November 24: Overindulgence, Sharon Olds, "Ode to My Fat"

Well, I am sore today.  I ran a 5K Turkey Trot yesterday morning, and my body is letting me know that it didn't appreciate the exertion.  Even sitting on my couch, I can feel a slight throbbing in my calves.

Thanksgiving is a time of overindulgence.  I understand and accept that.  The day after Thanksgiving, however, is when you either loosen your belt a little or wear sweat pants.  I have opted for the belt.

Of course, the next four weeks will be a parade of Christmas cookies and eggnog and breads.  That will mean more belt loosening or a lot of will power.

Saint Marty is again thinking the belt option is best.

Ode to My Fat

by:  Sharon Olds

Palpating my arthritic joint--
my saddlebag feels like a treasure ball,
dime-store treats wound in crepe-paper
streamer, so that they bulge with rubber
babies, with balls and jacks, yet I feel
it isn't dishonorable to wear
these pockets of flesh like the quilted pouches
of ladies' lingerie bags.  And there are calf-skin
Florentine boxes made with multi-humped
lids like this, and Elizabethan
sleeves made of bunches of puffs.
And somewhere there is a fish roe which is
a ball of bubbles, and a rhizome,
or a diatom, in the form of a sphere
made of half-spheres, and probably there's
a teething toy.  And how about
a mathematical formula, which
describes a dome covered with domes,
or a cabochon-cut gem then cut with
baby cabochonettes.  I know, it's
unnerving--they're collapsible and

bounce-backable, apop and aquiver as a
spider egg mass, the blobulettes
of fat, fecund as Astarte with her chest
of a hundred breasts--it's papadodeca-
hedral as the blastocoele
itself, it's like a doppelganger of what
each of us started as--exponentiating
matter.  Yet I salute you, elderly
corsage, wilted hydrangea worn
at the hips, holster of life force,
fat of wonder, fat of bright
survival, O tapioca, O foam
of Aphrodite, O cellulite!