12:30 pm
? Granny Smith apple (40 calories)
1 pm
? roast turkey on rye w/lettuce and mustard (250 calories?)
4:30 pm
large almond butter, rice milk, fig smoothie (500 calories?)
9:30 pm
watercress salad w/crispy soy beans (60 calories?)
cabbage salad (20 calories?)
broccoli (40 calories?)
steamed greens (20 calories?)
creamy tahini dressing (90 calories?)
sesame dressing (40 calories?)
2 pieces prosciutto (70 calories)
total caloric intake: approx 1,410
Notes: I did some cocaine this evening! Joaquin showed up at the bar and I said I couldn’t drink so he was like “do this cocaine.” Just a bump. Then we went to another bar for hamburgers and I was angry and got in a cab. But I’m still feeling good about food—not emotional—and was getting mega compliments on my look at the bar. Still coming up short in the fruits/veggies arena. Tomorrow I’ll start the day with a reasonable serving of yogurt and some dates, then have a lunch and dinner both full to bursting with veggies—that’s what this body needs.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2010
2 am
azuki bean mousse (250 calories)
12 pm
apple pie (450 calories)
bio-k (45 calories)
maple syrup (25 calories)
1:30pm
apple waldorf salad (350 calories)
? roast chicken breast (150 calories)
bite of cornbread (50 calories)
4 pm
small piece of milk chocolate (50 calories)
carrot/orange juice (120 calories)
5pm
small tasti d (80 calories)
large tasti d (150 calories)
6 pm
a bunch of lemon cake (300 calories)
7 pm
white wine (100 calories)
8 pm
steak, veggies (300 calories)
10 pm
more lemon cake (300 calories)
even more lemon cake (300 calories)
cereal and almond milk (250 calories)
banana (120 calories)
apple (85 calories)
? jar peanut butter (700 calories)
total caloric intake: 4,225 calories
Notes: I went totally nuts and ate all the things.
* * *
1 Bread tends to be vegan.
MY MOTHER INVENTED the selfie.
Sure, there were self-portraits before her, but she perfected the art of the vulnerable candid with an unclear purpose. She used a Nikon, a film camera with a timer, and she would set it up, stand against the cherry-print wallpaper in her bedroom, and pose.
It was the early seventies. She had moved to the city armed with nothing but this camera and a desire to make work. She had left her boyfriend behind, a kindly balding carpenter from Roscoe, New York, who wore a flannel nightgown and knew how to tap trees for syrup. I happen to know he’s kindly because we visited him once and sat around his table drinking lemonade, and he didn’t seem mad that she’d left him, just happy for her successes and generally pleased about my existence.
When she got to New York she moved into the loft I’d grow up in, a little too big for a single girl and a little too small for a family. She took odd jobs to pay the rent—styling food and selling billiard balls and once, just once, taking a Japanese businessman on a tour of New York City nightlife. (A unique quality of my mother’s is that when she’s uncomfortable she expresses her purest and most deeply felt rage, so I’m guessing he had a bad time.)
In the images she took of herself in the loft, she was only sometimes dressed, in a baggy sweater or belted safari shorts. But most of the time she was naked. At least partially. Jeans and no shirt, her pale shoulders hunched, her knees knocking. A round-collared blouse and thick wool socks but no pants, the shadowy place between her ass cheeks revealed when she pulled knees to chin.
Over time, her hair changed: long ironed sheets became an ill-advised perm. A bob, the ends still wet from the shower. Her armpits tended to be unshaven, a look I regret knowing that my father enjoys. Sometimes she added a potted plant to the image for texture, like a student filmmaker creating a makeshift set of Vietnam.