A Thousand Shades of Twilight

Boy, you're going to carry that weight. For a long time.

 

(Image from 'My Book of Bible Stories', Watchtower Press, 1978)

Oh, I can be such a glutton at times. I routinely finish other people's leftovers. I eat quickly in order to trick my stomach. I am a greedy-guts.There, I have said it. It feels quite transgressive for me to say that in these lean times. It also goes against everything I was raised to believe. But I have to come clean.

My catch-cry lately is 'But I am an emotional eater!' which, taken to its logical conclusion, would suggest that I eat 24 hours a day (a feat I have not yet managed to achieve, although not for want of trying). Even in sleep, of course, I am prey to emotional ravages, as Dear Patient M would attest (he has the dubious pleasure of having every dream of mine relayed to him in explicit, blow by blow technicolour detail. I am starting to wonder, because every time I ask him if he had his own dream, he responds (groggily), 'Yeah. Had one. Can't remember it..' Surely, surely, he would not be trying to change the subject?).

With boring predictability, I have been growing girthier of late. All those years of being told I had hollow legs have backfired. Horribly. As fun as it is to sit here playing with my rubbery folds of furry flesh, I must say that I would be willing to forgo that particular pleasure for the opportunity to leave a lighter, less gigantic footprint on this earth.

I sometimes try to put myself in the shoes of super-fit gym-junkie celebrities. How very good they must feel, I think. How very pleased with themselves. How very like a machine. How it must clear one's head to think about the Important Things (like adopting unsuspecting orphans, preparing winningly self-deprecating Oscar speeches, punching out the papz and such. I mean, just look at the staggering success of Gwynnie and her GOOP! He said snidely). It annoys me that I spend so much time having internal conversations about food and drink. Especially as my vocabulary is mostly limited to "Shall I?",  "Hmm..." and good old "Yes." I have a very efficient way of dealing with temptation. I yield.

There have, of course, been times when I have shown that I am capable of remarkable restraint. One year, I did not touch alcohol at all for six months. I even hosted a party during that time. People SAID they had a good time. Another year, I embraced the CSIRO diet with great gusto, eating nothing but lean meat every day. For the last year or so, I have been a strict vegetarian. Consistency, I feel, is vastly overrated. I have also undertaken all manner of controlled experiments involving my over-sensitive stomach. Sigh, the ex-Office Wit never lets me forget the fact that one week I was convinced that it was oranges that were causing me woe, only to decide that it was ricotta that was sending me into murderous rages the following week. It is as if I cannot simply accept the fact that sometimes I am just a moody shit, but, instead, have to blame it all on "something I ate". For someone ideologically opposed to the infamous 'Twinkie' defence, it is probably time that I asked my neighbour to check my eye for any stray logs.

In short, when it comes to food and drink, I am quite barking. Saner folk than I have patiently pointed out that there could be something to be gained by being tested for allergies. But what fun would that be? And have they yet found a cure for hypochondria? We hypochondriacs are ever so wily! We mutate!

All of that said, I am going to try to start another new health regime tomorrow. I  think I am probably telling myself that as a pretext for feasting like a fiend tonight. It has been a day involving inexplicable pieces of toast. This was meant to be the year that, for the first time ever, I was going to join a gym. Did I just say "was"? Eek. I have moved the "Join Gym" reminder in my electronic calendar at work about five times. It keeps getting eclipsed by other priorities such as purchasing crates of champagne. I actually do not believe it is going to happen and perhaps should just drop this pathetic charade.

The only thing keeping me going is remembering how good I felt at those times of healthy living. How clear-headed, how positive, how 'can-do' I was! My clear shiny eyes would practically be bobbing on stalks. My teeth seemed whiter, my hair shinier. It was as close as I will ever get to attaining the Colgate Ring of Confidence.  But it also seems like an aberration - not the real me. My poor old father spent a life time rationing like it was still World War Two, and drumming into his recalcitrant offspring the benefits of moderation. Needless to say, he was crying in the wilderness. He also created a monster. A cookie monster.

I think I have come to accept that it will always be feast or famine, boom or bust, hope then strife with me. That is the rhythm of my life. It seems to be the rhythm of the world of late. And, finally, those fleeting glimpses of whippet-thin, moderate me, in all my bug-eyed evangelical zeal? Well, they bore the (elasticated) pants off me.  There. I have said it.

Confessions of a cowardly curmudgeon

Here are two things that you may not know, or, indeed not care to know about your correspondent.

1. I fear festivals.

2. I fear phones.

This may surprise some who have met me. I am endlessly fascinated by humans and mostly love 'em to death. I also like to chat. Lord, how I like to chat. And I would describe myself as being pro-"fun". I can also do a very good facsimile of enjoying a crowd. That said, the very idea of a Festival of The Phone would cause me to break out in hives.

As for festivals, given a choice between The Arts and The Opposite of the Arts (i.e. Sports, Science, Fly Fishing), I usually incline towards the former. For me, however, festivals = an endless round of  bitter disappointment. Festivals = drinking warm beer out of plastic cups with people you have been studiously avoiding for years. Festivals = people on stilts. As I left the city on Friday, the railway station was crawling with eager Fringe-goers. Needless to say I was sickened, bug-eyed and starting to foam at the mouth as I clambered on the next train traveling steadfastly in the opposite direction. And I keep getting invited to something called The Garden of Earthly Delights. Was not that painted by Bosch? Exactly.

As for phones, I was raised with a morbid fear of interrupting somebody's meal time. I still remember Dad hissing at Mum: Dear!I bet they're having their tea! (Mum and Dad always called each other "dear" when they were most cross). It never occurred to Dad that perhaps not EVERYONE ate their tea at 6pm on the dot like we did. I think that particular fear has extended to a morbid fear of interrupting, well, anything. Of interrupting a thought. A glass of water. An ad on TV. My fear paralyses me. For me to ring someone for a chat involves a complex process of visualising myself having that chat (of course, always airily and pithily) for months in advance before plucking up the courage to actually dial. Let alone speak.

Today, after about four weeks of agony, I finally rang one of my best friends from school. We have not spoken for about two years - not out of any malice, just a combination of busy-ness, laziness and interstate-ness. I had been fretting as I knew my schoolfriend had relatives in country Victoria. I wanted to make sure that everyone had survived the bushfires. I knew he would think I was being an old hen. But I could not rest until I knew for sure.

While Dear Patient M had wisely and patiently counselled me towards picking up the phone and talking into it some weeks ago, I tried everything I could to avoid that unpleasant task. I bought Victorian newspapers, googled casualty names, rushed into the loungeroom to watch every news report. I even watched the Memoriam Service and scanned the faces of the crowd. Eventually, in a light bulb moment, I wrote my friend an email. It bounced back.

(You must by now feel like you are watching a pantomime, wanting to yell at me "Look behind you! There is an Obvious Answer looming there!")

Anway, driving home this morning, I visualised myself walking through the door, putting my keys on the coffee table and picking up the phone like a pro. But, as it turned out, I was thwarted by the clock. I realised it was possibly lunch hour and could not bring myself to do it just yet. Having slouched over that hurdle, I then had to negotiate the timezone difference. Finally, in all my coldly sweating, lump-throated glory, I just did it.

I was so delighted that I rang. I was pleased to hear that, while his relatives had been at some risk, everyone was now safe and sound. And that those relatives lived surrounded by 'denuded paddocks'. He told me that Child Number Two was on the way (which I would not have know otherwise). He called me by my full name, something which no one else ever does. We laughed about something that someone once said in high school (it involved comparing people to watermelons). We undertook a more grown up version of the surreal riffing from when we were stoned teenagers giggling like maniacs while his parents slept in the next room. I felt like I was walking on air. And he sounded pretty happy too.

So then, I say to you, if you are suffering from similar torments, just pick up the bloody phone and ring. You will not regret it. Well, you may regret it, depending on your tendency to regret. Or if the person on the other end despises you and tells you that you are a worm. Or, of course, if you interrupt somebody's tea.

As for festivals, though, I say:

JUST RUN. RUN THE OTHER WAY, DAMN IT. DO NOT LOOK BACK.

There are people on stilts. And they are looming.

"Everyone assume the crash positions!" (or, how I spend most Sunday Evenings)..

From 'The Concise Home Doctor' Volume 2, The Educational Book Company. Date and photographer unknown.

How not to get the best out of your life

I thought that I'd take the following quiz from New Idea magazine from 20 July 1968. No reason.The article begins:

Do you get the best out of life? Probably you feel that you do. Yet you are almost certainly wrong.

Well, cheers then. Thanks for that.

Let's just say that I am cheered by the article's assertion that:

Today, it is much more important to have a face that is vital and alert, than to have perfectly chiselled features..

and

Personality is far more important than physical good looks. Even the greatest beauty must  fade in time, but personality is permanent.

So given my buckets of personality, and my less-than-chiselled features, that would make me gorgeous. I think that's how it works.

Every time I do one of those Myers Briggs test, it says I'm an introvert. But I'm an introvert with a blog. And an introvert who doesn't have to be asked twice to take his clothes off in public. Perhaps I'm just an introvert trapped in the body of an extrovert.

Oh, my, yes.

The darndest thing: Despite myself, YES.

No, of course not. I don't believe it is ever possible for a person to worry too much.

Yeah, right. No one is generous enough. This is a trick question.

I abhor jealousy in all its forms. That, of course, doesn't mean I am not a jealous person. Au contraire. It is my life's mission to make myself unjealous of any person who is uncomplicated, has a sunny disposition or a 'can do' attitude.

I gave up writing a diary after keeping it faithfully for many years. The reason? Reading it back bored me witless. True story.

I don't even understand this question.

No. I WANT IT ALL. NOW.

Wow. My life feels better already. And all it took was ten lousy questions.

Let me know how you fare. You too can have a best-filled life. Etc.

Wow.