Tiring, but worth doing

Resolutions slip, but don't give up.  Change the deadline, but don't alter the course.

My favorite chapter of the book:


FIRMLY, LIKE ATTACHING AN ANCHOR TO A BALLOON

 Aomame devoted a great deal of attention to her daily diet.Vegetarian dishes were central to the meals she prepared for herself, to which she added seafood, mostly white fish. An occasional piece of chicken was about all the meat she would eat. She chose only fresh ingredients and kept seasonings to a minimum, rejecting high-fat ingredients entirely and keeping her intake of carbohydrates low.Salads she would eat with a touch of olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, never dressings. She did not just eat a lot of vegetables, she also studied their nutritional elements in detail and made sure she was eating a well-balanced selection. She fashioned her own original menus and shared them with sports club members when asked.“Forget about counting calories,” she would always advise them. “Once you develop a knack for choosing the proper ingredients and eating in moderation, you don’t have to pay attention to numbers.”
This is not to say that she clung obsessively to her ascetic menus. If she felt a strong desire for meat, she would pop into a restaurant and order a thick steak or lamb chops. She believed that an unbearable desire for a particular food meant that the body was sending signals for something it truly needed, and she would follow the call of nature.
She enjoyed wine and sake, but she established three days a week when she would not drink at all in order to avoid excessive alcohol intake, as a way to both protect her liver and control the sugar in her bloodstream. For Aomame, her body was sacred, to be kept clean always,without a fleck of dust or the slightest stain. Whatever one enshrined there was another question, to be thought about later.
Aomame had no excess flesh, only muscle. She would confirm this for herself in detail each day, standing stark naked in front of the mirror. Not that she was thrilled at the sight of her own body. Quite the opposite. Her breasts werenot big enough, and they were asymmetrical. Her pubic hair grew like a patch of grass that had been trampled by a passing army. She couldn’t stop herself from scowling at the sight of her own body, but there was nothing there for her to pinch.
She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines. On those rare occasions when sh ate out, she would choose restaurants that prepared their food with the greatest care. Almost nothing else mattered to her—not clothing, not cosmetics, not accessories. Jeans and a sweater were all she needed for commuting to work at the sports club, and once she was there she would spend the day in a jersey top and bottom—without accessories, of course. She rarely had occasion to go out in fancy clothing. Once Tamaki Otsuka was married, she no longer had any women friends to dine out with. She would wear makeup and dress well when she was out in search of a one-night stand, but that was once a month and didn’t require an extensive wardrobe.
When necessary, Aomame would make the rounds of the boutiques in Aoyama to have one “killer dress” made and to buy an accessory or two and a pair of heels to match.That was all she needed. Ordinarily she wore flats and a ponytail. As long as she washed her face well with soap and water and applied moisturizer, she always had a glow.The most important thing was to have a clean, healthy body.
Aomame had been used to living a simple, unadorned life since childhood. Self-denial and moderation were the values pounded into her as long as she could remember.Her family’s home was free of all extras, and “waste” was their most commonly used word. They had no television and did not subscribe to a newspaper. Even news was looked upon in her home as a nonessential. Meat and fish rarely found their way to the dining table. Her school lunches provided Aomame with the nutrients she needed for development. The other children would complain how tasteless the lunches were, and would leave much of theirs uneaten, but she almost wished she could have what they wasted.
She wore only hand-me-downs. The believers would hold periodic gatherings to exchange their unneeded articles of clothing, as a result of which her parents never once bought her anything new, the only exceptions being things like the gym clothes required by the school. She could not recall ever having worn clothing or shoes that fit her perfectly, and the items she did have were an assemblage of clashing colors and patterns. If the family could not afford any other lifestyle, she would have just resigned herself to the fact, but Aomame’s family was by no means poor. Her father was an engineer with a normal income and savings. They chose their exceedingly frugal lifestyle entirely as a matter of belief.
Because the life she led was so very different from those of the children around her, for a long time Aomame could not make friends with anyone. She had neither the clothing nor the money that would have enabled her to go out with a friend. She was never given an allowance, so that even if she had been invited to someone’s birthday party (which,for better or worse, never happened), she would not have been able to bring along a little gift.
Because of all this, Aomame hated her parents and deeply despised both the world to which they belonged and the ideology of that world. What she longed for was an ordinary life like everybody else’s. Not luxury: just a totally normal little life, nothing more. She wanted to hurry up and become an adult so she could leave her parents and live alone—eating what and as much as she wanted, using the money in her purse any way she liked, wearing new clothes of her own choosing, wearing shoes that fit her feet, going where she wanted to go, making lots of friends and exchanging beautifully wrapped presents with them.
Once she became an adult, however, Aomame discovered that she was most comfortable living a life of self-denial and moderation. What she wanted most of all was not to go out with someone all dressed up, but to spend time alone in her room dressed in a jersey top and bottom.
After Tamaki died, Aomame quit the sports drink company, left the dormitory she had been living in, and moved into a one-bedroom rental condo in the lively,freewheeling Jiyugaoka neighborhood, away from the center of the city. Though hardly spacious, the place looked huge to her. She kept her furnishings to a minimum—except for her extensive collection of kitchen utensils. She had few possessions. She enjoyed reading books, but as soon as she was through with them, she would sell them to a used bookstore. She enjoyed listening to music, but was not a collector of records. She hated to see her belongings pile up. She felt guilty whenever she bought something. I don’t really need this, she would tell herself. Seeing the nicer clothing and shoes in her closet would give her a pain in the chest and constrict her breathing. Such sights suggestive of freedom and opulence would, paradoxically,remind Aomame of her restrictive childhood.
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one?