Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Yesterday there was an incident. I was done for the day and tallied and I decided I needed another popsicle. Thus over my allotment by a pitiful 80 cals. If I wait too long before a meal I become panicked and angry. I used to manage this state of affairs by eating--a sensible solution to hunger, on the face of it--but now I need to reconstitute myself as someone who experiences mild hunger from time to time and relaxes, someone who eats allotted amounts at allotted times. This means, I'm realizing, that not just the portions but the timing is key. Especially here, with food from every quarter and corner, candy jars and Pocky boxes and pretzels in the office, or sandwiches, steam tables, and goldfish crackers every few blocks--not to mention burgers, pizza, and burritos, sandwiches, Klondike ice cream bars, chicken sandwiches, kielbasa, falafel, and gyros with white and hot sauce, Herr's potato chips, pastrami, pepper turkey, fig newton bars, kebabs and pesto and clouds of yogurt. It's like one of those training games they play with cops, where you'll be walking down the street and foods (or plywood cutouts) pop up from behind dumpsters and around corners and you must decide whether to eat them or not. BANG IT'S LAMB AND RICE FROM THE CART DO YOU EAT DO YOU EAT? YES! NO? Goddammit, trainee, you DON'T eat the LAMB AND RICE. You get a BANANA from the FRUIT CART.

All in the timing.

Just now there was another incident. I had the cup measure out and was pouring my milk over my cereal straight from the box, thinking as I did so, "You know, I should cut down on dairy." When the cereal was properly swimming I looked down and saw I had skipped the cup measure entirely, adding a full two cups (est.) milk to the bowl.

In the past, c'est la vie, but instead I ate the cereal and left the milk remaining in the bowl, then threw it away. Sweet cool calcium. Realizing as I did so that I had all my life been a two-cup man. And in fact often there was enough milk left in the bowl when I was done that I would throw another couple cups of cereal in. Which might necessitate the adding of even more milk. In this way a day would pass.

I think of the last lines from this bit of litrit goteam:

The Ideal

This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.

This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard.

-- James Fenton

"When Cancer Changes Your Appearance," Brian Nelson, the New York Times:

How does one deal with someone whose appearance has changed from the dashingly handsome (O.K., I’m taking some poetic license) to totally disfigured and, one might say, grotesque? We’ve been trained by movies and TV to worship perfection. After all, the bad guy is always either bald, short, limps, is missing an eye, scarred or has some other abnormality to distinguish him from us, the perfect audience. My close friend recently told me he was “shocked, I tell you, shocked,” by my appearance when he saw me again after six months. I’m shocked sometimes too.

It’s as much a learning curve for me as for others. I am not sure how people will take me: whether I will make them uncomfortable, whether they will be able to overlook the changes and look for the person who still inhabits this misshapen head. I have to talk myself into going out now. A little pep talk reassures me that, whatever others may think, I must not quit trying. My difficult speech has similarly influenced my choices – I tend not to answer the phone and am now a listener in group settings, only lobbing in a few bon mots every so often, and then re-lobbing them until people understand. My timing is truly unique. To combat the verbal steamrollering of members of my family, I raise my hand before speaking. Quite humiliating, sort of, but very effective.

Weight: 333 lbs