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.

Skinny Love: Natalie Portman and some stunned observations

It's incredible - I just can't do it.

I cannot do the ABC right now.

It is incredible because I used to be so good at this, at starving myself.

And now, apparently, I am not anymore.
Half a year of carelessness and unfortunate events was all it took.

What's so funny about it, is that "normal" people, people concerned with my health, would probably say I got better.
I used to be good at something that is considered "bad", considered unhealthy and disordered.

And now I am bad at that very same thing, that badunhealthydisordered thing, which must in turn me that I am - healthy.
With a BMI right in the lower-but-by-no-means-alarmingly-low half of the normal range, it must mean that I am happy, happyhealthynormal surely, in better order than before?

That's not what it feels like to me, though. I don't feel better, I don't feel "healed".

All that I feel is weakness, a failure of willpower is all that I see.
A failure of willpower is all that it is, to me and that never silent inner voice.

And I am not the happier for it, more carefree, quite the contrary - I am feeling So. Much. Worse. than I ever did when starving successfully.

Huh.
I'm trying to overcompensate with frequent and vigorous training for the time being, running and weightlifting twice a day until I have figured out who I am and how I feel and where I want to be.

In the meantime, I bring you another episode of Skinny Love:










Natalie Portman.

She's my ultimate ideal of beauty, I think. I could gaze at her stunning features for hours on end.

She's an outstanding actress, I love virtually every single movie I've seen her in (with the notable exceptions being A) those Star Wars I - III atrocities, they do rather fall into the category "guilty pleasures", and B) V for Vendetta, it was a bit of a disappointment as compared to the the original comic, but that was by no means anything to do with Portman's performance).

Her extraordinarily memorable performance in Léon remains unforgotten, of course...



(I love that movie to pieces, on the whole.)

... and many a great and entertaining movie followed, Closer, Garden State, Mars Attacks!, The Other Boleyn Girl and so on.

From what you can tell through interviews, through her commitment to various social causes, she seems like a wonderful human being on a personal level, too.

Also, she happens to be very skinny - tiny, elegant, graceful.

Yet, there is seldom to never any harping about her weight in any of the tabloids - other celebrities get the heat for being too skinny all the time.

Still, despite her being just as thin as other actresses (oh my gosh, look at those stunning claviculae - do want!) - despite her shoulders being as bony, her collarbones as protruding, her waist as narrow, her chest as flat and her arms as tiny - her thinness isn't subject to a lot of debate.

Which seems graceful too, in a way, as being skinny is very obviously not her only defining quality - there is more talk about her talent and her movies than her weight; she simply is skinny on top of that without ever raising a fuss about it.

Again with a quality I would so like to emulate.

Skinny Love: Tilda Swinton and an update

So, I am really, really not fond of myself today, and that's kind of an understatement.

To give you all the quick version: I did well on the abc for an almighty four days (yeah, really long, that), and then screwed up majorly with a HUGE binge yesterday (or huh-yooge, as Stephen King would say).

I don't even want to go into the sordid details of how and why it happened - yes, there were certain circumstances, and if I wanted to indulge myself I could go ahead and blame it on other people, on the particular situation, on the fact that I'm on my period and so on and so on.

But, we all know that sort of thing is deceiving yourself in a cowardly fashion - if I slip up and binge it is my own failure, a lapse in my self control, and no one else can be held accountable.

Oh well.
I got up at five thirty today and started the day with a run and a little weight lifting work-out afterwards, so at least that's making me feel good about myself.

Not so good is the fact that I'm invited to my parents for lunch today, so even if I wanted to pick up at day five again, I don't think I'll manage the 100 cal limit.
Perhaps if I add the burnt-off exercise calories, though...

In any case, in the spirit of not liking myself, I have decided to shift my blogging focus to other people for a change - no fun in talking about yourself all the time, right?

So, I've decided to declare this "Skinny Love" month, and do a mini-series of posts on people that fulfill the following set of criteria:

A) They inspire me in some artistic fashion, be it through their music, their style, their image, through writing or acting or any other creative pursuit, or simply through the entire concept and presentation of their persona.

And B) They are, in keeping with the obsession theme of this blog, visually inspiring to me by being thin or in other words, skinny.

(You are, of course, welcome to take up and participate in this idea if you find it amusing; I'm not running a trade-mark on it anytime soon, ha.
In fact, I'd be curious to know - which skinny minnies happen to have been inspirational to you, dear readers?)

Starting with: La incredible Swinton.










I absolutely love her as an actress - she embodies my every definition of "ethereal" with effortless poise - otherworldly, detached, incomprehensible and infinitely graceful beyond mundane definition, simply and utterly other.

And that photo-shoot she did a good while back for Another Magazine?
I can't even say enough about how she looks in those pictures above, how eternal and perfect, like a statue flawlessly set into stone, a monument of grace and beauty and dignity and spirit.

Where being thin is concerned, I don't even picture her as a person who purposefully tries to maintain or achieve this as a goal.

Much rather, if I had to guess, I'd picture her as someone who simply doesn't have food as a large part of life on their agenda, whose mind is too busy with ideas and their realization to ever think about eating in an active manner; someone who might often forget to eat, if not by chance reminded, while immersed in an other and inspirational part of existence that revolves around things untouched by the trivial absorption of calories into the body.

And that's the kind of ethereal we'd all like to be, aye?

PS: Have a happy Easter, everyone...