2006-07-30 - 6:58 p.m.
Ah me, sometimes the smallest, simplest things make me happy. Right now the bathroom in my apartment "looks like a summer vacation"--I've got my big beach towel with its turquoise, coral, and yellow colors depicting a huge sailboat, palm trees, fish, and seashells hanging across the shower curtain rod--I bought this for my Miami Beach/Key West/Miami Beach vacation two years ago. My red bathing trunks are drying from the shower nozzle and I've got an air mattress leaning up against the wall. What with this heat wave we've been having, I've rediscovered the joys of my apartment swimming pool, as convenient as three flights of stairs downstairs, I don't even have to get into the car and go anywhere.
Readers of this Diary know that I am pretty contrarian, which, as an investment strategy has worked quite well for me over the years. But by "contrarian," I am mostly referring to other things, such as my honest disbelief in political theories masked as science, such as global warming (motivated by some megalomaniacs' desire to create a one-world government), "bird flu" (good profit-making for pharmaceutical companies, plus gives the federal government even more control over the bodies of the citizens), and the HIV-virus-cause-of-AIDS theory (which is caused, instead, by abuse of the body through over-ingestion of toxins and antigens, including illegal recreational drugs and legal, but harmful drugs such as antibiotics).
There, that statement will kill off all but one of my remaining readers. Well, I AM an elitist, after all.
But I've lived and thrived for more than half a century with an open mind, a commodity that is sorely lacking in the populace these days, so if what I say doesn't comform with the "party line," then maybe it's worthwhile to listen.
My latest contrarianism is accepting how necessary the sun is for human health, and that a healthy tan really IS healthy. "Oh my goodness NO!" I can hear the dermatologists shriek, reminding us all of the dangers of "skin cancer". The very same doctors who as a group said that my "acne rosacea" was incurable, but which, instead, I handily got cured by my Chinese herbalist practicing in Alhambra.
I'd been craving the outdoors and getting a tan for many years, but I always messed it up somehow. After all, I am an adult working in an urban office, my opportunities for going outdoors in sunlight truly are few and far between. So I'd always make the typical mistake of every other urban office worker, when summer vacation came, I'd present my mother-of-pearl white body to the rays of the sun and the very first day out give myself a killer sunburn. That would effectively be the end of that.
Sure, sometimes I'd slather sunblock all over myself and THEN I'd just remain mother-of-pearl white no matter HOW long I was outside. I never seemed to find the proper balance in SPF ratings, it was either completely burn or remain pale white. Where was that tan I wanted?
Well, this year I decided to do some serious research on how exactly to produce a good tan without burning and along the way, I discovered that most sunblocks are actually made of ingredients that are cancerous...that one was more likely to get cancer from the sunblocks, themselves, than from the sun. So what was the solution to that, become a vampire, or, at least, a Goth? Just avoid the sun entirely?
Well, no...instead I found several books on the subject of how important the sun actually is. I bought one of those books, The Healing Sun by Richard Hobday, and I loved what it said on the back cover:
"The human race evolved under the sun, and for thousands of years lived in harmony with its heat and light. Yet over the last fifty years we have lost this close contact with the sun and its healing powers. We have become afraid of it."
Don't you just love it when you read something and the absolute truth of it just rings right out?
Of COURSE mankind lived under the sun for millions of years. But I especially loved that sentence, "We have become afraid of it." Isn't that such a true description of our whole society? We have become afraid of everything, and who is it who seeks to make us all afraid? People who set themselves up as committees of experts. And yet no good thing EVER came from a committee. Good things only come from geniuses, working ALONE. Contrarians.
It turns out that disease after disease, including diseases like bone, breast, and prostate cancer (which kill far greater numbers than skin cancer), increase the farther away from the equator populations live...that is to say, where they get less and less direct natural sunlight. Vitamin D deficiencies are actually a very serious vitamin deficiency that wreaks havoc with one's health, and taking Vitamin D pills or otherwise attempting to obtain the vitamin does not make up for that deficiency. Only vitamin D made in the body through exposure to the sun does the trick.
High blood pressure is another one of those problems that comes from not getting sunlight, and, interestingly, dark-skinned people (whose evolutionary home was in sunnier locations) now living as immigrants in cities such as London (where it is impossible to get enough vitamin-D-producing sunlight except during the summer months) have the highest blood pressure of all, whereas with Africans living on their home continent, high blood pressure is virtually unknown.
Not only is real sunshine essential for health, artificial light is actually detrimental and harmful. At the very least, one ought to replace all their lightbulbs with full-spectrum light sources (something I have not yet wholesale done, but am working on it bit by bit). Apparently the pineal gland, that controls so many hormonal functions in the body, cannot work properly without the balanced light spectrum of the sun. Also, the eyes, which are great windows for light for the body, require this same input of the full natural spectrum, which you see only by going outside and not looking through glass (glass blocks the tanning rays and it is the light frequencies that "tan" the body that the body needs for health), and that includes EYEGLASSES and CONTACTS! I was horrified when I realized that it has been several DECADES since my eyes have received the input of the full spectrum, because they have been shielded by glasses so long. Not receiving the light properly will lead to cataracts, macular degeneration, and other eyeball problems. And one of my complaints is that my vision has been getting worse and worse and worse. Now that I know to take my glasses OFF for at least a little while when I am outside, my vision has noticeably improved. That, along with eye exercises makes me feel that I actually may be able to get rid of my glasses for good. Something else contrarian that I am working on.
The book explains that getting enough Vitamin E and calcium (which I believe I get through my food, but I also do take sufficient supplementation) helps with the assimilation of the sun's rays, so there is less problem with burning of the skin if a person stays out too long. But the proper way to take in the sun is to expose as much of the body as possible to the sun in very light doses (which can be done by staying out for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time, or exposing yourself to the sun only before or after the peak periods between 10:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.), and then gradually increasing the intensity of the dosage. The creation of Vitamin D is indicated by the appearance of tanning. While it is possible to overdose on Vitamin D supplements, it is NOT possible to overdose on sun-created Vitamin D (even though the Vitamin D you make is manufactured and then stored for later use, so that those who live in London can make enough Vitamin D for all year by sunbathing in only the summer), because when you have too much the existence of the melanin (which is what shows as a tan) blocks out any more Vitamin D-making light frequencies. Dark-skinned people, such as Blacks, have in their bodies melanin appropriate for very hot climates, so they are naturally protected for life on the African veldt, but have to work very hard to get enough Vitamin D when they live in cities like London or Seattle. Black residents of those cities typically have many health problems stemming from vitamin D deficiencies.
Very light-skinned people, such as Irish redheads or Swedish blonds, can easily get enough Vitamin D in far-north locations like Dublin and Stockholm, because their light skin admits as much sunlight as possible. They, however, have to be careful when they visit equatorial climates!
I was surprised to learn from my Swedish friend (who lives so far north that the Arctic Circle is only an hour's drive away) that he and people in his community typically sunbathe outdoors nearly all year long. That seems unthinkable in a country that has long, bitter-cold winters, but the cold doesn't stop them...the only thing that does is that period of mid-winter when the sun never rises. (They make up for it in the mid-summer when they have an equivalent period in which the summer never sets.)
How does one sunbathe in the winter in the sub-arctic? "Easy," my friend says. "You dig a hole about three feet down in the snow so that the wind doesn't blow across you, you line the hole with a reindeer skin, strip naked, and then sunbathe. The sun shining on you will warm you up, and you will keep your summer tan going!" Sounds great...I would have loved to have joined them for that.
Nude, by the way, is the very best way to sunbathe for health, if one can manage to do it. Unfortunately, I don't have a private backyard, so I have no way to do it here. Another option might be a nude beach, but the closest nude beach to Los Angeles is San Onofre, which is in San Diego County. I am hardly going to drive two hours and walk another half hour (from the parking lot all the way over to the nude section of San Onofre State Park) just to sunbathe for 15 minutes on a side. Besides, the first and last time I went there, helicopters from the nearby Camp Pendleton Marine Base kept flying overhead on maneuvers. This was during the early days of the Iraq war and I felt stupid lying this pale white middle-aged body on the beach while Marine recruits were undergoing bootcamp in the air overhead. It just felt "wrong". Anyway, this portion of the beach was covered by only the kinds of bodies that probably ought not to be naked in public. All the good-looking bodies were over in the "surfer" section of the beach, and they not only weren't nude, they were covered from their necks to the bottoms of their feet in Neoprene wetsuits. So I decided that the nude beach was not for me.
The only places I know of in the city of Los Angeles that have nude sunbathing decks are the gay baths. There's one nearby in Hollywood, the Melrose Baths, and another one downtown, the Midtowne Spa, both owned by the same man (who owns several all across the country). I might have used them as a solution except for two problems. One is that it would be too expensive...the cost would be about $100 a month, which I think is ridiculous for me to spend that for something that is "free,", receiving energy from the sun. The other problem is that the baths are meant to be places to have sex. Just to lie down somewhere is viewed as an invitation, so I imagine that as I was sunbathing my front, I'd be having to swat hands and lips away from my dick, and if I were sunbathing my back, I'd have to keep fat middle-aged Mexicans (sorry that's who's there at the baths) from trying to mount me in the rear. Not that I think I am all that magnetically attractive, I don't. I just know how it is, that's all. Makes me think of the one and only time I attempted to watch a gay porno movie at the Pussycat Theater. Every few minutes or so, some guy or other would come over, sit next to me, and cram his hand down my pants or unzip my fly. When I protested, they'd get mad, like why was I there, then? I'm not interested in strangers having sex with my body like a piece of meat and besides that kind of contact in the movie theater is illegal. At the baths, it's legal, but if I wanted to go the baths for sex, I'd go to the baths for sex, but what I want is to simply sunbathe nude, but that's not what the baths are for
So I had to accept that sunbathing nude was out of the question for the time being. However, I did order one of those "tan-through" bathing suits, but it hasn't come yet, so I don't know how well it will work.
Since the beach takes too long to get to for these early days of sunbathing, my first time out, I went to Griffith Park. But I didn't enjoy it; it was too hot and uncomfortable to just lie in a park, the grass made me itchy even with a beach towel, and when I was there, there were too many workmen working on the lawn. I figured perhaps it made more sense to sunbathe at my apartment's pool, but the building doesn't have any lounge chairs. I thought of buying my own and carrying it downstairs every day, but where in this tiny apartment would I store it meanwhile? I thought of lying on a towel on the concrete, but at my age, that doesn't sound appealing, either. But how about lying on air mattress, instead? Well, once I hit on the air mattress idea, then I REALLY knew what to do--sunbathe on the air mattress while floating on the pool! Brilliant!
So that's what I do, now. For under ten bucks, I got the best of three designs of air mattress that they had at Rite-Aid--this one has a shiny silver reflective bottom underneath the clear plastic top and sides, and it has little pockets that fill with water from the pool to help keep you cool. The whole thing is marvelous, the pool is utterly refreshing, and I just love it. And since this courtyard where the pool is only has three-feet of walkway around the pool (most of which is in a shadow except when the sun is directly overhead), by floating IN the pool, I'm not in anybody's way when they walk by, and I have the whole surface of the pool for getting the sun.
And despite all my complaints about this apartment, the building is pretty beautiful. The real problem is that the apartment itself is so small, so there is no place to do anything or to put anything. But otherwise, it's an attractive, old-Hollywood-Spanish-style building, very well maintained, and the bright blue pool sits in the middle of a beautiful Spanish garden courtyard. So after living in this building for eight years or so, I have finally discovered that the very best place in the building to be is floating on an air mattress in the middle of the pool. Getting tan. And healthy.
And so even though I am at home, a peek into my bathroom looks like I am in Key West. And I only had to spend $10.00.
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