(via Tony.)

Every once in awhile someone on metafilter asks, how can an atheist or agnostic feel joy in the world? How can I be hopeful yet believe in no afterlife?

My belief in science says this: that Earth would exist, that life would evolve on it, was excruciatingly statistically unlikely. That humans would evolve to be thinking, rational, feeling, perceiving creatures unlikelier still. There could have been many permutations of life without man, or, if man existed regardless, without you–your great-grandparents might have never met, when grandma and grandpa slept together that night, a different sperm might have won and your dad might have been someone else completely. You might have never been here.

But you are here, to experience joy and pain. And I’m here, and I get to see the sky in Gainesville pinkened as the sun sinks down; I get to hold Jordan’s hand; I get to be here, telling you this.

And the unlikeliness of this (and what’s a miracle if it’s not “good things happen, though they were exceedingly unlikely to happen”) is joyful, incredibly joyful, more joyful than what any god, whatever he or she or it or them might be, could offer.

I’ve been feeling torn about blogging (food or otherwise) lately. I think it can be a great way to keep track of one’s life, which is why I’ve been doing it, in one form or another, since the age of sixteen. I know when I Re-launched this blog I said I was going to keep this to food only posts. This was because I thought the “pictures of Phoebe, eating” concept was pretty funny and different. I still think that. But it’s resulted in a sort of feeling of fragmentation

I’ve been on livejournal since college, on two different accounts. I have some important friendships there, but the journal itself no longer feels like a representation of myself. Back when I was on diaryland, I poured my poetic energies into entries. The shift, first to livejournal, then to my sixcylinders account, represented a refocusing on those energies: poesy went into poems, general updates into blogs.

But the nature of livejournal, and one of its early draws–the friends’ locked entry–has become part of the problem; I primarily use livejournal to kvetch. This doesn’t feel productive in any way anymore, and I have plenty of real life friends with whom I can blow off steam. I’d rather not hide behind false fronts on the internet, would rather just say only the things I’m really, fully, comfortable in saying. I hadn’t realized how conflicted I felt about livejournal until I heard about the lay-offs last week. Though I’ve made a lot of good online friends there, and would be sad to lose them, my primary feeling was one of relief. Perhaps this is a sign that I’m out-growing the service. For awhile, the primary draw was communities, but lately that’s been totally superseded by metafilter, which represents, to me, the pinnacle of online communities. Livejournal just isn’t up to snuff.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I don’t feel fully ready to give up sixcylinders and the friends I’ve made there, but I don’t feel terrifically compelled to write there, either. Really, if I felt convinced that people would follow me here on an RSS feed, I would probably shift myself completely. Tonight, I read through my MFA friend Ian’s blog and I really liked how he was using it–as a sort of writer’s notebook, in addition as a place to hold general thoughts. Ideally, I think, that’s what phoebeeating would be, but with food pictures as well. Perhaps it’s just a matter of switching over and closing my eyes and hoping that the people I care about will follow.

Well, I’ve gone ahead and done it: I’ve deleted all of my old posts in this blog. Not because I was ashamed–not due to self-censorship or anything like that. But because I realized that I was doing the concept of this website a disservice.

When I would tell people about my website, they would laugh, then ask what was on it, and when I’d tell them that it was pretty much a regular blog, their faces would fall, disappointed, and rightfully so. There are tons of “regular” bloggy blog blogs out there–there are even tons of food sites. But there are certainly not enough photographs of me eating on the internet.

The concept was Jordan’s, originally. “You like food so much!” he’d say, “It makes me happy to watch you eat. I’m going to start a subscription website, phoebeeating.com, and charge people to watch you.”

The URL was so good that I couldn’t not start the website (even if I would never dream of charging people for the service), but for some reason I felt self-conscious about the execution. Would such a website be too narrow in scope? Would I seem interesting enough if I was just eating food?

Of course, that was silliness. I say this as a feminist, as someone into body acceptance: it means something to be a woman eating in our society. It means something to be an omnivore. It means acknowledging that you have a body, that you take up space, that the body, as a vehicle for self, needs fuel, no matter how much advertisers tell us to abstain. Unlike many women, I lack the self-control necessary to diet. Unlike many women, I lack the desire to have the self-control necessary to diet. I don’t like it when women talk about morality (i.e. being good) in connection to what they’re eating. But I realize why this happens, and can’t say that I’ve never been stabbed by pangs of self consciousness regarding what’s on my plate

Posting about what I eat means more than posting about food, of course, but also the experiences surrounding food. Who am I with when I’m eating? I suspect that I look happy when I eat around Jordan because I’m happy when I’m around Jordan. We enjoy caring for each other, physically–cooking for one another, taking turns buying meals. I’m sure this is evident when I eat with him: that I’m happy, that I’m nurturing and being nurtured. So this will be a record of relationships, and not just romantic relationships–what do my friends do when we get together if it’s not eating and drinking? Diner food. Popcorn. I suspect that if our bodies needed no tending, we would be far less social creatures.

And then there’s monetary issues, and historic issues–what I pay for meals, the attitudes towards food that I’ve inherited or learned. So I think there will be plenty to talk about.

So, anyway, enough ruminating; let’s get down to business–let’s eat!