Curative power

The weight of the world

Since my last post, a lot has happened. I went to my college reunion, where I had the shocking realization that I'm one of those people who put on a significant amount of weight since college. I noticeably surprised at least a few former classmates, including one who pinched my abdomen and said, "What's going on here?" (I wasn't upset; he's a good enough friend that he gets to do that without incurring my wrath.) I walked around Oberlin in the muggy summer heat feeling like a big mound of fat. Many of my classmates seemed quite fit, and some looked younger than they had during college. I felt unappealing, regretful, and confused -- how had I let this happen to me?

Then I went to New York, where I began reading Frank Bruni's excellent memoir, Born Round. In it, the former New York Times food critic talks about his struggles with bulimia and compulsive overeating. I felt like I was reading my own story. In New York, I was walking a lot every day, much more than I do in Seattle; the same had been true in Oberlin. In both places, I had no other affordable transportation option. I huffed and puffed at times, but I survived. At the same time, I managed to eat more moderately than I had in many, many months.

The result: I lost weight. Even so, by the time I got to Virginia for an old friend's wedding, I once again felt fat and unattractive. It probably didn't help that Richmond was even muggier than Ohio and New York, and that the temperature was around 95 degrees. Also, weddings are a merciless indicator of how I'm feeling about my romantic prospects; in this case, I felt suddenly as though I'd be single forever unless I found a way to sustain my experiment in moderate eating. Being thin isn't the key to attracting a mate, but reining in self-destructive overeating would do wonders for my self-esteem (I know from past experience). In fact, I think getting a handle on my eating habits, and finding a way to exercise, would improve all areas of my life. Nothing can substitute for hard-won confidence.

I managed about five days of moderate eating after returning to Seattle, and then Shabbat dinner at the Kibbutz knocked me for a loop. (I wrote about this phenomenon recently for Jew-ish.com.) Carbs and sugar may not be the devil, but to someone looking to kick binge eating, they're diabolical enough. William Leith, in his food-addiction memoir, The Hungry Years, points out that carbs are many people's binge food of choice. Avoiding them entirely may not be practical or necessary, but cutting down, especially during communal feasts, is vital.

Focusing on fruits, vegetables, and protein has helped me feel healthier during the past couple weeks, and falling off the low-carb wagon last night was, well, instructive. I'm currently reading a book called 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, and it helpfully addresses the black-and-white thinking that can doom a moderate eating regimen. People trying to change their eating habits make mistakes. There's almost always something to learn from them, provided you're able to spend a few moments not emotionally beating yourself to a bloody pulp.

As Bruni points out in his book, one screw-up can lead to the following logic: "Well, I messed up; might as well get it all out of my system with a nice, long binge! Then I can start my diet again in the morning." When this becomes a daily pattern, any hope of actually returning to moderate eating begins to fade. As I told my mother in Virginia, what I have trouble holding onto is that essential thing, hope, the intangible quantity that keeps people doing and trying, day in and day out. Wanting to give up? It happens. Actually giving up? A bad idea. In that spirit, I've enrolled in a "Couch to 5K" running class that takes the out-of-shape and gets them ready to run a 5K without stopping. The process takes six weeks. My ex-girlfriend Kelly is taking the class, and she looks and feels great.

I'm not much keener on running than on any other kind of vigorous exercise, but the gradualness of the Couch to 5K program appeals to me, as does the fact that it caters to people who, like me, aren't very fit. Also, the group runs will probably make it easier for me to handle the solo ones (the class involves homework). I thought about trying the program earlier this year, but going it completely alone, without a coach or fellow runners, was just too daunting. That's the thing about change: It's harder in isolation.

Dane likes to remind me that I hate change, and I've recently started correcting her more fervently. I don't hate change as much as I hate feeling worthless and ugly and empty. I just hate not knowing what to do to achieve the kind of change I want. I hate not knowing where to put my energy. And I hate being depressed, because it undercuts the part of me that loves change, that craves it, that desperately needs it to survive. When people learn how to change while being gentle with themselves, they love it. That's all I want, and I don't think it's an unreasonable goal.

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.

Oberlin, day by day

The admissions office at Oberlin College, my alma mater, has put together one of its most impressive recruitment tools to date: an online "poster" made of gorgeous photos taken on or around the campus by an OC student. Click around and you get an aptly scattershot sense of what the college is like. Makes me want to hop in my car and road-trip it back. I'll be flying back at the end of May for my second cluster reunion, so probably best to skip the cross-country drive. With enough other Obies in the car, though, I bet it'd be a ton of fun.

Greetings from Big Sky Country

After arriving yesterday afternoon at Helena Regional Airport, I quickly noticed that Montanans are friendlier than Seattleites. By a wide margin. They strike up conversations simply because they're in the same space as you. They offer you fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies when you check into their hotels. They share taxis with you, to be friendly but also because there's only one taxi company in town, and sometimes the next cab won't be coming for an hour. We asked our driver how long she'd lived in Helena -- she was born around here -- and she said: "Too long." I shared the car with a nice couple visiting from Alaska. They had a satisfyingly negative view of Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens; the wife was in town to help lead a yoga retreat.

Last night, the groom's male friends, myself included, threw him an impromptu "bachelor party" that was really just a brief bar-hopping spree. We met some locals, discussed marriage and relationships, and got to bed by 1 a.m. Today I had a crepe for breakfast and read The New Yorker, got my Facebook fix, and had a fantastic veggie burger for lunch at an (ostensibly) Irish pub. Now I'm about to go swimming in the hotel's heated pool. The ceremony isn't until four o'clock. (Did I mention I'm in town for the wedding of my Oberlin friends Jesse Groman and Abby Person?)

The rehearsal dinner last night was splendid, and just the way I want mine to be someday: relaxed, fun, and full of nice people and delicious food. And random dogs. And homemade lemon sorbet for dessert, served in emptied-out lemon halves. This mini-vacation I'm on was sorely needed, and I hope to take more weekend trips in the near-ish future. Sometimes a change of scenery can be incredibly refreshing. (By the way, the picture above is of Helena's downtown cathedral, which I hope to see before I leave town tomorrow afternoon.)

One more time-capsule poem

I wrote this one in 1998, as a creative writing major at Oberlin. My mother uses it in the introduction of her soon-to-be-published memoir, (Re)vision of a Life: My Mother’s Holocaust Story.

KADDISH

a welling up of voices,
sorrowed, pious
and heavy with deference

these are
the dizzying heights
of mourning, of seeking out
the unanswerable questions
and answering them once more

this is
how He would have us weep,
how the order of things must be,
how lives at their end
are marked by narrow grooves
worn into the Rock of Ages

raised on the odor
of old pine pews,
the child finds his place
in the Holy Ark, his lullabies
the swelling hymns and distant,
hollow voices of the dead

And here's a passage from my mother's book:

I am the only child of Holocaust survivors. As is the case with most of the second generation, I am one of very few of our family members left in the world. I never knew my grandparents or a host of other relatives who could have filled my bank of memories and experiences while growing up. Instead, they were photographs to me—and stories. I always felt different in that regard as a child, except when I was around others who had suffered similar losses even before they were born. My recollection of childhood memories is incomplete, but the Leitmotif is certainly the Holocaust. My mother would say with both grief and pride: “I am from the Holocaust. I am the survivor, the only one left from my big family.” And now my son Neal and I are the only ones left from her side of the family.

Summer of love

The romantic comedy needs an overhaul. Not unlike the horror genre, which many would consider its polar opposite, the romcom has a bad reputation, and unfortunately it's often justified. There are some good horror movies, but many of them are awful, relying as they do on gimmickry, gore, and extremely tired formulas. Similarly, romantic comedies frequently err on the side of color-by-numbers plotting and character development that hold few surprises for the viewer. And since that's precisely the opposite of what love is actually like, it's easy to get cynical. The last cardboard Hollywood romcom I saw, He's Just Not That Into You, combined a lifeless, unintelligent script with meager direction and underwhelming performances from stars who should know better. Movies like this are why people love to hate romantic comedy, dismissing it as a frothy genre stuffed with untruths, the big-screen equivalent of the Harlequin novel.

The Stranger once declared Annie Hall the best romcom ever, and it's hard to disagree. Woody Allen's masterpiece captures the awkwardness and serendipity of dating (in the famous first-kiss sequence, for example), the hope that love inspires, and the way two people can grow apart slowly but surely -- and how hard it can be to let go of the other person, even when you know, in your heart and in your head, that you should. Annie Hall is funny and insightful, yet for all its intelligence it maintains a breezy tone. It's tremendously well structured; every corner of the film, every scene, every moment, is packed with signifiers and color and throwaway jokes and sharp observations. Yet despite its density, it's always a joy to watch, never a slog. It's the kind of movie I can't see too many times, the kind I have to watch until the end if I happen to find that it's on. It doesn't pretend that love is a simple undertaking, but it also captures love's simple pleasures, which are many if you're open to them. For anyone who's been in love and hopes to be again, Annie Hall is a touchstone and a virtual bible of relationship wisdom. With that film as the gold standard, many newer ones understandably -- but still regrettably -- fall short.

Enter 500 Days of Summer, one of the movies I'm most eagerly anticipating at SIFF this year. When I taught an Experimental College class at Oberlin on contemporary (post-Annie Hall) romantic comedies, I sought to include films that didn't conform too much to genre tropes. When Harry Met Sally..., that immortal statement about male-female friendship, was one movie I chose; High Fidelity, about how relationships shape and reveal us, was another. I titled the class "Chasing Love," which I hoped would contain both a whiff of Shakespeare's "What fools these mortals be!" perspective (the Bard, after all, is the source of many romcom tropes) and an intimation of the timeless emotional slapstick to be found in our pursuit of romance.

What Summer promises is a tale of unrequited love. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt falls for Zooey Deschanel (and who wouldn't?), but she doesn't fall quite so hard for him. Hard enough, it seems, to date him for the titular 500 days, but not so hard that she won't cut him loose after that. Gordon-Leavitt is an actor who's played both jaded rebels (Mysterious Skin) and downy innocents (The Lookout), and judging from the trailer he'll be working on the latter end of the spectrum this time around. Deschanel has played jaded to another actor's innocence (Elf and Almost Famous), but this role will require more nuance, and I'm sure she's up to the challenge.

What makes me optimistic about the movie is that it seems intent on doing what one of my favorite books, Blankets, does so beautifully: reminding us that love, real love, is heartbreaking whether or not it lasts, and regardless of whether it's requited. (The movie's lovely tagline offers a clue: "This is not a love story, it's a story about love.") Whether it's easier to be the adored or the adorer is an open question, but to open yourself so wide emotionally is always a trial. Of course, it's a trial that's good for us, but how many times will we submit to it before we turn away forever?

Charlyne Yi, the heroine of Paper Heart (which also stars Michael Cera, and is also at SIFF), thinks she's done with love. The film's mock-documentary approach was hard for me to grasp at first, based only on the trailer; I thought it was a fictionalization of a real relationship between Yi and Cera. In any case, Yi might well stand in for the cynical viewer who's ready to snipe at the first false note in a romcom. Justin Long giving a last-minute speech on Ginnifer Goodwin's doorstep, confessing his true love? Yeah, whatever. Paper Heart seems to be saying that even if we give up on chasing love, there's nothing stopping love from coming after us when we least expect it.

Finally, Adam (at SIFF as well) reveals the personality quirks that populate ordinary romcoms (Sally's habit of ordering everything on the side in When Harry Met Sally..., for example) to be molehills compared to the mountainous task of loving someone with bigger challenges. The film's title character has Asperger's, and the trailer suggests that his condition gets the kind of treatment -- sympathetic, but not sugarcoated -- that 500 Days and Paper Heart try to give romance in general. I've not yet seen any of these films, but I have reason to believe that they could help revitalize one of my favorite genres. Here's hoping.

Comment of the week

In response to my recent post about my new glasses, Jen Katz -- Oberlin alum and blogger -- told the following true-life story:

My trusty six year old glasses - from Group Health on 15th Ave. East, no less! - tragically snapped in half on Tuesday, due to a slip on a slick sidewalk en route to school, so I, too, am having that weird eye-feel of adjusting to new glasses. It seems like it really shouldn't be *that* different; after all, they're just glasses. But those glasses have been an integral (though subtle) part of my senses, all day, every day, to the point where I am are literally lost without them. I actually miss those plastic tortoise shell frames! (But I'm moving on with my snazzy blue and yellow enameled wire rims.)

(BTdubs: Hi!)
(BTdubs2: I actually had to nerdtastically tape the bridge of the old glasses with masking tape and walk around like that for the better part of the week. AWESOME.)

Oberlin on the big screen (sort of)

You'll notice in the trailer, right after James has been hung up on after describing his road trip, that he's wearing an Oberlin College T-shirt.

Which means I need to see this movie now.

No TP at the OC

My alma mater, like the nation, appears to be experiencing a financial crisis. Thanks to Greg for the heads-up. Maybe I should have upped my annual donation this year...

Oberlin does an alumnus proud

I know I'm always proud of my alma mater, but here's yet another reason to be.

In other news, I saw the new Werner Herzog documentary, in which the director -- whose droll, kindly, German-accented narration is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food for me -- makes good on his promise to present images of penguins quite different from those on display in March of the Penguins. Also, there's a big volcano and a woman who can fit in a carry-on bag.

I can haz 1995 Subaru Impreza

I am finally a car owner. My very own auto is named Gracie -- the name just popped up when I was e-mailing my mom. It came out while I was typing, and I'm in no position to question the genius of my subconscious, though I did have a talk last night with a friend who reminded me that naming inanimate objects after women is kind of sexist. Still, my car is definitely Gracie. Her color would be described politely as blue-green and less politely as "what color is your car exactly?" She has 130,000 miles on her, yet she runs more or less like a dream. She was recently cleaned and un-dented. I'm so, so pleased to have her. I really can't even describe how pleased. Now I can explore West Seattle without having to take three separate buses, and Ballard without a 90-minute transit ordeal. Now, moreover, I can visit my friends in Lake City and Lake Forest Park who never quite make it to Seattle anymore. And I can drop by a Wallingford friend's house on the spur of the moment. This, friends, is what life was meant to be. No more taxis. No more Zipcars. No. More. Buses. (Except on the way to work, for another two weeks.) I'll have photos for you soon -- kind of like baby photos, when you have a new baby, or puppy photos, when you have a new puppy.

Awesomeness.

In other news, I had an amazing dinner at Elemental the other night with Angela. The flavors and textures of the meal were some of the best I've had in years. We had artichoke soup, a salad of dandelion greens and goat cheese, grilled asparagus with a poached duck egg, green chile cheesecake, ravioli filled with ricotta and green peas in a sauce that included mint, a fantastic cheese board, and a dessert sampler that included ice cream, little doughnuts, chocolate mousse, and a lemon-ginger pound cake with whipped cream. This is my new favorite Seattle restaurant, no question. I intend to get back there at least once more before I leave town. Maybe for my farewell dinner...

Finally, you may have heard that my alma mater changed its motto -- well, its marketing motto, at least. (The official motto is still "Learning and Labor," though you can expect an outside consultant to come in and mess with it any minute now.) This student film purports to uncover the dark truth behind the new direction, but if you really want some insight into Oberlin life and culture from an outside source, check out Lewis Black's visit, which occurred in the spring of 2001. I was still on campus, and I totally recognize some of the people in the video. I love that Black doesn't directly mock the square dancing at Hales Gym, he just stands in the foreground and lets it mock itself. Though of course it actually seems kind of sweet, especially in comparison to the harsher ridiculousness of the "real world." I miss the bubble sometimes.