Weight Is Not Health

I enjoy living near a college campus for several reasons. It's a people-watcher's heaven! (There are no boundaries for what you might see or hear in an environment where 2,000 19-year-olds live together, let alone where sociology professors will assign social experiments as homework). I have a free gym membership. There's easy access to shows and speakers. I have constant visual confirmation that I finally look older than 15...which, surprisingly, doesn't feel like such a good thing any more. But more than anything, I enjoy being around the energy and excitement of learning, unlearning, thinking, and that unmatched openness to being challenged.

Little insights into these awakenings are everywhere. The other day, taking advantage of my free access to the gym, I saw an article suggesting some food or lifestyle that would make you fat. Luckily, someone whose former darkness of blind acceptance has begun to be punctured with beams of light, crossed out the word 'fat' and wrote above it, 'unhealthy'.

Thank you mysterious thinker! I hate how we have glued health and weight together. First of all, this is not any healthier than this! I have heard that our culture's disgust with the 'overweight' is the 'last acceptable prejudice'. And while we will also look with pity, if not disdain, at people who appear anorexic, we all still seem to aspire to be thin more than healthy. Which is why it is so important to further separate the two.

In middle school, when my diet was horrendous, I was very, very thin. Thinner than the athletes. Thinner than the vegetarians. I could not run laps. I could not do push ups. I was just thin. Not healthy. I have lost that lovely childhood metabolism, and after six months of being unemployed with round-the-clock access to my kitchen and couch, I have become very self-concious of my weight. I have not had the same concern for my health. Who cares if I have a heart attack? I just want people to stop assuming I'm pregnant!

I hate this about myself, and I write about it only to punctuate its existence. Especially now that I have found a job. I know that when I am working I forget to eat. I get so drawn into my assignments that I can go all day without so much as remembering to drink water. This is not healthier, but I look forward to it with the assumption that I will lose weight and fit slimly into my shirts again.

Health. Before I find it for my body, I need to find it in my mind.

UFO's Abound

I awoke this morning from the static of a dozen unidentified flying objects outside my window.

Chirping and tweeting. Searching for love and, hopefully, picking tics out of my backyard.

I'm familiar with some birds.

The vultures that crash through the uppermost branches in the pine trees outside my front door are anything but inconspicuous.

I can spot a mallard.
If I weren't blogging, I'd call it a duck.
I heard one this afternoon in a water tunnel under a field, echoed not only by itself in the reverberating cavern, but by a brood of ducklings trying to keep up in the dark.

Seagulls.
Robins.
Blue things and red things.

Beyond that, these flutes of the air are a mystery to me.

To center myself, I have devised a plan to get to know these birds.

I choose a favorite call, and then look with all my might for the source. My first pick sounded, to me, like the Simpson's portrayal of an Irish leprechaun.

While tying up my peas this week, I finally spotted the culprit - a surprisingly recognizable finch:
The Cardinal.

I sense this longing among my peers to reclaim what's been lost in the last few generations.

A connection to the land.

An understanding of how things work.

A sustenance based on community.

Beauty in imperfection.

Simplicity and the work that comes with it.

An awakening to the voices around us; the birds and frogs and millionfold mysteries that make our world a living and functioning place.

A new amour propre, that values the self in relation to these things in the present. In the process.

Next on my list, a bird that switches from high, punctuated notes, to low fermatas.

I don't care to know it's name, but I hope to awaken to its presence.

It grounds me in my own.