The Pilgrim Soul in You

I’m way overdue for a post, and there will be one, but today is busy for me. Still I wanted to leave you with a poem that’s been weighing on my mind a lot recently. Mostly just the pilgrim soul, which I feel that I alone have seen in people.

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

W. B. Yeats

I Find Little India Very Romantic

I’m sitting here
On the precipice of crying, though not from anything,
Feeling the slow, gentle thaw
Out of the winter that is my life.

Cells alive and vibrating again,
Hair standing on end,
My eyes widening as I exit hibernation
And exhaling slow, steady breaths
As if into an ear.

Another reminder that good
Lurks under the surface of everything;
I feel that spoon
Scraping away at the space under where my ribs meet
Trying to find my prize.

I speak only in a secret language
No one else knows yet.

I will emerge with liberated curls,
Collar bones, a head full of songs,
Anecdotes and quotations for every situation –
There will be an irresistible gravitational pull.

Re: Stacks by Bon Iver musically captures exactly how I’m feeling right now.

Half Drunk On Babble You Transmit (Also Half Drunk Because Pitcher + Straw = Bad Choice)

Tongue tied
I looked up to see the clouds
Stirred into the strange, deep blue
With legs shaking from cold, ketosis and lurching stomach moments

The switching of lights, so far away
Flickering Cinq Roses, which I couldn’t effectively communicate
With slack mouth and thickened lips
Because I know not many look at the city that way

Wishing, as I cautiously descended,
That I would not be judged for taking my shoes off
And climbing a tree
I feel there are saintly people somewhere who understand

Trying to forge things
Slamming the square peg down
But I can’t get there

Wringing myself for drips
And spouting nothing but lines
Wrought with falsified security

Nonchalance is unappealing
At this hour

Edited to add: Just incase anyone’s confused by this, it’s definitely not about lurrrrve. It’s just about how I’m an awkward mothafucka in person sometimes and I can’t have a normal conversation without trying to be significantly cooler than I actually am.

The Weight of the World

I never know how to start these things.

So, first off: Mark and I broke up. It’s too bad, but we both entirely agree that it was about time and that we just weren’t right for each other. That’s okay. I’m not actually sad, but rather relieved that neither of us have to pretend to be thoroughly fulfilled any more. It was relatively mutual, we had an airing of minor grievances a few days later and I really think we’ve learned a lot of from our relationship and we have a friendship that will eventually get back on solid ground. It’s too soon, and we both know this, so we’re going to wait for it to feel right before we really start talking again. This is an anomaly for me… A breakup that’s almost entirely free of hurt feelings and with the full intention of eventually being good friends. Kind of awesome. I don’t think I could have asked for a better outcome, since we both secretly knew we weren’t in it for the long haul. Over three years is still pretty long, though.

I’m coping really well. I’m spending a ton of time with new and old friends, getting involved in creative endeavours, making pretty music, gearing up for lovely spring weather and I’ve got a summer of fun to look forward to. Still, singledom makes me anxious sometimes. I had a discussion with a friend about this tonight, because hell, I cannot go to a Soulstice rehearsal without spending copious times with her afterwards. I guess it requires a couple of warnings…

1. This is something I really don’t talk about often and that very few people know about, especially in any detail.
2. It may make me seem kind of fucked up. I’m not, don’t worry, I just have a lot of thoughts.
3. I’m not looking for pity or reassurance. I just want to get this out.
4. It’s definitely going to make me seem like either a shitty feminist or ridiculously out of the loop with fat politics. The truth is, I can be perfectly rational and understanding and supportive of and involved in fat acceptance, but I can’t always quiet my interior monologue or the vibe I generally get from the outside world.

Basically, I worry about my weight from time to time. I have a fairly substantial history of eating disorder issues and in order to combat that, I have tended to swing the opposite direction post-therapy. I look at old pictures and see protruding bones, sunken eyes and patchy hair and wonder what the fuck I was thinking most of the time. But, there are times where I think that young girl had the right idea. In the few years following the snack-related shitstorm that was my life, I filled out to an attractively curvy ideal of beauty. Honestly, I look back at that part of my life and think that I was pretty much perfect, in an adorably imperfect kind of way. People agreed. But as I come from a family that struggles with weight “problems”, this didn’t last forever and my very normal, even slightly under-average eating habits yielded a substantially larger body. Turns out that it’s at least partly related to my freakish thyroid-stabbing immune system, but whatever. The point is it happened.

Now, I very much understand that fatness has the capacity to be every bit as lovely as any other quality and that it really is just extra skin. I know that my body is amazingly capable of so many things and that I shouldn’t be worrying about the state of my stomach, but the fact is that I do and no amount of intellectualizing this is going to change my mind, as much as I sincerely wish it would. I see other big people as completely beautiful, sexy and generally wonderful, but I just can’t get there when it comes to myself. What only complicates matters is that I straddle the line between legitimately fat and somewhere in between. This confuses me, because there are certain days where I wouldn’t change much on me at all, and others where that’s definitely not the case.

The singledom issue comes in because I feel that people don’t see me as a sexual person. I have a great deal of hang ups, because I have never been single while anywhere near the size I am now. People, even good/lovely/accepting people, have certain things that signify attractiveness in their minds. It’s engrained, it’s pushed upon them, they can’t help it, blah blah blah… The point is that, in the more pessimistic corner of my mind, it takes either a very open person or a person who may be fetishizing my body to get on board with what I’ve got. (Fetishization is a whole other discussion, but I think I fall on the side of not wanting to be initially attractive to someone because of an external characteristic that is considered outside of the “norm”, whatever that may be.)

What have I done? Well, over the past 6 months, I have lost and maintained a loss of 20 pounds. I know that it’s not necessarily a point of pride, but it is something that I did primarily for health reasons. There is a part of me that thinks that another 20 pounds would put me back in my drop dead gorgeous territory, but I also know that there is ever present danger in that kind of mentality. I have had enough days, both historically and recently, where I have eschewed food entirely, and I’m consistently concerned that a return to a really shitty pattern of behaviour is just around the corner. On the other hand, I think it would be awesome to return to McGill in the fall and make a few jaws drop. (Full disclosure, both my mother and my sister have made the transformation from overweight to slender in criminally short periods of time, so this is not an unrealistic goal if I want to drive myself crazy for a few months.)

It’s just tough, because on a day to day basis, I vacillate wildly between wanting to stomp out unrealistic beauty standards and spending hours crafting a workout/eating regime that would be torture to pretty much anyone. Hell, I got off a low-carb diet recently… And I’m a vegan. What kind of fuckery is that? Beans and vegetables. Not exactly the breakfast of champions. I KNOW all of this, as I keep saying, but nothing is keeping me from feeling this way. Let’s face it, if I shed the weight I gained, I would receive a ridiculously large amount of praise, I’d fit into all sorts of awesome clothes and I’d probably cross over from friend territory to “damn, she’s kind of cute” for a few people, despite not changing anything other than the shape of my torso, and to a lesser extent, my thighs.

I guess I just don’t look how I feel and I think that people somehow can’t get past the exterior. And I mean, let’s be fair, I realize that I’m a pretty person. I’ve got gigantor, deep blue eyes with freakishly long lashes, very pale, very soft and often freckly/rosy skin, some of the silkiest/nicest smelling hair around and, let’s face it, a rack that won’t quit. It’s just never enough. As much as I went into writing this hoping to come to the conclusion that anyone who can’t see the beauty inside me is unworthy of it, or some bullshit like that, it didn’t work. All I’ve done is furthered my desire to come back in September in skinny jeans, heels, a simple black tank, a pleather jacket and an ass that will be upsettingly cute. Take note, people of Montreal… You’ve got 6 months.