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Today I’ve been thinking about the language people use to compliment you when you’ve lost weight. “You’re disappearing.” “You’re shrinking.” “You’re wasting away.” The sentiment is, of course, positive, but the language itself is less so. It can feel, in fact, downright accusatory.

Change is uncomfortable on both sides of the transaction. Even as you’re wondering who’ll you be without the extra weight—will men be attracted to me now, will I fell more comfortable going out/dancing/being the life of the party, will I like different types of clothes—I imagine there are some who are also wondering, “Is she now going to be a threat when it comes to the getting a boyfriend/husband thing? Are people going to like her more than me now? Is she going to be prettier than me?”

Nobody really likes a wild card, which is precisely what you become as you start to inhabit your new body. If you can’t predict what you’ll do/want/think, how can anyone else?

This is not to say that every well-wisher is secretly hoping you’ll fall off the wagon and into a vat of Twinkies, but it’s naive to think that a change in attractiveness—toward either end of the spectrum—won’t affect how people relate to you. And I don’t think there’s really any way to prepare for this other than to just be aware it may happen. I mean I think this is really just one of those you take the good, you take the bad situations.

Your thoughts?

p.s. This does not mean you should stop giving me compliments. I’m just saying…

My weekend reading (with a brief break to read Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith)

“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re suppose to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything….All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn’t have to be a poem, for heaven’s sake, it may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings—excuse the expression….” — Franny

“But the big thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddamn ‘unskilled laughter’ coming from the fifth row…But that’s none of your business, really….An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you. Not in any real sense anyway.” — Zooey

All but two of my grandmother’s American grandchildren and great-grandchildren made it to Trinidad for the final farewell. Why aren’t my sister and I in this photo? Uhm, well, okay, it’s because we’re in the grocery store buying every single piece of candy that we remember eating in Trinidad when we were kids. Sigh…

I have a love-hate relationship….with happiness. When I was a kid, it seems like my happiest moments were always the ones that were swiftly followed by the whip of my mother’s* voice. If I was tearing around, just running and jumping like a kid should, I’d hear, “Don’t get carried away” or “Stop showing off.” The time I finally came home with a straight-A report card after going two trimesters with a B in handwriting (this was 3rd grade), I heard, “Those jeans are filthy. Why are you such a dirty child.” And then there was the infamous battle of my freshman year in college, when, newly giddy on the power to finally buy my own clothes, I pulled on a t-shirt and the new GAP sweat-shorts I’d bought (c’mon, it was the 80s people), which I thought was appropriate gear to go visit my father. My mother’s response? “You look ugly, and I don’t care if it hurts your feelings that I’m telling you that.” Sigh…**

Needless to say, I learned pretty quickly to mistrust moments of joy, especially public ones. and behaviors that could lead to such joy, you know, like success and achievement and the like. It’s not that I avoid them—happiness feels quite good even to anti-social couch-lovers like me—but I always make sure not to feel too ecstatic for too long. And I expect that if something good happens, it’s time to brace myself for the bad that’s imminently following.

As some of you know, my grandmother Eutrice died several weeks ago. The day before she died was a pretty wonderful day. I spent a good chunk of the late morning at the Wheaton Public Library store buying records and  a Colette novel in the specific paperback edition I love and some other goodies. Later that afternoon I made it to the Pyramid Atlantic open house where I block-printed a piece of fabric, letter-pressed a birthday card, and received for free a gorgeously colored, 11×14 print that I just love. On the way home I stopped in one of my neighborhood record stores where I scored a $7 nearly mint copy of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, which I’d been dying to get. I don’t remember what I did that night, but all in all, it was a great day. And I woke up still glowing from how wonderful the day was.

Then I got the phone call. I managed to somewhat pull it together to walk to church but lost it again in the middle of service. I felt broken wide open. In Trinidad for the funeral with my family, I was very aware of the many moments of grace that punctuated the trip. My aunt J’s old boyfriend rearranged his schedule nearly each and every day to take us to run errands. He also helped us to get inexpensive transportation for some group outings. He was Christian as were the caretakers at the guest house, which somehow made everything feel easier and safer. Eventually that week I realized that God had also given me an incredible moment–or rather day–of grace the Saturday before my grandmother died. I recognized for the first time that the bad thing wasn’t punishment for the good thing. Rather, the good thing was a cushion that made the bad thing easier to bear. How much worse would her loss have felt had I spent the day before feeling lonely or angry or generally unhappy?

As I pondered the many expressions of God’s grace that week, I also really understood for the first time that bad and good aren’t quite as intimately connected the way I thought. Sure they might seem to follow one another, but there is really no cause and effect. Life is made up of good moments and life is made up of bad moments. Sometimes extraordinarily significant good moments happen so close to extraordinarily significant bad moments that, from a certain perspective, they can seem linked. And sometimes they are. But not always. And I’d be willing to say that—unless your good moments are purchased at the expense of others—that it’s not often either. And what a moment of grace in itself that God used this time to teach me something in an area with which I’d been struggling my whole life.

So, now, you’ll forgive me if I cut this short…but I think I need to go have some fun getting carried away!

*I’m not one of those people who believe that our mothers are responsible for all of our hang-ups, but let’s face it, they’re usually at the core of at least some of them….I’m just saying…

** To be fair to my mom, this is a lesson that has been reinforced by several people over the years–whom I thought were friends—who reacted to my academic and professional successes with jealousy or disdain.

Here’s a photo from my adventures at the Botanical Gardens in lieu of the picture I probably should’ve taken of myself before I changed into my pajamas given what I knew this post was going to be about…sigh…

I looked good today. No, really. I was wearing pants that actually fit (thanks to spending a small fortune at the tailor) and a tee that was cut so it actually followed by natural curves, meaning you could see my waist. While I know intellectually I’ve lost 54 pounds (give or take that donut I had this morning), today was one of the first times I looked in the mirror and thought, “Wow, you’ve really slimmed down.” Which is all good. To a point. That point being when I start to panic as more and more people notice how much I’ve lost.

Having been through this twice before, I know that from this point on, I’ll get a lot of “You look great” and “Wow, you’re doing a fantastic job.” On the one hand, it’s a fantastic ego boost-slash-encouragement. On the other hand, I know from experience that well-meaning words can also trigger shame and guilt about what I looked like before. And shame and guilt ultimately lead to boxes of donuts with a few cupcakes thrown in for good measure.

The first time I successfully lost weight (by which I mean I did lose the weight though ultimately I was unable to keep it off), I was doing Weight Watchers with my friend Susan. We both had the same reaction once the compliments started coming in: “Oh gosh, I used to look monstrous, didn’t I?” We both wanted to encourage each other, but at the same time we didn’t want to trigger a guilt spiral. So we came up with a secret code. Instead of telling each other “You look great,” we celebrated by saying, “You look shitty,” with appropriate variations, such as “You’re looking shittier every day” or “I’ve never seen you look so shitty.” Crazy? Yep. But it worked.

The second time I successfully lost weight (with the same disclaimer as above), I had neither a Susan nor a plan. And it didn’t take too long after the compliments started rolling in for the weight to slowly start creeping back on. Part of it was, I think, overconfidence, but a greater part of it was also shame at what I’d looked like before. Not to mention, as someone who’d always used my size as a barrier against people getting too close, I simply couldn’t deal with the vulnerability.

Given those two experiences, I’ve been waiting for that panicked feeling to set in, and so far, thankfully, it hasn’t. I think part of the reason is that I’m going about this glacially. I’ve had a lot more time to get used to the shrinking me than I’ve had in the past when I lost 60-70 pounds in the space of a year. (So far I’m up to about a year and a half for this go round.) I also have learned a lot more about myself in the intervening years. For one thing, I’ve learned to accept the fact that with the extra poundage, I really wasn’t as attractive as I could be. More important, I’ve learned to accept it not as a judgement on how I handled emotional stressors, but simply as a statement of fact. Turns out when you remove emotion from your observations, shame doesn’t really have a place to get a foothold.

The other thing I’ve come to terms with, well, not so much come to terms with, but at least started to recognize, is the very many ways I actively work to keep myself apart from others, including disguising my body with extra weight, which is particularly effective against single men. There’s a whole host of reasons for why–despite the fact that I want to get married–I don’t let single men get anywhere near me, and I’ll maybe talk about in another post some day. For right now it’s enough to say that I’m working on being more open, which includes accepting the fact that I have been known to turn a head or two, and that that doesn’t have to be either threatening or scary. It’s just a fact, which I may even come to appreciate some day.

So, that’s where I am. Progress, I hope.

Lollipops at the Botanical Gardens. May 2012

The problem is not my imagination. The problem—as I stare at a blank sheet which is demanding the poem—is that lately I seem to require permission/courage/a passcode to be imaginative.

I am highly imaginative at work in terms of figuring out what to program for our various social media channels that will best drive home any of the various talking points we’re highlighting in a given month. I am given incredible leeway to think outside the box, however, given that my job is public relations for a federal agency, there are still more than a few rules to follow around the peripheries of that box.

As I was reading through Hermione Lee’s biography of Mrs. Woolf, I was consistently struck by Mrs. Woolf’s sheer gumption. Not only was she highly imaginative, but she actively dared and pushed herself to tell stories in a way other than they’d traditionally been told. She was daring enough to interrupt the narrative of a family and assorted guests on holiday in To the Lighthouse with a meandering middle section that personified the aging of the house where they holidayed. She was daring enough to give her take on Elizabeth Barrett Browning by way of a piece on Browning’s dog Flush.* As I read of VW’s various experiments, I realized how infrequently I came up with lines—that might or might not stay in the poem—that were imaginatively outsized enough to generate enough  heat to birth the lines of a poem down the page.

As an aside, I should say that I do believe that poem-ing, like other artistic pursuits, is more perspiration than inspiration. I also believe that oftentimes when I write a poem, I’ve been unconsciously doing the “pre-writing” for a while, and the outpouring on the page is not actually the start of the journey. When I speak of the “spark” I mean that phrase or sentence that pops into my head and somehow opens the gate so the poem can journey from the unconscious (or subsconscious) the conscious. Usually that phrase or sentence has something about it that, to me, feels daring about it. For instance starting a poem about Virginia Woolf with the line “She builds and unbuilds cairns” though I’ve no evidence at all that she actually did such a thing. Or sometimes the sentence is explicitly wacky, like every single line of Love Poem: “At midnight I loved you with an intestinal thickness that left me dizzy.”

I think what I’m really pondering is how much my work writing life has leached into my personal writing life. I often blame being tired from writing or thinking about writing all day for my lack of steady output, but even when I’m on vacation I don’t write that often. Well, I journal, but that journal writing has become much more a catalog of to do lists and what I’ve done lists rather than the pages of stream-of-consciousness free writing that usually leads me to a poem. I’m wondering if I’m secretly harboring the idea that there’s a “right” way to write poems because most of my writing time is, in fact, spent in rules-driven environment. And how can I actively impress upon my subsconcious writing mind that the rules are fine for work, but at all other times, it is free to play and be outrageous and make up history or what seems like nonsense lines? I have no answers but I’m curious to hear what you think, especially if your art form is also how you make your living.

*I haven’t yet read this so I’m unclear if EBB actually had a dog named flush or if VW made it up wholecloth.

Sorry I’ve been away so long. I wasn’t able to write while I was in Trinidad for my grandmother’s funeral, and my brain’s been way too scattered since then. But I’m re-emerging on the blog on May 1. See you then!

for Hyacinth Eutrice Mejias Callender (August 16, 1917-April 14, 2012)

Our dead take with them
the tongues of the living.
My mouth gapes with how

I should say I loved you
but words are awkward, ill-fitting.
You loved your wounds deep into me

but I didn’t mind the bruises much.
I learned to treasure the wrong words
simply because they were yours, beloved.

I know now what passes from woman to woman
isn’t love. Isn’t like an embrace or a kiss.
Isn’t tenderness. What I mean to say is:

If you are now myth, I too will be myth.
If you are now dust, I too will be dust.
If you once loved me, I too can die

knowing the grace of love’s hidden mercies.

This is the print I got at Pyramid Atlantic for becoming a member!

…when you have the Wheaton Regional Public Library store? Today’s purchases (which totalled approximately $29):

Working Girl (VHS)

Election (VHS)

Earthly Paradise and The Vagabond by Colette

Cowboys are My Weakness by Pam Houston

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton (intended as a gift for a friend)

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

LPs: Tapestry by Carole King; Cold on the Shoulder by Gordon Lightfoot; James Taylor’s Greatest Hits; Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits; Memories by Barbra Streisand; Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell

45s (by A-sides, or at least the songs I recognize, which I’m calling the A-sides): Copacabana by Barry Manilow (which is curiously printed with the same tune on both sides); Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle; Ring My Bell by Anita Ward; Boogie Shoes by K.C. and the Sunshine Band (the other side is Shake your Booty so it’s a double-win!); The Best of Times by Styx; Got to Be Real by Sheryl Lynn

After a brief sojourn at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center birthday party (where I sewed my own book, made a letterpress birthday card, block printed a handkerchief, and somehow managed to say no to the gorgeous looking red frosted cupcakes that were offered to me three times), I made a pit stop at Joe’s Record Paradise for: Rick Astley’s Whenever You Need Somebody, Rosanne Cash’s Seven Year Ache, K-Tels Disco Rocket (a 2-record set!), and the piece-de-resistance (insert teen scream here) Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall!

In other words, this whole day was a big cuppa swoon…