And I was able to buy “male fashion model sized clothes” at the clothing stores…even the extra-lean or extra-fitted versions of those clothes. So, in clothes, I looked like a million bucks. To me and to everybody else.

By this time, now, my doctor kept haranguing me to “choose a goal weight”. He would say, “Are you there, now?”, or “So, what is your goal weight, 170?” And every time he brought that up, which he brought up once a week since that was the frequency of our medical visits, I’d give him the same answer—“I do not have a goal WEIGHT, I have a goal FAT PERCENTAGE”. According to a fitness calculator that I was going by, I had started out with a fat percentage of something over 30%, which was defined as “Very Poor” for any age (they allow you to have, or expect you to have, more body fat on you the older you get, but even at my age, the oldest age category they had, I was “Very Poor”, so certainly I was “Very Poor” for someone in his 20s). To me, it was unacceptable to be limited by the age categories. Why was I going to go all through this only to be “Excellent” for a man in his 60s? If I’m going to do it, and it looked like I certainly could, I was going to go all the way to the best. And “the best”, to me, meant 6% fat, which was the absolutely lowest fat percentage for any male of any age. I figured I would get down to 6% and then allow the fat to settle up to a healthy 7% when I wasn’t dieting any more.

I told the doctor that I didn’t care so much what the weight number was…whatever I weighed when my body fat percentage became 6%, that would be my “goal weight”. And I expected that ultimately my weight number would increase, but not from fat…I figured I would then want to work on gaining more muscle, so my weight would actually get higher, but I will still have this awesome low fat percentage. But none of that “computed” with him, because, as I viewed it, he was still so old-fashioned that he only thought of “goal weight” when “weight” isn’t the issue, but the amount of FAT is. So we reached an impasse where he could not go any further, in his mind…he’d kind of sit there catatonic like a computer waiting for the next correct instruction input and until it comes, it just freezes. So everything kind of remained in abeyance at that point.

But I didn’t care about his reaction, I only knew what I wanted to do and I set out to continue of the path that had been working so well to achieve that. After all, here was where I stood at that time…I had long ago gotten to an “Excellent” fat percentage for a 60-year-old, which was 20%, and then I had gotten to an “Excellent” fat percentage for a 50 year old (19%), and then to an “Excellent” fat percentage for a 40 year old (17%), and then to an “Excellent” fat percentage for a 30 year old (14%), and even an “Excellent” fat percentage for a 20 year old (10%)…I was 9%. I only wanted to get down 3 more percentage points to “perfection”.

But from July 2011 all the way through to July 2012, one whole year, I did not budge one pound down below the weight of 173 and that fat percentage of 9%. So, was that year, for me, “half full” or “half empty”…was I a success, or a failure? Well, the “keeping my weight off for a whole year” could be considered quite a notable success, so that’s the “cup is half full”. But to me, I was on a painful PLATEAU for over a YEAR, could not LOSE ONE MORE POUND, no matter how dedicated I still was to the diet, not matter how much I still continued to follow it, no matter how much emotional deprivation I was putting up with. And, worst of all, I now had PHYSICAL deprivation. I now was hungry all the time…the meals I was eating felt like “nothing”…I craved to be able to eat like a “normal” person, hadn’t I certainly earned that by NOW? (Well, maybe not like a normal person, but something a bit beyond an eating program that somebody more than a hundred pounds overweight would have to be stuck with…for the rest of my life?)

And the doctor had no advice to offer, at all. He only knew to say the same old stuff over and over again. His advice was outstanding to “get you nearly there,” but that was where it ended.

Then came my trip to French Polynesia, and particularly, to the isolated resort of Raimiti in Fakarava. There at Raimiti there would be no control of the eating. While we would be fed at this resort an hour and a half boat ride away from any other civilization, it was whatever the kitchen there presented to us. No choices at all (they felt that we were lucky that they got supplies way out there at all). Well, there would be one choice, and that was to simply “not eat” certain things, which I don’t think was an acceptable solution. Not for a trip that cost something like $4,000. I’m not going to starve on my vacation. And besides, shouldn’t I be ABLE to more or less eat the things that they serve at a tropical resort with a kitchen run by a French cook? Surely my life did not require me to be forbidden this kind of exotic travel, which I plan to do a whole lot MORE of. This is very different from simply having ones daily working life back home in Los Angeles, where things are more or less dull but for a while I can stand being deprived of elaborate dinners in world class restaurants, and having fun at parties.

I came back from that trip having gained four pounds. And the doctor hit the ceiling. I could not believe his negative reaction. I was described as “a failure”, a “disappointment”; I was his “star patient” and “look what happened” to me, it’s so “embarrasing”; in short, he had to say it, I was “disgusting”. And his final summation was that I needed to be on a “very short leash” because I had “a great will to relapse.”

What is this…I who had lost 102 pounds, gained four pounds on a vacation when I had no choice in the meals presented, and now I am disgusting and have to be kept on a very short leash because I had a “great will to relapse”? What am I, a drug addict?

This man had had nothing of value to offer me for a whole year…he had no solution for a year of hunger, and now he loses his mind because I gain back four pounds, four pounds which I assumed I would burn off in the next couple of weeks.

So I decided that there was no point to going back to him anymore. It would be great to save that money. I didn’t tell HIM that…I simply stopped making any more appointments. Does he notice that I am no longer going to him? What does he think about that? Probably now chalks up his “star patient” as “yet another failure”…like ALL the others.

Okay, now…hold that thought. Is there something else I should have done, instead? Such as…what? Well, I could have decided that I had already lost enough weight, that 9% body fat was low enough for anybody. I could have satisfied him by establishing that my goal weight was 173, and then he would move us into the next phase which was “maintenance”, but which he called “stabilization”, which meant (under some kind of guidance from him) that I would be slowly taken up into increased carbohydrates and increased calories until I started to gain, at which point, I would have then “known” how much I could eat from then on.

But, I simply would NOT have ever thought that I should stop three fat percentage points away from my goal. Why would I? That would be like running a marathon and stopping with my chest just one inch away from the ribbon at the finish line.

It’s more like what HE should have done, such as said, “Well, you’ll burn that extra four pounds off in no time and then we will work on getting that fat percentage down to where you want it”…or else MAYBE he could have said, “I don’t think you CAN get the fat percentage down to 6% unless you are running marathons, but where you are is amazing and awesome. I think you should stay right here, but if you INSIST on going down where you want to go, then I will help you and we will see if it can be done. But I warn you, I think it is going to require some serious changes in the program [I don’t know what they might be…fewer carbs for a while, fewer calories, much expanded exercise?].”

But really, there was nothing he could do, nothing that he KNEW to do, because I DID have the horrible hunger and craving and yet he had no solution for that.

In short, my feeling about that program now, was that he knew how one can get the fat off, but he had no idea how one can keep it off. So, ultimately, his plan was no different than other ones I had followed successfully, but that also never worked at the end.

Because IT IS NOT OKAY to have to follow a starvation diet for the rest of ones life, and to live every day with serious hunger and cravings. Not when there are people who follow no rules at all and remain totally thin (so it IS possible). (Those are these shits who think they know everything there is about weight loss, when in reality, they don’t know any more about it than they know what kind of nutrients are growing on a habitable planet near Alpha Centauri.)

So now I am back to that same place I was before August 2011 (except, thankfully, I am not 102 pounds overweight), not consciously knowing what to do, but still thinking that somewhere INSIDE of me is the answer, I just haven’t “heard” it, yet.

I have tried some other things, though, but haven’t figured out anything conclusive. And the truth is, I would do just about ANYTHING if I had faith that it would actually work and that it was possible to live with forever.

There are some conflicting schools of thought and I have no clear idea which one is the correct one.

School of Thought Number 1: It is all about having a CALORIE DEFICIT. You cannot burn any fat off your body unless you eat fewer calories than you use up. You can create a deficit by eating fewer calories than your body needs, or you can create a deficit by burning more calories than you eat (by exercise), or some combination of both. All this sounds kind of good, until you get very near the end. When you are very obese, it is very simple to create a good fat-burning deficit. There is a big difference between the calories one has been eating to weigh nearly 300 pounds, and the eating that will sustain someone at 150 pounds, so there can be a visible and encouraging weight loss week after week as a person diminishes from that nearly 300 pounds. But when you are nearly at your goal, those few remaining pounds, based on the calorie deficit theory, would take more or less forever to burn off, based on the concept that to lose one pound of fat, you have to have a 3,500 calorie deficit. To lose even one pound a week (if one can stand that slow rate) means that there has to be a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day. That most likely would put a person below their basal metabolic needs (and the 1,100 calories a day I was eating for two years was definitely doing that), which means that their diet is destroying their metabolism. They’re losing weight, sure, but then are putting themselves into the situation of having to always maintain this “below basic needs” calorie eating in order stay there, so of course their body is fighting them tooth and nail about that with all the arsenal it has as its command…hunger, cravings, and storing as fat ANYTHING extra that ever passes beyond those lips. Does one want to REALLY live their whole life battling (and hating) their own body?

School of Thought Number 2: It’s all about making your body healthy, providing it all the nutrients it needs so that it can function humming along energetically and doesn’t feel that it is starving, and once you are healthy and properly nourished for a sustained length of time (say, three to four months), then your body (when it has “faith” in this steady nutritious food supply) will automatically NORMALIZE, as it no longer needs to hang onto this excess fat, which was there because the body felt that you were undernourished. This means that obesity is NOT a sign of eating too much, but is, instead, a sign of eating not ENOUGH of what the body actually needs. Plain old “calories” is not the measurement of that; one can get a LOT of calories in sugar, white bread, pasta, and Coca Cola, for example, but there is not ONE nutrient in all that.

That second school of thought is the more appealing one for many reasons, although it does have a bad side and that is that IF IT IS TRUE, that it was holding onto pounds of fat because it felt like it was in a famine (even if you were “overfeeding”), it is going to make you gain a scary amount of weight during the time you are eating this way (now that it is finally getting some good nutrients, it is going to want to hang onto them), until it feels secure enough to “normalize”.

I really wanted to avoid that “gaining more weight” outcome, but as I was more interested in testing that theory than I was going back on a calorie-deficit diet that I felt had already harmed my metabolism and that would take too long to achieve success with, anyway (by my calculation, two more years of being very hungry with nearly imperceptible success every step of the way). Unfortunately, this HAS definitely caused weight gain, so far, 30, maybe 40 pounds worth (I am, once again, scared to death of the scale), which is very terrible to undergo, and I don’t really have much in the way of clothes that I can now wear (that are comfortable and look reasonably good), plus what I see in the mirror looks horrible, and people have (thankfully) stopped talking about my body, now, because I don’t think the conversation would be GOOD, so I’d rather that they just shut up. And actually, I don’t really want to view myself as a failure (like they probably do) in that what I am really doing is trying to find out what really WORKS, but for the sake of appearance, I am always on the brink of simply going back to the “starvation” method, although I think that is the wrong way to go.

One might want to ask, “how or why were you under-nourished, didn’t you know how to eat healthfully?”

Uhm…does anybody in America know how to eat healthfully, and if they do know, do they actually do it? There is a lot of conflicting buzz about that, too. Such as “everyone” seems to feel that a McDonald’s hamburger is a very unhealthy thing to eat. And it seems that the majority of the people who think this way feel that it is the MEAT that is bad…oh, too much FAT, too many calories, and maybe they will attempt to moderate that by substituting a chicken patty for the beef, or maybe fish, or perhaps even a vegetarian (soy) “burger”. The program that I was on felt that the unhealthy aspect of a McDonald’s hamburger was the BUN (all that white bread), not the meat, and that those various meat substitutes made it the worst of all, especially since the fish was breaded, for example, and soy is not only an excess of carbohydrates, but is also a poisoned GMO (genetically modified organism) product.

Then there is the question of “healthy fats” versus “unhealthy fats”, where the average person maybe thinks that animal fats are bad, but vegetable fats are very healthy. While the program that I was on didn’t distinguish among the various fats, the doctor just wanted you to moderate the fat level (controlled by the calorie restriction more than anything else), but things that I have been reading and believing lately state that almost ALL vegetable oils are horrendously unhealthy and that animal fats are better or at least “okay”, but what would be ESSENTIAL would be animal fats loaded with Omega 3 amino acids, which means certain seafoods or grass-fed animals (natural grass-fed free range beef, wild deer, etc.).

And, of course, “dairy” is extremely controversial, from those who think all dairy is unhealthy and definitely not for adults, to those who will accept it only if it has 0% fat (which in the older days was the waste that the farmers fed to the pigs). The other polarity concerning dairy says that milk is extremely HEALTHY and we need to be drinking a LOT more of it, but only the full-fat kind, and that cream is definitely good to have, not avoid (and butter, too). And for those people, RAW dairy is best of all, which is illegal, now, in most states in the U.S. and “federales” have arrested even farmers who drink raw milk from their OWN cows.

Everybody seems to understand that sugar is bad, but I challenge anyone to completely do without any kind of sweet taste, so, should you use artificial sweeteners that at least have very few, or no, calories? But those seem to be poison, so which do you choose to use, that which will make you fat or that which will cut holes in your brain?

The truth is that no two Americans (or doctors, or nutritionists, or diet book writers, or the government) will agree as to what foods are healthy and which ones are to be avoided, and besides, NO ONE is eating most foods in a natural state since we are no longer hunter/gatherers and very few of us even live on farms, and so our food is preserved, processed, insecticided, antibioticized, growth-hormoned, raised in horrible and unnatural conditions, and even genetically-modified. SO WHO IS ACTUALLY HEALTHY? We may be eating a lot of STUFF (and the more convenient it is, the more likely we are to eat it), but we also may actually be STARVING anyway, so our poor bodies are like squirrels saving nuts for the winter, except for us the nuts are BODY FAT and winter is not always COMING, it is ALWAYS HERE ALREADY.

So that is what we are up against. I am up against. Except I insist that there is a solution and that I can find it.

I can see at this point that I have only just warmed up—the weight loss thing was NOT the main story, here, but rather than write all night at this point, I think it might be better to at least send you this one thing and hope that I do continue this

With Halloween, the Holy Days Have Begun

Now that Halloween has come, I feel that special loving happiness that I feel during the holidays. I realize that for me, the holiday season begins with Halloween (and doesn't stop until after Valentine's Day).

I really do enjoy having trick or treaters. I've probably said this before, but here is my perception: It must be amazing for children to have the understanding regarding Christmas and Santa Claus that there is a being whose entire purpose in life is making and delivering toys to children. The implications of that are huge, in my opinion. I think it opens children up to the concept of a benevolent universe that CAN work to support, provide, and love them. Of course, then, later they learn that that "Santa Claus" was a myth, that it is the parents who do it all. But myths really are symbols of a deep reality, so the Santa Claus myth is actually the truth,
and it is the PARENTS who support, provide for, and love the children, and that the entire created beingness of the Universe is an entity filled with love and wonder. In every way parents (the good ones, anyway) are Santa Claus, and so all this wonder and love begins in the home, and then can go forth out into the world from there.

I realized that Halloween in our culture is like an appetizer for Christmas, which is why I view it as the beginning of the "holidays", and I consider what must it be like for children to realize that on one day a year, they can dress up according to their fantasies and go around knocking on people's doors and the people in there will give them candy! Willingly! In my view, this supports the idea of a welcoming, accepting, giving, and generous neighborhood, something we want there to be for our children (and for us). So, in a way, Halloween brings the neighborhood together, if only for one brief night, but it is hoped that it can continue, and expand, on from there. How are the children treated there, by brightly lit houses, fun decorations, doors opened wide by smiling adults, and delicious candy proffered? Or darkened streets, scowling neighbors, a "get out of here" attitude, or a stingy demeanor? Or maybe one might wonder how certain people are then viewed--THOSE people are NICE, whereas THOSE people are MEAN. I think all this makes a difference in how children feel about the place where they grow up, and where they live, and about their culture as a whole, which is something I think we want them to care about and feel a part of.

All this is a positive spin on it, which I know that many others don't share. As loving as he was, my father didn't share in it, for example. He viewed it as something forced, and unhealthy. "If I had my way," he'd say, "Halloween would be eliminated." Huh? And yet I remember being a little boy, having so much fun when he took me out trick or treating Halloween night, creeping around in the delicious autumnal dark, smelling the smell of the fallen leaves, seeing the warmth of the invitation of the various houses, being with him on that special night. I don't even really remember the candy, were we even allowed to eat it? But what I was getting out of it was not the candy, but everything else. So when, and why, did Dad turn into such a humbug?

Others just see it all as unhealthy--"Children shouldn't have so much sugar." Others see it as "unChristian" (even though it actually has very Christian roots), "Idolizing zombies and monsters and other evil things." Others see it as supporting an "entitlement" mentality..."What, if we don't hand out the candy that we are forced to buy, what will they do, damage our house?" Then there are those who see evil everywhere out there. "The child molesters will be out on the prowl. In costumes, people can hide. Be careful of the things people give you--poisoned candy; laxative, or needles, or other hazards baked into cookies, don't take
anything that hasn't been commercially produced and wrapped and sealed."

Then there is the fear on the other side. I know someone who told me that she and her husband turn out almost ALL of the lights and hover in the farthest back room in the house. "We don't want anybody knocking on our door, we pretend to not be at home, you have no idea who is standing there and what they really want." You know, casing the joint, or they will bring out a gun from behind the folds of a ghost costume and come into your home to rob, rape, or kill you. I even felt MYSELF being a little afraid (although it didn't stop me at all and I didn't even peek through the little scope in the door before opening it...what would that have shown me, anyway?), imagining the possibility of a crowd of 20 teenagers suddenly flash-mobbing their way into my apartment and taking away everything valuable they could carry like how gangs of teenage blacks have done to 7-11 stores in Washington, DC and Las Vegas. Sure, that COULD happen, already society seems on the brink of ripping apart at the seams, and a sure sign of that total breakdown IS something like that person hovering in a hidden back room on Halloween night. But I still believe in "what my actions will manifest" and so far, I want my actions to support a loving, cohesive society, not people cowering in fear.

A couple of years ago, I read a book on "The Coming Race War", where "the color of your skin will be your uniform". While the author's arguments seemed to have a lot of validity (mostly based on how differing cultures tear themselves apart elsewhere in the world, and particularly in Africa which is, of course, continuously happening all over that continent), I didn't happen to believe that our American culture would fall to that. Sure, a hundred and fifty years ago we had slavery, but we also had the
Underground Railroad, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and then in the 60s we had the Civil Rights movement, which wasn't "blacks forcing civil rights on the rest of us," but "our culture indicating that the time for this was way overdue", and thus, we now have it. "But if it DOES come to a 'race war'," I said to myself, "then I guess I am dead, because there is no way I can see myself walking down the street and seeing a black or Hispanic person and automatically pulling out a gun and shooting them. So maybe they will just shoot me first." Of course I decided that my actions
would not support the manifestation of a race war, but will support, instead, that such a thing is ridiculous. [What actions would support the manifestation of a race war? The author's advice was to prepare for it by moving to safety right now away from the areas that would become the post-war Hispanic country (California and the Southwest), the post-war Black country (the South) (the two areas that I like best in the continental U.S.), and live, instead in the post-war White country (Christians in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest, Jews in the Northeast--yeah, put all the white people in the cold, rainy, unsunny north zone), but I appreciate attempting to understand the points of view of all different kinds of people, and anyway, I am always interested in reading about geography!].

So, to me, Halloween is a kind of holy day and I do my part by getting
into it.

My apartment was clearly welcoming, I had all the blinds open and all the lights on, I had beautiful holiday lights strung along the railing of my balcony (they were purple when I bought them last year, at a Halloween store, because I figured I could leave them up after Halloween and turn them on for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and whenever I have a party...but being outside all year, the purple color faded off so now they are just white, or clear, but that is fine), I had a large plastic half-pumpkin face that fits over the outside light that is next to my door and glows invitingly, and I had a skeleton poster on my door that said "Trick or Treat!". So it was obvious even from the street this place was open for business. And then when it was time for me to go to bed, I took down the pumpkin and the poster and turned off all the lights and shut all the blinds. Now closed! Actually, I had no more trick or treaters after about 9:00.

I did have one kind of peculiar and possibly scary visitor, my very last one, actually. He had a rather cute rhythmic knock, like he was playing a tune, and when I opened the door, who should I see standing there but one lone adult male, not even in costume, or it didn't look like a costume (who knows how he normally dressed)...he looked kind of like a rock star, very skinny, probably stoned. He was standing, smoking a cigarette, and acted kind of embarrassed. What on earth was he doing? Well, the only legitimate reason that I could see was that he was trick or treating, maybe he had nostalgia for his childhood Halloween, or maybe he just wanted to get some free candy, or was suffering from the munchies from being stoned (I am sure he WAS stoned). Anyway, while he did seem kind of embarrassed, like he needed to explain himself but just couldn’t quite, so he mumbled something I didn't get, it didn't matter to me; in my mind, he had a perfect right to go trick or treating like anybody else and if he wanted some candy, why not? So I said, "Hi, trick or treat, here," and held out my candy bowl like I did for the kids, "you can choose five of your favorites," and he carefully studied them and picked out one by one his five, nodded his thanks and then went on his merry way. He certainly wasn't casing the joint, he hardly even looked past the threshold, I think he was simply legitimately out there getting himself some candy. And, honestly, I like that...I like it that he felt free enough to participate in this thing.

Reading on Facebook later that evening, there were some Facebook friends complaining about adults carrying a candy bag of their own. These Facebook friends thought that that was ridiculous, that the candy was only for kids. With me, I offered my candy to the adults, too, not one of them assumed that they could have it, though, until I offered it, and very few took me up on it (but those who did were happy about it). Halfway through the evening (when, unfortunately, it was too late to do anything about it), I came up with an idea that I would like to do next year, and that is to specifically have something to hand out to the adults accompanying their kids: a bowl filled with a huge variety of those cute single-drink-size liquor bottles like you get on airplanes or have in hotel mini-bars. I happen to really like those, myself (but, you know, I admit that I like liquor and no, I am not an alcoholic), so I think it would be very fun to offer those to the adults, "Choose your favorite, or something new to try, for yourself." But I don't know, maybe that would be a bad idea for various reasons, I will have to think about it. But so far, I like that idea.

It was interesting to experience the behavior of the kids. Almost all of them were polite and appreciative, except for just one, maybe two cases.

The very first group of trick or treaters I had were loud, noisy, and energetic junior-high-aged boys. I had heard them shouting boisterously and running around in the complex before they got to my door. They were obvious residents of the complex, because residents were the ones who started early, and also were the ones (at that age) who were not accompanied by adults. My personality is such that I LIKE that exuberance in kids rather than despising it; they are kids being kids, which in my view is how they are supposed to be. If I didn't like the reality of that, then I wouldn't live in an apartment complex that is mostly composed of families (nor would I work in a school). Heck, at this stage in my life, I could even live in an assisted living complex filled with nothing but fuddy-duddy over-the-hill types, but, no....

Anyway, I opened the door and saw three "faceless" boys standing there, two in those full head-to-toe "blue man" body-stocking costumes (with other stuff over that) and one of them with a very bloody, fanged wolf-man kind of mask on. They were kind of a shock to see when I opened the door, which I knew they wanted it to be, and I shared that with them, "You guys really ARE scary-looking, wow!" I then held out the candy bowl, saying that each one could choose five of their favorite ones. The tallest of
the boys said, "FIVE, are you sure?" "Yes," I said, "five." "Wow," he said, and then he carefully sorted through them and chose five, counting them out, "One, two, three...." Another of the boys sprang at one of them, held it up, and said, "This one is my FAVORITE kind!" They were actually SO nice and polite, and I said to one of them in the full-on body stocking, "Isn't it scary to wear that? I think I would feel claustrophobic inside there." You know, it's like being shut up inside a hood. He gave me what in my world-view is a true hero's answer, instead of a fake one, "Naw, it isn't scary, you can completely see through it, it doesn't make you feel shut up." The fake hero answer would be, "Yeah, it's scary, but I can handle it." True heroes tell you how YOU can do it, don't set themselves up on a pedestal. So those boys were winners, to me.

Interestingly, counting out five was kind of difficult for some of the kids, especially if they were very young. Their mother or their older sibling had to encourage them each step of the way. "You've now taken one, you can choose another one." And that would continue all the way to the fifth one. But even for some of the older ones, it was kind of like the difficulty of walking and chewing gum at the same time...they had to both CHOOSE and COUNT this to five. Everyone seemed to want to make sure that I saw each one as they chose them, like I was a policeman watching to make sure they took only FIVE (if I paid any attention at all, it was to make sure they got their entire five, which some of them seemed to not believe they could get). One girl got kind of messed up and after choosing three, ended up simply grabbing a handful in frustration, and then after she did it, looked up at me in shock and said, "I just took a whole handful!" and started to put some back, but I stopped her, "No,
that's okay, you keep them!" She seemed grateful that I didn't yell at her or something. I didn’t care, I just wanted them to be happy.

I did begin to worry that I might run out before the evening was over, for if a group of say, six, came to my door, they would then walk away with 30 pieces of candy. I had gotten one bag that said it had a 100 pieces and two other bags each that said they had 40. But at the rate of, say, "30" with one group, I would have only enough for about six of such groups. Of course, most "groups" weren't that large (composed of just two or three kids), but some of them were. So at the point (briefly), I cut it down to three pieces, and while all but one of those kids seemed quite happy with the three, one slightly older girl, my one clear rude visitor of the evening, said, "The people downstairs are giving out five." Imagine! But she succeeded in making me feel bad, because I had been giving out five, myself, before this group came. But
if she felt that her comment was going to make me give her more, it didn't work; her rudeness made me adamant that she was lucky to even get the three. But I did want to give two more to the nicer girls who were with her, but no, they all got only three.

As it turned out, the counts on the packages were inaccurate (or falsely indicative), and there were way more in those bags than what they said (which would have had the effect of making you buy many more bags). Maybe by "pieces" they meant some kind of a "serving", such as maybe "three" counted as a "serving", so the actual number of "pieces" was 300, or they were counting a certain weight...I really don't know (I probably should have figured it out). But I ended up counting how many I had left and realized that I was highly unlikely to run out with giving out five, so I went back to that.

It ended up that I had had WAY more than I needed. When Halloween was over, I still had nearly half of them left. So now what do I do with them? While it would be nice to "keep" them for next year, I knew that would be impossible; one way or another, I would end up eating them and I did not need to do that (proof of that, this morning, I found myself wishing that I had kept around a few of them, but I am thankful that I had not). And I wasn't sure if they even would be any good, kept around for a year. So I took them to school the next day, and divided them into four shares that effectively got rid of them. One share I put in a bowl in our building's kitchen for administrative employees to have, and that bowl was emptied within the first thirty minutes. Two other shares I gave for the stash of two teachers I know, one of whom keeps them in a teacher's workroom where the teachers in that group carefully enjoy them one at a time during breaks (I admire their control), and the other of whom has
a secret stash that she uses, shhh, to reward her students from time to time. The fourth share I put in our school's "left-over Halloween candy drive" bin, which either goes to disadvantaged children or maybe is sent to the troops overseas (I'm not really sure WHERE it goes). Anyway, that candy will find good use outside of my home.

So now I have Thanksgiving to look forward to, which has its own special charms that I enjoy. The weather outside has joined in the celebration, giving me that feeling of cozy comfort (fireplaces, candlelight, and sweaters or jackets) and the feeling of being embraced by a force bigger than I am. While it pulls you within, it also directs your heart to outside of yourself, so I am appreciative, thankful, and grateful for all that we have.

Sick

It's been a while since I have been sick like this, but now it seems like I am making up for lost time. I feel sick everywhere. One thing good...I for sure will call in sick tomorrow. For some reason, those stolen days seem more delicious than normal days off, like they are somehow illicit and I am getting something extra that I normally wouldn't be entitled to. Of course, it is also good to pamper oneself. I think no matter how self-indulgent we may be, we rarely really ever pamper ourself, at least, not without guilt. But if you are sick, you HAVE to, since you want to get well, so no reason for guilt.

Apparently this started with diarrhea, which I still have. It came upon me three weeks ago, which I think is a long time to have diarrhea last. It made its awful presence known my final morning in French Polynesia, not entirely ruining the last day of my wonderful trip, but pretty close. I think I know where I got it, but maybe not. As I was suffering having to go to the toilet every half hour, I had plenty of time to think about how I might have gotten this, when I suddenly realized that I been "lured" into drinking tap water in the hotel in Papeete. I was wanting to enjoy everything my hotel room had to offer, and there was a rather intriguing-looking coffee-making thing in the room. It looked more like a steam locomotive, was more horizontal than vertical in shape and design the way coffee makers are in American hotels. This made coffee from little capsules. It had two pages of instructions, all in French, but fortunately the drawings illustrating each step were more or less clear. And one of the steps was filling a hopper with water, which, without thinking, I filled from the sink the bathroom, just like I would with a Mr. Coffee coffee maker in any American hotel room. It's funny how deeply-set habits are just repeated automatically.

Well, I had had no warning that drinking the tap water in Polynesia was bad (if, indeed, it is, which I am not sure). Not like Mexico, which everyone knows, or St. Petersburg, Russia, which well-read travelers will know. The fact that I had been served water in bottles everywhere I went in Polynesia (and they even had them in the hotel room) did not compute in my mind; that would have been only one vector in my awareness, that required at least one other axis in order for the principle to be pointedly clear...which I guess getting three weeks (and counting) worth of diarrhea provided that other vector, and so now you have heard that, here. Don't drink the tap water in Polynesia, it will apparently be WORSE than the water in Mexico.

My brother questioned, "But wasn't the water heated when it made the coffee?", but it wasn't BOILED, and not for so many minutes. It surprisingly quickly heated to a mild coffee-drinking temperature, nothing that would generate a lawsuit against McDonalds if I had spilled it in my lap. So I still think it had to be that hotel tap water.

This case has been surprisingly severe. When I got Montezuma's revenge in well-known "don't dare drink the water in Mexico" (from having a Margarita in a luxurious restaurant in San Miguel Allende--it's the luxurious places that get me--was made from a chipped block of ice, which may as well have been made with sewer water), I was sick for less than a week, and that was while traveling a long way away from home. Not three weeks, like this, and with me doing everything I can at home to fix it, such as taking the antibiotics that came in a traveler's diarrhea kit that I bought last year from the place that gave me all the innoculations for my trip to Palau, and when those were all gone, swallowing charcoal pills(supposed to absorb all the bugs), drinking diatomaceous earth (supposed to cut to ribbons all the bugs), and doubling my probiotic doses (the good bugs fight the bad bugs).

Finally today I called my general practioner, requesting an appointment and, I hoped, a prescription for something extremely powerful. However, all he did was recommend the BRAT diet, not one item of which is allowed on my weight-loss diet--bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast--all carbs carbs carbs and I am already going to be in trouble when I see both my weight loss doctor and my cardiologist tomorrow, who freak out whenever I gain even two pounds and, unfortunately, after my trip to Polynesia and then during the remaining weeks of my vacation AND in-service week at the school where we have been fed every day (attendance at those meals has been mandatory), I have gained something like ten.

However, I am successful at losing weight but so far haven't been at curing my diarrhea, so I bought all the BRAT stuff anyway, although for the life of me, while I was at the store, I absolutely could not remember what the "B" stood for, so I failed to get bananas. My mind seems to be going, as well, and that is due to the distraction of all the aches and pains I feel in my body, my constantly runny nose that is its own little waterfall, my chocking cough, and the feeling that the whole inside of my throat is crawling with creepy-crawlies (maybe they are the diarrhea bugs making an upstairs escape). Where did all that stuff come from? I really have no idea, but we did have half a day's first aid and CPR training yesterday with other sick people in a room that was ice-cold. The school continually harps on attemping to be "green", yet the air conditioning in the gymnasium was on so high that several people were shivving the whole time, while others wrapped themselves in blankets. (This with it being 108 degrees outside.) As for me, as soon as I got home, I sat outside on my sweltering balcony so that I could thaw out. So maybe drafts actually do make one sick (sicker).

I'm really not happy about having two doctor's appointments tomorrow where I am going to be berated for a ten-pound weight gain when all I want to do is OD on Nyquil. I definitely don't deserve this treatment and wonder why I am even in this mess in the first place. Because I have to admit that it has been a year, now, during which I have not progressed or improved my body one iota. I never ever got thinner than 170, even though I had quite easily and painlessly managed to lose over a hundred pounds in the ten months prior to that. I should have been able to slide on down to the 160s, maybe even the 150s (but needed to go no thinner than that) with absolute ease.

So in my misery today, I was thinking about that "failure", too (although it is hardly any kind of a failure to have stayed as thin as I have for a year, where I have maintained male fashion model stats), and realized it is all because of the braces. Seriously.

Since I had done so well with my body last year, this got me to wanting to work on other things that needed to be done, and the next thing in line happened to be my lower teeth. I had had braces when I was in high school, but during my freshman year in college I got so I wouldn't wear my retainer (which was required at night), because it made me talk with a lisp which was not something I wanted to have happen while living in a dorm my first year away at college.

But I am paying the price for that, now, because slowly but surely, my lower teeth began to crowd forward until the two teeth in the center began to attempt to move on past each other. So I had one central tooth in the lower jaw that had almost turned completely sideways and had become like a leaning Stonehenge pillar. Fortunately, my upper teeth stayed where they had been put (are 99% perfect, according to my orthodontist), so I needed only serious work done on the lower teeth.

However, it has been a miserable experience. These metal "brackets" that are glued onto the front facing of each lower tooth feel to me like "diamond mounts" in an engagement ring--without the diamond, only the waiting sharp prongs. So it is like having a row of sawteeth (four per tooth) rubbing against the inside of my lower lip and cheeks.

Even worse than the diamond mounts are the outer ends of the wire that is used to pull each tooth in whatever direction it is supposed to go. Somehow they have to come up with a better idea than what they have been doing, because what I end up with is like the point of a pin or a needle at the back inside my mouth next to the last molars, sticking there to get caught on by the inside of my cheeks with nearly every movement of my mouth. If I reach into my mouth to test the wire ends with my index finger, I nearly cut a slice down the pad of my finger. (My regular dentist began to wonder if I was heading for a case of oral cancer, and even sent me to a oral cancer surgeon for an evaluation.) So how would you like to spend a year with all that in your mouth? Not to mention the nearly constant ache of the teeth being torqued into position.

But even worse than those sufferings is eating with all these pointed metal things inside the mouth. Fibers of spinach wrap around each appliance. Meat is even worse, as it hunks up behind the wires and somehow crams into the spaces between each and every tooth, which I feel as if I had sand pebbles between all my toes except it's my teeth (one develops a phenomenal respect for the sensitivity inside the mouth). Fish is an immense violator, secreting its rot and fish stink into every fissure, making it essential that I laboriously brush my teeth after every single encounter with food or I will go crazy. And I can only imagine what my breath is like, although with my constant furious cleaning, I may actually smell better than ever, but who really knows?

There has been, quite seriously, a long-standing recommendation for airplane travelers to save their life by being sure to bring a toothbrush and toothpaste onboard in their carry-on bag. Apparently studies showed that during the heyday of the "take me to Cuba" airplane highjackings, the people who would be selected each day to be shot as the means to show the authorities that the hijackers were serious about their demands were always those who had been stuck there on a hostage plane and had been unable to brush their teeth. There is something about feeling a mess in your teeth that makes you aggressive, or uncomfortable, or irritable, and this aura of unease made these people noticeable to hijackers, as in, "here is one we can kill".

Well, my life has been in danger like that every single moment since a year ago when I had these braces put on. Because no matter how hard I work on my teeth with brush picks, threader floss, Oral B electric toothbrushes, tongue scraper, Listerine mouthwash, and ACT cleansing rinse, I never ever fully feel that my teeth actually ARE brushed. I even feel paranoid that bacteria is filling up the spaces next to, behind, or inside all these metal rings and appliances, so that once I actually DO get the braces off, that my teeth will end up being so rotten anyway that all this nice orthodontic work will have to be extracted and replaced by artificial implants.

So, with all this, some of my teeth actually HAVE been hurting almost at toothache level, and I can't determine if something truly IS wrong, or is this a kind of tension hysterical emotional reaction.

Needless to say, for a year I haven't enjoyed a single bite...eating either hurt too much (saw-blade and needle-cuts inside my mouth) or felt too creepy (particles of food stuffing between every tooth as I ate) or played my paranoia like the keys of a pianola, and I swear, the body has a limited capacity for feeling so in the midst of this symphony of negative sensation, I don't think I have been able to detect a single delicious taste. How can one "taste" anything in the midst of this sensual cacaphony? Well, I sure haven't...I hardly can even CHEW my food, let along taste it.

So whereas two years ago I could enjoy and feel full and satisfied from all the delicious tastes of healthy, weight-losing food, this past year I have felt hungry and unsatisfied no matter how much I have stuffed down my gullet. So it has been a battle to maintain, both my weight loss and my insanity.

So now, today, it has all come to a head, so I will go to bed early and then go to bed again for a whole day after my punishing doctor visits tomorrow morning. Surprisingly after all this heat outside, the weather report for tomorrow calls for potential rain storms, which in Los Angeles, is "winter" weather. Actually, that will play perfectly with me being cozy and resting in my bed, almost as if Mother Nature herself has come to my rescue. I love sleeping when it is rainstorming outside. So I imagine that after a day or two of that, I will be as good as new and maybe will be able to venture a bit beyond bathroom vicinity. Wouldn't that be nice!

But eating will still not be enjoyable. The metallic barbed wire inside my mouth is slated to be around for another two or three months. But you know what, that's just about how long a summer is, and we all know how fast THAT flew by. So, before I even know it, it's going to pearls and no more swine (between the teeth).

Rejected TripAdvisor Review of Raimiti, Fakarava

RAIMITI, ISLAND OF FAKARAVA,  TUAMOTO ISLANDS, FRENCH POLYNESIA

Below is a careful, thorough, honest, and, I feel, helpful review of where I stayed in French Polynesia on my vacation this summer.  I wrote this for the website TripAdvisor, which I liked and have written several reviews for, until they rather insultingly rejected this one for reasons that I don't accept, but that very clearly let me know that from now on, they are not for me and I am not for them.  In fact, I would actually like to remove all the reviews that I have posted on their site, as the thought of my words (which always remain as a precious part of myself) present there now makes me rather nauseous (but there seems to be no way to remove them, of course).

I have noticed recently that TripAdvisor has a tight tie-in with Facebook, whereby a review or two of mine automatically ended up on my Facebook page by default.  If you do not want this to happen, you have to carefully hunt for a box to UNCHECK.  I am uncomfortable with so many things now automatically being posted on Facebook when you have not actually logged onto Facebook for the purpose of posting those things.  Things I want on Facebook, I can easily go and post them there directly.  Is Facebook going to rule my whole presence on the Internet?

So many independently-created websites that become popular get swallowed up by larger sites, so that among entities like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, eBay, Paypal, Amazon, Facebook, and so on, it is hard to know which ones own the other ones.  In my view, this has become all too "corporate", and TripAdvisor's recent attitude toward me is a clear sign that they are operating this way, now, too.  

As I write this, I decided to see who actually owns them, and discovered that either they are currently, or were previously, owned by Expedia...hummm, that's a nice scam...as people search for reviews of places on TripAdvisor, this is giving "price negotiating tips" to Expedia, which I have never liked because their prices are always higher than the others.  I think maybe their having a hint that I have a strong desire to go to some place (based on the quantity of time reading reviews on TripAdvisor) makes them elevate the prices to that place.  Could be.

But, apparently Expedia got to the point where it wanted to "spin it off" (not quite sure what that means...sell it?) and there are on-line rumors that it will (or has already) become part of IAC, a multi-media and multi-internet conglomerate that I had not heard of until this moment, but which defines itself as the world's sixth largest network.  So yes, I now see, all these things truly are "mainstream", which is to say, more powerful, and therefore more corrupt and less good for the user.

Here is the (what I consider) insulting rejection notice from TripAdvisor (along with all the painted-on clown smiles, which is how I view their various exclamation marks and statements of "how they value" my contribution that they don't value at all):

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for taking the time to submit your review! We value your contribution, and would like to be able to post it to the site. However, we're only allowed to post reviews that meet specific criteria and your review must meet the guidelines below before we can post it. If you'd be willing to edit and resubmit your review, we'd really appreciate it, and so will your fellow travelers! Your original review is included below so you can easily copy and paste it into the review form and make the necessary edits.

*Individual from a traveler's perspective

(No second-hand stories from others. No hearsay including rumors, quotations from other sources or the reported opinions/experience of others -- just individual travelers' opinions and/or customer service related experiences. Note: Hearsay is defined as unverified information heard or received from another.)

*Relevant to other travelers

(No content that is irrelevant and unhelpful to tourists. We are not a forum for general political, ethical or religious opinions. We will not post questions or comments directed to property representatives or questions/comments directed to, or about, TripAdvisor staff or other TripAdvisor members.)

We appreciate your contributions to the TripAdvisor community.

Best regards,

TripAdvisor Support Team

I wrote (but did not send) a nasty e-mail back to them, since I feel that their objections to my review are incorrect (I do not own up to what they are complaining about) and especially since I viewed their implication that my review contained content that was "irrelevant and unhelpful to tourists" to be not only grossly incorrect, but immensely insulting...they aren't PAYING me for my efforts, so why should I jump through hoops for them?  (Their little "reviewer ranking" titles and "badges" are irrelevant rewards if they control what you write.)  If they had given me some specific examples of what they didn't like instead of making me have to guess, I might have attempted to accommodate them, but since they didn't, what's in it for me?  (Especially now that I know they are so corporate.)  

Instead, I won't even bother to respond to them at all.  Because now I have gotten their number, and no longer care about them.

So, here is the review they rejected.  I have not changed a word.  If you are actually interested in the French Polynesia island of Fakarava, and especially are considering a stay at Raimiti, you might appreciate this review.  I notice that there is NO review of Raimiti on the TripAdvisor site more recent than last January.  Not a single one from this most recent high season.

------original review-------

VERY UNUSUAL, DEEPLY MAGICAL, BUT THE BEST OF ALL

WERE SOME OTHER GUESTS WHO WERE THERE

Thinking back over my experience of Raimiti, I realized how very unusual, and yet deeply magical the whole place was.  I have read every review of Raimiti on this site, and I feel that every single thing said by anybody is true, whether good or bad, and I felt, myself, nearly every one of the things that other people said, plus many things of my own that nobody else has said.    I would say at the outset that you must carefully read the Raimiti website so that you will have a full understanding of what is on offer there.  I think once you read those words and understand what they are saying that you will feel in your gut whether you want to go to Raimiti or you do not.  What you see on the website is what you get...look at those pictures...you will be there in that place, and it will look exactly like that.  There is no fakery in those photos nor are they the product of photo-shopping genius.  I, myself, took hundreds of pictures that look just like that and all I do is snap and shoot.

Your own body and soul knows what it is that you hope to get out of a stay at Raimiti, and what you want may be different from what some other reviewers wanted.  For example, many spoke of quiet relaxation and solitude, but I am not one who gets relaxation by doing nothing (I can, and do, read at home, and I can't stand lying still sunbathing), nor is solitude, per se, any special thing for me since I am quite able to be solitary at home.  I know how to relax in even the most frenetic urban environment.  But I found that what I could absorb from Raimiti that was infinitely relaxing to me was taking in that amazing blue color of the lagoon, or hearing the sound of the water lapping in what I thought of as "my tide pool" right outside my fare's front curtain (there is no closing door, and I didn't need one), or feeling the delicious shifting breezes blowing against my skin, or the motion of whatever boat we rode in as it sped across the water past perfect private white sand beaches backed by coconut palm forests.  Instead of a place of solitude, Ramiti was a place for me that brought wonderful people together--from Italy, from Switzerland, from France, (from California...me), people of sophistication, intellect, sensuality, artistry, but, most of all, heart, which, if they were drawn to this place, that they surely have. Beyond the charms of Raimiti's beauty and setting, it was these people (two newly-wed couples in particular!) who made my experience there the magnificent thing that it was.  And if these same kind of people were in a large resort, one might not ever know it or ever have the chance to know them.

So at this point, if your study of the Raimiti website makes you feel within you a "yes", then here are some hints that might make your enjoyment even more assured.

Times are hard on the island of Fakarava (a rectangular ring of somewhat separated motus around a clean, gorgeous lagoon), like they are around the whole world, making things more difficult for pension owners.  Transportation seems to be a difficulty (lately, or maybe always), maybe fuel costs have increased or it is expensive to maintain boats, but there now seems to be a sharing of boats and "captains" so that there is no such thing as a "boat from Raimiti that will meet you at the airport for an hour and a half ride down the lagoon to Raimiti's motu".  Instead, when you arrive, don't expect someone to be waiting there for you with a sign that says "Raimiti" on it, or perhaps your name (even though you will see that for some of the other, I guess larger, pensions).  Instead, you will need to exit the airport with your luggage and go out to where vans are lined up and ask one of the drivers if he knows where the van is for Raimiti.  That van may (will) have the name of some other pension on it, but it will be filled with people who will be dropped off at various pensions and guesthouses along the way.  Even though there is actually a boat dock right there at the airport, nobody seems to use it for some reason.  Instead, you will be taken to what seems to be the end of the only road on Fakarava, where there will be a small dock and from there you will be taken to Raimiti.  On the boat, of course, will be the others who flew in on the same plane who are also going to Raimiti, but there also may be other visitors taking this boat who are going to pensions further down the lagoon from Raimiti.  I recommend asking on the van who all is going to Raimiti so that you can already gain a familiarity with the other visitors who are going there with you.

One other thing about this transportation...your departure from where the van drops you off may be delayed due to waiting for another plane that will arrive after yours, that is either bringing in some needed supplies for Raimiti, or, perhaps more likely, the arriving flight for visitors going to a pension beyond Raimiti.  This is all to make this journey from the airport to the southern Fakarava pensions cost-effective, and the very boat you are riding in may actually be owned by one of those southern Fakarava pensions.  

A hint about bathrooms:  the Air Tahiti prop plane you take to Fakarava DOES have a bathroom on it (hidden at the very rear of the plane); please be sure to use it before you land at Fakarava.  The bathrooms at the Fakarava airport are not likely to be working, and you will not have a bathroom available after that until you get to Raimiti.

If you understand these transportation conditions going into it, then you will not be upset when it happens.  Disappointment comes when the reality does not meet the expectation; well, don't be disappointed.  Let this be part of the whole adventure, HOW they need to do things on this isolated coral atoll.  Make friends with your fellow visitors, who chances are will be wonderful.  You're in this beautiful place, already, so you can enjoy it.

When you book your trip to Raimiti, you have a choice in bungalows, the "Robinson" ones which (as near as I saw) were all on the lagoon side, and the "Crusoe" ones, which were all on the ocean side.   There is some difference in the bungalows themselves, as you can see from the website, but conditions-wise, visitors say that the ocean side may be breezier (which some like and some don't--it's an advantage when there are mosquitoes), but also noisier.

The way I look at it, the Robinson bungalows, while private, are more central to the action--the dining room is on the lagoon side and the boats operate from the lagoon side.  This is like the "front yard".  Also, you can swim in the lagoon and kayak on the lagoon.  The lagoon is the sunset side, so it was wonderful to be located over there and enjoy the sunsets from the front of your bungalow.

I loved my Robinson bungalow that happened to be the very first one after the dining room.  I slept like a baby in there and woke up early, feeling fully refreshed.

Showers were good...each bathroom has its own solar-heated water heater.  I had gotten the good advice from Tripadvisor reviewer Cass, who suggested using "sailor's" shampoo since the Raimiti shower water could be slightly salty.  I ended up getting Kirk's Castile shampoo, conditioner, and soap and it worked perfectly (this actually could have been used in the lagoon, itself, since it was biodegradable, but that wasn't necessary!).  I always felt completely clean and refreshed.

I am pretty sure that while I was there, no one was staying in any of the bungalows on the ocean side.  (By the way, you do not swim in this ocean crashing on this reef, which is too rough.)  While I was happy to have my bungalow on the lagoon side, my favorite special place was over in the isolated, empty, almost alien landscape of the ocean side, where I never saw another person.  I liked to go over there early in the morning and see all the crab tracks (what I called "crab crossings") in the soft sand.  Those crabs were partying during those nights!  This was the sunrise side.  But my favorite thing about visiting over on that side was what I called "Monument Valley"--hundreds, if not actually thousands, of rock and coral piles, statues, or monuments, some of them rather high, all of them unique, beautiful, and somewhat ominous in a way, as if the whole immense compound of them as far as the eye could see in either direction up and down the shore were part of an ancient "marai" honoring Tahitian gods, ancestors, or some other beings.  When I first saw them, they were an amazing mystery, but actually, it really was no mystery--these had been built by visitors to Raimiti over the years as a way of keeping their spirit there in that place.  So, I, too, made one.  Those "memorials" were probably my favorite thing about Raimiti, maybe because they were so unexpected, mysterious, and full of careful artistry.  If you go to Raimiti, you must check these out and then build one for yourself!

There will be no electricity in your fare or its bathroom (either a separate building right next to it if you are on the lagoon side, or inside your fare if you are on the ocean side).  Your light in your fare (and also on the steps in front of it) will be romantic blue kerosene lanterns, which Eric will give you the easy instructions as to how to use.  However, you are are also given solar-charged flashlights for use during your stay.  Flashlight headlamps are recommended for those who might want to read in the vicinity of their fare after dark.  There are solar lights around in the compound so everything will have a soft, lighted glow.  You won't be in the pitch black dark!

In one of my favorite movies that comes from France, "My Father's Glory", which is autobiographical of the childhood of Marcel Pagnol, the family spends delightful summers in a house that they rent in Provence and the young Marcel romanticizes the kerosene lantern that they hang from a tree over their outdoor dinner table and lights the family's doings outdoors every evening.  There on Raimiti with my blue kerosene lantern on the steps of my fare, I thought to myself, ah, yes, I have Pagnol's summer kerosene lantern, now.

Meals at Raimiti (delicious, healthy, and beautiful) are breakfast at 8 AM, lunch at noon, and dinner at 8 PM.  They will blow a conch shell horn to announce when the meal is ready.  The conch will be blown before a boat leaves for excursions and for airport departures.

When I was there, it was the wonderful Moe (pronounced "Mo-ae") who helped prepare and serve the meals and she was especially sensitive to and aware of the social dynamics within the dining room which I greatly appreciated, which had to do with which and how tables were set, and for whom, and in what combination of guests.  I always felt cared for.

Excursions may be variable depending upon various factors.  Also, the conditions at each place may be variable, as well.  It is best to take these as they come and presume that Eric (the owner of Raimiti) knows best.  During my visit, we went on five excursions:  twice to our group's favorite white and pink sand beach, once to the area of the village near the south pass, once to a protected bird nesting motu, and once to a "hoa", which is a shallow reef place where water from the ocean is flowing over into a lagoon area and has interesting shellfish embedded in the coral.  You get to all of them by boat, although the favorite beach area could be reached by visitors on a kayak.

In order to enjoy these excursions, I highly recommend that you bring a beach bag into which you can always carry reef shoes--I happen to like Salomon Techamphibian water shoes that worked really well when I thought to bring them--(thongs will not be sufficient because they are too slippery) or, alternatively, scuba-diving booties, snorkeling gear (mask, snorkel, fins, and booties because those fins are likely to gouge slices across the top of your feet if you aren't wearing protection), a beach towel, sunblock, and your camera.  You will take hundreds of pictures.  (I took about a hundred each day.)  If you do not have reef shoes, you will be unable to enjoy much of the charm of each place you will be taken.  For example, at the beach, you are likely to want to walk out through the water to an alluring distant sand bar, a walk that will really hurt your bare feet.  The nesting bird motu does not have a sandy beach, but is made up of what I think of as "coral gravel".  Worst of all was the "hoa" that  (for some stupid reason), I did NOT bring my reef shoes, but instead, had on only thongs, which were all but impossible to use to walk across the jagged, broken-glass-sharp dead coral bottom.  To show you how sharp that coral bottom was, I (also stupidly) jumped off the boat wearing my glasses, which, of course, gently floated down through three feet of water and rested on the jagged coral bottom.  That mistake will cost me over a thousand dollars to replace the too-deep-to-fix scratched three-levels-of-correction progressive eyeglass lenses.  All the glasses did was gently REST on that bottom and the lenses were ruined.  What was happening to my hands and knees and legs...blood city.  Fortunately, there were no black tipped sharks around to test their normally-not-interested-in-humans nature.

One never seems to know when the snorkeling will be good or bad, despite what we are told.  There was virtually no snorkeling at all at the beach, although there were some curious snakey-like fish, but that was all.  We were told that snorkeling would be good in "the pool" in front of the village, but it wasn't really all that good, although there were some pretty yellow and also some beautiful blue fish.  However, there were black-tip reef sharks which we cautiously swam with.  While I had hugely hoped to have calving whales, dolphins, sea turtles, or manta rays, we never saw any of those ever, but at least we were in the water with sharks, so those became my memorable "big sea life" of this trip.

To me, snorkeling was best of all at the nesting bird island, where there were lots of examples of purple and other beautiful coral and several different species of fish.  It was there that I got into a relaxed frame were I simply wiggled my fins and gently moved along peacefully, enjoying all the underwater sights.  That ended when suddenly a fish shot past me in a panic and then I saw a black tip shark swim over, larger than the ones I had seen near the village.  I figured that maybe I would feel more comfortable closer to the shore, so I purposely made my way away from the shark, not in a panic, but just wanting to be on the safe side.  I would have liked to have photographed it with my underwater camera, but I used my energy to carefully move away, instead.  But that was a great experience to have under my belt.

Interestingly, my favorite place to swim was in the lagoon right there at Raimiti, and it ended up that there were thousands of a long, thin, blue fish right there around Raimiti's dock.  So "home" maybe had the best snorkeling of all, after all, even though some reviewers found none there at all when they were there.

One thing that I for sure expected us to do we did not do, and that was snorkel the south pass.  However, the newlywed couple from Switzerland did scuba dive the pass and didn't find it to be all that impressive.  The fantastic pass diving (and snorkeling?) experiences probably happen only at the peak in-coming tide times.  Looking at some tide tables, I see that, of course, these peak times slowly progress day after day around the clock and at the time you are there, the peak tide time may be in the middle of the night or at some other time that does not coincide with excursion times.  So this is not the fault of Raimiti, but conditions astronomical.  If this particular experience is essential for you (especially if you are a scuba diver and are going to Fakarava particularly for this purpose), you might want to consult some tide tables or communicate with TOPDive about this issue and select your trip time accordingly.

One dinner at Raimiti while we were there involved a fish barbecue right there at Raimiti, so that was a special activity that happened at Raimiti instead of on a distant motu.

At Raimiti, of course, like at any hotel, guests arrive and guests  depart.  What isn't typical, though, is that if you have had any interaction with the guests at all, perhaps at a meal, or along on an excursion, you will then feel sadness when they leave. And then it will be time for you to leave, when you will be sad for yourself, but there are people there who will be missing you!  It feels good, though, to feel a loss after the departure of a person whom you maybe knew for only a day, and I think that indicates the strength of what Raimiti really has to offer that I didn't see many (if any) reviewers talk about.  And, of course, all those hundreds of piled stone and coral monuments stand in mute testimony of something important, too.

There was only one bad, or problematic thing about Raimiti, and that is the language situation.  While I had completed Pimsleur's French I language course (so one cannot accuse me of being the kind of American who expects everyone to speak English), it wasn't nearly good enough, for Eric was very "French" on this subject (of perfectly executed and preferably fluent French being expected and almost required), but who did know English, while few of the staff members had the slightest clue about English, although one could have some communication with Moe.  This was not a total handicap for me thanks to three of the four newly-wed friends being quite good in English (one of whom worked professionally as an English/Italian translator of contracts and other legal documents, and another of whom actually taught English, as well as Latin and history), who kept me thoroughly abreast of the goings on that were not otherwise fully communicated to me.  Throughout my stay at Raimiti, there were 12 visitors being there at various times; two were from French-speaking Montreal, six were from France, itself, two were from Geneva, Switzerland (where French is the language), which left only two of us who did not know French fluently.  If you, yourself, are not fluent in French, I would not cause that to prevent you from going, but be prepared to feel somewhat isolated unless you have the experience I did of making friends with people who were fluent in both French and English (or whatever language it is that you speak), and who are generous in interpreting for you.

I think I did not fully appreciate Raimiti until I was putting together a Shutterfly hardbound photo book of my trip.  The page that got me emotionally was the last photo of the deep blue Fakarava lagoon at the airport before I got on my flight back to Papeete, and then home to Los Angeles.  The sudden grief I felt showed how deeply the experience had embedded itself into me.  I hope that you will find yourself having this same depth of experience with the place.  And I hope that the friends that may make there become lifelong ones.