A Few Unusual Photos of the Night Sky

Comet NEAT

Comet NEAT is in bottom center between the trees

Cassiopeia during Leonid Meteor Shower

Notes On Feeling Fat

Notes On Feeling Fat

            I did something that took some nerve yesterday.  I looked at myself naked in a full length mirror.  Frontal and side view.  I’ve avoided doing it for years and I finally got tired of being such a coward and did the deed.  I looked.

            It was disturbing but also liberating.  I’m sixty five years old; age is happening to my body. I won't be one of those people who cling to youth with frantic denial. I want to enjoy being a cranky old man who groans and says "Fech!" Things could be much worse.  All the flab has settled around my mid-section, leaving my shoulders, arms and legs looking okay..  I weigh two

hundred and stand five foot eight.  I “carry my weight well”, so I’ve been told.  I’m not a waddling fire plug.  I’m more like a bear or a gorilla.  These creatures don’t have tapering waistlines.

        It’s the fault of the medications.  That’s what I tell myself.  The medicines changed my metabolism.  I got heavy after I started taking the medications for my leg neuropathy and ...all those other things.

Forget the compulsive bed-time eating, the appetite for Reese’s Pieces and

Nestle’s Crunch.  Never mind the yum yum indulgence of putting peanut butter on Ritz Crackers and tossing down half a roll.  I ride a bicycle every day, three sixty five.  I know, you hate me.  I also do a daily yoga practice.  I know, you hate me even more.

            It’s a case of good disciplines counteracting bad habits.

            I am a disciplined compulsive.  Is that a paradox?  Try living with it.

Is anyone else like this?  Is anyone locked in a struggle between the rational and irrational parts of themselves?  I’m killing myself while saving my life.  I’m a suicidal yogi health food candy addict.  

            I practice aerobic “spinning”.  I sweat hard and push myself until I’m panting .

            My treadmill test indicated that I am free of heart disease.

            How do I live with myself?

            Tolerantly.  Very tolerantly.

            Am I the only baby boomer with a past full of addictions and recoveries?

Am I the only sixty-something with chronic pain in at least two parts of my body?

Am I the only man who feels conned and imprisoned by the pharmaceutical companies because I have to take meds for blood pressure, depression and physical pain?  These meds have saved and restored my quality of life.  They’ve also made me a prisoner.

            I feel as if I’ve loaned out my body as a lab rat and everything will stay cool as long as I keep running on the treadmill.

            My belly’s been large for twenty years.  I’m a husky strong man.  What will body shame get me?  Nothing.  Avoiding my reflection in the mirror is absurd., I don’t know what I really look like.  Each gaze into my reflected image is so loaded with ingrained value judgments, fantasies and delusions that it’s pointless to obsess on my appearance.  I just don’t know and never will know what I look like.  Furthermore, I don’t look the same to any two people.  Nothing does!  So what the fuck?

            I’ve made a deal with my belly.  I talk to it.  Belly, I say, you are a part of me, you are a product of genetics, lifestyle and a thousand other factors.  You and I will have have to get along.  Let’s be friends.  It’s obvious you’re not going anywhere.

            So, belly, how ya doin’ today?  No pain?  That’s good.  Let’s go for a ride.

Hiway To The Skyway

Jack In The Box Love