status

[rm]

Yup, absolutely, positively 100% gluten. For the first time in over three months, I have no gall bladder type symptoms. None. Zero. And in the last two days I've had avocado sushi, a tuna steak, and some gluten-free cookies that didn't suck. And pop corn. Now I just have to not jump off the deep end immediately (because I want a fajita burito bowl at Chipotle!). My skin also looks better than it has at any point since I hit puberty and the mysterious scratchy pathes on my elbows have gone. My hair, alas, is furious, and I'm going to have to get over my shit, and just go by the first wheat-free industrial strength condition I can find, damn what it smells like, and sort out the pretentsion later.

All of this means I can get serious about auditioning and working again, because the truth is, I've been trying, but I've not really been able to. My physicality and my voice and my focus have all suffered severely in this, and I just couldn't do anything I've needed to do acting-wise with the agression necessary to get what I want or derive pleasure from the effort. That's been my dirty, open secret. And you all have been terribly gracious about not being up my ass about it.

The understatement of the year and more fronts than nearly any of you know: Discipline and I have a very odd relationship. From music to food, sex and work. I don't know why I keep thinking about, in a way I can taste, the weird and not very good buttery pasta from meals at Guitar Craft, but that's been in my mind since I woke up (actually it probably makes sense in a things I long for way -- I'd like some fucking pasta, one of those classes was in Seattle where the lovely lady is currently seeing her man, and gee, surly British men with peculiar senses of humour and really scary definitions of rigor (i.e., pitching oranges at people while they try to fucking play!)? Sure, GC is probably the best shorthand for way too much of my head right now. Ah the lot of you Crafties, I'm sorry!). Regardless, I surprise myself, and I suppose I have to.

I've also noticed that work and me get along better when it's concrete. When I'm selling a product. Whether that's "a day of work on this set nets you this much money" or Judy's Book or Associated Content. So that's interesting. Means I have to write more, but I've been tired the last few days as my body readjusts.

Question of the Day, since GC, being perhaps the first of mine of any scale, puts me in mind of it. Tell me about your pilgrimages. I used to have to say so much to explain, but now it's just, "I went to the other side of the world" which is a lot more dramatic without effort than a long story about New Standard Tuning and a field behind a mansion in Virginia.

I used to know this fabulous, tall, super curvy dominatrix that insisted her clients call her "sir" because she found the word "mistress" an irritant. I'm not sure why it never registered to me at the time as much more than amusing, because it's the answer to so many things and not just the messy fluctuations of gender / identity. I am what I say I am. The contortions are on this end, all you have to do is follow along and keep up. Why the hell have I ever thought that was too much to ask of anyone?

Comments

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

My pilgrimage was to wild poppies, sunflower fields, linden trees, Hus' churches, Havel's square, Stalin's concrete base, Galileo's university and St Jan of Nepomuk's watery grave. I would spend hours wandering the Old Town, just randomly passing narrow little streets and visiting fogotten ancient cathedrals. For a non-religious people, the Czechs seem to have more churches than anywhere I've ever been. The subways are so beautiful, and clean that you might never believe the Communists made them that way. I ate my first real strawberry, wild and perfect from a funny young guy who sat outside the subway station on my way home. I got my hair cut in a salon run by Russian mobsters as a front for prostitution, and I got drunk in gay bars and clubs with go-go girls in cages. I climbed cherry trees on the side of the road. I rode in a train to the border and looked at the ruins of the border fences while Hana showed me the exact place she crawled underneath the barbed wire to escape.

It was being there that convinced me I didn't have to kill myself, that the world did really exist and there were true things like what I had read in books. It made me believe, as much as I can believe, that there might be some meaning to all of this.

Pilgrimages

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

I really want to go to the desert. Preferably alone. I've written a lot about it. I am drawn to go to the desert. Part of it is about light. Light is very important to me, the qualities of it, and I have an idea that the light in a desolate, bright desert will have special meaningful qualities to me. I like the idea of stripping away all but the necessities. I want to go to the desert and let sand and light and heat burn away the non-core of me.

Returning to Louisiana a few years ago was a great (in the sense of greatness, not in the sense of superlative) pilgrimage for me, an important one, a reclaiming of the happy parts of my childhood. I made them part of the adult me.

[miep.livejournal.com]

then langen folke to go on pilgrimages...

I have gone to visit the church in Leeds where the first female ministers of the Methodist church are buried. I went to Gogol's house, and saw where Pushkin lived until he was shot. My visit to Venice was a pilgimage of sorts. but none of them were real as pilgimages to me. those journeys are as yet unmade.

oh, and i am going to mail you some questions about taxes and self-employment, in full knowledge that the rules are different in our two states.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm not sure how much I can help, but I can tell you what questions you need to ask someone who can.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Maia;s sister's boyfriend has celiac. I can get you some recipes for various things.

You can fake pasta with xanthan gum, corn meal and practice.

The sad part is how much hidden gluten there is out there, e.g. most soy sauce (though Tamari, and traditional Chinese are pure soy).

Good luck, and if you have any questions (esp. on cooking) feel free to drop me a line.

I'll get back to you on the pilgrimages.

TK

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've got the soy sauce handled, but any other japanese food products you know of that are wheat-free would be awesome info -- teriyaki, tempura sauce, etc. I'm going nuts on that front.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If you were in Japan I could tell you.

Tempura, for example, is made with rice flour, in Japan. It's often made with an admixture of both here.

I'll do some research.

TK

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've checked some of the Japanese markets here to no avail, but if you find ou I am sure I can track it down. And a huge portion of my diet is usually japanese food, so this one actually matters for me.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

My someday-pilgrimage will be a tour of Shinto temples in Japan; I've got thr route planned and all that. Physical pilgrimages have, for various reasons, been scrapped for me.

I used to know this fabulous, tall, super curvy dominatrix that insisted her clients call her "sir" because she found the word "mistress" an irritant

I've done the same thing for years.

Glad to hear the celiac thing seems confirmed; hope you continue to feel better.

As I understand it, most celiacs find that external products are OK because it has to be ingested to cause damage, but some people can have a skin reaction as well.

[rufus.livejournal.com]

I make a pilgrimage to the ocean at least once a year. I like to try and go more, but the one with ritual significance is the one to Coney Island. I have different days with different meanings and motivations behind them, but I derive as much inner peace from the journey as I do from the cold water rolling over my toes.

At the moment I have three soda bottles of sea water on my dining room table. I need them -- don't know why yet, but I just do.