The Door to the Netherworld of Obesity in My New Life

I had made a good life for myself. I was kicking ass at my job. I was hitting the yoga mat hard almost everyday. I was on cloud 9. The state of serenity was magical. The sleep was even better. Everything was going my way. My window was a beautiful portal to the world. My life was taking off. I was living the life of my dreams.

And then like missiles locked onto me or chess pieces of the netherworld’s hand my family showed up. My father was fired from his job near Dallas Texas and moved back closer in Tennessee and my sister randomly quit her job in Lexington Kentucky and moved close to my mother and me after she realized I was a confirmed money-maker. My community of artists, yogis and intellectuals was invaded. At first I didn’t know where it was coming from. It was like some neanderthal from Covington Kentucky was slinging snowballs with rocks in them at my stain glassed windows. I lost my clout at work. It was like a bowling ball was thrown on the sheet of my community. Or, I was tight rope walking, and some asshole was hurling rocks at me. And it was my own goddamned family. The scene from Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby flashed through my mind when her hillbilly family shows up to collect her prize money while her neck was broken, “Did you see the fight, and hear the crowds cheering?” And family’s reply, “You lost Mary Anne.”

I no longer go home to the home I created. I go home to their homes and their communities. My home isn’t the zen peaceful place of tranquility I worked so hard to build. And when I push their community out of my space it gets shoved back in almost as quick as I purify it out. I left their beliefs and life styles many many years ago: The S.A.D. lifestyle or Standard American Diet lifestyle. I identify as a West Coast type living in The American South. That’s Yoga, Snowboarding, vegetarian, surfing when I can, kayaking, athletic sunshine positive lifestyle. I was always that type growing up but when I travelled out West to the desert in Patagonia Arizona at The Tree Of Life with David Avocado Wolfe’s friends it solidified it. There is a small group of us here in Alabama: smoking pot under waterfalls in college. It has an Oregon feel to it. The mainstream BBQ, Church & Football, huge gas guzzlin’ loud trucks, environmentally unfriendly Alabama was never the Alabama I knew. I stuck with my Greek Hippie community here or the University crowd or Mellow Mushroom folks. And generally never crossed paths with the other part of the state. But, when my sister and father moved close they brought the hillbillies to my doorstep. They can’t stand seein’ folks livin’ better than them in their home state yet they refuse to change their beliefs.

Thus, the Door to the Netherworld of Obesity resides belching and fuming in the corner of my room. The door to Appalachian hedonism of clogged arteries, terrible life philosophies, illiteracy and everything else I left behind for the life of my dreams. The very same corner where my window once overlooked Alabama The Beautiful or our East Coast Oregon; from a tree house that Frank Lloyd Wright would have built. Even as I write this I can here my jealous father laughing in my mind as he walks away from the ruins of my life saying, “Thought he was better’n his old man. Had some come uppin’s for him.” Or some other useless, negative slogan he picked up from the boxcar-bum America. I am truly proud to be French from my mother’s side.

Last updated June 24, 2023