Yo Yo Ma

Yo yo dieting. Say it enough and it sounds like a foreign language or a rap song. I don’t really think of myself as a yo yo dieter. I think of myself as a yo yo healthy eater. When I’m up it’s all veggie burgers and quinoa (a word only Whole Foods employees know how to pronounce) and even kale salads and veggies with sesame tofu and vegan lasagna. When I’m down it’s extra cheese pizza and Friendly’s Butter Crunch ice cream and Fritos with Heluva Good french onion dip and those 99 cent hash brown things at Dunkin Donuts and caramels with sea salt.

I know I am really off the deep end when I find myself dipping oyster crackers into Earth’s Balance vegan spread. Like a crazy person I bring my two disparate sides together in the name of healthy binge eating. And herein lies the dilemma–when I am eating healthy my body feels better but when I am eating crap my soul feels better. So how do I love myself, body and soul ? (Hmm..I hear a Billie Holiday song coming on.)

I met Yo Yo Ma  once. He actually walked by me and shook my hand on his way into a performance. He looked like the happiest man alive. He asked me how I was. I just nodded like one of those bobble head dolls with a grin that caused me about 10 minutes of lock-jaw. But his smile, his smile was joy personified. He actually radiated, like a super hero exposed to some unearthly chemical or an angel. What is his secret? Does Yo Yo Ma ever yo yo? Or when you do something you love every day, when you reach into yourself and expose the very thing that makes you tick, that makes you rise up above all the dangers and dogma and dailiness, do you get a piece of that joy? If I write as often and as bad and as extraordinary and as deep as I possibly can, will it transform me? Will it stop the yo yo? Wake me up before I go go? Turn me into a ho ho?

Yo.

Word.