Am in that weird state again where just don't know how to respond to things. Like when somebody's upset about something, and you offer them a constructive solution, and they refuse to take it, preferring to remain upset. Clearly, you step back and let them exercise their right to remain unhappy. But you wonder. And you feel bad for the person, but that only goes so far. And you have to watch yourself to make sure your compassion doesn't secretly catalyze into sanctimony. So you just kind of blink a little, and say, "Hm," and feel bad for the person, who is rather nice, actually. And then try to let it go, because, honestly, it's no longer your problem.

Goodness knows, fall into that sticky enough myself. Like, oh, dunno, every time S. calls. Am still feeling enormous amounts of guilt over my role in this whole affair, beating on myself really hard for trying to force myself into a "normal" life. I made mistakes, and I still have regrets, and apparently I need to keep whaling on myself for that. But there is a calm, dispassionate part of me that has stepped back to watch myself whaling on myself, wondering when am going to be done with that. Dispassionata feels for me, she really does, but she doesn't try to stop me, either. I suppose the fact that I can detect the observer means I will stop doing this to myself sooner rather than later, but still.

It even turns up in books. Started I'm Not the New Me yesterday, a memoir about a woman who, unhappy with her weight, tries to lose some. The amount of self-hatred and unhappiness pouring up from the pages is more than I can bear, so I won't be finishing it. You'd think I'd have more compassion, being a formerly seriously overweight person myself. Then again, maybe because I remember being there, I have no desire to go back.

People who knew me before, when I was really fat, ask me all the time how I did it. It was really actually quite simple: I reached a point where I got sick of my life being the way it was, and was willing to make the changes necessary to alter it. I learned to cook. I started exercising. I stopped eating boatloads of crap unless I was willing to walk a mile for it (and you'd be surprised how frequently I was, and still am, willing to walk a mile for the prospect of really good ice cream). I started drinking lots of water, reduced my portions, learned to say no, made friends with food instead of seeing it as the enemy. Was it easy? No. But the alternatives were less attractive, so there you go.

*shrugs*

And you'll forgive me if that sounds less than kind and compassionate. It drives me crazy that so many women in America dislike themselves, their bodies, the way they look in general. But I don't have to be one of them, if I don't want to. And I don't want to.

Because there's heat beneath your winter, let me in.

Oh, Simon. You say the sweetest things, at the darndest times.

*sighs*

So, here we are again, a lovely morning in my study. The art store won't open for a few hours, so there's no hurry to go get more paint, though I still need a few colors to complete the one project am working on. To pass the time, will probably work on those stained glass windows some more. Provided my new apartment has adequately-sized closet doors (and I can't imagine they wouldn't - a door is a door, is adore, Isadore), have got an idea for what to do with the pages once they're colored in.

And that will be fine. But, for the moment, I still have no better answers about how to be in a world that perplexes me so, except to be quiet and still, and look around, and think a lot.

In poetry today, Longfellow speaks of Night.

The article that's breaking my brain this morning involves local grocery options.

First of all, I simply don't get the persistent "competition with Cleveland" thing. So Cleveland has a bigger store than we do. We're not Cleveland.

Also, if you really take a good look at it, we have a heck of a fine store. Are we really to be pitied because we don't have 24 rows of prepared meats? Should we put on sackcloth and ashes because we only have 21 bins of olives, as opposed to 36? That's the detail that's really breaking my brain ce matin: 21. Bins. Of olives. 21. Twenty. Plus one. Bins. Of. Olives.

*vanishes in puff of smoke*

*reconstitutes*

Call me judgmental, if you like, but it seems to me that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong here if we are sincerely considering ourselves deprived because we "only" have one Whole Foods, and it's sooooo much smaller, with fewer amenities, etc. In the face of worldwide starvation, that seems just a teensy bit insane.

It also begs the question, what is enough? Let's say we get a bigger store, or a second store, and 50 rows of prepared meats, and 100 bins of olives, and chair massages, and a mariachi band that plays for you while 700 virgins brew your free-trade coffee and sing praises to you for being a wise and judicious consumer, skilfully executing iambic hexameter in their songs. Is that enough? Where would it end? Do you see why I'm a little afraid to leave my house in the mornings?

*worries*

Is it wrong to be happy with what you have? I don't mean stop striving for better things. I'm just questionning the definition of "better."

Oh yeah, definitely time to make some art. A bientot, mes chers etoiles.

That is perplexedly all.