Weird day; lots of thoughts running through my head.
I know that blogging is sometimes like baking cookies for Santa. You put all this effort into something that you know is going to go to waste. Unless some kindly soul takes pity on you. But I do get bothered when I see blogs that have achieved a certain level of popularity get dependent on that popularity. They often lose the earnestness of their voice because they keep trying to stoke the fires of fame by reposting the same thing over and over. Did a post about abortion net me 150 comments last week? Okay, then! Let’s write ANOTHER post about it.
Of course, sometimes you just recycle ideas because at a certain point that’s what’s in your head. Your needle is stuck in a groove of ponderance that you just can’t escape. With me it’s my illness; why is life this way and if it was going to be like this why dod God bother to have the doctors bring me back to life in babyhood? And since they DID bring me back to life shouldn’t I be doing something with that? Like last night I watched The People Vs. George Lucas and George made the point for the billionth time that because he walked away from that car crash in Modesto he was destined to become a monolithic corporate artist. Where’s my Kathfilm?!?
The one thought my mind has let go of in the past five years is my weight. I used to obsess on it. I used to weigh food, count points, count calories, spreadsheet my activity, journal every bite. Then over time I realised that I had turned weight loss into idolatry. It was my stumbling block. I had come to revile God’s creation–my fat self–and feel angry at God. So like every other zealot, I’m very anti-diet mentality. So of course there’s a heartbreaking conversation going on over at Tiny Cat Pants. The title of the post is so fantastic, so succinct a summation of everything that’s medieval about the current anti-fat bias in medicine:
I Have To Join A Cult Before They’ll Mutilate Me
Isn’t that perfect? Doesn’t that just sum it up when you think about it? You earn the privilege of having your belly sliced open in five places and laser-probes stuck into those incisions so the doctor can see well enough to tie off your stomach with a high-tech rubber band. You of course earn this “privilege” by first joining Weight Watchers and failing to lose weight on that program. It’s called Lap Band surgery.
Here is one of the better-known spokespersons for the operation, 8 years after the fact:
Ann Wilson is the one on the right.
Lap Band is like every other weight loss method. You still have to starve yourself, work out all the time and basically make looking like someone other than yourself your full-time job. And your life will be consumed by this task. You will come to loathe your best ally–yourself. All because people who don’t know you have decided in passing that you don’t look right.
Anyway, over in that discussion Vera Ellen came up. She’s the late movie star who was in White Christmas and whose anorexia was so bad that costume designers had to cover her neck and arms to hide the bones. And I know they’re not the same woman, but whenever her name comes up I automatically think of the Pink Floyd song “Vera” and the lyric
Does anybody else in here
feel the way I do?
…and I’m back to wondering about the futility of blogging and life and whimsy all over again.
And on that note, I’m finally giving in to temptation and reading a book I’ve saved all summer.
You could write about anything and I would read it. Seriously. And thanks to you, the husband and I have spent the last two nights watching “The Walking Dead” on Netflix. See, you have groupies.
TMI from a random internet stranger:
(Actually I’ve read your blog faithfully for several years, and have probably commented a time or two, so I’m not so much a “random internet stranger” as a “creepy internet stalker”. But I digress…)
In 1979, I saved up money from a summer job and some after-school jobs when I was in high school, to buy a very nice home stereo system. It had a receiver/amplifier, turntable, cassette player, and very impressive speakers. Each of these was a separate component — so yeah, we’re talking pretty nice stuff. (I still have the receiver/amp and speakers today!)
But when I got it home, I had no music collection. None. Nada. And almost no money left to buy music. I bought “The Wall” on cassette, and since it was my only source of music other than FM radio, I played it over, and over, and over. To this day, when I read the words of your title, I don’t really read the words, I simply hear the song being played in my head. And the song continues beyond just the words you typed. And I can’t really stop it. I’m not crazy or anything. It’s just part of who and what I am.
Some sunny day….
I’m with CH, above. Too much Pink Floyd in my youth means the song plays as soon as I read the lyrics.
I hate the thought that some self-righteous Doctor said that stuff to B. I hate that people get so trapped by the culture that we say those things to ourselves in our own heads. I hate this whole rat’s nest of issues and what it’s done to
me, my friends and family and almost every woman in reach of movies and TV and magazines. I haven’t gone over there and made this connection (because I just thought of it) but B’s more recent post, about the quiet rebellion of just being out in the world as your own self, that’s the only answer. We, the currently unculted, unmutilated folks of whatever size, just need to keep pushing through the world and making room for that type of person.
I declare honestly that reading this comments is TRULY like coming down the stairs and seeing Santa munching away on the snickerdoodles. I am always beyond honoured that folks give their time to what I have to say. And bless you all for liking it (most of the time.)
Jess, I don’t know if there IS such a thing as “too much Pink Floyd”. In fact, the whole reason this post got written in the first place is that any mention of the name “Vera” in written or spoken word automatically trips that song trigger in my head.
CH, you HAVE commented here before, and I remember you and I am blown away that you still read.
Your tale is similar to mine in that the Wall got stuck in my Discman during my Sophomore year at college and I spent three months with it playing nearly every free minute. My husband claims to have fallen in love with me when I told the group we were in that my favourite song was “Mother”. (It’s still up there, fighting for position with Tangled Up In Blue)
Janet, please don’t come beat me up over Walking Dead.
I hope you all are liking it okay…in spite of its Zombieness. I’m so very glad bridgett introduced us.
Oh no, The Walking Dead rocks, although I may have to throw in a viewing of Pride and Prejudice for balance.