Celebrate

"Over the years I have been exposed to women with extraordinary bodies, some of whom are naturally blessed with them, and others who have to fight for every inch. Some are reed-thin and others creamily voluptuous. The happiest are the ones for whom eating is a pleasure, rather than something to be held hostage by. These women are sexy. They share a total ease around food and the understanding that whatever their shape or size, they steer the ship in which they sail. Women have historically given much power to food, yet food is inanimate. There is nothing sensual about militant restriction. It is infertility, osteoporosis, and bleeding gums. It saps and withers."

Wise words indeed by Sophie Dahl in the March edition of Vogue US.

The topic of weight is a long-running one, the world over. Growing up in Kenya and having limited exposure to the West, anorexia was a distant thing and something I can honestly say I didn't have to consider the implications of. I cannot speak on behalf of all the young girls (or guys) growing up alongside me in Kenya but its fair to say that when a vast majority of the country is worrying about sourcing the next meal, the impact of magazines/models/designers/media/the resultant feeding loop of mothers and daughters and the knowledge passed on regarding food is not in the foreground.

I am now well aware of the extreme dangers associated with starvation and the fact that food obsession caters to being in control, and is addictive and soul-destroying.

So do we tackle the problem the right way? Dahl's article iterates the importance of placing value on taking pleasure in food. Natural ingredients, traditions. The French, the Italians, the Africans (to name a few examples).....they have it right. They are not the same stick thin build but then why is that attractive again? They have it right, they embrace food and conversation, cooking together, espousing delicious flavours and aromas and tastes. Food is life. Food is culture. Food is family. And food is meant to be nurtured, celebrated and to satiate.

I have to be honest here. I've stumbled across a few blogs where pictures of the authors do nothing more than nauseate me. Where do we draw the line? Dry skin, brittle hair, bones protruding where they shouldn't be? There is no excuse. Models too, in my opinion, are meant to look vibrant and gorgeous and full of life. And a gorgeous item of clothing on a beautiful girl will spark my desire, not a sack of bones with a hessian sack (because everything starts to look like that) draping over it coming down the runway.

Is food a friend or an enemy?

And is it a pleasure, or a guilty pleasure?

I am a woman for whom eating is a pleasure. I embrace culinary experimentation, natural ingredients, and the mouth-watering results. I thank my parents for encouraging me to learn how to cook and to enjoy it, and for never passing on that negative food association that so many mothers unfortunately inadvertently pass on to their daughters. I am not a saint, I eat things on the 'no go' list. And between the ages of 17 and 22, I sometimes experimented with the whole "could stand to lose a few kilos" stance. When food was a guilty pleasure or when I thought I could stand to lose a few kilos and attempted to diet somewhat, I was the biggest I've ever been. And as soon as I stopped worrying about the few kilograms and just focused on enjoying food, I lost those "trouble" kilos without even thinking about it.

In truth, uncompromised control is timpossible to maintain. I quickly realised that its all about moderation. My timely realisation that uncompromising control over what I eat will lead to a breakdown of sorts when something doesn't go according to plan allows me to enjoy food and to treat it as just that. You may think you are in control when you monitor everything that goes into your mouth, but you don't realise that you're the one being held hostage.

So love food, embrace it, enjoy it. Because embracing our size and shape and embracing food, in the truest sense, is the perfect way to be. Ne'er has a truer statement been made. The happiest women are truly the ones for whom eating is a pleasure.

I am a complex being, a mass of thrumming organisms...

"I myself have never been able to figure out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

(On Beauty, Zadie Smith)

Content. Satisfaction. Predeliction.

"....Few days went by without some kind of get-together. It was unthinkable that a week would pass without discussing life, love and the universe, in depth, with a variety of people. Friendship was something honoured and prized, almost above anything else, and forming new acquaintances a gift to be encouraged and nurtured."

"I think of how I love this place, this country.......I smelt the salt in the air.....and thought: I am home."

Paula Constant, Slow Journey South

Love my home. Australia, home.

Snood (and Core Book Collections)

I bought a 'snood' today. I picked it up, saw the "how to wear" tag attached to it and headed straight to the counter. Thank you Valley Girl, for fulfilling my MK Olsen snood desires. In case you are wondering, a snood is a scarf-hood hybrid and the one I got is geniusly warm and beyond fashionable. Love. Will have to photograph.

p.s. How f*cking awesome is the word snood? I proceeded to irritate the bejesus out of my sister on our train ride home by inserting 'snood' into every sentence I spoke. For example, "This train driver is a snoodlum...what's with the jerking?" or "what should we have for dinner, salmonsnood...?". I swear she may have threatened to clobber me me with her huge and funky umbrella. Such is life :)

Apart from my fabulous snood and the fact that snood is good, I thought I would do me a favour and follow up on this post with what I believe to be the core book collection. Of course, this is only what I can remember now off the top of my head and the complete idealistic collection is a lot longer and would realistically take up one of the two walls of my floor-to-ceiling library.

Of course.

So without further ado (and more snoodalicious talk), lets get into it....

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Breath - Tim Winton**

Under a Tin-Grey Sari - Wayne Ashton

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide - Robert Louis Stevenson

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

Falling Man - Don Delillo

Down Under - Bill Bryson (and anything else Bryson if we're being honest)

I'm Not Scared - Niccolo Ammanati

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela

Sixty Lights - Gail Jones

Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

Midnights Children - Salman Rushdie (love, love, LOVE this book!)

The Story of the Cannibal Woman - Maryse Conde

Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice

The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice

Caucasia - Danzy Senna

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey

Underworld - Don Delillo (need to buy)

Winged Creatures - Roy Freirich

The Language of Threads - Gail Tsukiyama

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov

The Alchymist's Cat, The Oaken Throne, Thomas - Robin Jarvis

The Harry Potter series - J.K.Rowling

The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon - Thomas Harris

Paradise - Abdulrazak Gurnah

The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi

The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh

The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

Shade - Neil Jordan

Cosmopolis - Don Delillo

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Papillon - Henri Charriere

Waiting - Ha Jin

Desertion - Abdulrazak Gurnah

Apologies for such a long list. I thought it would be an interesting observation to come back to this list (which is just the tip of the iceberg) in a few months or a year and add to it or see whether the above still hold favour.

I'd love to hear your suggestions too...anything to add to my collection and to awaken my ignorance....

For those that have read to the end...here's gratification in the form of some pretty pictures (taken by moi)

**Please read, Tim Winton is a literary genius!

Reading Material

I love books.

It's as simple as that.

When I was little, mum would put me to bed and I'd promptly turn on the torch under the covers so I could read more. I still find myself going to bed at insane hours (notwithstanding my job) just because I have to finish this or the other book.

And whilst many extole the brilliance of writers like Don De Lillo, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Chuck Palahniuk, Ann Rice, Haruki Murakami, Khaled Hosseini and even J.K. Rowling (granted, all brilliant authors worthy of their status), I wanted to mention some books (and writers behind them) that have struck me as quietly magnificent, not showy or expected. Just because they strike a chord.

Gail Jones (Sixty Lights) - Gail teaches literature/cinema/cultural studies at the University of Western Australia (my uni), and that is how Stuart came to know of her brilliant books. I read Sixty Lights, and love how Gail pursues and develops the characters....I fell in love.

(see a review here: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/18/1092765003194.html?from=storyrhs)

Maryse Conde (The story of the cannibal woman) - Not sure if she's famous outside of Australia, but given she won the 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for this masterpiece, I should hope so.

(see: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/books/review/Schmidt.t.html?ref=review)

Danzy Senna (Caucasia: a novel) - A debut from Danzy Senn about black, white and those in between. Daughter of an Afro-Mexican poet father and Irish-American mother, this book is rich, vivid and deserves the awards it was bestowed.

(see: http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol22no1/book.html)

Gail Tsukiyama (The Language of Threads) - I was introduced to Gail Tsukiyama by a friend in uni who lent me The Samurai's Garden. I fell in love with the her writing, the simple yet heart-wrenching manner in which you were pulled into the story, and at once attracted to the simplistic style of writing employed by Japanese writers (see: Tsukiyama, Murakami, Ha Jin) that is not only effective but magical, innately insightful, painfully sharp and mostly intoxicating.
(see: http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/0312267568.asp)


Ha Jin (Waiting) - Winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2000 Pen/Faulkner Award, its author Ha Jin is a professor of English. He writes deceptively simple tomes; precise and historical, and manages to tackle love stories effortlessly and devastatingly.
(see: http://www.hackwriters.com/Hajin.htm)

Amitav Ghosh (The Hungry Tide) - A tale paralleling the wilderness of the Sunderbans and that of the human spirit (you like? :), Amitav is an Indian-Bengali author, who I stumbled upon when I bought this book at a book sale. I love his struggle/passion for national pride and identity and the gradual reveal of what makes us tick and people's histories.
(see: http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2004/08/short-review-of-amitav-ghoshs-hungry.html)


p.s. I didn't hand pick the reviews, just googled the books and took a quick look. Hope you get a chance to read these fab books/authors, or if you already have let me know what you think!