|
sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
|
The Fat Demon Who Reads
Bonus second entry for today: I had the idea since the University's gym is closed for the break to join the Y for these two weeks and, as a challenge to stay focused, to go and buy a pair of pants a size smaller than I was wearing and make the promise to myself that by the end of the break I'd fit into them. And so I signed up at the Y and then went and usurped my own minor victory when I walked into Old Navy (the scourge of the military-industrial complex, I'm sure) and slipped into a size of pants I haven't been in since before I was about twelve or so. How could I not buy them? So I bought them, and am wearing them even as I type this little entry... Clothes have been so problematic these days. The stuff I bought to take to Tennessee in October has been relegated to the "too big" bin (some of it after a single wearing) and I'm already too small to wear Max's clothes. And shoes? I've dropped a shoe size, which drives me crazy, as my beloved Docs are now almost a size-and-a-half too big. There will have to be new boots, but the break in period will kill me dead. To celebrate the buying of the new pants, I went home and took a nap (and dreamt about eating yeast rolls and soup made with pigs feet and heads and beans and rice), then went to lunch at Flying Star (the ubiquitous turkey sandwich and sugar cookie and lots and lots of coffee). I had stopped by the used bookstore earlier looking for Pale Fire, the Nabokov that Sophistica recommended, but apparently there was a run on used Nabokov for the holidays because they didn't have anything of his that I hadn't already read. Instead, I scored Edward Wilson's autobiography Naturalist, and a copy of Wizard, the Varley, for Max. And I sat, alone (gasp!) in the cafe, eating lunch and reading about Wilson's childhood. Wilson's writing is about what you'd expect: he has a beautiful talent and inspiration for science, but that talent and inspiration don't cross over into his telling his life's story. He did have a beautiful boyhood, though, and because of it retains his boyish wonder in nature and, even more impressive to me, he is unconsciously attuned to the necessity for gratitude towards people and nature. That sense of gratitude is something that I appreciate very much these days and so I love his story despite his often uninspired writing. In the bookstore: I ran into some cute little emo boy in the art section who made with the eye-contact. Now there's something that I am noticing a lot more these days: the attention of strangers. There was this strange cross-over time when a lot of women paid attention and that period I really liked. But it was in that period that I realized that I was about 30 lbs. away from the attention of men. And, sure enough, self-fulfilling-prophecy-ing-ly enough, there went 30 lbs. and there came the eyeing by the men. I first noticed it in the grocery store a few weeks ago. It was pretty blatant. They stared me full in the face and I stared back with as cold an expression as I could conjure up. I noticed that it was mostly older men--and by that I mean older than me by fifteen or twenty years. Younger men were mostly with their girlfriends (whose territoriality led them to eye me) but those girls' honeys kept their eyes resolutely on the contents of their shopping baskets and left my personal space personal. In addition to the eye-contact, I also get a lot of "I didn't recognize you!" from acquaintances and those others who haven't seen me in a while. I think I've written in here (or maybe I haven't, maybe I've just ranted about it over and over to my friends) about people who knew me a hundred and sixty pounds ago and who now are only realizing that I'm a person they want to know and befriend? Like IMErin, who decided that I am suddenly good enough to invite to parties? Fuck her. I was super fucking cool when I was fatter. I have real friends from then to prove it. Still, I don't mind the "I didn't recognize you!" response. I can usually side-step it with a smile and turn the conversation in another direction. What is strange though is that I don't have that same response to my own appearance. I still think, as I go to put on Max's now too big jeans: Who do you think you're kidding? You'll never fit into those. In too many instances, I'm still the superfat chick who gets out of people's way (or who doesn't, which was a pretty good way to piss people off and make them acknowledge my presence, as I was normally the biggest invisible thing in the room and wanted to make them see that). And I still see Sublingua 1999 in the mirror, the Sublingua who was glad to diet herself down to 300 lbs. to get to Australia that summer and who gained 70 lbs. after coming back in the fall. I still look in the mirror and see Sublingua 2001, who was content with the 30 lb. loss that was a side-effect (along with no-feeling and the increase in suicidal ideation) of the antidepressant. I'm still the Sublingua who ate whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, however much she wanted. And I loved it. I loved those days. I loved them, I'm glad they're over, and I'll never go back to them again. And tomorrow, I'll see you at the Y, 6:00 a.m.--I'll be the one at the weight bench, doing chest presses with a 40lb dumbbell in each hand.
More lies:
|
|||||