As I write, the rain pours down. It plops on the rooftop and pitter patters on the porch. It rushes down the gutters and streams down the driveway. It drips off the pine needles and shines the leaves.
Rain. It can ruin a bride’s wedding dream. Turn graduation into a soggy mess. In a pandemic, it keeps diners from their outdoor dinners, pushes us back back into the homes we barely emerge from.
Yet in this moment, it is so welcome. The ground is so dry. And my stomach is so empty. All I want to do today is laze, and write, and perhaps think more about the impact I can have on the world. I want to shut the world out, and sleep.
Interestingly, the fast this time around is not so bad (at 4:37). There is a sensation in my stomach, and an occasional desire for food (Triskets? Not yet.) But it feels almost… pleasant? There is no ball in the pit of my stomach, no weightiness of absence. I’m not ravenous for just anything. My head doesn’t particularly hurt – I just feel a little foggy. I feel tingly in my legs. The rain pitter patters down.
Can abstaining be pleasurable? Do fasts get easier over time? Did we simply eat well in the days leading up – lean breakfasts and lunches in the days before, a nice hearty meal last night? Is it just because it’s warm out?
Or could it possibly be because this year has seemed so terribly, unfathomably bad, and the future looks so much incredibly worse, that one day without food just doesn’t feel like it used to?
I want food. I want the clock to tick closer to 7, ever closer. But I also don’t feel in pain, in suffering. The feeling in my stomach – it’s so hard to describe, but for some reason the word daisies comes to mind. It’s so bizarre. I couldn’t tell you why. But it feels like…daisies make you feel? Sort of light and happy, but – hear me out- also a little sad, because they’re so insubstantial, so simple (and not in a meaningful way) and used by small children to make wreaths, but not the beautiful kind. The ephemeral, we barely care kind.
It’s such a strange image to associate with this. I can’t explain it any more than that.
Fasts are a strange thing. Multi faceted, ever changing. You hate them while they’re happening but relish the experience after. They are an experience unto themselves.
drafthistory 