June 4, 2019

Back at the Y, with increased weights, and I felt marvelous at the end. Stretched muscles for months unstretched.

Now that I’m more than a week into it, I feel it’s legitimate to analyze my sibylline health project. I have eaten exactly two meals since May 29. Nibbles here and there, such as bar food at DJ’s birthday, potato chips at rehearsal, a few fries snagged from Allyson’s plate, plenty of juice and water, as many radishes as I want, which turns out to be 2 or 3 a day. V-8 juice is wonderful for making you think you’ve eaten when you haven’t. The cause was my knees. My knees were failing– standing up and sitting down at church had become an ordeal almost beyond bearing-- and given the condition of my legs I felt knee replacement surgery would be unlikely. The plan was to get as much weight off them as possible; make them last as long as I could. Yes, my knees feel better, and only standing without something to pull on hurts them at the moment. I couldn’t have lost weight to achieve that yet, so it must be something else. The further amazing thing is, all my body inflammation has gone away, the ache that made me long for the time when I could take another aspirin or another hit of CBD oil, the low flame that sometimes read as sickness and through which I’d have to lie down and try to sleep. The pain that I thought would define the rest of my life, that I assumed would sharpen and become more resistant with time, is gone. I have not had an aspirin since the day the fast began.  Gardening, I realized I was lifting the 50 pound bags of sod straight up into the air as I had in the days of my youth. Could I have been poisoning myself with food? Was it the wrong food, or too much food? I assume the latter, since I’ve always taken in a fair variety. What does food beyond the necessary do to the body? If I read things right the amount of intake a body needs is radically less than we had thought, for seldom recently have a felt more vital and energized than I do now. Yes, I’m hungry, but not THAT hungry, and to be a little peckish and not in pain is a trade I’m willing to make. It occurs to me that the prospect of retirement provides a psychosomatic element to this, but I am content, when things go well, not to be too precise in my method.

Watering the parched garden.

Removed dead people from my Facebook friends list.

Rejoice in the flashes of rusty gold that is my thrasher flying from cover to cover in the sunlight.