Joy may be a means of confronting the masked inadequacies of stock authority figures.  Carnival, that fleeting liberation from established orders, celebrates redemptive change.  

Yet, hitting targets with accepted weapons, carnival renews orthodox faith.  It is a realisation of hysterical fear at inescapable need, the established truth, of that order.  Constitutionally held up definition by distinction; hierarchical battle lines, citizen&gypsy, man&woman, are bloodlustily drawn, drawn out of oneself into traditional identity.  Traditional identities, self-evident truths, are at the heart of civilisation.  Ourselves fortune told; Us ident. carded by love and death, rich pasts buying poor futures.  Crossed rays of hope with silver shadows, humanity is clasped by belief.  Ever tragic laughter, like rust ringing a rollercoaster, weds us to this faithful mockery: the glories of civilisation.

Midsummer madness revels in a submerged fecundity, a threatening Other defining Us enjoyed/contained, that, exposed as a prized present (like that won goldfish contained in plastic), will be dead in a few days.  Creative joy uncovers the fete of life: being painfully beautiful, death.  Holiday laughter, like fairytale's happy ever after, is a promise of release at the end of a warning; the salve of eternity; a loving salvo at the unenduring joy of life, that allowed beauty if married to the established order.

Joy, changing our perspective through halls of funhouse mirrors, may change us.

Loving every other in theory
Not really (me)
Hating no one except every body
Not really (me)

Three thousand years ago the stone lay under salt waves. Lodged in shifting sand, remnants of an idea newly form, from ghosted thought to hotter flesh and opaque scales. Skin like leather erodes spirits to grain inside, as outside the waves rub slate grey to silt.

Bloody opium was spilt over decks above. War over release. Inside its stone the dragon stays, absorbing strength through tidal pressure. Glass bottles change hands. A concave moon pales, changing shape.

Two thousand years ago a fisherman dredged the bay for shrimp. Dragon’s stone, caught in a net, was taken up as an ink stone. Heather scales permeating through the small smooth rock face, the stone decorated a writing desk in the fisherman’s cabin. Ink blots from quilled letters home tinge the tip of dragon’s ears and tail.

Long boat shadows flicker coldly over the water. Dull echoes of epic narratives, drunkenly exchanged, drift down, prickling dragon’s consciousness awake.

One thousand years ago in a mountain village a woman takes the ink mottled stone to sharpen swords. By the river while talking with her husband a blade slices a clean clear cut across her lifeline. Dragon’s stone, now spotted with crimson too, falls into the river. Rushed a way by such currents it quickly sinks below such flurries to rest with a little hidden yawn on the riverbed.

And eagles preyed with talons bared their muscular wings spanning human dreams. Light dances over the underside of the forest. And chameleons writhed with cloudy opalescence, their tails trailing pictures in the mud. And sleek leopard’s fur creeps over lithe muscle. Claws crawl points into earth. Ideas ossify to scarab darkness.

A shaggy sun warmed the grey slate over Mrs. Allen’s home. Sophie wanders without purpose through the heated rough mane. With a purple t-shirt dark against her dark skin the six year old paid no mind to jagged heat. Passing by the farm then, Mrs. Allen elbowed her door open and throws a cat outside. The cat turns midair to land on its feet. A practical writhing of sleek fur and pink paw. As she walks Sophie watches the cat pad toward one of three bird tables, where handfuls of expensive seed have scattered birds of various beiges about the lawn. Sand speckled, tabby patched and pallorous downy, they all peck a nervous feed. Sophie’s steps copied the cats for a sly tiptoe, stalking one-two-three and pounce. Neither the cat, who frightened the birds from milling in a flutter of dense wings and transparent seed shells, or Sophie, who jumped off the curb onto a quiet side road, caught any prey.

On Sophie meanders not slowing until she sees the fishermen. A disruption to the still currents on their serpentine course, with boots hip deep in blue green water marbling to white froth. They became a new concourse on the river’s way. One fisherman had just finished baiting his hook. A clean pink worm dies in ridged throes around the sharpest pith. Metal flicked up and back through sweat thick air, the line falls smoothly, splicing a ripple without the tiniest splash.

Sophie walked on over the little log bridge, her arms outstretched to keep balance. Up to the crags where eagles nest. It isn’t long before Sophie saw one bird hovering, crooked claws held in suspense over a field mouse. The bird swoops, maple wing feathers swagger, tickling a downy breeze. There’s a grab through fur and skin, blood trickling over talons. In a single silent motion, unhesitant, the eagle rises again. Up the mountain, following the river to its source. Up to the spring where dank rocks mumble with the wind. A pooling stream burrows underground, and little estuaries of pebbles dip down from dry earth through tree roots to pale stone. Pebbles clock together as Sophie, bean’t over, sifts through the collection to find the best to skim. Patterns thus scratched on the water’s surface picture the liquid prowl of cats and eagle’s wings. She saught out the flattest pebbles. Most were smooth and grey, so the rough purple rock caught both her fingers and attention. Its dusty coarse surface gave way to a smoother layer below. There was a warmth emanating from the stone; perhaps that colour sopped the sun’s heat. Sat amongst tree roots, she grazed noughts and crosses into grit before rounding a sun with jagged mane. Inside the circle she drew stick figure cats and writhing worms before, bored, she brushed loose dirt over the memories, smudging them all together.

Sunlight had already succumbed to red gloaming. Perhaps dragon felt Sophie’s pulse beat through the stone, so long deposited in cold mud. Dragon moved. It’s coiled tail awkwardly stretching, causes a crack to zigzag out across the grain. Dragon opened it’s jaw and another crack breaks the stone apart. Sophie noticed movement across her palm. The squidgy flesh of a newborn dragon gave beneath her grip. Heath purple like the stone, dragon is now fully formed, flesh and bone, and growing fast. Now slipping through her fingers like sandpaper with melted wax poured over its grain. Now marrow, now cloud, now a spirit glinting through twilit fear.

Lightening bolts freeze the image as dragon unfurls. It’s neck a stubbed haunch, of thwarted elegance. It’s torso thick muscle covered in myriad scales. It’s body tapering to a wicked tale that sparks storms with movement. Heat writhes through dragon’s flesh, tongue licking human imagination. Large eyes, dot black, look askance, watering as it thinks, and as it thinks the rain falls. It’s small legs are crooked with clutched round talons wide and sharp. Those black ink blots stain its ears and tail dark. Now flesh becomes a muscular cloud, skeletal heat condensing skyward. Camauflage flayed with saffron dawn or deep night, dragon guards the crops, hoarding the rain.

A damp impression blinks through Sophie’s mind, of a shimmering dragon a drift like steam through her fingers. The ink stone lay in wet dusty pieces over her hand. She glances upward, momentarily afraid of the overcast heaven, before shaking strange ideas off. There’s an eagle hovering somewhere above. The cloud behind it looks something like a cat with a fish forked tale. A light rain begins to fall. Sophie shivers from the back of her mind.

Global warming is the atypical Western issue. It consists of gently tempting over- indulged people to help in ways that won’t bother them. ‘Change a light bulb. Maybe. Please? It cost the same. People are kind of dying in landslides and...’ it’s impossible to make a connection until the earth falls. Without direct culpability you’d think the world might be able to avoid the years of bargaining blame and negotiate action. Yet with every nation doing the same blameworthy things what happens is a collective, ‘I’ll stop if you do,’ shrug. 

150,000 people die every year due to climate change. Is this just the way the world turns? Common sense science, dredge up and burn bits of Earth and the nature of the world will change, might be academic if it didn’t lead to easy ways of helping; change a light bulb, change your mode of transportation, recycle; somewhat insufficient counterweights to deterministic entropy. Time compels this planet by turns to ash it’s energy, or do human hands cross chance? However timely the second law, can more fortunate folk do anything to ease the suffering of those less fortunate? Buy the Guardian, I suppose.

Give up something. With so many in the West giving up in misery at the futility of their existence one might think this wasn’t such a difficult selling point. Give up some pleasure that hurts other people. Easier than it sounds. Culture is an insidious tutor, and has a strangle hold on every body. Give up refined sugar; no chocolate, alcohol, ready meals, most cereals, most everything except pasta and porridge. Try it. You will probably have withdrawal symptoms. Get it out of your system though and feel fantastic. Get it out of the world system. How fantastic might that be? Give up plastic, littering the oceans and clogging the landfills. Give up chemical clogged soaps and detergents, give up buying new clothes that depend on such chemicals for their production, polluting the oceans. Live close to work so you might give up driving your car. Ration our little indulgences. No. We want to help, we want to save the world, but only when it is so easy we don’t feel the loss. I can’t give up refined sugar. It’s production renders the world less. Consuming it renders me less functional. I buy food wrapped in appalling amounts of plastic. I fly in aeroplanes. So, no, I am afraid.

150,000 people die every year due to climate change. Is this just the way the world turns? Is it just momentary selfishness? Not really. It’s too conscious a crime now, these daily vices; bottled water, plastic wrappings, chemical enhancements, electric lights, cars and planes. For how much longer can we not connect our actions to their consequences?
 

'Creep not upon the earth, my brother, like an animal. Put on those wings which Plato says are caused to grow on the soul by the ardour of love. Rise above the body to the spirit, from the visible to the invisible, from the letter to the mystical meaning, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the involved to the simple... If with all your might you strive to rise above the cloud and clamour of the senses He will descend from light inaccessible and that silence which passes understanding in which not only the tumult of the senses is still, but the image of all intelligible things keep silence.'  (Erasmus)

 
Ascetic Ideal Of Femininity = Anorexia

+ Consumer Ideal = Bulimia 

When ascetic ideals clash with the status symbols of consumerism it gives rise to contradictions; wo/men should be faithful but also sexually rapacious, wo/men shouldn’t diet, in fact ideally they should eat a lot, yet they should be exceptionally thin and athletic; women should be child-like and submissive to patriarchal views yet independent and intelligent, women who wear make-up are vain yet women should have porcelain skin, long lashes and live up to the airbrushed fantasies in magazines; men should be both sensitive yet strong, emotionally open yet independent, complete in order to be a completion for others yet suffering well-timed moments of weakness for the complete modern woman who needs to be needed.  Both sexes are still too preoccupied trying to make the everything they are supposed to be work to know how to help the other.  Bulimia can be seen as an extreme reaction to, even an embodiment of, such contradictions.  Binge in the consumer mode, purge in the ascetic.  Both ideals, extreme asceticism and extreme possession (a post-modern avarice, self-possession) are incompatible, unsustainable and destructive.
 

A different form of consumption has taken hold of men and women alike.  Not a huge surprise that modern ideas of anorexia emerge most evidently in the industrial metropolis.  Advice pages of Victorian Ladies Magazines are full of mother's panic about their hitherto bright daughters cutting off their circulation with corsets to get the desired figure.  No wonder sensation novels are full of girls having fainting fits.
 

Feminism never got rid of corsets, society merely internalised them.  And, to pre-empt the burning bras corollary, women need them for comfort and feminism always knew it. Burning bras was a media invention to disparage a 1969 No Miss America march.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corsets for that matter, they can accentuate that pelvic curve; rather the insidious cultural restrictions that impel a singular figure that's the problem.

 
The media doesn't cause anorexia or bulimia any more than a drug dealer causes addiction.  Yet society doesn't allow dealers to hang out in the school playground without a fight.  Images of perfect bodies throughout culture must an atmosphere in which eating disorders thrive.  Disordered eating may begin as an unconscious attack of unacceptable social ideals, but if forced conscious it may become a reaction against.  The patient is not a model of the ideal; their behaviour is symptomatic of the reasons for objecting to such generic standards.  At a certain point of recovery, the stand-up and saying 'My name is... and I am a bulimic' stage, unconscious reaction to society becomes a conscious reaction against.  That is when the madperson can become the radical, lobbying for reform. 

Cultural expectations control passion to the point of screaming.  The individual fights against it, striving for compromise equilibrium.  Forced into conscious thought, even locker room jokes are spoilt, male desire is as tangled up as female desire ever was.  Every romantic comedy shows a prohibitive standard of perfection tying the knot of attraction.  Beauty is only skin deep but the gaze depends on cultural expectations, and so does sexual love.

In the earliest extant law book, which biologically speaking is not that old, a charter myth of patriarchy follows fast on the Word's Creation.  Si[g]n came into the world through that original woman eating knowledge.  Peace plucked into bits when she shared that food for thought with her other half.  The punishment, to be shamefully aware of flesh and painfully aware of Bloody childbirth (the spiritual origin of community).  Beauty and shamefaced ugliness, those binary opposites, are the apple of every communities eye; cultural standards that frustrate natural energy.  The story of Adam and Eve is a piece of art, sign or symbol, that naturalises intellectual standards of beauty as opposed to instinctual attraction.  These aesthetic social ideals crafted the psyche as soma, naturalised intellect as sympathetic flesh and communities Blood as Spirit.  And so Eve ate the apple.  Natural matter imbued with Si[gn, so says the Word, decayed humanity.  Si[g]n is frustrated instinct, natural Passion becomes unnatural appetite.  The woman, functional as a ribbed and ribbing body to birth man, is coiled in her own brain tissue by reaching beyond her caged maw.  So, rebellious, Eve need submit to more suffering during childbirth.  The body as community as culture; much like the Tower of Babel story it is society, connections between two, that moral codes go between.  Associated then is woman's submission to her own leaking body and her desired physical and mental submission to man who submits to God.  This may be verified by Lilith, who in some popular versions of the myth, refuses to submit to Adam and is punished with eternal barrenness; the natural state of woman's Blood without violence translated to vicious nightmare, vampiric miscarriages of maternal instinct.  Women out of control are morally repugnant.  Unsubmissive sexual appetites belly crawl outside acceptable social functions, and are as such connected with indulgence of the senses; libidinous, gluttonous, curious.  A questioning mentality is translated physically.

Although biological functions have defined her as a slave to instinct, the New Testament has it that woman shall be 'saved by childbirth'.  Through childbirth the female form can be thought of as a creative not just a sensual canvass.  Motherhood is dissociated from Passion (from the virgin birthing a human saviour born of Blood yet conceived free of sexual ‘sin’.  His Passion translated to self-sacrifice through the body, a violent blood letting).  That Biblical mother's (i.e. the birth of Samson) need to refrain from eating unclean things may be significant as part of this trend.  A nurturing woman’s needs must be under control.  Marriage as a financial appropriation of emotion submitted body and Passion to un/comfortable social definition, containing her procreative capacity within functional economic bonds.  Tied by apron strings, or more atavistically the umbilical cord, to the duties of preparing meals social definitions of femininity are forever entangled in food.  In this respect gluttony is a reader's digest of instinct twisted by social definitions of gender.

Divorced from reality, traditional moral restrictions no longer go between human thought and action.  Post-modern mental rot has enacted umbilicus decay.  Dissociate from spirit, blood is clogged with transfat.  Dissociate from control, people sleepwalk into ambien eating.  Dissociate from comfort, bodies coil brains.  Women, no longer desired for their procreative abilities, should be girls with slight pelvis; their breasts apparently not required for feeding babies can be plasticity pumped full of toxic chemicals, to satisfy the mechanised gaze rather than natural hunger.  Irresponsible perhaps to have cosmetic surgery.  Still nobody is directly responsible; peer pressure is fatal and fitting in remains perhaps the least worst reaction for that bullied individual.  Haggard from birth by distant-screaming guilt, our aging society is determinedly youthful in its search for comfort.  Perhaps the only way an anorexic feels they can reject such frustrated pleasure pursuit is a distracted unconscious writhing that mortifies the flesh, as never being good enough gets depressed into self-destruction rather than being transcribed into useful creation.

So consumerism runs rampant, pooling stagnant milk lakes and steeping bread mountains, while, counterbalancing industrial horizons, Romantic views idealise childhood.  Naturally, we want to be young, fresh faced, lithe, and carefree; not responsible for any of this.  This is perhaps where female images diverge from male.  Men are still signposted towards worker's brawn and muscle, consummately responsible for good work, although a trilling boy power is catching on, cause celebre style.  The only responsibility empowered girls are weighed down with still tends toward shame for not being what they should, even if such blame is laughed off with a 'zigiziga' and a 'what a wanker' gist of the wrist.  Instead of defining ourselves based on natural talent, live action, definition continues to be mistranslated by fleshed senses.  Sexbomb successes.  Fat failures.  How sexually attractive is that fifteen/fifty year old?  The twenty-five year old is now the ideal youth, lithe and carefree, that actual adolescents defer childhoods to be, and older people botox reason to become again.  Our lives, our identities, are determined by distracted sensation.  Associated with moral codes, unreasonably valorised, that only result in senseless guilt.

So what is the compromise equilibrium for cultural si[g]n, for men and women, sexuality in equality, for identities, bodies, eating?  Disorder, at the moment, as the wor[l]d is deconstructed.  Those decaying binary oppositions of beauty and ugliness need to be, now fragmented yet figmented, re-imagined beyond cathexis.  Shame is a reaction against pride.  Without pride there is no shame.  Without singular beauty there is no shamefaced ugliness. Without forbidden knowledge, maggot bit by an absolute Word, associate bodies need not be riddled by self-consuming self-indulgent guilt, that pride of shame over comfort men and women might find an equilibrium, and live together even on this compromised earth without Passion becoming appetites.  If and when gluttony is no longer profitable to mass produced culture, disordered eating might move beyond bloated self-negation and create out of individual upheavals a motion against consumptive social definition.

Dear G/god, Sorry for taking all your manifold blessings and doing nothing with them but sinning.  Sorry for wasting another precious day in your stunning, beautiful world focusing on the ugliness and irritations, rather than the good and the good that I might do.  Amen.

Dear Lord, For thine is the power and the glory, thank you (and sorry) for everything.

. Depression.

. Eating anything (once I start I can't stop).

. Loneliness.

. Weight gain.

. Going to supermarket.

. Not enough sleep.

. Cleaning - or not having cleaned. My home being disordered or messy.

. SAD - being around people.

. Going out. Being insulted on street (happens a lot due to my clothes, hair, skin and general disarray). My faith in humanity is precarious. Need some proof that am not a monster.

. Thwarted perfectionism. I'm not good enough. If I can't be perfect then I may as well fail utterly. Am punishing myself for not being as good as I want to be - in an appallingly self-indulgent way.

. Comparing myself obsessively and unfavourably to others. Allowing myself to think that if I can't reach this or that standard then it doesn't matter what I look like. Talk about skin deep. I know that's superficial, and now it's at this level of consciousness becomes more an excuse. It's about living the most productive life I can live. There will always be people who are living infinitely more useful lives than I ever could, that's no excuse for not doing the best I can.

. Habit. Or, rather, a lack of alternatives. It's got to the point where I know what I'm doing and could probably stop myself but don't know what else to do. Stress still writhes my gut. It's been going on for so long I don't know any other way to be.

When I am in control - what's different?

. Was doing something constructive/useful. Volunteer work at playgroup and then Tredegar and then the museum and the befriending service. Unfortunately am in no fit state to do volunteer work at present, but that is a long-term goal.

. I had something good to focus on. I had an innocuous, fun obsession like Jane Austen or Buffy the Vampire Slayer to block out negative thoughts in my mind. The more good things I have to fill my head the less room there will be for food obsessions and all the destructive negativity. I am studying with OU and that has helped. I sorely miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the internet communities that went with it.

. I was getting enough sleep. Again, routine is key. Must develop regular sleep pattern.

Why do I lose that control?

. Loss of stability. I moved house. I left my volunteer work.

. Clinical depression.

. Boredom and loneliness.

. Put too much pressure on myself. Not patient enough. Recovery takes a tediously long time, that doesn't mean I'm not getting anywhere.

. Loss of faith in my ability to change.

. Lost sight of long-term objectives.

. Habit and lack of alternatives. Gave in to the sense that collapse was inevitable.

____

. Good things to fill my mind. I don't believe in organised religion but I need faith, or at least a hobby.

. Somebody (community worker?) to help me make sure I clean my flat, take my laundry to laundrette and help me do my food shopping.

. A sponsor - somebody to email/phone when I feel like I am going to binge.

. Get flat decorated so I can feel secure/at home.

. Buy proper cutlery and plate/bowl etc. Have a place to sit to eat proper meals.

. Eat at same times everyday.

. Eat twice a day.

. Regular sleep pattern.

. Daily routine (but with occasional variation so I don't get bored).

. Control depression. I know when the depression is coming; it descends like a fog, it builds like environmental tension before a storm; then there's the crash of thunder, the sense of impending gloom lurches out of the fog - and could do more to ward it off... maybe ask doctor about occasional anti-depressants to take when I feel myself approaching the downward part of the cycle.

Coping Mechanisms / Safety Deposit Box

Make a list of alternatives to bingeing:

. Go for a walk.

. Write in this diary.

. Having a cigarette isn't really a positive coping mechanism, is it? Especially since I don't really smoke. But at this point it seems better than bingeing.

. Read (except when I'm in binge mode I can't concentrate). So re-read a favourite book.

. Watch a film. You are allowed to sit and watch TV without the grand gesture of 'giving up' that is bingeing. Similarly, you are allowed to buy a DVD without making a big gluttonous show of what a disgusting consumer you are.

. Eat a piece of fruit that takes a long time - that you can cut up and chew on like a pineapple, mango or melon. You will enjoy this far more than bingeing.

. Brew a proper cup of coffee or tea in a nice cup, with a slice of lemon or whatever.

. Cook a stew or soup; spend time chopping lots of fresh vegetables. Lay out a proper placemat, use cutlery. If you are hungry then sit down and eat a nourishing regular-sized meal.

. Chew gum.

. Surf internet.

. Identify what you are craving - sugar, starch, protein? Allow yourself one thing that satisfies the craving - a small bar of chocolate will satisfy a sugar craving, you don't have to make a grand 'giving up' gesture and eat chocolate until you feel sick.

. You may be tired rather than hungry: try to sleep (it doesn't matter what time it is). Go to bed with a book.

. Facial sauna and clay mask.

. Identify the actual emotion that you are having; are you really hungry or are you tired, lonely, bored? If you are tired then sleep; if you are lonely, contact somebody; if you are bored, find something fun to do (go ice skating or to the cinema).

. Write lavish descriptions about the food you are obsessing about - get it out of your mind and onto the page rather than your hips.

. Copy quotes out of quotation book. Or try to memorise a poem/passage.

. Even if you buy the binge food you don't have to eat it now. Ideally you'd be able to keep it in the cupboard or a box so try to buy food that lasts. Even if you start to binge you don't have to eat everything you have bought. You can stop at any time.

. Money: Don't throw food away. If you do buy binge food try to purchase everyday products that last (cereal, bread, jam, potatoes), stop eating as soon as you can and add it to your cupboards. The next consideration is whether or not you can return it, so keep the receipts (supermarkets are more understanding than you think). If you are binging on food you justifiably don't like to eat on a regular basis (chocolate, sweets, etc.) then you might keep it in a secure container on a top shelf (out of sight and everyday mind) or more optimistically for your recovery give it to a homeless person. I have occasionally left bags of donuts and chocolate outside the local pub late at night; give somebody a nice surprise, all that dairy might help ward off their hangover. Don't just throw it away is the point. Bad for your wallet and your self-esteem.

____

The gap between who I am and who I want to be is now so wide that there is no discernable way to bridge the chasm.

Getting back into control after relapsing into bulimia is terribly difficult perhaps because I am so tired. That's why I lapse and binging hardly revives me. Too tired to deal with the consequences I prolong the downfall.

A specific reason for not self-destructing might help me stop. Then work would help sustain the upward eMotion. I need a goal, something good to look forward to. Can't work be the good thing now and on horizons, all connected, a change of scene but familiar?

Reasons for stopping:

. Won't feel sick all the time.

. Will be able to get out of debt. Spend money on books instead of food and diet pills.

. Won't have to spend 3-4 hours a day exercising. Will be able to sit and write or read without feeling like I should be exercising.

. Will be able to sleep.

. Being able to concentrate on study/reading/writing.

. My skin and hair will look better. Will be able to maintain a lower, healthier weight. Can get some clothes. It will be easier to go out and interact with people.

. Being able to go out for walks.

. Develop the modest self-esteem that comes with a little self-discipline and feel more human/less bestial.

Long term:

. Get a job. Be useful.

. Get friends. Not be lonely.

____

People's first impressions of you are invariably wrong, so what does it matter? Equally your impressions about them are probably wrong, so take a second look and think again.

People are going to mis-take you anyway, so why not let them mis-take the truth.

The best means of fulfilment is to: think more about others and less about yourself.

____