Cactus Juice

A Sandblasting at the Golden Gate

Last week I finished reading Heloise and Abalard by James Burge.  I had started the book annoyed.  Annoyed by the topic of romantic tragedy, annoyed by Burge's strange compliment to his wife in the introduction, and annoyed by Burge's paranoid academic footnotes.  Fortunately the footnotes manage to drown the paranoia by number three (either that or the editors drowned the remaining footnotes), and the topic has the strange attraction of being central to the history of the time.  There is so much to be known of that era of thought and mores just by knowing Heloise and Abalard, and this book is a very good read.

My mind remains unsettled by Heloise's insistence on her tragedy.  She has lived her life as a lie, she declares in her later letters, the rational and Godly prioress while inside she never let go of her tragedy.  If it was a lie, it seems that it had to be a rationalization of an entire nation: who can believe that a wife and a mother is actually "nun"?  She took her vocation sobbing, and the priests looked away.

I recently had opportunity to take a walk on the San Francisco shore.  I had come to San Francisco expecting to be able to enjoy one of my happy places, which was surely expecting way too much.  As I stepped off the plane bitter tentacles of romance tore at me, and the drive into the city started and ended with tears.  On that walk, I wanted the blowing sand to scrape them from my skin.  The ghost needs to be pulverized in the spirit before I am forced to face it in the flesh next month.

As a very young woman I imagined the pain and bitterness I had experienced by twenty to be a kind of paint on the skin.  By painting over and over it with a lover's touch and other new things I expected the paint to at least be covered up.  They tried that on that Golden Bridge for many years as well, and eventually they brought out the sand and started over with the plain structure.  As if that would make the bridge forget it's history.

I arrived back at my hotel to the story that the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, had been outed as stupid.  We like to write off the stupidity of men as about sex rather than love.  But Sanford's emails, quite stupid in the plain light of day, aren't that different from the strange words Prince Charles used in his affair with Camilla.  Even John Edwards, supposedly blinded by power and and a leader's sex drive like so many American politicians, surely uttered words of romantic attraction to that strange woman he chose.  While we know that no one quite that stupid can be permitted in power, it nonetheless safely seats the root of stupidity far from the crown of reason.

The stupidity of love is much closer to the mind, far more dangerous, and consequently is only accepted when far more domesticated.  No one doubts that Barack loves Michelle, but we feel deeply reassured that he would never be stupid over her.  On the T.V. show 24, the responsible female President wipes the influence of her husbands love out of her mind.  Partly a mistake in her leadership-- she chose him as a partner because he is not irrational-- but ultimately as a matter of strength and not done with much difficulty and she is applauded.  A thousand years later we still look away.

Fatday: Protecting the Miracle

Recently, someone wrote on the WW'ers 100+ board about the idea, "Protect your weight loss."  I know people who have gone to dramatic lengths to protect the body they have created through weight loss, and I admire them and hope to gain wisdom from their good example.  Looking at my entire ww'ers weight history below, you can see where I let go of something precious, a very miracle, that I had created.  It isn't worth looking back at the relative value of what I traded it for, but it is worth looking forward and insuring it doesn't happen again.

I spent the entire week on the road, starting in Ottawa, Ontario.  The opportunistic little national symbol pictured above was eating leaves leftover after the trees were pruned in front of the National Archives.  At rush hour, he looked a bit like a beggar.  "Eating with dignity" is not his thing!

I felt a bit prickly all week.  I wanted to avoid dealing with the 250s for the third time this year, and going into the week at 249 put all my weight loss intentions on full alert status.  I had to counter my attraction to the various foods, as well as the intentions of friends and waiters to overfeed me.  A friend commented that I seemed over-restrictive.  This is what it takes.  I finally arrived home on Friday evening and my Saturday morning weight was 249.5.  So, I'm still in the 240s game.  It is going to take a lot more prickly to protect.

Bless Those That Persecute and Despitefully Use

I used to think it tremendously childish to have enemies.  I remember a respected college professor one day starting class with a long tale about the negotiations surrounding the publication of his latest book.  He ended the story by saying, "Life is just high school over and over again."  Making a hobby of enemies is jr. high school.

But to have enemies probably is just the weary fact of life being high school over and over again.  If one is engaged and active in society, they will be there.  You will be duped.  You will be made the fool.  You will be attacked honestly, and also wickedly and foolishly.

Withdrawal from human interaction does not impress me.  Neither does the paranoia of seeing an enemy lurking behind every smile.  Once must engage, maintain a clean conscience, and permit life to be experienced as it may.  As the philosopher Abelard put it in his list of advice to his infant son: "As a wise mind should not be deceived, so a good mind should not / deceive; to be deceived is a flaw, to deceive is a crime."  Or as Christ exhorts, "...I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.  Beware of men..." (Matthew 10:16-17)

It is true that one will find one's best critics amongst the enemies, though it is yet another weary fact of life that they will be buried amongst many fools.  I had to laugh to read in the Psalms this morning, "Those who sit at the gate murmur against me, / and the drunkards make songs about me."  Reading the Psalms over the past year, they are full of a considerable amount of passive-aggressive whining, to the point that I seriously wonder about the wisdom of daily reading.  However, they are also the truth of a man who was deeply engaged in public interaction.

Recently I had a disappointing conversation with an elderly woman.  It started well enough.  She asked about the link between my education and my employment.  Given that I studied philosophy, there is none.  She said something I don't hear enough: "Well, I always thought that people went to school to get an education, not to get a job."  Of course, the truth is most people make every effort to get through college while receiving as little education as possible.  This woman had taken advantage of her college years to become educated, she asserted.  She also had the advantage of her many years of experience and many years of religious instruction.  The conversation moved on to an issue of morality, where her option was not to take either side but to take a position of willfully ignorant amorality.  I read somewhere recently that as soon as you care what people think you become an evil liar.  I don't recall who wrote about this, but in this case it was true.  I am trying to ingratiate myself into her society and so I merely nodded noncommittally and beat a hasty exit.  My friendship has done her no favors.

Experience has taught me two things about life that I had not until now put together.  The first is that as one develops into adulthood it is quite easy to become progressively more stupid.  My GRE scores from 6 months after graduation to 6 years after graduation are more than enough to prove that point.  The second is that experience has a value that cannot be replaced by anything else, so that as one moves into adulthood one becomes progressively less stupid.  What this goes to prove is that there is an uneasy balance of stupidity in adulthood and unless one is quite cautious to tilt the balance in favor of intelligence, stupidity will win.  It is probably more likely than not to arrive at ones dotage with little but experience to show for it.  Yet, if we have exceedingly good fortune, we may from time to time have a friendship or passing acquaintance or even a single conversation which improves intelligence.

A few weeks ago I wrote in my journal, "There are many who would destroy themselves rather than admit that even those who work to destroy them work to their own good."  We don't need good fortunate to assure our enemies are among us, we just need to walk out the front door.  It is the best opportunely we have to assure that reason and good sense develop rather than wither.

(Picture: Landaur Alterpiece, 1511, by Albrecht Duerer, poster)

The Perfect Plan

Where shall I place my first footstep if I don't know in which direction I am going?  It seems obvious enough, but more mornings than not I rush into my day without any kind of a plan.  There is a famous quote from an executive at FedEx that goes something like, "We start every night with the perfect plan and watch it fall apart."  And still, more times than not, my priority overnight package is on my front step at 8 AM.  This is a result of a perfect plan that didn't happen.

So, an effort every morning to start off right.  Which means morning prayer before sunrise, because that is right.  And it means reviewing my plan.  I was surprised a few weeks ago to read something on my New Year's Resolution.  Surprised!  How is it supposed to direct my year if I don't even know what is on it?!  And then a look at the calendar for the day and a mental rehearsal of what the perfect day will look like.  This entire process is meant to take an hour, in any case not less than 30 minutes.  It is at the moment the single best thing refreshing how I live my life.

Just today, finished reading The Act of Will by Roberto Assagioli.  I was going through Davis Library purposefully toward some distant stack and happened to notice it- a sunshine yellow binding and that title.  In the book he doesn't speak directly of existentialism, but the book is something of a handbook for the existentialist life, between Tillich and Getting Things Done.  And he does reference Paul Tillich, as well as Viktor Frankl and Rollo May.  Despite having read all of them, I had never heard of him.  Unless the worm in the brain becomes distracted (entirely possible), I foresee several posts about Assagioli and his book.  For today, just the reminder that the will is nothing if the goal has not been envisioned.

Fatday: "Well"

Everyone is getting ready for their summer and fall races, and in The New York Times and elsewhere all kinds of articles and discussions about how to get there.  And right behind them a crowd of nay-sayers.  A comment on the NYT article about how marathon runners always seem to be injured got me to thinking.

At my top weight I spent two years on and off crutches because of persistent tendinitis in my ankle, but aside from that I was well.  So well that when I had a CT for a kidney infection and was found to have fatty liver disease, my primary care provider flipped through my medical chart and said, "I just don't understand how this happened to you.  You're so healthy."  Well, except for the slightly off liver enzyme levels we had blown off for years exactly because I was so "healthy."

With the use of my favorite upper, food, I was able to roar through day and spent my 20s bounding forward in my career while putting on 100 pounds.  I got up early in the morning to spend a few hours on a favorite hobby, worked all day, and spent the evening studying new skills to get ahead at work.  Everything was just great!

Now I'm just the sort of hypochondriac walker/runner that the comment writer thinks is so unwell.  I really didn't feel right last weekend.  I had eaten some wheat earlier in the week, very dumb because I have Celiac Disease, and also had had a rare dose of alcohol.  Immediately swore off both for the rest of the summer!  But let's look at what my poor wheat and alcohol addled (one serving, oy) head did last weekend- 6.5 mile walks both days.  Today I'm nursing a spot of plantar fasciitis on my left foot, five blisters in various stages, a little tendinitis higher in my left leg, my usual hip sciatica also on the left, core muscle soreness that comes with weight loss (the muscles have to keep shifting) and sore arms from upping my walking pace.  With this version of "well" I walked 16.2 miles today.  Oh, and my medical chart is a bit thicker after a half-year battle learning to stay ahead of hyponatremia and passing out while biking due to hypoglycemia.  Now my PCP can look at my ECGs and say, "Well, we know your symptoms aren't from a heart condition."

The second version of "well" has a lot more information and requires a lot more management than the first version did.  Stuff yourself like a duck meant for the pâté department and never moving means that you don't have too many complaints until your liver explodes (it doesn't really  explode) and you die.  Walk the 68.2 miles that I will have walked by the end of this week, and you've got a bit more to keep track of.

Down four pounds to 249.0 lbs. and back out of the 250s for the second time this year, although my mind has immediately gone crazy: "If I lost four pounds every week, I could be ____ by my next half-marathon."  How about just settling for well enough to transport myself 13.1 miles, that's about 12.6 miles further than I could walk back when I was "well."

(Picture: me after my first half-marathon in 2007.)

Fatday: My Boat

I missed a few weeks of Fatday.  Honestly, my walking goals push aside a lot of other things in my life, including blogging.  Since that last post I've been up to 256.0, down to 251.5 and now here I am at 253.0.  I alternate between being irritated that I'm heading into a half-marathon in the 250s (And just plain irritated- here's a joke: apparently I'm going on vacation with my ex-boyfriend that isn't speaking to me!  Maybe we can sit together on the plane, BAER!!), and realizing that there's two months between now and then- plenty of time for me to lose some weight and my ex to pull a hamstring.

A little blow-up on the WeightWatchers board brought home to me the fact that we are not all in the same boat.  My boat is headed to a marathon or bust.  Other boats have different destinations.  I follow the blog The Anti-Jared by a man who has lost more than 200 pounds on WeightWatchers.  He's been writing prose poems lately about what his motivation is, and it's all about his wife.  The latest one most clearly brings the point home.

Women who want to lose weight are generally advised against putting the same kind of importance on their husbands.  Given the unreliability of men and the cultural servitude of women, that's not the worst advice.  Anti-Jared makes himself extremely vulnerable living in someone else's boat, but I can appreciate the bravery and the heroic idealism of marriage that he is demonstrating.  And my own boat is not unsinkable- if I were to have a stroke or otherwise become incapacitated my boat would capsize too.  No boat is entirely safe.

The only thing I have going for me is that week after week, month after month, year after year, the captain is getting more and more experience.  And not only that, but the journey itself is worth something.  I'm coming back from a 44 pound re-fattage after throwing myself into some stormy seas.  I recently had a long conversation with someone who made is so clear that there are other directions I can steer my boat- it's a big world out there!

(Picture of Laser World Championship 2008.  I raced in the USA Women's Junior Championship in 1992.)

Memorial Day 2009: Heartache and Meaning

A year ago, this was my weekend get-away with a man I had fallen in love with.  Over that short time, each of us disappointed the other, but neither of us would speak of anything that might hint that the newborn relationship was doomed and so we pretended the other hadn't fallen short, and pretended not to know that we had fallen short ourselves.  Perhaps the disappointments were what unraveled the relationship, perhaps the silence, but unravel it did and this year I bring a broken heart to an occasion where only broken hearts will do.

The way survivors of World War I & II speak of Memorial Day is very different from the way Memorial Day is recognized by survivors of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.  The older generations speak of sacrifice and heroism.  Named heroes, as well as the unnamed mortally wounded who made barricades of themselves before their surviving comrades on the beaches of D-day and who fill all those cemeteries abroad.  The younger generation speaks of morning and loss.  From Korea and Vietnam we still hear of heroism and distinction in battle, but my generation, the Iraq and Afghanistan generation, is certain our parents were duped by Vietnam and aren't about to recognize the accolades of war.  We never speak of any type of Medal of Honor.  We only speak of widows and widowers, orphans and parents left behind.

We live in the best of all possible worlds.  I don't believe that because some theology can rationalize it.  I'm pretty sure theology can't.  I believe it because it is the only way I can keep breathing.  I've blown the fluff of off 20 dandelions and twisted the cores off a dozen apples, wishing for a different world.  We believe that God gives us the desires of our heart.  We believe that God looks after fools and drunks.  I believe the second a little more than the first.  I remember that silence a year ago and, knowing I am a fool, am forced against my wishes to thank God for having more wisdom than to give me anything I might wish.

Someone who enjoys suffering once told me the story of Heloise and Aberlard.  Heloise was a brilliant young girl, tutored by the famous scholar Abelard.  They became lovers, at least physically.  Perhaps they were incapable then of becoming the lovers they would one day be; I think their actions demonstrate that anyway.  Heloise became pregnant, gave birth alone, and eventually presented herself for ruin to protect him.  He doesn't seem to have given her anything at that point except a secret marriage that neither of them were willing to acknowledge, and her uncle cut off Abelard's penis in a bizarre turn ultimately meant to protect his career as a great intellect.  The best of all possible worlds beats to hell anything Twilight can turn out! Later, they began the correspondence that creates the great love story of history.

As I mentioned, my generation doesn't do recognition of greatness.  Instead of Heloise and Abelard, we turn out Save the Last Dance, presently getting the send-up it always deserved.  And my little life isn't that interesting.  I want the twisted avenging uncle and the letters simultaneously, but I'm probably not the woman that deserves either.  I am surviving a not terribly meaningful suffering, in the real world, and ultimately it serves to make me more human than I was.

I'd be very disturbed if trends continue and ultimately Memorial Day gives war widows and orphans no more than the greater trump card of heart-break.  When my Mom and Dad sent him off to Vietnam, I don't think they did it to draw a line on Communism.  My Dad was no warrior, he was an electronics engineer.  I'm pretty sure he went to war because he was an American and he recognized his duty to his country (another old-fashioned term).  While my father came home when his year was up,  his cousin Robert Louis Dyke died in a ship fire off the coast of Vietnam, and my distant cousin Peter Herman Krusi died in an airplane taking off from another ship.

I do not know enough of these men or their families to comment on what they meant to be doing there, but I am confident they were doing more than finding unique ways to break their parents' and wives' and daughters' hearts.  They were creating meaning that makes being human mean more than it did.  We never forget, not because we never forget the tears of their loved ones, but because we never forget what their deaths have to say about the lives we are called to live.  This continued valuable addition to our society is what Memorial Day should see in our war dead.

Both of my Grandfathers, who survived their wars, one going to great lengths to participate in World War I and World War II and then returned to fight tyranny at home, had much to say about what that meant.  I hardly need to repeat their message- they were The Greatest Generation, you know what they had to say.  On Memorial Day we mourn with those who mourn, but to honor the memory of the dead also means to live greater lives of meaning.  It is a reflection that is worth far more than just a reflection of suffering.

Bunday: Lessons from my Mother

On Sunday I drove several hours to meet a rabbit.  A childless woman scheduling a rabbit visit for Mother's Day might be amusing to some.  It has my shrink in hysterics.  Go ahead and laugh.

I'll wait.

I had never been to a no-kill animal shelter before and didn't realize that it was really a museum of hopelessly unadoptable pets.  The rabbit that had looked so cute in the petfinder ad was beady-eyed with rat legs.  The rabbit in the adjoining cage would attack anyone that touched her food dish- a volunteer demonstrated.  Aside from the three rabbits, there were about 100 cats displaying a range of eccentricities that I had not before realized was possible to collect in one room.  Another volunteer (the volunteers were about as unadoptable as their charges) gleefully explained the bizarre issues with each cat.

Still waiting for a rabbit (no giggling!).

I hadn't had a good long drive in ages, and it unleashed a few months worth of pent-up car trip kind of thinking.  I spent most of the trip with a notebook balanced on one knee.  North Carolina recently banned texting-and-driving, but your basic quill is still legal.  Before I hit the road, I had stopped at the Mother's Day edition of PostSecret (look quick- they don't keep a history).  Despite the tried-and-true stereotypes about relationships with mothers, the cards represented a wide variety of individual relationships.  Everyone's mother means something different to them.

What I learned from my mother explains why a rabbit is just a rabbit.

My mother grew up in gentrified Piedmont, California.  As a little girl she kept a knife collection displayed on the wall of her bedroom.  I think this would result in calling in a whole team of shrinks today, but her parents took it in stride, gave her a sword to go in her collection, and by the time she was a teenager she had replaced the knives with a little horse ranch.  Eventually a man came into the picture, but on the side.  Not the perfect man, but the perfect man for her.  If he hadn't happened by, I doubt she ever would have married.  If he hadn't of liked horses, he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did.

There's some bad news for a rabbit in here somewhere.

Whenever someone tried to talk to my sister and I about what women couldn't do in the past, or what they shouldn't do now, my mother would roll her eyes.  She would point out the women in history who have done exactly what they wanted.  For the present, she only had to point out herself.  Other women could have done these things, they just didn't have the balls.  When I see a woman fall down or get beat down and stay down, I always wonder if their Mommy hugged them a little too much.  My Mommy didn't hug, and she didn't comfort.  For better and worse, that has made me the person I am today.

I've got a date with another bunny next week.

 

My mother, with her mother.

Fatday: Planning for Miracles

On If You Belonged Here this week a post about caterpillars and butterflies.  In some ways I feel butterfly stage: studied hard, left home, and here I am with my job and my house and a very good life.  Now what?  While it seems ridiculous that at 100 pounds overweight and imperfect in so many ways I could see myself as anything other than a caterpillar, for a moment when reading the post the only thing I identified with was the butterfly.  He's clawed his way out of how many ever caterpillar suits and now what?  I commented such, and Polly Poppins answered back:

The caterpillar transforms five times before it becomes a butterfly. Six, if you count being born in the first place. I wonder if, after the second or third transformation, the caterpillar thinks "that's it, I'm done" or if he knows there's more coming. Does he look at butterflies and think, "wow, that's going to be me some day?" or does he see a bigger furrier caterpillar and think "man, that's probably as good as it gets."

If the caterpillar is thinking anything at all, that's a pretty big miracle right there (heh!).  But if he were to look at the butterfly and think that is going to be him someday, he would be anticipating a fairly preposterous miracle.  In comparison, the miracles I'm looking for aren't that grand.  Shedding a fat suit is a lot simpler than... whatever it is that caterpillars do- seriously, go read Ms. Poppin's post; it is mind-bogglingly complicated and there's big words for it that I had never seen before.

I've had some trouble lately with miracles.  As I write this, a storm is clearing and the tree outside my window is glistening in front of cotton candy pink clouds.  And there starts the birds singing.  How preposterous to forget about miracles even for a second!  And yet here I am.  Several reasons- the "rest stage" in my life journey being one, the difficulty of establishing waypoints in my journey when I'm not on the road being another.  I used to remember when things happened by city- "Oh, I had that conversation when I was in Houston.  And that was on _____."  Now developments that are four months past seem like they just happened last week and it feels like I'm not making any progress.  Last, I tested my relationship with God, to say the least, and we haven't quite recovered yet.  I'm realizing that in ever tradition God is presented as feudalistic; there's a reason for that, but I'm not quite sure I'm willing to go back into the fold.

I just finished my second triathlon.  When I started walking more than three years ago, I had some dreams of what I was going to accomplish athletically.  This week I got out the calendar and started planning for real what steps I need to take to get there.  I need to do more of that with the rest of my life.  The caterpillar doesn't have to know he's going to be a butterfly to know that he had better work his way out of the skin that is coming off right now.

As for my weight, last week I had another large gain.  I had the taper to the triathlon, but also the decision that I was just going to eat as much as I wanted.  Honestly, the sudden change in eating with that big of an exercise push (for my fellow ww'ers, I get more than 130 APs a week) is mind-boggling.  It's not just a matter of what to eat, but also of how very different my body feels without that hunger hanging over my head all day long.  I don't think I'm going to worry too much about the fact that I continue not to deal well with taper weeks. This week I was back down six pounds to 252.0, and onward.

(Butterfly from Easy Child Crafts.)

For anyone who ever thought they were too slow to complete a marathon.

This man made me cry.  For the vast majority of us, there is absolutely no reason we can't put one foot in front of the other and keep going.