WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.160 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:01.160 --> 00:00:03.590 align:middle line:90% So this is my book. 00:00:03.590 --> 00:00:05.660 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read to you from my book. 00:00:05.660 --> 00:00:08.418 align:middle line:84% The essays are too long to keep you here listening to, 00:00:08.418 --> 00:00:09.960 align:middle line:84% so I'm going to read you part of one. 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:12.203 align:middle line:84% And then for $17.95, you can find out 00:00:12.203 --> 00:00:13.203 align:middle line:90% what happens afterwards. 00:00:13.203 --> 00:00:15.710 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:15.710 --> 00:00:18.530 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read from an essay that is about-- 00:00:18.530 --> 00:00:23.150 align:middle line:84% the whole book is about my body, other bodies, 00:00:23.150 --> 00:00:25.083 align:middle line:90% bad things we do to bodies. 00:00:25.083 --> 00:00:26.750 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to read from an essay that 00:00:26.750 --> 00:00:29.540 align:middle line:84% is about my body and the gym and a time when 00:00:29.540 --> 00:00:31.880 align:middle line:90% I tried too hard to be strong. 00:00:31.880 --> 00:00:34.970 align:middle line:90% The essay is called Sick Gainz. 00:00:34.970 --> 00:00:38.240 align:middle line:84% "In 2016, I was living in Honolulu, 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:41.310 align:middle line:84% and I ran so many miles that my heel bone cracked. 00:00:41.310 --> 00:00:43.730 align:middle line:84% I had just started to run when I felt it-- 00:00:43.730 --> 00:00:46.850 align:middle line:84% a loud hot twinge in my right foot, as if 00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:49.280 align:middle line:84% a piece of cherry red steel was slicing through me 00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:51.290 align:middle line:90% from ankle to sole. 00:00:51.290 --> 00:00:54.380 align:middle line:84% When I was honest with myself, and it took several days 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:56.990 align:middle line:84% before I was able to be so, I admitted 00:00:56.990 --> 00:01:00.260 align:middle line:84% that I had felt this pain for weeks, perhaps months, just 00:01:00.260 --> 00:01:03.430 align:middle line:90% quieter, soft enough to ignore. 00:01:03.430 --> 00:01:06.640 align:middle line:84% The mornings always smelled like plumeria and sweet rolls 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:09.700 align:middle line:84% in Palolo, the valley where I like to run. 00:01:09.700 --> 00:01:12.610 align:middle line:84% On the particular morning when I finally cracked my heel, 00:01:12.610 --> 00:01:14.440 align:middle line:84% I'd had a perfect amount of coffee 00:01:14.440 --> 00:01:17.110 align:middle line:84% and had gotten enough sleep to power me through the 10 miles 00:01:17.110 --> 00:01:18.580 align:middle line:90% on my running docket. 00:01:18.580 --> 00:01:22.300 align:middle line:84% First, to the back of the valley behind the Zen Center. 00:01:22.300 --> 00:01:25.180 align:middle line:84% Back in the lush crevice between the ridges of the Ko'olau 00:01:25.180 --> 00:01:27.400 align:middle line:84% mountain range, crispy mountain apples 00:01:27.400 --> 00:01:30.820 align:middle line:84% like sweet cucumbers that leave your mouth feeling wet and dry 00:01:30.820 --> 00:01:32.030 align:middle line:90% at the same time. 00:01:32.030 --> 00:01:33.520 align:middle line:84% They grow by the side of the road, 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:34.978 align:middle line:84% and there's a small store where you 00:01:34.978 --> 00:01:37.770 align:middle line:90% can get sodas and poke bowls. 00:01:37.770 --> 00:01:39.690 align:middle line:84% When the pain announced itself, I 00:01:39.690 --> 00:01:41.910 align:middle line:84% immediately turned up the music in my headphones 00:01:41.910 --> 00:01:43.680 align:middle line:84% and took a series of deep breaths, 00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:46.770 align:middle line:84% trying to send the sensation somewhere else. 00:01:46.770 --> 00:01:48.760 align:middle line:84% This is the thing I know how to do-- 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:49.870 align:middle line:90% depart my body. 00:01:49.870 --> 00:01:50.890 align:middle line:90% Be elsewhere. 00:01:50.890 --> 00:01:52.890 align:middle line:90% It almost always works. 00:01:52.890 --> 00:01:55.970 align:middle line:84% I can slide a needle into my flesh without flinching. 00:01:55.970 --> 00:01:59.130 align:middle line:84% I can look you in the eye while you punch me in the face. 00:01:59.130 --> 00:02:02.340 align:middle line:84% And yet, on this particular day, in the hot, sweet, wet air, 00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:06.910 align:middle line:84% the pain in my foot overtook me and I had to stop moving. 00:02:06.910 --> 00:02:09.669 align:middle line:84% On the big screen in my sports medicine doctor's office, 00:02:09.669 --> 00:02:11.710 align:middle line:90% the imaging looked accusatory. 00:02:11.710 --> 00:02:14.140 align:middle line:84% The cup of my heel bone, the calcaneus 00:02:14.140 --> 00:02:15.890 align:middle line:90% was split nearly in half. 00:02:15.890 --> 00:02:18.400 align:middle line:84% 'It had been broken for a while,' he explained to me, 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:21.340 align:middle line:84% tapping on the screen with the butt end of his pen to indicate 00:02:21.340 --> 00:02:24.280 align:middle line:84% the broadening crack between two pieces of my bone. 00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:27.870 align:middle line:84% I had run more than 100 miles on a broken heel. 00:02:27.870 --> 00:02:29.990 align:middle line:84% There were good reasons for all this running. 00:02:29.990 --> 00:02:31.350 align:middle line:90% Some were athletic. 00:02:31.350 --> 00:02:33.510 align:middle line:84% At five years into my obsessive relationship 00:02:33.510 --> 00:02:35.190 align:middle line:84% with long-distance running, I had 00:02:35.190 --> 00:02:36.600 align:middle line:84% found an intensity in my training 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:38.910 align:middle line:90% that had previously eluded me. 00:02:38.910 --> 00:02:40.560 align:middle line:84% Others were questions of identity 00:02:40.560 --> 00:02:42.930 align:middle line:84% that were soothed by hours of fast-pounding pavement 00:02:42.930 --> 00:02:45.000 align:middle line:90% in 85% humidity. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:46.680 align:middle line:84% I was getting really into my thirties 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:48.960 align:middle line:84% and it was starting to show in the slope of my ass 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:50.880 align:middle line:90% and the cracks next to my eyes. 00:02:50.880 --> 00:02:54.150 align:middle line:84% I had tabled my ego inflating career and the bags of money 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:56.520 align:middle line:84% that came with it for a dubiously charted stab 00:02:56.520 --> 00:02:57.820 align:middle line:90% at a creative life. 00:02:57.820 --> 00:03:01.180 align:middle line:84% Everything was uncertain, except the mile. 00:03:01.180 --> 00:03:04.720 align:middle line:84% In the mile, I could pour myself into pain and exhaustion 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:06.520 align:middle line:84% and let go of all the big questions 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.670 align:middle line:84% for a relentless series of the same small question-- quit 00:03:09.670 --> 00:03:10.960 align:middle line:90% or keep going. 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:12.380 align:middle line:90% And so I kept going. 00:03:12.380 --> 00:03:16.000 align:middle line:84% 20 miles a week, then 30, 40 through a pain that perhaps I 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:17.620 align:middle line:90% had known wasn't normal. 00:03:17.620 --> 00:03:19.360 align:middle line:84% It doesn't matter whether I knew or not, 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:22.120 align:middle line:84% because after two months of hot twinge in my right foot, 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:25.060 align:middle line:84% that day finally came when I lacked the capacity to ignore it 00:03:25.060 --> 00:03:26.860 align:middle line:90% for one more second. 00:03:26.860 --> 00:03:28.750 align:middle line:84% 'You got to take a rest,' my young, 00:03:28.750 --> 00:03:31.790 align:middle line:84% sexy surfer doctor told me, looking me hard in the eye. 00:03:31.790 --> 00:03:34.880 align:middle line:84% 'No marathon this year,' and there wasn't. 00:03:34.880 --> 00:03:36.260 align:middle line:90% Some facts. 00:03:36.260 --> 00:03:38.120 align:middle line:84% When I was young, the only important thing 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:40.730 align:middle line:84% was to be thin, skinny, skinny, skinny. 00:03:40.730 --> 00:03:42.840 align:middle line:84% That's what made you beautiful in the '90s. 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:43.920 align:middle line:90% Thin everything. 00:03:43.920 --> 00:03:45.950 align:middle line:84% Eyebrows like barely traced pencil lines, 00:03:45.950 --> 00:03:48.890 align:middle line:84% thighs like long stretched out pieces of boneless chicken, 00:03:48.890 --> 00:03:50.930 align:middle line:84% arms like little bundles of clothesline, 00:03:50.930 --> 00:03:54.200 align:middle line:84% tiny asses disappearing under our tiny skirts, our ribs 00:03:54.200 --> 00:03:58.190 align:middle line:84% loud, proud stripes under our gauzy going out tops. 00:03:58.190 --> 00:04:00.440 align:middle line:84% None of these traits was natural to my physique, 00:04:00.440 --> 00:04:02.510 align:middle line:84% so I starved myself into many hospitals, 00:04:02.510 --> 00:04:04.970 align:middle line:84% into feeding tubes and cans of Ensure, 00:04:04.970 --> 00:04:08.030 align:middle line:84% into a 15 years' collection of eating disorders that finally 00:04:08.030 --> 00:04:10.590 align:middle line:90% abated in my late 20s. 00:04:10.590 --> 00:04:13.410 align:middle line:84% I have been mostly well on that front since then. 00:04:13.410 --> 00:04:15.480 align:middle line:84% Even as my relationship with exercise 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:18.232 align:middle line:84% twisted into something I was no longer at the helm of, 00:04:18.232 --> 00:04:20.190 align:middle line:84% I had been eating good food with great pleasure 00:04:20.190 --> 00:04:22.890 align:middle line:84% without considering vomiting it up for many years. 00:04:22.890 --> 00:04:24.810 align:middle line:84% I mostly liked how my body looked 00:04:24.810 --> 00:04:26.850 align:middle line:84% and I felt fully comfortable without clothes 00:04:26.850 --> 00:04:30.876 align:middle line:84% on, though I always wished for a more feminine shape 00:04:30.876 --> 00:04:33.920 align:middle line:90% to offset my athletic solidity. 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:36.350 align:middle line:84% I considered myself to be in long-term recovery 00:04:36.350 --> 00:04:38.750 align:middle line:84% from my eating disorders, as close to normal 00:04:38.750 --> 00:04:41.450 align:middle line:84% as someone who had been as sick as I was can get. 00:04:41.450 --> 00:04:43.490 align:middle line:84% It looked for a long time like I was 00:04:43.490 --> 00:04:44.960 align:middle line:84% going to be a lifer, of which there 00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:48.020 align:middle line:84% are so many sad 40 somethings carefully counting out 00:04:48.020 --> 00:04:49.260 align:middle line:90% pieces of celery. 00:04:49.260 --> 00:04:51.800 align:middle line:84% It sucks and it's real, and I remain unspeakably 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:54.560 align:middle line:84% grateful to have been spared that long, drawn out 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:56.630 align:middle line:90% spiral of suffering. 00:04:56.630 --> 00:04:58.520 align:middle line:90% But wait, my body said. 00:04:58.520 --> 00:05:00.680 align:middle line:84% My mind had caught up to a new reality, 00:05:00.680 --> 00:05:03.620 align:middle line:84% one in which I was healthy, an athlete, an eater of protein 00:05:03.620 --> 00:05:05.760 align:middle line:84% and sweet potatoes, a drinker of water. 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:07.560 align:middle line:90% But inside me there was damage. 00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:10.010 align:middle line:84% And not just the stuff I could see or feel. 00:05:10.010 --> 00:05:11.600 align:middle line:90% There were things amiss-- 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:15.710 align:middle line:84% hormone things, adrenal things, fertility things. 00:05:15.710 --> 00:05:18.530 align:middle line:84% Even though I no longer wish to be skinny, 00:05:18.530 --> 00:05:20.090 align:middle line:84% I was no less obsessed with my body 00:05:20.090 --> 00:05:21.750 align:middle line:84% than I had been a decade earlier. 00:05:21.750 --> 00:05:25.280 align:middle line:84% It had just shifted to function over form. 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:27.410 align:middle line:84% I first learned about physicality and endurance 00:05:27.410 --> 00:05:28.640 align:middle line:90% from my father. 00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:31.550 align:middle line:84% After the first time I was institutionalized as a teenager, 00:05:31.550 --> 00:05:33.320 align:middle line:90% he began running marathons. 00:05:33.320 --> 00:05:35.420 align:middle line:84% I hadn't yet run a mile in my life, 00:05:35.420 --> 00:05:37.250 align:middle line:84% so I didn't understand the significance 00:05:37.250 --> 00:05:39.530 align:middle line:84% of his daily departures in moisture 00:05:39.530 --> 00:05:42.650 align:middle line:84% wicking fabrics and his returns, smelling of salt, 00:05:42.650 --> 00:05:45.680 align:middle line:84% and radiating either deep self-satisfaction or bitter 00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:47.450 align:middle line:90% disappointment. 00:05:47.450 --> 00:05:50.630 align:middle line:84% I didn't yet understand that how fast you can travel over 00:05:50.630 --> 00:05:53.300 align:middle line:84% 10 miles of this Earth can determine whether you believe 00:05:53.300 --> 00:05:55.840 align:middle line:90% in yourself that day or not. 00:05:55.840 --> 00:05:59.500 align:middle line:84% I didn't yet understand that fear and pain and uncertainty 00:05:59.500 --> 00:06:01.490 align:middle line:84% can be compressed and moved aside 00:06:01.490 --> 00:06:05.536 align:middle line:84% by the cumulative brutality of endurance sport. 00:06:05.536 --> 00:06:09.330 align:middle line:84% A year after my heel fractured, I visited a fertility clinic. 00:06:09.330 --> 00:06:11.960 align:middle line:84% I had resumed running with the frantic pent-up energy 00:06:11.960 --> 00:06:14.420 align:middle line:84% of a mouse sprung from a trap and my body 00:06:14.420 --> 00:06:17.090 align:middle line:84% felt like a hot engine running without oil. 00:06:17.090 --> 00:06:19.310 align:middle line:84% After mentioning that he had taught at Harvard, 00:06:19.310 --> 00:06:21.560 align:middle line:84% the doctor looked at my medical history, 00:06:21.560 --> 00:06:23.720 align:middle line:84% drew me two graphs and several diagrams, 00:06:23.720 --> 00:06:26.300 align:middle line:84% and showed me a PowerPoint presentation on his early model 00:06:26.300 --> 00:06:27.920 align:middle line:90% desktop computer. 00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:29.747 align:middle line:84% 'When you were in puberty,' he told me, 00:06:29.747 --> 00:06:31.580 align:middle line:84% pointing at something on the computer that I 00:06:31.580 --> 00:06:33.990 align:middle line:84% didn't understand, a gland, maybe. 00:06:33.990 --> 00:06:37.820 align:middle line:84% 'Your body was starving, and so it didn't--' There is a long 00:06:37.820 --> 00:06:40.700 align:middle line:84% blank space there where I can remember his mouth moving and I 00:06:40.700 --> 00:06:43.550 align:middle line:84% can remember a dull crumpling feeling behind my sternum, 00:06:43.550 --> 00:06:46.150 align:middle line:84% but I cannot remember what he said. 00:06:46.150 --> 00:06:48.170 align:middle line:84% And that's why you haven't gotten pregnant. 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:49.690 align:middle line:84% You aren't likely to be able to get 00:06:49.690 --> 00:06:51.760 align:middle line:84% pregnant without intervention and definitely 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:54.690 align:middle line:84% not at your current activity levels. 00:06:54.690 --> 00:06:57.630 align:middle line:84% I felt as though I should cry, but I also felt so separated 00:06:57.630 --> 00:07:00.510 align:middle line:84% from my body that it would have taken effort to climb back in it 00:07:00.510 --> 00:07:01.900 align:middle line:90% and eke tears out. 00:07:01.900 --> 00:07:02.658 align:middle line:90% So I didn't cry. 00:07:02.658 --> 00:07:04.200 align:middle line:84% And I didn't take notes either, which 00:07:04.200 --> 00:07:06.660 align:middle line:84% is why I can't recall the information. 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:08.622 align:middle line:84% I just sat there mute as he clicked 00:07:08.622 --> 00:07:10.080 align:middle line:84% through the rest of the PowerPoint, 00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:12.390 align:middle line:84% and then I traipsed behind him to the exam room 00:07:12.390 --> 00:07:15.480 align:middle line:84% where he smeared cold, sticky lubricant on an ultrasound probe 00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:16.870 align:middle line:90% and jabbed it inside me. 00:07:16.870 --> 00:07:18.720 align:middle line:84% My compliant legs flopping open when 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:22.507 align:middle line:84% he said so, closing back up when he pulled the device out of me. 00:07:22.507 --> 00:07:24.840 align:middle line:84% I paid my bill and I walked around the parking structure 00:07:24.840 --> 00:07:27.330 align:middle line:84% for a long time, not really looking for my truck, 00:07:27.330 --> 00:07:30.060 align:middle line:84% just walking, wanting to remain in the interstice 00:07:30.060 --> 00:07:33.030 align:middle line:84% of what I knew then and what I hadn't known before. 00:07:33.030 --> 00:07:35.220 align:middle line:84% The next thing I remember is lacing my shoes up 00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:38.060 align:middle line:90% to go for a run. 00:07:38.060 --> 00:07:40.280 align:middle line:84% The honeymoon phase of any addictive behavior 00:07:40.280 --> 00:07:42.710 align:middle line:84% is such a swirl of pleasurable brain chemicals 00:07:42.710 --> 00:07:45.500 align:middle line:84% and renewed vigor for life that it is, for me, often 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:47.320 align:middle line:90% impossible to turn away from. 00:07:47.320 --> 00:07:49.340 align:middle line:84% I've had it with so many things that I know it 00:07:49.340 --> 00:07:52.880 align:middle line:84% by heart, that new relationship energy of a fresh compulsion-- 00:07:52.880 --> 00:07:57.710 align:middle line:84% bourbon, heroin, razor blades, credit cards, dangerous sex, 00:07:57.710 --> 00:08:02.150 align:middle line:84% face-punching, cash, whiskey, bondage, check fraud, vodka, 00:08:02.150 --> 00:08:06.290 align:middle line:84% shoplifting, ketamine, methadone, red wine, cigarettes, 00:08:06.290 --> 00:08:08.100 align:middle line:90% work, nicotine gum. 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:10.880 align:middle line:90% croissants, wintergreen Skoal. 00:08:10.880 --> 00:08:13.640 align:middle line:84% There are so many things that have, for a short while, 00:08:13.640 --> 00:08:17.030 align:middle line:84% salved my discomforts and offered me peace and pleasure. 00:08:17.030 --> 00:08:19.970 align:middle line:84% I loved those things once, each and all of them, 00:08:19.970 --> 00:08:23.720 align:middle line:84% until they turned on me like they all did, like they all do. 00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:26.390 align:middle line:84% This, of course, is the nature of compulsion. 00:08:26.390 --> 00:08:28.100 align:middle line:84% The substance of the habit becomes 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:31.370 align:middle line:84% almost immaterial after so many years of trying to stuff things 00:08:31.370 --> 00:08:35.179 align:middle line:84% into the gaping void of spiritual discomfort. 00:08:35.179 --> 00:08:38.429 align:middle line:84% But can a spiritual hole be filled with physical acts? 00:08:38.429 --> 00:08:40.400 align:middle line:84% And can a body be reasonably expected 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:44.030 align:middle line:84% to endure the battering it might take to reach serenity? 00:08:44.030 --> 00:08:46.370 align:middle line:84% The muddled hope that the pains of the body 00:08:46.370 --> 00:08:49.490 align:middle line:84% will beget the solace of the mind has been around for as long 00:08:49.490 --> 00:08:52.040 align:middle line:84% as people have been keeping track of such things. 00:08:52.040 --> 00:08:54.560 align:middle line:84% Yoga, arguably the first recorded form 00:08:54.560 --> 00:08:57.380 align:middle line:84% of physical exercise, was developed as a practice 00:08:57.380 --> 00:09:00.680 align:middle line:84% to gird body and mind for extended periods of meditation. 00:09:00.680 --> 00:09:03.950 align:middle line:84% These movements will bring you closer to enlightenment. 00:09:03.950 --> 00:09:06.650 align:middle line:84% Victorians used early treadmills as curatives 00:09:06.650 --> 00:09:08.730 align:middle line:84% for the wicked instincts of prisoners-- 00:09:08.730 --> 00:09:11.720 align:middle line:84% these movements will bring you farther away from the devil. 00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:13.820 align:middle line:84% There is nothing modern except the details 00:09:13.820 --> 00:09:17.960 align:middle line:84% of how I have worn down, burned through, and used up my body. 00:09:17.960 --> 00:09:19.640 align:middle line:84% At the end of my CrossFit classes, 00:09:19.640 --> 00:09:21.890 align:middle line:84% we all collapsed on the ground, heaving, 00:09:21.890 --> 00:09:24.350 align:middle line:84% flat on our backs or in the fetal position, 00:09:24.350 --> 00:09:27.020 align:middle line:84% leaving behind sweat angels in the shape of our splayed out 00:09:27.020 --> 00:09:29.630 align:middle line:90% bodies when we finally get up." 00:09:29.630 --> 00:09:30.950 align:middle line:90% That's all for now. 00:09:30.950 --> 00:09:34.000 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:38.000 align:middle line:90%