harvest & snow & kate bush & ponies

So here's the deal: I met with a naturopath who encouraged me to switch the phrasing in my head every time I think about my health. Apparently our bodies don't hear a negative, so a phrase like "I don't want to get sick again" becomes, to the body, "I want to get sick again." Weirdly enough, I have found I talk to myself all the time in phrases using negatives. It's been trippy to catch myself in the act and rephrase. I know this puts me on the path towards dreamy new-age get-your-attitude-right kinds of stuff, but I'll be damned if it hasn't made a little bit of a difference.


I do sort of believe most of our demons are in our minds, so to take the battle there is profound, however you choose to fight. It's only hard if you believe it's hard.


I've finally started messing around with songs again. Yay! Right now I'm on the hunt for a song called "Harvest & Snow". I hope it'll be finished in time for my November shows; it seems like the kind of song that's open to being finished soon. Not like a few others that simply elude me (you know who you are).


I've made a kind of pact with myself to write songs just for myself....again. I find that I have to forget the audience a little bit in order to be honest. After all, I'm not some enormous artistic presence or influence who has thousands of people holding their breath for what I'll say next; the soul I'm saving is mine, really. So I might as well get on with it.


I've been inspired by going back to albums I listened to when I was 17. Kate Bush's "The Sensual World" is high on my list. Holy cats, it puts me there. And so is Joni Mitchell's "Wild Things Run Fast". Yeah, I guess I was a strange 17-year-old. "It takes cheerful resignation, a heart of humility, that's what it takes, a cheerful person told me. Nobody's harder on you than you. Nobody's harder on me than me." Shouldn't I have been listening to "We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl."????


Anyhow, 17 has been on my mind and running through my veins too. I blame reading the Twilight Saga books and watching the movies. This story is like a direct conduit back to the energetic and emotional realities of being 17, even through the average writing. Enough time has passed that feeling all that isn't entirely unpleasant. I wouldn't have been able to say that 10 years ago. It's sort of a sweetly charged melancholy, newly colored by gratitude. And the leaves scrape over the sidewalks in flurries of wind, and the colors go bright to fading fast, the crows flies towards the sunset again, every evening. It's all so perfect.


Time expands. I'm restless and bored with adult living and all the familiar motions. I start my metals detox next Friday. A year of that and then let this pony out to pasture. I'm tired keeping it safe and domestic.

Dumbness of it all

When I was in high school I happened across a show on PBS that had a character who said something I've never been able to forget or shake: Sometimes we get lost in the dumbness of it all.

I've been trying so hard to listen to what my body needs, to learn about what's going on, and to find the right practitioners to help me on my path towards well-being and health. But there are so many voices and so many paths I could take. How does one know if the path is a direct course or a long and winding road?

Yeah, I stole that phrase. It's a good phrase.

I sit here at my computer at midnight with insomnia, a pounding head and a metal-tasting tongue. I met with an herbalist last week who set me on a path for 30 days to work on reducing inflammation and viruses and fungi and god knows what else. She believes the metals will resolve themselves if my systems are working.

But chicken or egg, man. Which is it? Do metals take hold because of inflammation and fungi and immune suppression, or do they cause it? Can it be both?

Is drinking half a lemon in 4 oz of water helping to move out the crap or is it making it worse (like the metallic tongue) because my body doesn't know how to move out crap right now?

I've got all these questions and no answers. And no sleep. And no food in the house because the fridge stopped working 2 days ago. And no fridge.

So, that phrase popped up in my head tonight. It's not a bouquet of roses or a thank you card or a free trip to Cancun, but it's solace of some kind. Sometimes we get lost in the dumbness of it all. Sometimes knowing we're lost is almost like being found.

We forge on

Since I've last written, a few promising things have happened. First, I've done some traveling without falling ill afterwards! On the heels of a long weekend to visit family I had another weekend of shows, three in a row. Again, no extreme fatigue! I have to mark this moment because last October at this time I was having a very different experience. It's important to acknowledge progress.


Having said that, by all accounts the metals detoxification process I'm selecting is slow, and hopefully not debilitating, and could easily take the next year of my life. I hadn't anticipated such a long term prognosis for treatment, but again what builds up over a life is not always shed in a day or a month.


I'm aware of thee things as I go forward: first, that I believe I will get better. I am admittedly terrified of the detox process based on past experience -- and metals chelation therapy can be quite dangerous --, but I truly believe this is the next course of action and it's worth it to get to the other side. I'm going to get there. Second, the cost will be substantial. Whether I go the intravenous route or the sauna and supplements route, there's no way around the fact that this process will cost thousands of dollars and consume much of my waking hours. Third, health insurance, by my early research and estimation, doesn't cover a lick of this healing process. I know there are many views on how health care should happen in our nation and I respect that quest. However, I have to say no one should be looking at a bank account statement and weighing that against how they choose to heal. This is the weirdest perversion, and anyone who doesn't understand that has never personally been sick and wondered how they will pay for their course of treatment.


I kid you not, after I've recovered from all of this I will be integrating some component of financial support for wellness into my art. I don't know how yet, but I can say that governments and companies don't have all of the answers, nor should we be held hostage to their indecision and compromises. We forge on with our own lives independent of what's around us. In my case, I will detox metals even though Allegheny County Health Department apparently can offer no help in isolating the source of this metal contamination and Highmark Health Insurance apparently can offer no coverage for my method of treatment.


So it goes.