Astronaut Food

I've been thinking about that concept lately - a concept taken from the novel You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem.

It's not about actual food, either - although considerable parts of this blog deal with the consumption and non-consumption of food, today's post doesn't, not exclusively.

I'll try to sum up the meaning behind "Astronaut Food" for anyone who hasn't read the novel - Astronaut Food, as named for the packed-up long-lasting food provisions that spacefarers take with them, is

... someone you're always thinking you might get with, but deep down know that you never will.
... someone you keep on your list of possibilities, as a back up, just so you don't have to feel there are no possibilities at all.
... someone with whom the stakes are blissfully low; a friend who might be more than a friend, but in the end is really just that - a friend.
... someone, with the idea of whom you entertain yourself, despite knowing essentially that if anything was ever to happen between the two of you, it would have happened already.

M. has always been my Astronaut Food.
I'm not sure if I am his as well, I'm suspecting that I might be.

There seemed to be a mutual understanding between us all the time, that we were thinking about each other within similar terms.

This understanding might have been that "things were developing in a certain direction", slowly but surely - or it might have simply been that we were to be the others' Astronaut Food forever more.
I was never quite sure.

Now though, I am not even sure about the Astronaut Food part anymore.

Now, that I am spinning ever more out of control, that my academic progress has been stalled in the wake of my various psychological disabilities - I'm not sure that he still sees me that way, as even remotely desirable, when the facade of a happyfunctioninghealthysuccessful person is slipping further out of reach.

By which I am not insinuating he only cares about those things, about a person being "normal, functioning, successful".
It is just that - he is so goddamn clearly one of those people, the normalhappyfunctioninghealthysuccessfull kind.

It's not that he doesn't have issues, hidden depths in which problematic thought patterns lurk.
I believe everyone does, and I do happen to know a little about his.

Still, he apparently deals with them, in an ever so commendable and effortlessly healthy way.

He is the picture perfect image of a strong, compassionate, successful and grounded individual, incredibly kind and helpful towards others, someone who follows his passions and takes care of things actively, who manages to accommodate for his hobbies amongst excelling in the pursuit of his career, nauseatingly well-grounded really, totally down-to-earth.

And you can't even hate him for it in your bottomless envy, he's just the most endearing and disarming kind of "healthyfunctioningnormal" there could possibly be, at least to me.

Being in his presence makes me want to straighten up and better myself, to be healthy and sane - yet it makes me feel impossibly humbled too, like I could never be good enough, that in my broken state I am not worthy of his friendship, his compassion, his concern.

He's like the bigger brother I never had, and at the same time I would really like to be his Astronaut Food.

... once again I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except perhaps to say that I am rambling, and that You Don't Love Me Yet is an excellent novel, that I recommend it.

It has some bits and pieces interesting in the light of thinness and superficiality, too - some rather poetic pieces which I am going to quote while sincerely hoping I am not committing any severe from of copy right infringement:

"I do think he looks a little fat onstage with the rest of us. I guess I'm not supposed to say that."
"He's not fat, he's just a grown-up. We're the ones who look strange. We're anorexic, we're ghosts, we're tinder."
"I thought we looked pretty good."

"You know what I love most about you?" she asked.
"What?"
"The way the veins in your forearms stick out. And the ridge of muscle that runs along your waist. I love that you're skinny."
"That's superficial, Lucinda."
"You can't be deep without a surface."

Beauty and the Beast

Unsurprisingly, this is a post on beauty; and Beauty and I have a rather strained relationship.

I can be beautiful, I know that - I can make myself so, I can pull myself together, I can focus my mind and I can seem that way to others, if I just focus enough, if I'm having a good day.

Beauty is an effort I make, a mask I put on, but it is not my natural state.

I feel like a monster underneath, hideous, inappropriate, crudely sensual in all its repulsive glory and glorious repulsiveness.

I feel that if I'm not careful, if I relaxed too much, that natural state would come through, would break its way out to the exterior.

I feel that sometimes, when I don't look into a mirror for a while, my features begin to shift without my constant scrutiny - the edges sharpened and the angles blunted, the brows protruding and the chin receding, the eyes sinking deep into their sockets - and then, when by chance I catch a glimpse of myself in a darkened window after nightfall, I look like a Gargoyle, I have turned into something dangerously close to what nature intended me to be.

It's in my body and my mind - the monster is inside, but it would also be outside if it got even the slightest chance.

My body seems to be straining, constantly, to transform itself into that monstrous form against my desperate and ever-more-exhausted attempts to restrain it.

My limbs, my fingers, my feet, seem straining constantly to develop in a crude and gangly fashion, to stand off at odd angles and curl up into themselves, my joints are straining to grow gnarly and repulsively swollen, my back is straining beyond belief to arch itself into a hunched and croony form.

My skin is straining constantly to break out into festering pustules and ulcerous pimples all over my body, to grow hair that will cover me whole, to hold on to any kind of filth and stain that might come its way.

My flesh is straining to expand, to break out in masses of fatty tissue obscuring the form of my skeletal frame underneath.

That would be me, I feel, if I wasn't careful, if I didn't take any pains to hide it - a monster, winged and horned, with huge gluttonous lips smacking in delight over a greasy, pimpled chin.

And every day I try to make believe, I bathe, I shower, I scrub, I shave, I run, I restrict, I clean, I push; I do my hair and I treat my skin, I cover with makeup any pimples or redness, I dress my body to hide the fat that is pushing to the surface, I push my body to its limit in order to burn it, I paint my lashes, adorn myself with jewelry and a false smile, I open my eyes wide and I purse my lips in an appealing fashion.

I do everything to hold onto the last vestiges of self-control, to become prim and proper and clean and neat and pretty, everything that society smiles upon and would wish a human being to be.

While in truth - I am meant to be a monster, I am fit to live in a cave and scare away small children with my unashamed hideousness; heck, I am probably fit to eat them.

I don't want to feel like this all the time, on the verge of breaking into ugliness befitting a creature of gruesome legend, of gluttony and hideousness meant to be cited in cautionary tales.

I don't want to go through the motions everyday, straining to make myself appear as if I had any business at all in the realm of beauty.

Still I do, because the alternative seems ever more terrible, and I am not ready yet to let the Beast win - despite the monstrosity that I feel underneath, I am not willing to give up on beauty.

Mini-update on T. and a small treatise on Romance

Thanks for everyone's comments on my last post; it fills me with unabashed gladness and glee that you took some entertainment value from my dating fiasco, and that you actually applauded my slightly inappropriate but liberating move of Leaving Without Looking Back, instead of chiding me for my childish behaviour.

T. texted me again yesterday, a completely passive aggressive text of "Yeah, must have been really hard to be stuck with such a douchebag, right?".

I had absolutely nothing to add to that sudden spot of self-awareness, apart from utter agreement, so I didn't respond.
For once, I thought, let's just keep to the adage of not saying anything at all if you don't have anything nice to say.

On the whole, I'm just getting tired of the romance game.

I'm a lost cause.

On the one hand, I am fairly anti social, I can't stand people more often than not and I sometimes despair of the feeling that I'm incapable of forming a relevant connection to anyone, with the possible exception of a few close friends none of whom I would want to date.

On the other hand, romance seems an important part of life to me - I do crave it, I crave the chemistry, I crave touch, I crave the rush and the excitement, that tingling sensation that you get along the edges of your spine when you suspect that things might be Developing Into A Certain Direction.

It's not just the sex I am interested in, either - I crave the intimacy, the mental connection, the build-up, the entire package.

Which is a shame, because a craving for just sex would always be easier to satisfy.
I am a sensual person at the core, but I am also, in addition to that, somewhat of an incurable romantic.

Throw that in with being uncontrollably impatient and misanthropic towards people who I find do not meet my standards of at least semi-coherent conversation (and there seem to be a lot of them these days), and you get someone who is haughty and desperate all at once; Too High Standards and yet Starving For Anything At All.

I tire of romantic partners easily, even prospective ones.
Yet I wish for and dream of someone whom I'd not tire of ever again, nor him of me.

And finally, on top of everything else, there is also that voice - that voice that I can never for the life of me shut up, that voice that whispers to me constantly: "You are a fat fuck. No one's ever gonna love you unless you stop being such a fat fuck."

Put together, it doesn't amount to very much by way of being able to develop or maintain a healthy relationship; or even a fling-tastic casual one.

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this - I guess I just needed a good old rant, and I thank you all for listening to this soon-to-be old spinster and crooked crone raving about her inability to Get On Good Terms With Romance.

Oh well, I figure if I do make it to spinsterish Old Crone status some day, at least I'll have one entertaining story to tell - the story of T. and the night when I Disappeared Through The Backdoor.

Through the Looking Glass - A Saturday Night Dating Disaster

All right, so this is going to be long.

The date was a downright disaster.

It was, to me, an entertaining and at certain points rather funny disaster, however, so I am going to share in all its glory.

Really, if I told you that the night ended with me disappearing through the backdoor of a dingy club, as in Excusing Myself To Go To The Toilet And JUST NOT COMING BACK, you would already know all the essentials you needed to know about how it went.

Still, I am going to humor myself and narrate the evening's events more fully.

It didn't start out all that bad.
Well, it started out sorta weird already, but no incentive was given whatsoever to make me suspect I would be ending the evening by sneaking out through anyone's backdoor.

For one thing, the fella' was still rather handsome, in a vaguely roguish, artsy way with messy blond hair, a lean frame, sharp and defined features, piercing gray-blue eyes and a well fitting suit of sorta-artsy proportions.

He also had a vaguely wild-ish expression about the eyes, like a young Kinski, and that was by all means a clue as to what his personality held in store.

I ain't gonna lie, I was definitely attracted to him in a sexual sense, still sorta' am even after the hilarious-yet-disastrous turn the evening took.
Still, I am physically unable to lower my intellectual standards that far as to overlook his personality, but we're getting to that.

Fitting the Kinski theme, he turned out to be an actor, as well as a director and producer of independent films, one of which will be (allegedly) hitting the festivals at some point next year, so I'll definitely notify you when and if THAT happens.

At first, we also discovered quite a pleasing amount of similarities that one could build a conversation on - like me, he was a vegetarian (although I'm pretty much an almost-vegetarian only, just like I'm an almost vegan, since I do indulge in fish (and cheese!) every now and again).

Like me, he loved Leonard Cohen, had seen him in concert numerous times; I even grew jealous at his tale of a particularly riveting performance he'd witnessed in Paris at one occasion.

Like me, he was a lover and self-proclaimed connoisseur of tea, which he preferred over coffee, and like me he had spent a longer period of time in Asia and particularly China before, so that we could exchange pleasantries about Szechuan cuisine.

I'd say that's about where the pleasantries ended, however.

I know I am a horribly choleric person, but there is almost nothing that gets me as aggressive, as fast, as that particular brand of pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-deep artistic types who are so immensely absorbed in the all-encompassing importance of their own person that they possess not the tiniest speck of self irony or any sort of capability NOT to take themselves seriously for even two seconds at a time.

I say that with all due fondness for pseudo-intellectualism, I am an avid disciple in that field myself.
But goooosh - at least I can laugh about myself every once in a blue moon.

And he was downright impolite.

For one thing, he kept disappearing to the toilet to do coke about every five minutes, WITHOUT EVER OFFERING ME SOME.
I don't really do coke, actually, I've had a sheltered upbringing like that - but that's entirely not the point here, it is still impolite.

He also presented every oh-so-radically-interesting fact about his life and his many pursuits in a condescending manner that seemed to demand rapt attention and immediate awe and admiration - like the fact that he had collected almost four hundred antique guitars since his seventeenth birthday, that he had once run a one-man catering service with the sole purpose of improving his own cooking skills and had shut it down once he was satisfied with his personal progress.

Yeah, I get it, you are something else, aren't you? These things might even impress me, if you didn't make it so goddamn painfully clear that you are expecting them to impress me...

When he asked what I did and learned that I was a student with an array of rather uneventful part-time jobs, his response was a smug-smiling quip of "How... normal."

Also, he was by no means planning to pay for my dinner anymore.

The first thing he told me when we met up (and that's where things were already taking a turn for the weird), was that he was sorry but he'd have to watch his money tonight, because he had just gotten into conflict with the police that day and had had to pay a heavy fine.

The reason?
Well, he and his film crew had been shooting a scene on the public sidewalk in front of the studio without official permission to film there - a scene that had him wearing an authentic SS uniform and shouting German insults at the camera because that particular film is intended to "mock fascism and the many forms in which it appears in a challenging and provocative fashion".

Yeah.

I don't think I'll comment much on that one, except to say that it makes for a fun story and that I am technically all in favour of defying fascism, unless it costs me my dinner invitation.
(I'm sort of being light-heartedly crass and jokingly self-centered here, which I do now feel the need to explain because I just spent an evening with someone who didn't get my, or anyone else's, humour at all.)

Basically, his every statement just kept getting less and less relevant and more and more idiotic throughout the evening; and every time I actively questioned the meaning behind his elaborate constructs of empty Big Words, made a sarcastic remark or exhibited the slightest trace of light-hearted (self-) irony, it became painfully clear that he couldn't keep up.

Might have been the drugs though - at a few occasions he smiled at me after something I said like it actually made sense to him, but then afterwards I realized it had pretty much looked like a vacant coke grin more than anything else.

I wasn't even being particularly unfriendly.
I had gone into that date (my first 'proper' date in forever) with naught but the most benevolent intentions, and I put up with his self-important nonsense talk for far longer than I should have.

After we had split the bill at the restaurant, after I had then had to pay for the taxi to the "party of a friend" he was taking me to (his money had run out by that point), after he had already started inching his hand over into the general direction of my thighs in the taxi and I'd thought to myself "You gotta be kidding me!", after the "party of a friend" turned out to be taking place at an absolutely dodgy club with absolutely unappealing clientele wearing too much fake tan - after all of that, I disappeared.

We were standing at the bar and I excused myself to the bathroom, racking my brains for the polite thing to say once I came back in order to get the hell outta here.

And then I saw it - The Backdoor.

Like the door into Narnia you find in the back or your Magic Wardrobe, I was absolutely enchanted when the door actually opened under my careful pulling of the handle.

Instinct took over, and with a wash of relief flooding over me I stepped into the cold, clear, fragrant air of the night, ending up in the backyard of the premises from where another door, incredibly also open, led out to the street.

I laughed like a maniac for a few minutes, revelling in my victory, the improperness of my own behavior, the childish yet effective and exhilarating way to escape an inopportune dating situation.

T. texted me not much later, "Where have you gone?!" - and after some minutes of careful consideration, I figured the polite thing to do was to at least own up to it, so I texted back:

"Through the backdoor."

I am happy to report that I have not heard from him since.

Date Night

Unexpectedly, I have a date tonight.

That is unexpected and sudden in so far, as it is, well - sudden and unexpected.

On my way to meeting with up my friends last night, I was accosted by a rather nice looking, rather handsome and rather well-dressed guy of about my age.

"Excuse me", he said, and I assumed he was going to ask for the time or directions, "Are you hungry by any chance, I'd love to take you out to dinner right now."

I said that I was flattered by the suggestion (because I did like what I saw), but that I was meeting some friends and was already running late, it was past 11 PM and I should have been at the bar half an hour ago.

He said that was a shame and asked whether there was the slightest possibility that we could go for dinner tomorrow instead, and because I was sort of taken by surprise and also in a hurry, I simply gave him my number and said that why not, he could call me and we might plan something but now I really had to go.

I don't know, this might turn out to be a fiasco (I am not a fan of spontaneous almost-blind dates per se), but in keeping with my resolution not to waste my life on anxiety and hesitation anymore, I've decided to give it a shot.
Who knows, that guy, which I am going to nickname T. in the (highly unlikely) event that he actually takes on a recurring role on this blog, might be worth knowing, might be interesting or funny or charming for all I know.

So, I'll let you know how that goes.

Also, I will now be answering a set of questions that the lovely and incredible Petal posed:

1) What is your favourite kind of cake, pie, biscuit, dessert, or sweet thing? (To eat, smell, look at, destroy...)

It varies - To eat, it would be crème brulée, to smell it would have to be Walkers Shortbread Highlanders - I can get high off that smell, I'm not kidding, it is intoxicating like a drug.

To look at, it is now something that I have just discovered - an outlandishly beautiful creation of white chocolate sprinkled with raspberry pieces, ground rose petals and chilli, all blood red on snowy white ground, extremely enchanting to look at and for sale at our local Organic Foods supermarket.

To destroy, it would be chocolate muffins, because I cannot resist them and I hate it; they destroy me from the inside.

2) If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

This is such a tough one - spontaneously, my brain came up with "Tower of Song" by Leonard Cohen.
Then again, I would also have to take into consideration "Bring me The Disco King" by David Bowie, because I can physically not go a single music-related question on anything without trying to bring Bowie into it.

Another candidate would be "Acts of Man" by Midlake.

I wonder why none of them are upbeat happy songs.
I guess it says something about me, something sad and very very cliche.

3) What is your favourite part of your body?

My lips, hands down.
They are perfect in my eyes, although that seems very cocky and narcissistic; to lessen that impression I will add that I have had that notion reinforced by quite a few others.

If we were talking body parts outside of the facial region, I would say hands or the region around my waist and ribcage, because I tend to be much slimmer there than anywhere else.

4) Do you paint your toenails and fingernails? If so, what colour, and why?

Sometimes, and when I do it is usually in one of three colours -

A) black, because it brings back fond memories of my "rebellious" teenage years, when I considered it an outrageous fashion statement,
B) some sort of transparent colour because it is practical and doesn't really show when it chips, or
C) bright hot pink, because I consider it an outrageous fashion statement now, coming from myself, and most people who know the usual confines of my style would agree.

5) Do you prefer baths or showers?

This is another tough one, I am very schizophrenic on a lot of issues like that.

There is a part of me that ABSOLUTELY prefers baths, because they are relaxing and contemplative, and that part used to be very dominant and had me bathing far more often than showering in my teenage years.

Then again, there is a part that believes people who only ever bathe are pussies, and that prefers showers because they are quick and cleansing and sharp, and wake you up.
I've been showering more often recently, it seems to be tied in a silly way to my idea of becoming more assertive.

6) Have you seen Alice in Wonderland? If so, what was your opinion on the dancing scene?

I haven't; if I had I'd probably be bitching about the dancing scene because I love to get all flustered about questionably entertaining scenes in movies like that.

7) What means the most to you, and why? This could be anything, an item, an emotion, a person, a place... you decide.

As and abstract concept - freedom.
That is silly because it is such a cliche and an unobtainable one to boot, because one cannot even define entirely what it is about, or how one would go about achieving it to completeness.

Still, it is the word that has always meant the most to me.
Tied in with that, the place that means the most to me is the sea and the seaside, because it embodies and defines and symbolizes my romantic ideal of freedom to perfection.

8) Would you eat spaghetti with a spoon and fork, or a knife and fork?

I'd really prefer to use just the fork, but if I had to choose I guess I'd take the spoon.
And then leave it lying next to the plate untouched the entire meal.

9) Can I have a kitten?

Only if you don't dress it up.

10) Do you prefer hand-written letters, or emails?

Both, for different reasons and different occasions.

PS: I have just decided it would definitely be "Bring Me the Diso King" - I just cannot live without that song.

You promised me the ending would be clear
You'd let me know when the time was now
Don't let me know when you're opening the door
Stab me in the dark, let me disappear

Memories that flutter like bats out of hell
Stab you from the city spires
Life wasn't worth the balance
Or the crumpled paper it was written on

Dead or alive.... Bring me the Disco King.

Assault, Battery and Shopping Frustration

Today was an entirely strange and unpleasant day.

It started with the realization that Summer Had Gone again, at least for now - it is back to almost-wintry cool-and-grey-and-stormy-ness.

As I type this, raindrops are starting to splatter against my windows; by the sound of it they measure as much as the egg of a midsized pigeon, each.

To properly celebrate the last day of my spring break, I got it in my head to go shopping today - clothes shopping no less - starting at American Apparel.

I never really noticed this when I was still skinny - but they appear to be quite sizeist.
They really seem to have a sizing policy that is designed exclusively for those flesh-and-bone-skinny twigs on legs that we'd all want to look like, the ones that I idolize and strive to imitate physically, the ones that I am woefully far from emulating at this point.

I only tried on a few items, but I could barely squeeze myself into a size M with most of them, despite the fact that I am now at the lower end of normal according to BMI.
Even the Bra that I tried - Jesus Christ on a stick, my boobs are rather on the small side, but an AmApp size M is about two sizes too small for them regardless.

I used to leave shitloads of money at that store, but today I walked out without having bought a single item, as is the irrevocable fate of the fat person at the clothing store.

Then I went and blew a small fortune at Zara - on clothes that were labeled size S and actually fit me, one particularly freakishly sized jacket still fitting loosely in XS even.

That just goes to show, as it has been proven many times before, how tremendously you can affect your sales and influence your customers through sizing policy.

How much of a difference it makes, whether the sizes you employ give them the illusion of being skinny - or the illusion of being fat.

Then, when I was barely out of the changing room, my mother called.
She had been assaulted on the street by a Random Old Crazy Guy, who set his dog on her before pushing her to the ground and starting to kick her and the grocery bags she had been carrying with great abandon.

An absolutely random attack, absolutely bizarre and therefor all the more frightening, absolutely traumatizing to my mother, evidently.
She was lying on the ground sobbing when she called me, by the time I arrived a friendly young man from one of the neighbouring apartments had also come down to help her, and the police arrived not soon after.

I accompanied her to the station, where she gave her statement so that charges might be filed against the assailant, and to the doctor to document and treat her injuries.

Neighbours that had gathered at the scene told us that the man was notorious for incidents like this one, and had attacked many a passer-by in a similar fashion before, while the police said that probably nothing could be done about it unless something "really bad happened" one day, like the dog maiming someone in a severe and lasting fashion.

It's instances like this, really, that make you see for a moment why self-justice and vigilantism might actually seem like a good idea.

When I came home I was slightly shell-shocked and shaky from all the excitement; I made myself dinner, a large one, and didn't even feel bad about eating it as it seemed like an utter necessity in order to calm down and replenish my energy.

Tonight I am due to go drinking and clubbing with friends, so there will be alcohol, and even more calories.
It has been a bad day in regard to calories, but then again it has been a bad day in regard to pretty much everything else, so I'm figuring what the heck.

I'm sort of out of the loop, I would like to go to bed early and look forward to getting up right before dawn for my customary run - still I feel like I should not pull out of the group activity, lest I become a complete recluse which I am constantly on the verge of, anyway.

Small-Scale Miracles

Yesterday, pretty much immediately after I posted, a glimpse of summer suddenly and magically appeared.

It had been getting warmer throughout the day, and by late afternoon when I was travelling across town to keep the weekly appointment with my therapist, the scenery had completely transformed itself into a picture-perfect tableau of summertime.

Troves of bored youth kicking around cans on street corners, hands buried deep into the pockets of baggy pants.
Young girls, with glittering eyes and shimmering hair, getting out their still-white legs in floaty floral dresses.
People riding their skateboards in short-sleeved attire, people eating ice-cream in the streets.

It was rather cliche, rather pretty, and rather unexpected.

I also managed to stay content with myself; turns out it does pay off to take my own advice from time to time.

I didn't entirely fast, but near enough: I had nothing apart from water and a single plum all day.
I ate the plum when I was feeling reasonably hungry, too - so it felt good, like the natural thing to do as opposed to a false messiah, a mindless craving I was simply giving into.

I was pleasantly surprised by the compliant and easy fashion in which my body submitted back into the (almost) no food regime, after being fed to a more wholesome extent the day before.

It even left me the energy to go running, twice, a nice and easy way towards an instant high.

Today, I replaced the plum with a 103 calories of single-serving-sized caramel flavoured soy yogurt; I think I could get used to this one-item-a-day "diet"...
At least it's been keeping me happy so far, we'll see whether stark hunger or the frustration to be eating even anything at all dictate otherwise tomorrow.

I'm oddly tired right now, not even weak, not even exhausted, just slightly disenthused in the brain.

I think I'll go for a trip to the video store and rent a few episodes of some entertaining show or other, hand the responsibility for my thought process over to the tv screen for a bit.

It's back to university next week, and god knows that'll be the end of excessive time left for lazing on the coach, so perhaps I should make the most of it.

I'm thinking Nip/Tuck perhaps, certainly does well in the "entertainment" department, while also being thinspiration personified - what with the entire premise of the show being the obsession with perfect bodies, and its cast of actresses ranging from staggeringly bony to solidly zero-sized with few exceptions.

I apologize for the lack of substance in this post and will be back the next time with something a little more relevant and a little less.... lethargic.

I'm blaming it all on the prayed-for yet unexpected onslaught of summertime, obviously.

Waiting for Summer

I wish it would just hurry the fuck up.

Which is funny, since I'm in no hurry to be getting all these imperfect body parts out in the open, they look bad enough in a covered state lately, as it is.

Still, I want the heat on my skin and an excuse to wear sunglasses without making a pretentious fashion statement about the blinding darkness of human society.

Granted, the sun part is already starting to come around, but it's bone-chillingly cold nonetheless.
Which is great for a crisp run in the pre-morning air, but starts grating on my nerves by noon at the latest.

There always seem to be so much more open doors and branching roads during summertime, so much more suspense and possibilities.

Well, I guess it's no surprise that warm-blooded animals would associate climbing temperatures with opportunity.

To turn up the heat in the spirit of skinny love, I'm leaving you with a few more sexy-skinny images of Evan Rachel Wood, whom I like despite never quite getting over the fact that Manson has taken a lover of my exact same age who isn't me.

Midlife crisis is a powerful thing, as "Eat Me, Drink Me" can attest to.
I attended a Manson concert not too long ago, where in good old tradition he set afire a bible while performing one of his songs.
"My god", I said to the person accompanying me, "Marilyn Manson burning bibles on stage, I'm feeling young again!" "So's he, probably", he replied.

In any case, on the subject of Wood?
That incredibly Hammy performance she puts in as True Blood's Sophie Ann LeClerc is something one just has to love.

I take morbid delight in my inability to learn from mistakes.

First of all, I have a confession to make: I DID weigh myself, at some point after starting this blog, despite saying that I really couldn't bear to know.

I did weigh myself, pretty much exactly a week ago, just two days after the "Serious Business" post were I still said I hadn't and wouldn't.

I did step on the scales, and kept the result to myself, because it was just as I had feared - not quite 60 kg, but a solid 59, hovering in between 58.9 and 59.2 as I stood there, shifting around on my feet to see whether that number wouldn't yet, magically, go down.

The good news in the matter, however, is today's revelation: I step on the scales this morning, not even entirely empty, not having been to the bathroom yet, already having had a bit of water - and it tells me 57.1.

I step off and on again, can't believe this stroke of luck.
Seems like the on-off ABC, the exercise, the one day of proper fasting have already done some good.

The bad news is the fact that I still look like a freaking whale of course, unchanged, 2 kg do not make a difference in the monstrously appalling dimensions of my thighs, the not-quite-flat-enough-ness of my belly.

Although I have seen some progress there; since I've started working out properly again, there are already teensy tiny changes and improvements in muscle definition along the legs, the abs.

I even imagine that I am already starting to feel a shift in the monstrosity that is my hips, but that might be wishful thinking entirely.

Still, wishful thinking is what fuels me to go on, and a little bit of a starting enthusiasm never hurts.

On the downside, I did eat today, although I wasn't really hungry - I went on fasting for most of the day and it wasn't even hard, it felt natural and easy.

Still, I was feeling suspicious for some reason, distrustful of my own ability to fast because I hadn't done this in so long.
So as the day wore on, I convinced myself that having a little something to eat would be "safest".

And there I went, eating, and immediately regretting it the second I had swallowed it down. It felt wrong, my high was destroyed, my belly full and my sense of peace and centered calm shattered to a thousand glittering pieces.

I am feeling shitty right now, on the verge of depression, but I will keep it together.

I have learned a valuable lesson; one that I already knew but apparently have to re-learn once more:
That I shouldn't eat when my body isn't even telling me to, that I should trust my body to handle itself and warn me by outrageous hunger or dizziness should the fasting become too much to bear, that I should trust my mind to handle the slightly heightened mental stress of running on empty for a while, that I shouldn't feel compelled to feed them in advance just because I fear they might not be able to deal.

I have learned, as I already knew, that it is very easy for myself to achieve a little happiness through careful fasting, and very easy to completely ruin the mood by eating when I do not need to.

I will try to keep these lessons in mind once again, to ease back into the confidence that I can handle a little hunger, a little silence, a little stillness of the body and mind.

I will try to listen to my instincts next time, to be patient and relaxed instead of nervous, to trust myself and discard the automated voice that insists a human being must have food to survive, and going without it for over 24 hours still feeling no hunger must be unnatural.

(Of course, that voice is technically right - a human DOES need nutrition in the long run, but that is not the point of a fast, and going without it for a few days will not kill you - so I need to shut that voice up for a little bit in order to concentrate on the void inside of me, to let it nourish me, replenish me during some food-free days of peace and silence.)

I hope I didn't ruin my progress too much; on the scale and in my emotional landscape, by tripping up my confidence and breaking the fast.

... and because I don't want this post to be filled with purely negative raving, I'm adding a little something from the "inspirational" department, a lovely fictional being with blue hair and blue tears, by the name of Jill, a creation of formidable genius Enki Bilal.

That image of her seemed to fit the mood of my post, and I'm using it with all due respect and copyright acknowledgement to Monsieur Bilal himself.
I love all of his graphic novels almost equally, but La Trilogie Nikopol was the first of his works I fell in love with, and of course first love lasts a lifetime.

If you haven't read them I can only encourage you to do so; it is worthwhile also to work your way through the French original, even if your French is as poor as mine.

Or, if you want a quick introduction to his world, I recommend the loosely-based movie adaptation Immortel, where Linda Hardy delivers quite a watchable, and incidentally rater skinny performance as Jill.





PS: Don't you just love the ironic juxtaposition created by those last two, completely unrelated panels when you put them together in this fashion?
Yeah, I'm deep like that...

Skinny Love: David Bowie

All right, so I'll come right out and say it: This post is going to be completely gratuitous.

You already know that I like David Bowie, and you already know he is skinny, so yes - gratuitous is where it's at.

Gratuitous Bowie-picture eye-porn, no less, and that is hands down the best kind of gratuitous as far as I am concerned.

Forgive me for being unimaginative, it must because I'm content.
I did a very satisfactory water fast today (thanks for the inspiration and motivation goes to Ancora <3), and I'm feeling happy.

I'm feeling light, focused, sane; in control.
The emptiness of my stomach leaves room for me to hear the echo of my thoughts, the light-headedness of hunger grants me the ability to feel grounded.

I very much enjoy that feeling that comes on the evening of a successful fast, when you've gone hungry all day, stomach grumbling, fantasising about food you won't be having - and suddenly it all falls into place, the hunger recedes, the rumbling settles, and you are not craving anymore, just empty.

It's the perfect the state, the ideal status quo, floating like a feather suspended in mid-air right at the center of your physical existence.

Not to get all new age-y on you, however - I promised Bowie pictures galore and so I shall deliver.

I hope you all had a pleasant day, I'll go and try to hold on for a bit to this new-found contentness right now.