feminish

Sometimes a photograph just grabs me, like this one. I can’t remember when I first saw it, but its stark, respectful honesty has stuck in my mind:

Lauren, 23, bleaches her stained outfit backstage
at Little Darlings, where she is an exotic dancer
Las Vegas, Nevada

I have now discovered that it was by photographer and film-maker Lauren Greenfield whose latest work is the documentary Thin and its accompanying book. Greenfield went inside a Florida treatment centre to tell the stories of four women who are struggling to eat. Although the stories are deeply sad, and although the treatments don’t seem (to me) to touch the real essence of these women’s suffering, the tone of Greenfield’s film is stark and respectful, just like the photo above. Women are having a hard time in this 21st Century world, and we’re lucky to have Greenfield’s gaze on us.

Here is a powerful preview to Thin:

Lauren Greenfield is probably best known for her documenting of ‘girl culture’ in America. You can see her awesome “Girl Culture photoessay” for Time magazine and other remarkable Girl Culture photographs published on her website.

I ended last week’s fast the evening of the second day.

Those first two days I felt drawn-out and a little bit wonky. Time passed slowly, droolingly and lethargically. I felt empty; spare.

I stopped happily and gently, enjoying the savouriness of a bouillon soup.

In fact, it was kind of the cosmos to arrange the early-finish, because first thing the next morning we received a phonecall from the Patterner’s grandmother up the hill:

“I am dying”

We flew out of the front door and into the car in, I warrant, no more than 15 seconds. There are now some small roadworks in the village, so we even had the chance to blow a red light.

The doctor and ambulance seemed to take an age; time steadied and thickened. With one hundred percent concentration we stayed with her, following our breath and helping her to follow hers. When fear came up in myself I had to immediately take care to dissolve it - and to call on every last drop of my resources of meditation to be present, calmly present, so that she could be present too. We could tell that only if she was calm and not-fearing could her Heart and Will make it.

The women came - Paulette, Anne-Marie. Soon she was swaddled in wool blankets, soft towels and crisp linen; the sweet-smelling feminine trousseau. We comforted and coddled her away from the abyss as Anne-Marie brushed her hair: That’s better. You can’t go to the hospital without a quick brush.

Within a few hours and after a few more alarms she was there, on a wheeled bed in the corridor, shaken and exhausted but returned. Her particular shade of grey was, we remarked, still somewhat better than the grey-whites of certain barely-bodied-humans swooshing past, each chased by their own urgent, white-coated entourage. At one point her blood began to rise up, rich and red, through the drip-tube.

“That’s a good red,” I said. “Just like a British Letterbox.” (”I’m surprised they make it in France”, I might have added, but didn’t.)

She smiled a weak but willing smile, and the Patterner and I fell into humming chorales as we waited for Radiology.

Today I have started a five-day fast.

This morning I drank a glass of the grape-juice I made yesterday and this afternoon I ate quite a few hot blue-black grapes from the vine. I began the day with a few ume-bosis (pickled plums from Japan), to flush-out my system a little.

A few years ago I thought I would never be able to fast. Having not-eaten for a year or so when I was younger, I was worried I could never fast in the calm, clear and free way that, for example, an experienced meditation practitioner can. Like breasts which have lost their form a little from yo-yoing weight, it was one of the consequences of troubled womanhood I’d come to accept - bravely, with a set jaw.

I was afraid that for me fasting would immediately be about control, about achieving and about body-weight. And so, for five years of summer meditation retreats I have avoided fasting - or, rather, just enjoyed the delicious Immanent Grove food without regret.

These past few months, though, with my practice of mindfulness and pausing in awareness (when I remembered and when I was calm enough not to be in a hurry) before serving food and eating, I started to see what a stressful relationship I have with food. I noticed that I in fact have an entire and elaborate internal-monologue whizzing back and forth around my head every time there’s a decision to be made about eating. Is this too much, or not too much? Do I deserve this or should I feel guilty? Is this allowed? Is this naughty? Am I being greedy?

Only recently have I recognised my internal monologue and started to replace the words with more helpful ones. So I try to ask myself, Will this make me feel better? Is this what I really want? What does my body tell me when I look at this food? Does it want it or not?

This may sound excessive for those who are at peace with eating. Yet I really do experience this amount of thought and angst. But it’s only when I follow my breath and feel how rooted my feet are to the ground, that I can eliminate a lot of external and internal distractions and really hear what’s going on inside.

In July I fasted for one day. I felt instantly freed from the stressful web of to-eat or not-to-eat, this-much or not-this-much. I had a little peace, for one day. And I learnt a lot about my relationship with food and how I can begin to calm and quieten it. The first few meals after the fast were an entirely different experience - I felt much freer and calmer towards the food, and real gratitude.

So now I am fasting to enjoy that peace for a little longer and to see myself a little clearer.

Yesterday’s Jam-Making went as usual.

My hands are stinging from tearing apart the plums by hand and my tongue is burnt from tasting it while it was boiling. I felt sick all afternoon from testing it too often. I didn’t have enough jars, and became miserable when I finally had to evict the aluminium-pan-poisoned Seville orange marmalade that’s been sitting in lovely jars gathering mould since February. Once the jam had cooled I realised it was too sweet and too dark (organic Rapadura ain’t the same as Tate & Lyle) and had to empty out all the jars and try again with extra plums.

As I was tidying up the mess I picked up all the stones and without a second thought chucked them out into the garden, which right now resembles a building site.

Suddenly I felt quite guilty.

I realised that the whole reason the tree has made such a great effort to produce juicy plums for us to take and eat is to ensure its continuation: to give the stones a chance of ending up somewhere they can become a tree.

It’s all very well for me think I can express my gratitude to the tree by capturing its fruit in sugar and jars and not letting it go to waste. But in fact the best way to return the tree’s favour is to treat the stones with respect and put them in places where they’ve got a chance of growing.

I realised that the pile of soil and rubble I had thrown them on will be heading to a landfill in Autumn.

Two hundred years ago a bloke in Britain planted thousands of acorns to ensure there’d be enough oaks for the next generation’s naval ships. Maybe I should plant out hundreds of plum stones to ensure there are enough reines claudes for the next feminist generation’s jam?

It was breezy today, and I my belly was striking its monthly pang. Not a day for thoughts and decisions.

So The Patterner and I decided to abandon Work in favour of Jam-Making.

We quit the studio and glided across the valley by bike in search of Bionic Woman, the lithe, muscular, deeply tanned and shy human soul - more earth than woman, truth be told - who manifests organic fruit and vegetables from the soil.

This week is reine claude week. There’s only one. Within a couple of days they’ll be soggy and overripe - but just now they are perfect and very wet. I’m amazed that even in this dog-heat drought the struggling trees still offer us - who have taps and showers and feet to walk to the riverbank - such incredibly wet plums.

Bionic Woman gave us twice as many reines as we had money for, and let us graze them as she jostled with the metal hook and runner that served as her approximate-to-the-nearest-kilogram scales. If our jam didn’t work out, she said, we could have some of hers.

I’m not sure why I submit myself to the frazzling ritual of boiling up stupendous quantities of fruit with unhealthy quantities of sugar. (Re-emptying jars and re-boiling Seville marmalade for the third time at 3 in the morning the night before my political TV show went out live is but one of many pained memories.)

I think I do it partly because I’m obsessed with tea and breakfast (it being the Most Important Meal of the Day); by extension I’m therefore obsessed with toast and things to put on it. It’s partly because as a one-time non-eater my mind is fascinated by intensely rich foods. And it’s partly because I have a fetish for connecting with women’s old-time diligent forethought. There are Seville oranges in February, but not for any of the other 11 months. There are reines claudes this week but there won’t be next. So chop and soak and boil and pot “we must”.

Normally I hate the echoes of women’s ‘musts’ through the centuries: that I must always have clean nails or must never leave the house with wet hair (though I do now have a mantra: ‘a girl must carry her Leatherwoman at all times’). But somehow it makes me happy to respect the musts of nature. Here the trees are, pouring forth their generosity and it feels good to do justice by them; to accept their fruit in gratitude and invest a few hours of attention and slog to ensure they last beyond next week. It’s a humbling rite - I’ll never be able to create a reine claude and yet if I’m not careful I can squish one, spill it or burn it.