Last week I gave up gluten, and I was ready to give it all up. Luckily, I’ve found that no bake cookies can be made gluten free, and that Cherry Garcia ice cream is too, and as long as I can still eat a fucking cookie, and enjoy my weekly pint of gluttony, I suppose I’ll hang around a bit.
I joke and exaggerate, and have a proclivity for gallows humor, but gluten free life has hardly been a blip in the news stream. Life is chaos, but everything is calm around me, and that’s more and better than most of us could have ever wanted.
Turkey burgers, cheese and farm fresh fried eggs. Typical meal of late on this new challenge.
After working all summer, I finally got the parts ordered to get my 2009 Pontiac Vibe back out on the road last week. Sinead, the name I gave the Pontiac, gets 30 mpg on the highways, and my old truck Janis does not. The Vibe has 175,000 miles. The truck has 173,000, and lord only knows how many miles my heart has rang up.
It’s still summer. It’s still Virgo season. I’m still writing even as I fall behind. I’ve been sidetracked by the business of living, and now I’ve been walloped with a whale of a cold. In this week, the week the world celebrates or denigrates my birth, I’m reminded that at my age, I no longer have the ability to push through illness. None. I get a cold these days and it’s over for me for a day or three. So, I’ve spent much of the past 48 hours napping, resting and thanking the gods that Progresso makes gluten free soup. That, and that green tea is green tea.
Seriously, there’s something about being mentally ill, and getting sick that just sort of throws me out of it. All my thoughts and ideas seem to echo in a hallow tube. Everything in the world seems out of synch, and then there’s the weakness and exhaustion, two things I don’t like, and then there’s the depression and melancholia that comes with being down a few days. I live my life always thinking there’s so much to be done, and putting me in metaphorical traction for two days is a sort of torture for my troubled mind. Anyone else always have a bad cold flip the switch to depression?
Hey, come see me at the following shows.
This Sunday September 22nd, a first of its kind show in Toledo! Punk Rock and Poetry night at the Switchboard downtown. Featuring bands The Old Breed and Sex Mex, and me and Tauno Ahonen as poets. $10 at the door. You’re not going to want to miss it.
Saturday October 26th I’ll be reading in Nashville. Those details coming soon.
Sunday November 3rd I’ll be reading at a house show in Kansas City. Details TBA
And lots more November tour dates coming in the following days.
Speaking of the November tour, I’m doing that big drawing for the month of September to fund it, and it’s up to an unbelievable 47 entries so far. Entries are just $5. Get in on the fun today. You could have your name printed in the thank you section of my next published book, there for everyone who reads the thing to see it.
The tour includes driving through 13 states, over a half dozen readings, and a cobbled together itinerary of couch surfing, cheap motels and car camping at places like Love’s Truck Stops, beaches, and Joshua Tree National Park. Everything about the tour is on a shoestring budget, but gas is a hefty expense, so the entries to the super fan drawing will go a long ways toward helping with that.
What have I been reading? I put down this book of John Prine interviews a while back, shelved it and read some other books. This is not at all uncommon for me and my ADHD, especially for a book like this one, a book I’ll likely read and reread a dozen times. But when I picked it up and started back at it, I found a Library of Congress interview with U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and Prine, and it’s an interview I’ve read three times now. In his introduction of Prine, Kooser says Prine’s characters and writing isn’t too much different than Ray Carver’s, and I’ll be damned. He’s right. I’d never put Carver and Prine together, but they pair well like grapes and cheese. This book of Prine interviews is like attending a master class on writing taught by one of the best to ever do it. I bought this copy for $20, but hell, you could get it free from your local library. There you go. I just saved you $699 on some video classes you were thinking about taking.
And finally, in everyone’s favorite news section, just what the hell is he smoking? Comrades, legal marijuana saved my life, and continues to be a prescribed medication for my chronic pain and C-PTSD. Access to legal, lab tested cannabis has not only saved my life, but it has had a positive impact in the lives of so many others. It might not be right for you, but it’s one of the safest medications in the world to try, either way.
I tried these Little Tree gluten free gummies, and they’re ok. I have a high tolerance, and I usually consume 100-200mg at a time, and these didn’t hit that hard. And I left one bag by a warm summer window and the gummies melted together, so there’s that. But they’re gluten free, and so am I.
And a newer weed strain. I got a zip of Blueberry Cheesecake from Michigan grower Holy Smokz. The flower, a hybrid, is purple-y and tests out at just under 26% THC, and has terpenes that are sought after for pain and anxiety relief. Decent weed. Got high. Would smoke it again.
When people talk about taking a tolerance break I always joke that I did that once for seven years, and I didn’t like it. That’s a reference to my first seven years of sobriety when I didn’t consume cannabis, but instead white knuckled life with the help of as many as four Ativan and three psych meds a day. Now, I consume a lot of cannabis, and take zero psych meds and about four Ativan a year. So, I don’t do tolerance breaks because this is my medication. But I do try to switch my strains, and mode of consumption up often, so that my tolerance stays at an affordable plateau. Hey, I’m a struggling artist that has to medicate on a budget.
And finally, it’s my birthday tomorrow. Yeah, I’m a Virgo. I’m told that explains everything, ya know? I don’t usually ask for things for my birthday, or really ever celebrate it much. But this year I have two requests: join my super fan drawing if you can to help support my trip out west. It’s just $5 to get in, and unlimited entries.
And please, everyone reading this, go read a book this weekend. Any book. I don’t care. But open one up and put your nose in it. Do it for my birthday.
Love,
Dan
Sorry you're sick but hope you can still make it to the Switchboard which I'm planning on attending. Another fine Microdosing entry. Everytime I get a cold, especially the flue, it messes with my mental stability so I' assuming it is a common thing.