GO: Barcelona Bites

Barcelona is my favorite place to have a layover on my way to the Seychelles. I first went when I was 22 years old, with a huge wad of money, a Louis Vuitton satchel, my able assitant and not much else. I fell in love with the city’s complete committment to beauty and art. I absolutely LOVE beauty and art. Where else can you get a Tibetan massage in the morning, have a live decendant of Gaudi's give you a tour of his most awe-inspiring creation at noon and drink coffee made from coffee beans found in hidden trove of actual ancient 8th century Moorish beans dug up by underpaid archeologists? Below are a few suggestions for eating and drinking while there. Spoof Gwyneth Paltrow GOOP.

Quel merde!

Sueco Albóndigas/ Tamarite, 104+34.935.245.241
This gem of a restaurant was first recommended to me by no less than the prince of tapas, Enrique Salazar Rodrigo Juan San Sebastian El Rocito Mayabar Hendrickson (his father was Swedish - he is just to die for AND boy, can he cook). Reservations are hard to get, but if you plan three years in advance it is worth the wait.

El Cucaracha Blanco/ Margolia, 104+44.882.687.449
This exquisitely hip bar features only white drinks. The white roach motif was created by Jeff Koons, who occassionally drops in for a quick quaff. My FBBFinB swears that two swigs of the frothy Vapid Vixen will cure any ill.

Distopia/ Margolia, 104+44.375.245.241
Very old school, high fat rice dishes and full of interesting tortured types (the restaurant, not the rice). Great if you are travelling with people you don't know well, but would like not to get to know better. The food just oozes ennui.

El Soya Marizpanito Preservado/ Mercado Viejito 104+44.228.945.331
If you have to pick just one place this is it. It is, without a doubt, the best soy marzipan sculpture reproduction of preserved foods restaurant on the planet. During the two and a half months of the year that I throw myself heart and soul into work I have to be especially careful, because it is so easy when I am tired and hungry to eat real food. This in turn leads me to eat processed foods, (yes, my favorites are Ho-Hos, followed closely by Little Debbie Raisin Cakes) which is a serious no-no. It's then that I remember El Soya Marizpanito Preservado - their remarkable soy marizpan processed food reproductions are so good that I have them shipped via air to whereever I am. Faux Twinky heaven!

A GOOP Spoof

DO: In The Rooms Where Women Come and Go

As some of you may know, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. When you're a mom, whether you work full time or not, this is even more true - not for you, of course, but for everyone else. If your mind goes, everything falls apart and then kids don't get to do what they want and husbands are inconvenienced. Spoof Gwyneth Paltrow GOOP.

So, about three months ago I decided to keep my mind busy and find a topic each month that I could really become an expert on during 3 or 4 half-hour sessions. This month I studied TS Eliot with a fabulous woman named Hermione Swope whom I met in an ashram in the Bahamas in February. She recently completed her orals at Cambridge and offered to personally tutor me for the month.

Her topic, TS Eliot: Time-Travelling Transvestite Mother Unmasked, has revolutionized the study of Eliot's work. I thought I would share some of her landmark findings in the hopes that you, too, are inspired to learn something new every four or five days when you can spare the time or focus for long enough. Her conclusions are startling for their originality, but once you stop to think about what she's saying, all you can think is "Duh!"

On The Wasteland:

• "April is the cruelest month" - Hermione points out that, in a genuinely poetic sense, for mothers, June is the cruelest month. This is because a woman who is a mother of children (as opposed to a mother of, say, invention) is faced with conflicting priorities that surface explicitly when her children are not in school anymore and she has to figure out what to do and how her life is altered. These questions are existential and can cause genuine and deep despair. But "June is not April," you say. Hermione Swope was the first person to prove that that in England, during the time the TS Eliot wrote, children came back from boarding school in late March. April WAS June. NO ONE had considered that before.
• " A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water." As Hermione points out on page 98 of her opus, is there a better image of what it feels like for a mother today to have to sit through "Land of the Lost" on a summer afternoon. Clearly TS Eliot had seen the movie prior to writing these lines and then travelled back in time. After which he/she says " 'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad." "Whose aren't?" I ask.
• And then, as if this isn't enough proof that TS was a time travelling transvestite, there is this stanza: 'What shall I do now? What shall I do?' 'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street 'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow? 'What shall we ever do?' Only a mother today in week three or four of June could have written those lines. Ppphhhh! It is remarkable that no one saw this before Hermione.
• Particularly poignant is the line :"By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept... " Hermione argues convincingly that it is a simple typo and should read :"By the waters of Lehman I sat down and wept..." Who among us does not have a friend bemoaning Lehman this summer? I almost fell out of my chair during the session in which she pointed this out.

On The Lovesong of J. Alfred Proofrock

• "There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" - I mean, BOTOX by any other stanza.
• "Do I dare Disturb the universe? (Read: Can I change my children's sleepover plans at the last minute?)In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse (No, I can't, but my children can, only to make new complicated ones that require more driving). For I have known them all already, known them all :—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (and soup spoons and gelato spoons and melon ball scoopers and measuring spoons for baking and spoons that can be used in sand boxes or not)
• "And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question" This speaks for itself. But Hermione parses it so elegantly and she can do it while doing hot yoga.
• And finally, what woman hasn't said to her husband in reference to her June ennui, as TS clearly did: "It is impossible to say just what I mean! ... “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”

See what Hermione sees? You could just weep it's so clear that she's right.

BE: To Flake or To Glow?

Yesterday, I realized I no longer glow. I flake. You know, as in, I actually flake. The skin on my elbows, my legs, my head. This is often the case for women of a certain age. But what really horrified me was that I didn't really care. I mean, it would be nice to glow of course. But, flaking, that's just where I am right now.

One day, I will glow again - maybe with the help of moisturizers, luxurious bath routines, personal groomers, sea weed and vodka scrubs, good low carbon footprint lighting - but I will. My newest friend, Milicent, who lives in Mallorca, swears we just bathe too much on this side of the planet. We strip our surfaces of essential body oils and the result is, well, really bad flaking. I explained to her that flaking is just the natural order of things (buy my book - "I Wasn't Born This Way". The alternate title, which I personally voted for but my publisher didn't like, was "Not One of My Cells Was Present at Birth - The Perpetually "NEW" Me." I just think it is clearer and, for marketing reasons alone, that's really important. ) But, back to what's important, Milicent is on a disciplined regime of one bath every 9 and a 1/2 days and I have to say, the results are astounding. She virtually shimmers. The natural emoliants in her skin literally take on a life of their own. I admit to being envious and I have committed to joining her in the summer and adhering to her routine. If you, too, are interested visit us. Mallorca is lovely that time of year and not bathing keeps the hordes away.

MAKE: I Am So Lucky

My friends Val, Cynthia and Merrell are so like me! We all have children, we try and work when we can and we breathe oxygen. It's ridiculous! We decided, since we share so much and our nutrition and life ethos' are SO similar, that we should put our heads together and come up with an easy idea for how to make dinner regularly, you know, so that we can feed our families. Well, it was AMAZING. Cynthia suggested that if we bought food and took it home with us we would be a long way to our goal. I agreed. Merrell was all over the idea and even added that getting food they would like and actually eat might enhance the experience. And, Val, she had the great idea that opening a wine bar together would provide a good place for us to stop and gather ourselves before taking the food home. It's amazing what a group of clever, dynamic women can come up with if given half the chance.

DO: Staying SANE

As I write this, I am completing the fantastic two-week “SANE” mental heath programme described below. Designed by self-described specialist Dr. Bettina Ruiz, this approached allowed me to think clearly and go through my day normally, something I cannot do if I am on a medication-free equilibrium programme. I followed her steps to the letter and can report that the results were startling. I was really normal-seeming. (I did have to end my seriously fun and slightly buzzed serotonin enhancement phase about six weeks ago – oh, well, c’est la vie). I have also really enjoyed finding out the details about everyday life, etc. seen through a vague haze. This revolutionary approach is amazing. Make sure you talk to your internist or holistic guru to see if SANE is right for you.

POOG: What is “Sane”?

Dr. Ruiz: After myself facing the chronic problems of everyday life I realized that many of us are dealing with constant symptoms that overwhelm us. Basically, as a culture we aren’t paying attention to basic principles of sanity. I developed the SANE program to help treat these symptoms by addressing their actual cause: life.

When our systems are overwhelmed by life, in the famous words of Chinua Achebe, THINGS FALL APART. Sleep deprivation, dehydration, no time for mediation, eating sporadically, waxing infrequently - all ensue in a mad rush. Forget facials. Simple things, like well-filed nails and coiffed hair. The majority of these symptoms are clearly due to life.

In my new blog: SANE: A Startling Approach, I make my solution available to everyone. The three key strategies are: Spelunk, Sedate and SIP– in that order. When you SPELUNK you are able to remove the psychological barriers to sanity that build up during years of living. Spelunking enables you to dangle in the dark caves of existence, taking you out of the then and placing you firmly in the free-fall of the now. Only then can you SEDATE using a combination of natural elements that I have engineered to emulation neurotransmitters that are only usually released immediately after male orgasm. At this stage you are ready to SIP (Sleep in Place) – detailed in the blog.

POOG: How did you come up with the approach?

Dr. Ruiz: After engineering school, I moved to London to complete my degree in 18th century literature. This radical shift left me 20 pounds thinner, plagued with acne, riddled by doubt and anxiety. No amount of Xanax, yelling-therapy or hot stone massage helped. I tried acupuncture, Vadic rope walking, crushed glass inhalation. Nothing. The diagnosis: Deal with it. I couldn’t and in a creative frenzy I designed what I thought would work for me personally: a reliving of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. I only made it as far as the caves when I fell into a deep sleep. It happened so fast, I didn’t know what it meant. And still don’t. I regained my lost weight however, my skin cleared up and my confidence soared. I looked and felt like I was 13. Everyone wanted to know how and now Here We Are. Today the SANE program is part of several practices in London, Paris, LA and Mumbai where I am designing a new, integrated Tantric SANE methodology.

POOG: What are some practical tips for a bit of SANE in day to day life?

Dr. Ruiz: Spelunk, Sedate and Sip whenever possible. No one ever thinks about the manifold opportunities for spelunking in daily life. Just carry a small pack of ropes, hooks, carabineers, and opportunities will reveal themselves. The next time you feel sketchy, nervous, getting ticky - find a cave-like cavern. Then, just move on to SEDATE and SIP. It’s that easy.

Visit my SANE program at www.saneprogramme.com where you can join a community of former crazed people around the country and the world who are doing the SANE program in unison and harmony. There, you can share your tips and successes with them and help other get SANE too.

POOG - Ordinary Greatness

On Monday afternoon, in a serene corner of my garden, Jessica Benchly, a longtime practitioner of unguided meditation, will be discussing the meditative and redemptive qualities of ordinary clothes. I met her purely by accident one day when I'd decided to sell my unwanted clothes on the sidewalk outside of my house. E-Bay came to mind, but in the interest of supporting the local economy, I thought the sidewalk would be better so I set up shop. She walked by and picked up a luscious little pink cashmere sweater trimmed in lavender-hued ostrich feathers. The minute she saw it you could see her eyes glaze over peacefully, the tension flow out of her posture and her breathing become deeper and more enriched. I thought to myself - I want to feel that way. This woman knows something I don't. So I asked. She offered to hold a seminar for me and my friends and Voila! Please come and bring a friend. Make sure you bring as many of your clothes as possible because she is going to demonstrate tantric techniques. See you there!