the second deadly: “ardenter. forente.”

also known as gluttony.

but to apply this to writing, you can’t just follow the tried and true formula of the sin. i choose to believe that gluttony, in this case, applies to all things. not just food. which is technically how this scene is described.

might i also add that this series on deadly sins is going to give me some pretty fierce drag queen names? for when i launch my imminent female-female gender bending drag queen career like a ship on her (maiden) voyage, of course.

there are topics that i always tend to stray back to on this blog. sex, grammar, music, religion. i’m not entirely sure what that says about me, but maybe that doesn’t matter. maybe it just means that i’m interesting in some fabulous and controversial things.

gluttony has never been a sin that i’ve paid much mind to. whereas women of my generation often diet, i’ve never restricted myself to that. my relationship with and to food is healthy. i exercise to stay healthy. i never limit what i eat. and i was never taught to do that. as a child, i was brought up on healthy meals, but junk food had a good (and not excessive) solid place in our family. as an adult living on my own, i truly love love love cooking and i try to eat as many vegetables as i can. (also, now junk food is way too expensive for me to indulge in.)

bear with me. i swear this is going somewhere.

but to be honest, i would never be able to limit myself from eating what i want. (a ha. not so healthy now.) i read an article somewhere at some time (so helpful, i know) that said that food cravings rival that of… well, of very strong addictive drugs, i think. or something along those lines. and to be honest, i always cave to those cravings. i can’t not cave. i’m a personality that knows what it wants, and goes for it. i don’t necessarily cave to other people, but i cave to myself.

i wonder if somehow this – what could maybe be considered “gluttony” – in my personal life can apply to how i write. or why i write. because i was and am never someone who limits themselves. i think in order to be a writer you have to be both gluttonous and indulgent, and indulgence goes hand in hand with gluttony. you have to be extremely self indulgent. how else would you be able to sit all day in a plaid shirt and no pants and never leave the apartment and not do much actual writing but call it a day of work? self indulgence. or insanity. whatever.

i also think (i know) that writers are gluttons. we are gluttons for goddamned punishment. we tie ourselves to things that will never love us back – literary magazines that will never accept our submissions, people who we love but who will never love our writing, people who we love but who cannot handle our crazy, subjects that we want to write about (objects, things, people, minerals) but that we cannot manage to write about.

we are gluttons in the way we write – sitting down at a computer (or a notebook for the very ambitious) for an entire day, doing nothing else. staying inside all day indulging in (or partaking of) only one thing. we anticipate the writing. we want the writing. we have a love-hate relationship with this idea of writing. and we indulge in it.

but that could just be me – being a glutton for punishment. or a glutton in general. a glutton for beautiful words. and while we’re speaking about it, the word glutton is kind of beautiful – that slick beginning and then that hard ending. anyway, i am a glutton for many things. gluttony, addictive personalities, self-indulgence – it’s all connected to being a writer (an artist in general, i suppose).

wow this blog post has really made me think about the sin that i never gave much thought to. gluttony is kind of cool.