In Which I Make a Shocking Discovery

I learn more things every day.

Today I learned how an electric fence works. Twice! It's a strange endorphin rush to be slightly electrocuted. I swear, though, it wasn't like I touched a fence and was all "oooh 'tricity I LIKE it" and then promptly became a voltage junkie and went around trying to find electric fences to touch. I was just THAT stupid two times (though they happened at two different locations, and the fences were v. different from each other, plus the second fence was holding in donkeys and I consider it a BOOBY TRAP to have donkeys held behind electric fences that one cannot help but touch in an effort to pat those donkeys on their schnozzes. How can you resist this face???).




The morning started off, however, with the effort of dragging myself out of bed, eating chocolate cereal and coffee for breakfast in an effort to get to some level of awakeness whether through sugar or caffeine, and then jumping in the car with Farmer John, our host Tadeu, and his daughter Charlotta. Off we WENT to the organic farm research center, and were met by the MOST amazing and enthusiastic gentleman of our acquaintance thus far, Ulrich. Ulrich was in love with his research and in love with exploring new and alternative means of studying the wide world of organic food. He started off our morning with telling us he had put silica in all the paint on the interior walls of the research center, as silica promotes liveliness. If at any point we were feeling less-than-lively, we should put our hand on the wall and voila! Instant jolt of energy. Farmer John, feeling the same way I was feeling that morning, immediately put his hand to the wall. Ulrich also supplied us with muscatel grapes infused with energy-giving dew, and he excitedly told us that we should eat a kilo of these grapes a day, and if we do so we would have SO much stamina and only need four hours of sleep a night!! And THEN he provided us with espresso and told us his most recent experience in the realm of the alternative and regaled us with the tale of his own daughter, who for years had these attacks of stomach pains, and no doctor could find anything wrong and they were at a loss as to how to cure her. Finally, in desperation, he called a friend involved in alternative research while his daughter lay writhing on the ground. His friend directed him to press on various points on her ear and to relay to him what points hurt the most when prodded. From this information, this Alternative Scientist determined Ulrich's daughter's Inner Note, i.e. the sound frequency in which she existed, and Ulrich was then instructed to fill a bottle of water and place the bottle on top of a piano. With his daughter in the room, Ulrich played, over and over again, the note to which his daughter was so indelibly intwined and then had his daughter drink the now note-infused bottle of water. She drank it. They waited. She hasn't had an attack in the five years since. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the right google term to find the page that will tell me how to figure out what my OWN note is. Oh fate!

Continuing on, apparently the dew outside exists on frequencies that, when paired with the already life-affirming muscatel grapes, creates a powerhouse of vibrant energy one can tap into if one consumes enough of the fruit, seeds and all. Ergo, five minutes later, one found me leaning wholeheartedly against the silica wall, clutching bunches of grapes in my fists and downing them as fast as I could (half) chew them. I ate so many, in fact, that the natural acid of the grapes began to burn my tongue and the sides of my mouth.

Two walls, five bunches of grapes, three cookies, four espressos and a few hours later, still exhausted, I shocked myself on the first electric fence. One eye sprang open. After jolt number two, I was wide awake.

Shock therapy, people. Better than caffeine.