Exercise: None. In three days. This, under orders from the husband, who, upon seeing me return from a 3-hour interview on Saturday, said, “Baby, why are your hands blue?!” I didn’t know; maybe not enough oxygen absorption due to recent toxic gassing? He ordered me into a hot tub, then to bed; I woke an hour later with pink hands. Anyway, I have been ordered to rest, and I must say, though it runs counter to my nature, I am feeling — and thinking — better.
What I Learned: I love the quote I read yesterday in Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year: “Authority cannot be taught, it cannot be learned.” I struggle no more with writing; I know how to write and to keep the reader entertained; I struggle with the thinking; have been all year. I feel myself getting just slightly ahead of the struggle, a relaxation of the “if I don’t…”s; the knowledge of what knowledge is not, and the ability — rare, maybe pathetic and small, but there — of being to reach out and poke at knowledge. Right now (and yes, sillily), it looks like a plump of raw pork, fleshy-pink and moist; living, of course.
Exercise: Thirty minutes stretching on my bedroom floor, in the dark, while Pandora played anything its genome thought like Erik Satie. Really nice, like meditation, maybe, except you’re moving, and thinking, about work.
What I Learned: That, contrary to yesterday’s post about being strong and flexible, I am weak and tight. The weakness brought on by being exhausted, and also, the toxic gas poisoning of two weeks ago. The tightness because I do not stretch. I could/should do this twice a day. It was extremely pleasant to put something new into the roster, in lieu of harder exercise.
Also, about what Jaq sent yesterday. the Tilda Swinton interview where she mentions that the Scottish character she would play in Young Adam was heavy-limbed, cumbersome, and that she and director Dave Mackenzie “intended that I should be fatter than I am naturally to express that sort of living flesh thing for Joe .. but I found it impossible to get there, so we went for a different kind of lumpenness.” Jaq sent it because she thought I would understand this, and I do. The would be no contest if someone said to me, you must gain this weight to play this character, or feel the weight she has and express that. The latter, because you will need to come to sort of holistic understanding of how you feel and why and how to move, but also, how could one work best while trying at the same time to live within the new weight? While I can see this done to excellent effect, there’s too much to explore being fat, if you’re naturally not, and I can imagine it being a distraction to getting the work done. I know this, too, from having been heavier, and how interruptive I found it to other processes.
Exercise: None, today; sore from gym. Husband already chided me for lifting weights (mind you, weeny weeny weights, for five minutes) two days in a row.
Weight: 141.6. Body fat: 33%.
What I Learned: In the midst of having something of a political argument in the comments section of a blog post. Several times in the past, when I’ve treaded in this area, I’ve backed down because the response has been so caustic, so personal. Cathy was great at standing up to this, and to me, in order to do so, you need to have the courage of your convictions. I guess I did not, previously. I do now, and it’s interesting to see how the responses either die away, or move to more civil ground. This gives me the opportunity to ask questions. I think this is called being both strong and flexible, a condition that calls up for me the image of a fast plastic sled. I like it.
Exercise: 10 minutes stretching and weights; 20 minutes elliptical, during which I watched CNN, and heard Mike Huckabee say that “we” all put our heads on our pillows every night wondering whether tomorrow we’ll be killed by terrorists. I regret there are so many who do this, but I am not amongst them. It’s a big world and so, I think about a lot of things, work, sex, what I’ll eat for breakfast the next morning, death. Also, as a nation, how many people are we supposed to be afraid of? It used to be Stalin and the Reds; before that, the Japanese. Shall I hate Native Americans? The British? Any descendent of Attila the Hun?
People do not, because it’s not decorus, talk about how much they fear death; it isn’t seemly or good cocktail party talk and it makes us look wussy. Fearing terrorists, on the other hand, is considered a sign of strength, and do not doubt that as much as the next person, I dislike the idea of being murdered for my ideology. But I think fearing terrorism serves another purpose, in that it supplies a political base as well as a watertight credibility to our fears. The idea that our fears give birth to actions that wind up encouraging the things we fear is, these days, called anti-American.
What I Learned: The above. Also, that the sit-up machine at the gym is working.
Exercise: Ten minutes weights; 20 minutes stationary bike. Turns out the local gym is surprisingly empty at 9:30 am on New Year’s Day.
What I Learned: From the glorious Happiness Project, which I might have started reading at the beginning of its life in 2007 rather than the end: you must never miss more than one day in a row of exercise. I know this; my brother (who got me into running in the early 90s) used to call it breaking the umbilical; you just get too far from where you should be and it breaks. And breaks. And breaks. Come to think of it, I do this when it comes to writing books. In any event, and as usual, structure equals freedom: tomorrow at 1 pm, I go to see whether I am a candidate for Lasik; the exam takes 2 1/2 hours, and I assume I will not be able to exercise afterwards, perhaps not the next day, either, which means I must exercise in the morning, and am already planning for it, and looking forward.
Weight: 141.6, within ounces of the last time I weighed myself, in July.
Body fat: 29%, though this scale is kind of kooky.
Exercise: Short run, necessarily short as a few weeks ago I exposed myself to toxic gas and my lungs are still healing
What I Learned: The simplicity of stopping certain behaviors, how easy, actually, this is, as though there has been someone standing by the door all this time saying, “Right this way,” and now you can just say, “Why, thank you.”
Three days ago, in the midst of a middle of the night moral/actual hangover, I decided what I needed to do. I don’t believe (anymore) in discussing resolutions; it seems indulgent. But I am going to making some changes, not in an effort to be something else, but to be something other than what I am now. The mere act(ion)(s) will do this.
There will be some exercising, however; that I can say.
Thanks to Jackie, as always, for building the means by which to communicate.
I am currently writing an article about the gentrification on my block. If I had been asked to pick seven more distinct voices, I could not have done so; it’s a veritable Rashomon of opinions, and that I am completely surprised and captivated by what I am being told will, I hope, make the article worth reading.
It also got me thinking about language. I remember, years ago, my ex’s relatives, all full-flood Creek Indian women, being absolutely disgusted because a white woman, a friend of a friend, had volunteered to take them around Hollywood, and when they said they wanted to buy some souvenirs to bring back to Oklahoma, she’d asked, “For what age?”
“For what age,” they later snickered, to me, over and over. I didn’t, at the time, tell them I didn’t really see what was so offensive about the question, and sort of, still don’t. But that doesn’t matter, because to them, it was. My point being, communication is mercurial; I say x and you hear y. I had this happen the other day when I mentioned in a post that, if I owned the four gorgeous Clover coffee brewing machines that a local coffee shop does, I’d display them better; perhaps have them “held aloft by topless girls wearing tiaras.” This was read by someone who frequents my husband’s café, who commented that the post (which he took to be about “strippers”) “was just kind of a childish remark and a slam with a touch of jealousy.” More, that my “animosity” toward the other café means, he will never come back to ours. I don’t even know where to begin here, except to say, it got me thinking about the word “fat.”
In the past month, I’ve posted several of what I’ve called “fat rants” on my blog, posts for which I’ve received some private emails, from readers stating that he/she previously respected my work but no more, because it’s now clear I lack the humanity to understand what the morbidly obese go through. I will not, in this post, argue that point one way or the other.
I did, however, Google “fat rant.” This is what I found:
I find Joy Nash to be very smart, very sassy; very reasonable. Also, everything she talks about, I have felt, if not always in relation to weight. But I disagree with one point she makes, which is, that she’s fat. I don’t see it. She’s a big girl, but she looks of fairly normal size to me. In the video, she talks about how absurd it is that the clothes at, say, Urban Outfitters, start at a size 0. Well, I think so, too. I have no idea who fits into these tiny birdie pants. It seems to me a normal American woman is somewhere between a size 6 and 16. That Nash weighs 225 pounds does surprise me, though probably for the very reason she states: because women don’t admit to their weight, and thus, we’re taken aback by the 200+ number. I need to recalibrate my thinking in this area. It’s a start.
This is definitely a weight loss technique I could get into, even though it’s also a shameless PR stunt.
I read a LOT as an adolescent and teenager. Shudder to think what I’d have weighed if I hadn’t (I’m assuming here that I would not have turned to cross-country running out of boredom).
My friend Adriana’s mother is a doctor (so is her father, for that matter) and says that intense thinking can indeed help you burn calories. Talk about the upside of anger.
I have been beating myself up about how I ate today, but really, it could have been much worse. (That said, I’m thinking that a total break from sugar might benefit me, because sweets make my damn day go ’round.)
Breakfast: NutriSystem cranberry-orange cake (which is lush; cake for breakfast!), skimmed milk, two small plums
1PM: Ooh, the M&M cookies that my building’s leasing agents always make are fresh out of the oven! They’re just sitting there, waiting for me, when I walk into my building. How could I not eat one? Vow to do double-time in the gym tonight (don’t want to get all sweaty and have to re-do my hair and make-up prior to tonight’s social function).
Pre-social function snack at 5PM: NutriSystem BBQ soy chips (which I actually REALLY like; they are technically a ‘dessert’ on the plan, though), one egg, three prunes
Social function: Resisted all the lovely, free canapés, drank four icy Diet Cokes
Unexpected dinner at restaurant with fab new acquaintances: Greek salad with garlic-lemon rotisserie chicken, tzatziki-type dressing, one small piece sourdough with fresh tomato topping
Nightly sweet fix, even though I already had my ‘dessert’ when I ate those BBQ soy chips, and even though it’s 11PM: NutriSystem oatmeal raisin cookie, tiny glass of skimmed milk
I got home at 11, so didn’t make it into the gym at all today. I was aiming to go every single day except Sunday, so let myself down, but won’t let that discourage me from getting back into the habit (will I?).
Seriously, what I love about NutriSystem is that it is entirely possible to have chocolate at every meal (some of the breakfast and lunch foods are wholegrain bars with chocolate, plus there are lots of chocolate desserts to have with dinner). But I think this might be problematic for me, too, because it makes me feel like I need to have chocolate – even thought it’s just NutriSystem chocolate – every day. If I go a whole day without it, I feel cross and deprived. Things are going to get ugly when I’m only down to my almond biscotti dessert (blech).
Nancy
