Author: Sydney Hanson Mandt

Today is the 6th day of the Baha’i 19-day Fast. From March 2nd to March 20th, adult Baha’is who don’t have significant physical impediments or specific exceptions to do so, refrain from eating or drinking while the sun is up. For medical reasons, I drink water during the Fast, but even with that, it can be challenging for me. Today, for example, I am feeling cold, a little achy, and strongly pulled towards taking a nap. While in the midst of a free-writing exercise this morning, I found myself drifting off into dream-thoughts seemingly unrelated to what I was writing.

This used to happen to me often when I had afternoon classes in high school and college. I remember stints of falling asleep in an after-lunch history class. I would be dutifully taking notes, struggling to stay conscious. When my head would jerk up after a temporary sleep-slouch, I would look down at my notes to see that they either had nothing to do with the history being spoken of by my teacher and/or my written words had gradually become smaller and messier, trailing down off the notebook line they had started on.

Recently I have been reading about Abdu’l-Baha, the son of the founder of the Baha’i Faith, and this morning I was writing about Abdu’l-Baha’s travels in Egypt, Europe, and North America around 1912. He was nearing 70 years old at the time, and the trip was very hard on him, physically. I was just remembering a picture I have seen of Abdu’l-Baha in his aba (a kind of robe-like garment common in Persian culture), and suddenly I was in that same brick-wall-bordered courtyard, dancing in a white robe singing, “I am Mae.” Then just as suddenly, I was awake and thinking, “What was that about?”

When I have had paying jobs during the Fast, I have struggled at times to stay awake. But now that I don’t have an employer, no specific daily tasks that I can’t bypass without consequence, the struggle is even more difficult. Why not give in and let my body snuggle under some covers and submit to somnolescence?

Not everybody struggles with fasting the way I do. I’ve seen people who seem to have high energy and joyfulness even after they have not imbibed food or water for almost 12 hours. In fact, I know many people who have fasted beyond the point of sunset because eating right at sunset didn’t work for their schedule. That’s not me, though. Especially not today.

The rain is demonstrating my relatively new vocabulary item: “atmospheric river”. It’s a constant flow of wetness that makes going outside an unattractive prospect. But I don’t really want to go outside anyway since I’m feeling a bit ill. Both rain and pain are excuses that keep me inside without feeling obligated (or even inclined) to experience the outdoors.

My current body dysphoria can go under the category of what I now call a migraine. I used to think I was getting strange, recurring sinus infections, since the pain largely occupied the area between my nose, eyebrows, cheeks, and the back of my eyeballs. But eventually several online articles and my doctor suggested it was not a sinus thing, but a brain thing. I wrote a poem this morning trying to describe the migraine experience, but I don’t know if it’s as shareworthy as it was cathartic.

In some weird synchrony, while writing the migraine poem, I thought of how the Russian words for “grandmother” and “butterfly” sound the same to English-speaker’s ears. A Russian-speaker I knew once said a word to me while pointing to a butterfly, and I responded, “Grandmother?” When I said to him that бабочка (butterfly) and бабушка (grandmother) sounded like the same word, he frown-smiled, shaking his head and communicating “not really”.

I suppose when you know a language, similar-sounding words still have a clear distinction due to years of use and association. “Clark” and “clerk” are words that, when pronounced clearly and said in a context, I probably would not get confused with each other, while someone who didn’t speak English as a first language might. There are many examples I’m sure I could think of if I put effort into it. But my current preference is not to exert myself too much.

I am reminded of my 80’s & 90’s aerobics exercise experiences, and how often there would be two instructors at the front of a class. One would be doing moves at full throttle, jumping and leaping, reaching and lunging with unassuaged gusto, while the other executed similar but moderated moves. That was the person the main teacher would refer to when saying, “And remember to go low-impact if you need to!”

So it’s a low-impact day. I’ve probably used this concept in some of my archival blogs, since it’s one that often occupies my brain when I’m feeling some iteration of low energy. It’s a good way for me to remember that all movement is valid, even if it’s not as exuberant as it could be. I’m also a big fan of naps – sometimes the actual stopping of activity is what is needed. But so far today I have been content within that zone of moderation between fully functioning and asleep.

So far, I got the beginnings of two poems out of the day. Their working titles are Migraine and Grandmother/Butterfly. If/when I get them formed into something presentable, I will post them under Poems.