Wasted

"I became bulimic at the age of nine, anorexic at the age of fifteen. I couldn’t decide between the two and veered back and forth from one to the other until I was twenty, and now, at twenty-three, I am an interesting creature, an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. My weight has ranged over the past thirteen years from 135 pounds to 52, inching up and then plummeting back down . I have gotten 'well,' then 'sick,' then 'well,' then 'sicker,' and so on up to now; I am considered 'moderately improved,' 'psychologically stabilized, behaviorally disordered,' 'prone to habitual relapse.' I have been hospitalized six times, institutionalized once, had endless hours of therapy, been tested and observed and diagnosed and pigeonholed and poked and prodded and fed and weighed for so long that I have begun to feel like a laboratory rat."
- Marya Hornbacher
in Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
First things first: if you struggle with an eating disorder in any degree of seriousness, please, PLEASE stay away from this book. At best, it will not do you any good; at worst it is the definition of triggering. There is a reason the author's name shows up on pro-ana and pro-mia websites.

That said, I do recommend Wasted to mature readers who want to better understand the mindset and experiences of an eating disordered person. Hornbacher's vivid narration makes it all too real.

I can understand why it could look like just another book capitalizing on our society's love for intimate confessions of deep problems, one of those books that pleases readers by shocking and horrifying them. Maybe some people do pick it up looking for that kind of a read. Her insights and strangely graceful style of writing, even when dealing with such an ugly subject, make it more than that, though.

It's worth noting that it is, as it says, a memoir of her disorders - it doesn't touch much on her recovery, though there is an afterword. My only real beef with it is that the section detailing her childhod was a bit tiresome and confusing, and felt rather self-indulgent. As a whole though, Wasted is mostly just honest to the point of being reckless of the reader's comfort, which I can't say I think is a bad quality in a book.

To say Wasted is absorbing would be an understatement - reading it is like being caught by a breaking wave. It crashes over your head and pulls you down into the dim, disorienting, airless underwater of eating disorders. It's not a fun read, but the anoretic and bulimic speak to us about their disorders too rarely and urgently to be ignored.

Grade: B+

N.B. Wasted also contains strong language and deals to a much lesser extent with drug use and sexual promiscuity.

I posted another quote from this book last Tuesday.

Why I love aerobics

I've had a membership on and off at my local YMCA for a few years now. This being the summer after freshman year (uggh), I'm trying to exercise more than usual. And I've tried a bunch of different classes and forms of individual exercise, including the "cool" ones like yoga, Pilates, et cetera. But you know what I like best of all? Aerobics.

Yep, just like that. (Except aerobics practitioners have, blessedly, opted for more fabric and less poly/spandex since the '80's.) But no joke, the aerobics classes I go to are a blast.

First of all, there's the instructor. Her grin and enthusiastic bellow, and the sight of a woman who is at least in her forties dancing around so energetically and unreservedly and with so much enjoyment, never fail to perk me up, even at eight o'clock in the morning. Also, from time to time she yells that as long as we are moving, we're doing it right, which is a line I can't help but like.

The steps are fast and simple but with a goodly amount of variety, and impact-wise you can amp it up as much as you want, which I like because I love anything with a lot of jumping (hence I do Irish dance). It's an hour of bouncing, twisting, punching, and side-stepping around, and it's fabulous! I always feel like going full out, and sometimes I can't NOT grin.

A fast, fun soundtrack is provided, including reunion time with such classics as "The Twist," "We Got The Beat," and "Whoomp! (There It Is)" as well as weird, only-for-aerobics-instructors songs like a techno remix of Eponine's "On My Own" from Les Miserables.

I get to witness the miraculous spectacle of a gym full of women two or three times my age grooving uninhibitedly to said soundtrack, answering every "HOW ARE WE DOING?" from the instructor with a chorus of hearty cheers right on cue. Aside from how reassuring it is to see that, yes, women can have real fun even after they reach forty, thanks to them there is no trace of the stereotypical gym culture (that is, I never worry about wearing something cool, how I measure up to the person next to me, and so on). One older lady even told me today that my energy inspired her, which kind of made my morning. Teehee.

And of course, it's really good exercise. It gets your heart rate up for a solid hour, makes you sweat, and works your muscles a bit too, but at the end you still feel like you have more energy than you did when you began. Genius stuff, I tell you. We don't give the 1980's enough credit.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

And Happy Independence Day to you. :)

Unfortunately I couldn't find a YouTube vid of this song for you, but know that it's just a guitar and a sweet, low male voice. It has such a melodic, quiet sound, and I really like the way the lyrics characterize Jesus* (the Mexican boy).

Jesus the Mexican Boy

Jesus the Mexican boy
Born in a truck on the fourth of July
Gave me a card with a lady naked on the back
Barefoot at night on the road
Fireworks blooming above in the sky
I never knew I was given the best one from the deck

He never wanted nothing I remember
Maybe a broken bottle if I had two
Hanging behind his holy even temper
Hiding the more unholy things I do

Jesus the Mexican boy
Gave me a ride on the back of his bike
Out to the fair though I welched on a $5 bet
Drunk on Calliope songs
We met a home-wrecking carnival girl
He's never asked for a favor or the money yet

Jesus the Mexican boy
Born in a truck on the 4th of July
I fell in love with his sister unrepentantly
Fearing he wouldn't approve
We made a lie that was feeble at best
Boarded a train bound for Vegas and married secretly

I never gave him nothing I remember
Maybe a broken bottle if I had to
Hanging behind his holy even temper
Hiding the more unholy things I do

Jesus the Mexican boy
Wearing a long desert trip on his tie
Lo and behold he was standing under the welcome sign**
Naked the Judas in me
Fell by the tracks but he lifted me high
Kissing my head like a brother and never asking why

- Iron & Wine


*Not Jesús, really. He sings it as "Jesus."
**This welcome sign, if you didn't catch it.

In Search of Giants is hosting the poetry round-up today.

Cupcakes!

(Scroll down for English!)

Anscheinend sind Cupcakes momentan extrem trendig. Warum, weiss ich nicht, aber aus diesem Grund ist eine ganze Cupcakekultur aufgekommen, mit einer Menge Cupcakewebseiten, und die gefallen mir zwar sehr. (I empfehle Cupcakes Take the Cake, The Cupcake Review, and How To Eat a Cupcake, wo man für das nächste Rezept wählen kann, die er will, dass sie probiert)

Also, sie haben mich angeregt, ein cooles Cupcakerezept auszuprobieren - ich habe Minz-Schokochip Cupcakes gemacht, hurra! Ich habe dieses Rezept benützt, ohne den Zuckerguss zu machen - habe sie sondern nur mit Andes Pfefferminze gestreuet. Sie haben mir nicht schlecht geschmeckt, aber zum nächsten Mal würde ich sie irgendwie mit mehr Schokolade drin machen, denn meiner Meinung nach sollten sie stärker nach Schokolade schmecken.

Apparently, cupcakes are extremely trendy at the moment. Why I do not know, but for this reason an entire cupcake culture has sprung up, with a ton of cupcake websites, and them I do like a lot. (I recommend Cupcakes Take the Cake, The Cupcake Review, and How To Eat a Cupcake, where you can vote for the next recipe you want her to try.)

So, they inspired me to try a cool cupcake recipe out - I made mint chocolate chip cupcakes, hurrah! I used this recipe without making the frosting - just sprinkled them with Andes mints instead. They didn't taste bad, but next time I would make them with more chocolate in them somehow, because in my opinion they should taste more strongly of chocolate.

eta: I tried this recipe later with 1/2 t salt or so and 1/2 T more cocoa, and the cupcakes were notably better.




[Why is this in German?]

Armchair travels to a darker side of reality

Wasted, von Marya Hornbacher, ist, in einem Wort, heftig, als die Erzählung von einem vierzehnjährigen Kämpf mit zwei Essstörungen sein muss. Es war ein schmerzliches, faszinierendes, und ab und zu entsetzliches Lesen. Eine ganze Buchbesprechung würde ich lieber auf Englisch schreiben, also warte ich, denn ich habe versprochen, heute auf Deutsch zu schreiben, aber ich wollte dieses Zitat mit euch teilen (obwohl es nicht so ganz charakteristisch für das ganze Buch ist). Ich habe besonders gern ihre Beschreibung von der "kulturellen Kakophonie."

[Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher, is, in a word, intense, as the account of a fourteen-year struggle with two eating disorders has to be. It was a painful, fascinating, and at times horrifying read. I'd prefer to write a whole review in English, so I'll wait because I promised I'd write in German today, but I wanted to share this quote with you (although it’s not really representative of the whole book). I especially like her description of the "cultural cacophony."]

"This book is neither a tabloid tale of mysterious disease nor a testimony to a miracle cure. It's simply the story of one woman's travels to a darker side of reality, and her decision to make her way back. On her own terms.

"My terms amount to cultural heresy. I had to say: I will eat what I want and look as I please and laugh as loud as I like and use the wrong fork and lick my knife. I had to learn strange and delicious lessons too few women learn: to love the thump of my steps, the implication of my weight and presence and taking of space, to love my body's rebellious hungers, responses to touch, to understand myself as more than a brain attached to a bundle of bones. I have to ignore the cultural cacophony that singsongs all day long, Too much, too much, too much. As Abra Fortune Chernik writes, 'Gaining weight and pulling my head out the toilet was the most political act I ever committed.'"

- Marya Hornbacher
in Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

[Why I am posting in German, if you didn't catch it.]

Edited to add: Read my review here.