FIELD NOTES 002- hyper aversion edition
what goes up must come down…the fixation to adversion cycle
I promised a love letter and since I finally delivered on that, this week’s can be light. It’s the second installment of Field Notes, essentially it’s recommendations with a (loose) theme. The first edition centered around hyper fixation and this week’s is tied together by the other side of that coin….
It’s the salad you ate for lunch for a year but the smell now nauseates you; it’s the song you loved until the Stranger Things music supervisor did too; it’s the former roommate who now feels like a mosquito showing up to your group despite citronella, and well … you get it… it’s repulsion.
It’s tough out here for those of us with a propensity to overdo it… tell me what you’ve been into or repulsed by lately… or if you’ve mastered moderation, please, tell me how….
FIELD NOTES 002 ______ DATE: 8/22/23
QUIT:
Last time, I’d ditched a morning walk route to hike up to a pond with turtles. This was a welcome change, until it wasn’t.
The time between realizing a routine is a repulsion and replacing it is uncomfortable, so I often hold on too long. But the quicker I let go the sooner I can catch the next trapeze. I thought I believed in morning routine monogamy; now I see the value in not lingering anywhere too long.
ATE:
I used to be like a half-pack to a pack a day, but big update: I’m off the cakes. The satisfying crunch of a fresh pack of rice cakes had me under a spell for months, which I gushed about here …
But I began walking past them, even in the stores that stock the best brand (Mother’s salted). Then the true test came: Groce Out, which doesn’t usually stock them at all, had a display of them for 99 cents, and I still kept walking. That’s when I knew I’d [over] done it.
It’s sad when a hyper fixation becomes a repulsion. Most of August has been nightly versions of how I always eat solo: cold food, often standing up, often the quickest item I can find. I’m not proud of this, but I’m also not ashamed of it and genuinely curious how all of you eat when no one is looking.
Our private eating habits have many names: I like calling mine “Oliver Twist eating” ever since Captain made a joke when I told him how long it had been since I’d had warm food: “So you eat like Oliver Twist when left to your own devices!”
Meanwhile, the internet has been calling this propensity for snacks as meals, “Girl Dinner.“
When Michi used the phrase casually, I didn’t know the term, but I do the action so often it is nearly my next repulsion.
Obviously, this way of eating is not gendered like that name suggests. When Jason talked about his inadvertent “husband meals,” I thought, yet another name for it. Until our food correspondent Kate corrected me, “There’s overlap but they’re not identical,” she said over a shared girl dinner/husband meal/Oliver Twist plate.
The trend isn’t as interesting to me as the question: how does one eat with no one looking? And no one to share with? When yours is the only palate for consideration—what do you consider?
There’s something melancholic about eating alone to me, even though I often prefer it. Living with roommates during the height of the pandemic, it felt intimate and voyeuristic to see how people ate alone. I noticed myself plating a more traditionally appetizing meal when I had perceived supervision.
Karolina, a chef, once said, “Feeding someone is one of the most intimate things you can do.”
So perhaps my intimacy issues extend to my eating? I’m not alone in my complex relationship to it; honestly it’s wild that to simply remain alive, we must handle feeding ourselves daily, multiple times, and taking too many days off from it…eventually kills us. High stakes.
Well this was all food repulsion, no recs, so again, I will direct you to Kate’s Bite Sized, our source for those…
DID:
Kate’s close friend, Chef Chloe, co-hosted a dinner with my close friend, Heidi. As guests began leaving, I turned to Kate and said, “It’s going to look like I’m going in for thirds if I make a plate now.” Kate responded, “Who cares, go eat!”
Then, like a guide in a forest, she led me through the bountiful spread, warning me of the peppers’ heat and suggesting (correctly) I’d want a larger portion of the green dip.
Between the food by Chloe, my plate by Kate, and the clothes by Heidi, the evening checked a lot of boxes, but my favorite part was when we migrated inside.
The party ended, cleanup crew began—and laugher erupted around the kitchen island when Chloe realized she forgot to put out the 6 baguettes she bought. So we dunked hunks of them into the spreads we’d just transferred from elegant dishes to Tupperware. While debriefing from the night, we snacked on leftovers, which is: basically large format Girl Dinner? Eating like we would alone, but with others?
I tried to make my exit but feared committing what we call in the midwest, an “eat & run.” But I was double-booked; Christine was DJ-ing at the bar and Zoë was there waiting for me.
There are two types of people in this world: those who mysteriously exit easily and those who—regardless of where they have to be next—cannot leave until they’re certain the host won’t wake up to a mess.
Zoë is the latter: when I would host parties, regardless of how late it got or how convincingly I insisted, “no worries I’ll do it later!” she stayed. She didn’t have to, but the more she made sure I was never left with a mess, the more I wanted to host again.
When I arrived with ziplocks of salad and a baguette, and my excuse for why I was so tardy… she understood.
LISTENED TO:
I feel the same about this album as I do about the hike and rice cakes: things I loved and still feel a fondness for, yet am no longer reaching for like I once was.
In this case, I’m actively pushing it away in repulsion. A song from this album came on in a store last week and I left.
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