R.I.P., Hans

Hans Petersen was a ball of energy, a genuinely happy person, and a doer of good. That he died while installing solar panels on a roof reflects his commitment to improving the world.

I last saw Hans in 2006, when I was having a yard sale prior to my move to New York. He came by, chatted for a while, and advised me on a dilemma I was facing: whether or not to try antidepressants. Even when discussing such a potentially sensitive topic, Hans was upbeat, and his words stayed with me. He was one of a small group of people who actively encouraged me to take steps to improve my mental health, and for that I'll always be grateful.

I knew him in college as a dedicated communitarian, a lover of fun, and someone who cherished his friends and appreciated people in general. I'll miss his sunny outlook and his great sense of humor. You left us too early, Hans, and it's clear that you're already widely missed.

On overeating

Today I said the words: "My name is Neal, and I'm an overeater." I wasn't at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, though I hope to attend one soon. I was at my therapist's office, and I was telling him that my recent and past behavior suggest that the "overeater" label might be useful for me to work with. Another option: "food addict," the term preferred by British journalist William Leith, who wrote The Hungry Years, a memoir about his own bout with food addiction that also serves as an investigation of the Atkins hypothesis that carbs, more than fat, are the enemy.

I understand the argument that labels, especially those doled out by some large, authoritative body, can do more harm than good. I get that diagnosing someone as an ADD sufferer or a depressive can make that person feel "broken," and perhaps unfixable. But diagnoses and labels have their positive sides, too. I didn't necessarily go around saying "My name is Neal, and I'm depressed" before starting on Lexapro last year, but I was depressed, and I had been, off and on, for a long while. My mother saw it, my friends understood it, and I knew it on some level, too. When I confessed that I wasn't looking for work last fall because I simply didn't want to (because, in turn, I didn't believe that any effort of mine would be rewarded with anything of value), it was tantamount to an acknowledgment of depression.

When you stop trying because you don't think anything you do will turn out well, because you believe your situation can't be improved, well, you're depressed. Similarly, someone who eats 1260 calories' worth of pasta in one sitting (plus some untold number of calories from the pesto that's mixed with the noodles) is an overeater. I don't overeat at every meal, and I haven't always overeaten in the past. Indeed, as a teenager I was anorexic, and I've had periods of self-starvation since then. (It's the only way I know how to lose the weight I inevitably put on during overeating periods like the one I'm in now.)

What I hope to do this time around is find a healthier, more constructive way to lose weight. I weigh around 222 pounds, which is roughly 30 more than I weighed two years ago, and more than double what I weighed when I was anorexic. While I try to attend waterobics class every week and am now also on a kickball team, I'll need more exercise, and more vigorous exercise, if I want to stay fit in the long term. Also, I'll need to treat my eating the way I've dealt with money management: I'll need immediate and longer-term plans and goals, ideally with a dedicated advisor to help mold and adjust my program as needed. Moorea Malatt, my financial advisor, has done a fabulous job of helping me budget and plan for the near and far future. Now I need someone -- myself, my therapist, or another paid advisor if need be -- to assist me in making my eating habits sensible and sustainable.

I'm willing to try a support group, which is why OA, which is free, appeals to me. Being around other people who struggle with something similar to what plagues you can remind you that you're not alone, and that other people can understand you. In the past, I've avoided OA because I was afraid I'd be surrounded by severely overweight people, whose appearance would be a reminder of what I fear most -- losing control of my eating so definitively that I end up morbidly obese. But it's hard to say what the other members of an OA meeting will look like. Most will probably have at least the "few extra pounds" so often described on dating-site profiles, and some will be heavier than that. Maybe a few will be profoundly large. But being around people of various sizes who fight a common enemy could not only be inspiring for me, it could also teach me to be more tolerant, and less scared, of people who seem to embody my worst nightmare about myself and my possible destiny.

In 1999, I wrote a nonfiction piece called "A Diary of Hunger" for a creative writing class. I remember feeling exhilarated to finally be getting the story of my eating disorder down on paper. The sentences flowed freely, and the piece ended up being one of the best things I wrote at college. I had an urgent need to tell my story, and that's part of what made it effective. The subject tapped into an emotionally significant and vulnerable area for me, and I was able to talk about my history with unprecedented honesty. It's been 10 years since I wrote that piece, and it might be useful to write another -- a document of the last decade's (mis)adventures in eating. I've made some progress, to be sure, and have gained some degree of perspective and wisdom along the way. In Park Slope in 2006, I was actually able to cook balanced meals and eat them slowly and mindfully -- a tremendous achievement for someone whose eating has veered between cruel self-deprivation and unfettered excess.

I still remember the night, also in 2006, that I went to meditation class, then proceeded to eat far too many cookies during the snack time that followed. Rather than moving directly to self-loathing, I tried to observe myself without judgment. I walked back to my apartment, took my blanket up to the roof, lay on my back, and looked at the stars. This felt like the first time I'd ever overeaten without mentally collapsing into paroxysms of shame. What had happened had happened, and I'd survived without descending into self-hatred -- the very feeling that sustains the vicious cycle of overeating.

We overeat, I suspect, because we're upset about something, and we're increasingly upset at ourselves the more we overeat. A perfect feedback loop, yet one that I'm determined to break. My name is Neal, I'm an overeater, and I want it to stop. Soon.

On going back to school

I told someone recently that I'm trying to decide between the Master of Science in Nutrition and Clinical Health Psychology program at Bastyr University and the Film and Video Communications program at Seattle Central Community College. She responded: "Wow, you sure have a wide range of interests!" I said: "If someone gave you a course catalogue and told you price wasn't an object, you could take anything you want, you'd have a hard time deciding." The truth is, we all have a wide range of interests; the tricky part is figuring out which ones to pursue academically, which professionally, and which avocationally.

I worry that studying film theory, for example, might negatively impact my love of film. I studied creative writing and Spanish in college, and by the time I had my B.A., I was ready to take a break from both. I never really came back to either area, even though I was obsessed with Spanish in high school and wrote poetry and fiction fairly regularly back then, too. I'm also not sure academic analysis is the way I want to look at film; I enjoyed being a film critic for the Weekly largely because I got to choose the level of diction and analysis for each movie, and because popular criticism seems more accessible (and, frankly, enjoyable) than academic articles and books. For me, the idea of becoming a film studies professor isn't beyond the pale, but it doesn't feel like one of my best options, either.

Seattle Central's filmmaking program includes some theory, but its emphasis is on production. I attended an info session last week that laid out the two-year curriculum and included talks by two of the program's main professors. One is a documentarian whose film Sweet Crude played at SIFF this year; the other didn't mention his body of work, but I liked his no-nonsense personality and his sense of humor. Both teachers stressed how challenging the program is, and that it's a great deal, financially speaking: $7,800 or so for six quarters of quality instruction. Renting equipment and studio space for a single day, one of the professors pointed out, might easily cost $1,300, the price of one quarter in the program. We watched a short film made by members of a previous year's class; the acting was surprisingly good, the writing was decent, and the cinematography and editing were impressive.

We also talked about the logistics of finding work after graduation. Both teachers admitted that graduates have to work hard to find jobs, and many of them are freelance gigs. But they balanced this sentiment with the notion that there's always some work, somewhere, for a highly skilled production person. I was dazzled by the info session, as I imagine many of the other people in the room were; the session was packed with the most diverse group of people I've been around in a long time. The program takes a team-oriented approach, placing students in small groups to work on production projects. Finding ways to work well with virtual strangers, we were told, is a common challenge in the industry, and the program tries to recreate that challenge from the start.

If I want to enter this program, fall of 2010 is my first chance. Students can only enter it in the fall, and no spaces remain for this year. (There's quite a waiting list in case anyone drops out; I decided not to bother including my name on it.) It's a full-time program, which means holding down a full-time job in addition isn't an option. (One of the professors said that even working 20 hours a week while in the program is a tough row to hoe.)

The Bastyr program is a horse of a very different color. Fall of 2010 won't work because of all the prerequisites I need to take before applying; 2011 is more like it. I'll need nutrition, chemistry, psychology, anatomy, and biochemistry, all but the last of which I can take at either Seattle Central or North Seattle Community College. (Biochem isn't offered at the community colleges, so I'd probably have to attend a proper university for it.) I just paid for two classes for fall quarter: nutrition and a general prep class for chemistry. The former will give me a small taste of what I'd be getting myself into if I decided to pursue the MSNCHP; the latter will enable me to take the required chemistry series, if I end up so desiring.

My decision to go back to school was the pretty direct result of a realization achieved in therapy: I keep waiting for something external to tell me which direction to go professionally, but it's impossible to know what will suit me and what won't without trying something. I can't try everything, varied interests or not, but I can try something. And two community college classes are a whole lot cheaper than a year of grad school. Might as well try a subject that interests me on for size.

Some people who don't know me well, or haven't known me long, are surprised by my interest in nutrition counseling. The fact is, I've knowingly struggled with eating and body image issues for 15 years. Even after my bout with anorexia nominally ended, I veered back and forth between overeating and self-starvation. Only in 2006, in Brooklyn, was I able to achieve a level of mindfulness (thanks to daily meditation) that allowed me to understand what healthy eating habits might look like for me. And only now, a year after joining the food-intensive Kibbutz community, am I able to recognize that I'm heavier than I want to be without completely melting down about it. (I credit meditation, life wisdom, and Lexapro for that.)

In the proverbial perfect world, I'd study nutrition, counseling, and filmmaking and would win an Oscar for a groundbreaking documentary on disordered eating. For the moment, I'm excited to be a month away from starting classes. Studying algebra and pre-calculus to take the community college math placement test was more fun than grueling, thanks to the lessons that 12th grade calculus class apparently branded on my brain. I think relearning chemistry as an adult, from a competent teacher (my 10th grade chem teacher wasn't), might be a great experience. And I expect to really like nutrition class. My sense of how the body uses food, and what foods help or hurt us in which ways, is shaky at best. While mindfulness is definitely a part of the healthy-eating equation, information is also key, and no matter what I choose to do in the coming years, I won't regret having taken either class.

Wisdom from two DWs

Earlier this afternoon, Steven read me the bulk of the commencement speech that David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005, and it's just beautiful. The following excerpt, about how to see the tedium of adult life with fresh eyes, was exactly what I needed to hear, and it's as good an example as any of what he's up to:

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

I recommend you read the whole thing. The fact that Wallace refers to suicide in the course of the speech makes it all the more poignant. (And if you haven't read the recent New Yorker article about Wallace, please do so.) I'm actually reminded, just now, of some lyrics I particularly like in Dar Williams' song "Mortal City":

He smiled and said, "Sometimes at night I walk out by the river,
The city's one big town, the water turns it upside down
People found this city because they love other people
They want their secretaries, they want their power lunches."

I've always loved that: the (unnamed) male character's willingness, his ability, to view seemingly soulless big-city realities as signs of people's love for others, their overwhelming desire to have them all around. Of course, this conceit has its payoff in another of the song's beautiful moments, when the female character tells him:

"I think I have a special kind of hearing tonight
I hear the neighbors upstairs
I hear my heart beating
I hear one thousand hearts beating at the hospital
And one thousand hearts by their bedsides waiting
Saying, 'That's my love in the white gown.'"

Williams' song is about the same kind of compassion Wallace discusses, the same goal of traveling outside your familiar perspective, received wisdom, and routine to find a more positive way to look at the world, including its maddening aspects. I only wish Wallace had been able to swing that when it really counted. As he says, it's damn hard. From my perspective, having wonderful friends and exercising my creativity are just two of many ways to fight back against the "day in, day out" repetition that can slowly turn you angry, small, and hollow -- already dead, as Wallace sees it.