Peter on a Fast

Late last night I proposed to my brother Chris: “Why don’t we go on a fast tomorrow?” Of course, I came up with this idea as I was eating a buttered sweet potatoe, and my stomach was filled up. As I undressed for bed, I hoped he would forget the suggestion, and we would spend the next day as any other, stuffing ourselves with food we did not work hard to earn and think about the next thing we were going to eat.

The truth is, QM pals, Chris and I have never been able to deal with food obsession, and this has been a serious crutch on our spiritual development. We are only now beginning to become spiritual beings; half a year ago, if you were to ask us why we meditated or did yoga, we would either respond that we wanted to be less anxious around people and more “ourselves,” OR that we wanted to become enlightened. Ha ha ha. Now if you asked us the same question, I’m not sure that we’d have any response beyond “It feels good.” And this, I think, is a much better reason to pursue any practice. It is the most elemental and basic reason to do anything, besides survival. If one doesn’t enjoy breathing, then how would they expect to enjoy or succeed at “saving the world” or other such nonsense?

In the morning Chris taps me awake, and I continue to groan around in bed for awhile. I find it hard to have any incentive to leave my bed if I’m not even going to be able to eat a banana when I get up. But eventually I summoned enough energy and walked out into the living room, to tiredly observed Chris drawing foxes at the coffee table. It seems like a bad day. I can’t eat shit and Geoffrey is home from work. In other words, I can’t use the computer. So what is there to live for if I can’t eat OR use the computer. In summer this would be a different question, but this is mid-january, and the skin peels off of my hands if I step outside.

I try to meditate, but it is completely unfulfilling. I can’t seem to feel the yogi-breath deep enough in my abdomen. And grandma is blasting some pathetic news story from her television. After five rounds of counting 1(in) 1(out), 2(in) 2(out) all the way to ten, I get up and walk back upstairs.

But as the tiredness wore away and the weakness began to replace it, I began to feel lighter and less tense. Moving slowly like a buddha was no longer an annoyance; it was a neccessity. Silence became easier to practice.

If I could go without food, and feel better at the same time, why eat at all?

Geoffrey objected. “Food is fuel. Food is fuel.”

Chris and I watch Geoffrey go to the fridge (or as he aptly abbreviates it, the REfridge) and take out the cheddar. Geoffrey then cuts off a large slice of the stuff. We beg that he does not eat the whole thing. (he has a habit of overeating, but he is selective about it. A month ago his diet consisted of binging on cereal and breads. Now he only eats proteins.) But Geoffrey stops at the one slice. “That’s not a lot, it’s…”

“It’s a snack,” I say. Nothing like father-son bonding. There’s something about fasts, makes you a gentler man. I wonder if that’s how my friend Brian felt on his four day hunger-strike at college. Who knows.

I’m not looking to save anybody’s jobs with this fast, like Brian did so many months ago. I can’t say I’m looking for anything right now. I don’t think avoiding food will make me a happier person, or anything like that. All I know is that the yogis did it, so it’s worth a try.

-Peter