eating doughnuts in the service of science

As both of you know, I've been off the wheat for a while. It's an experiment spurned by the fact that half my family can't eat wheat. Nothing doing. My mother, my aunt Helen, & Helen's daughter Fiona developed celiac disease as adults; Helen's son Steeve has been allergic since birth; & then there's Kevin.

Kevin stopped eating wheat when he noticed it was dragging him down. He just didn't feel good when he ate it. And his symptoms lined up more or less with his celiac-disease-having relatives, so he just stopped. Now, he feels better. This is more or less where I'm at, too. The next step is to go to the doctor to get tested for it.

The thing is, the test for celiac disease is, in fact, a test for the presence of antibodies against an aberrant converted wheat protein. If I have been excellent about not eating wheat, there won't be any antibodies, & I'll get a negative (whether my mutant genes are modifying the antibody-triggering proteins not). In order for the test to be meaningful, I have to eat wheat again to trigger the protein conversion. 

The other thing is, the body is a very adaptable thing. When it notes that you, the User, aren't regularly introducing what it views as a disease to the system, it heaves a huge sigh of relief & happily goes about focusing its attention to other things. Biking, drawing, writing, doing crossword puzzles, thinking about prime numbers, having benevolence toward humanity. It's not girding itself for a great battle every single day. So then let's say your doc tells you to eat wheat in order to intentionally trigger the mutant protein-conversion process, to get the antibodies to show up, for the sake of the test. But while I, the User, know that a great battle is coming, my internal organs & wheat-protein-converting mutant genes ... don't. They are blindsided, having been long out of battle. And the battle is worse than when the antibodies fought for the User back in her doughnut days. Kevin opts out. It was bad enough before, he doesn't need a battle today, thanks. I, myself, went into battle recently when I fucked up one night & drank a beer. I felt sick for two days.

It was a Maredsous 8 Brune. And it was worth it.

Kevin's solution is to not eat that doughnut, to not get tested. I like Kevin's solution. It's not that I don't trust or need medical confirmation, it's that it would be merely that — confirmation of something that I viscerally know to be true. I'm still in the midst of the experiment. I said I'd give it a couple months, & it's only been a few weeks. However, I'm not certain I want to intentionally make myself sick when the couple months are up. You can call it willful ignorance, if you like. I call it refusing to curse the darkness & instead just lighting a candle. We'll see.

Speaking of lighting candles, here's a thing Errol Morris wrote about the benefits of cursing the darkness. He is a funny doughnut-eater.

wheat trouble

I'm sitting here, drinking a cup of Kenya/Ethiopia coffee (I didn't have enough of the Gichathaini for a full cup, so I supplemented it with some old Yirgacheffe I had lying around), marveling at how good I feel. I woke up rested, calm, & happy. I have energy, & I have the inspiration to get up & do the things that I want to do (like, say, write). I feel very, very good.

This is in contrast to just a few days ago. I was downright giddy. All the time. I smiled at strangers, my days were a frenzy of activity & good will, & I was remarkably uninhibited. It felt like I was a little bit drunk, all of the time. It startled me, frankly. It felt good, but it was unnerving. I kept stating it: "Hi! I feel giddy. How are you?"

Fortunately, I wasn't actually drunk, & I decided to use this hiccup of good feeling wisely. I used this newfound energy not in making things (I have a few art projects in various stages of completion & a book to write), but in setting up the proper conditions to create better, later on. I didn't believe that this uplift in spirits & productivity was going to last, so I figured I'd better prepare. And I was right — it didn't last. But this is a good thing. One can't be drunk all the time.

Well. One can. But it's not recommended.

"So what changed? Why the giddiness?" Well, thanks for asking. Before The Giddiness, I stopped eating wheat. My family is Irish, if that wasn't patently obvious. People of Northern European descent are more apt than others to develop something called celiac disease (they aren't born with it — my mom developed it in her fifties). The short version of celiac disease is, when I eat wheat, an enzyme in my person modifies some proteins in said wheat, & my immune system is all just like "WHAT, NO." My immune system then goes about fighting those proteins as though they were foreign bodies, like it would fight a virus. The crux is in the modification. People without celiac disease don't modify that protein, & they go about their doughnut-eatin' ways. (Poor saps.) People with celiac disease, in contrast, feel like all of their systems are just a little bit depressed. This is because they are. Their immune system is taking up much of the body's energy to fight this "virus". They experience fatigue, stomach upset, & lowered mood — everything from crankiness to mild depression. To keep with the booze analogy, I felt like I had a teensy, tiny hangover. All of the time. But since it got progressively worse over time, I didn't notice. I kept re-setting what "normal" meant. But there came a point when "normal" felt so ... abnormal, that I decided to do an experiment.

The experiment is still in the works. I'm simply & only cutting wheat out of my diet for a while, to see what happens. The Giddiness happened, but it's ebbing, & now I feel merely very good. Also of note: The emergence of The Giddiness doesn't necessarily mean that I have developed celiac disease. It means that I might. It's possible I can stave it off, if I cut wheat out now. Conveniently, the treatment is the same: Don't eat wheat. The difference is in the degree of terrible I will feel if I do eat wheat. If I stave off the disease but then at some point eat wheat unknowingly, I will feel down & gross & cranky for a small time. If I keep eating wheat until I develop celiac disease, then at some point eat wheat unknowingly, I will feel terrible. Maybe for days. So, y'know ... I should just stop eating wheat now.

"A stitch, in time, saves nine." Or so the kids say. But man — I'm gonna miss you, doughnuts.

learning how to breathe

Three nights a week, I finish up work after the last train leaves. And so I drink sixteen ounces of sparkling water, saddle up, & hit the road. It's just shy of eleven miles from Old Pasadena to Angeleno Heights. It's no century, but it's long enough for me to notice a few things along the way. Like breathing.

I used to be a ballet dancer. One thing I learned through dance is the importance of using my breath in exercise — that the pattern of my breathing could work with me or against me. Let's say I'm doing small jumps (petit allegro*). It feels right to inhale as I jump up, then exhale as I land, with every small jump. It's what my body wants to do, to maintain a perfect one-to-one ratio of jumps to breaths. But the jumps are so fast that I can't get enough air in my lungs if I stick to the tempo. It's not efficient. And when you're performing as one of the Cygnets in Swan Lake, the number one aces top thing you can do to not suffer the fate of Moira Shearer is be efficient. (The number two thing you can do is stay perfectly, exactly in time with the music alongside the three other dancers; if you don't, you'll accidentally kick one of them, ruining the performance, & they will drag you backstage & murder you.)

I'm riding along Fair Oaks, not paying attention to much, when I sneeze. Twice. (I always sneeze in pairs.) I've just expelled all the air from my lungs, so I take a monstrous breath**. And then I let it out. It takes me two 360º revolutions of my pedals to exhale. And it feels pretty good. I slip into shallow breathing again (more or less one inhale-exhale couplet per 360º pedal revolution), but I notice that it feels ... not as good. I breathe slowly again. One full revolution to breathe in, one full revolution to breathe out, so half the speed. Then I inhale slower: once per every TWO full revolutions (& exhale at the same rate). And I keep at it for a while. And it feels amazing. Meanwhile, I notice that, with my current gear ratio, my breathing is just a tiny bit faster than my legs, which means my legs are constantly trying to speed up, to make my cadence match my breath. Which, coincidentally, is the same thing as going faster***. And wouldn't you know it, while I'm focusing on my breathing & my legs are focusing on my lungs, it's easier & more efficient to stay in the saddle instead of standing up, which means I'm using more of my legs, which makes them go faster, which makes me able to slow down my breath even more.

Then it gets fun. So two full revolutions per inhale (then two again per exhale) feels good, but what about two & a half? Two revolutions are easily split into four parts (right-left-right-left), so I just add one. Right-left-right-left-right on the inhale, then left-right-left-right-left on the exhale****. Then I let my cadence & my breathing get out of sync for a bit as I force my lungs to slow down & I try for three revolutions. I become a monster. I tear down hills, I annihilate corners, I chew up the road, & out of nowhere emerges the intersection of Figueroa & Cypress. 

I can't believe I didn't know this. I mean, I knew this once. But I didn't translate it. Did you know this? For me, it's a revelation, a minor miracle, a marvel of physiology, & the most obvious thing in the world. I feel silly & proud at the same time. And oxygen-drunk. It's cool stuff, that oxygen. You should try it.

———————————————————

* "Petit allegro" — I know, I know, the first word is French, & the second word is Italian. That's what happens when French dance people name stuff using Italian music-notation descriptions. (There's "grand allegro", too.)

** A beast of a gasp.
*** This is where the analogy with dance breaks down. You can't — shouldn't — dance any faster than the music tells you to dance. But you can adjust your breath all the same.

**** Is there a less clunky way of describing the details of one's cadence? I hope so. 

i quit

There are things that we do that we're proud of, & there are things that we do that we are not proud of. For the past ten years, I have gone back & forth, caring that I did something of which I wasn't proud vs. not caring. Does that make sense? No, right? So I did something about it.

I quit smoking.

Below is a pretty good list of reasons I might have quit:

· I taste things, professionally. And smoking gets in the way of my ability to taste things. And smell things. It prevents me from being as good at my job as I could be.
· Meanwhile, to be seen hampering my ability to taste lessens others' faith in how well I do my job. Employers, colleagues & customers, some of whom ask me on the regular for advice on coffees.
· Continuing to smoke — choosing to smoke — while knowing full well that it brings about an early, painful death is basically saying that I want to die. But the thing is, I don't want to die.
· It lessens my enjoyment of other things that are important in my life. Like food, coffee, biking, breathing, walking, singing, & feeling good.

But those aren't the reasons that I quit. I quit because I wasn't proud of it. And I would like to be proud of every damned thing that I do. I am not proud that I started when I was so young. I'm not proud that I gave money to the tobacco industry, on & off, for fifteen years. I am not proud that I allowed myself to be complacent when I knew it was out of step with what I believed in. And one day, I realized just exactly how un-proud I was, & from that moment forward I didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

So far, quitting has not been difficult. In fact, it's been remarkably easy. Perhaps this has to do with my reason for quitting — I'm not withholding something from myself that I want to have. I just don't want to want it any more. And that feels incredible.

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. My family, we are scrappers. We work hard, as a rule, & we're ambitious. There are reasons for this.

My father was born one year before the Great Depression struck. Thirteen years later, his father left his wife & five children. And so: My grandmother, after whom I'm named was suddenly a single mother of five in the throes of the biggest financial crisis this country had ever had (& has had to date). My dad, fiscally anyway, was essentially an orphan, though obviously he had the love of his mother & his four siblings. Not long after, his estranged father died, granting Dad & his siblings access to Mooseheart. Mooseheart is a boarding school in Brookfield, Illinois, for the surviving children of men who belonged to the Loyal Order of the Moose. I'm 100% serious.

My mother was born in Dublin, Ireland. At an early age (13!), she decided she wanted to practice medicine. But there were a couple snags. She was a woman, in the fifties, in Ireland. She actually needed special dispensation from the Catholic Bishop in Ireland in order to attend the (Protestant) college that would best prepare her for medical school. And he said "no". (I guess it's only the Pope that's infallible — Bishops err.) The other good college in Ireland told her she was too young. (She had skipped a grade, so ... what, she was too smart?) And so she, her parents, & her two sisters (also medically inclined) moved to America in pursuit of better sense. Her parents didn't have anything lined up in America, by the way. It was an act of faith I can hardly fathom, but the three daughters backed it up with personal sacrifice & incredibly hard work, & all three became successful anesthesiologists. (My mom says that putting people to sleep is the easy part — the trick is waking them up.)

Those two stories pretty much sum up the American Dream.

This year, I did not spend Thanksgiving with my family. I spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, doing a medium-sized collection of small things, things that didn't require businesses to be open. Tragically boring things. I can't be thankful for spending time with other Thanksgiving Orphans, I can't be thankful for a huge meal, & I can't be thankful for my beloved at my side (I broke up with him four days ago because I have excellent timing). I can be thankful, however, for the following:

· My father's dedication to education, both his & ours
· My mother's obvious joy in what she does, starting with medicine & continuing now to local politics & community service
· My sister's ability to come up with groundbreaking ideas that change how people think ... & then act upon them, bettering people's lives in very real ways
· My brother's incredible focus, setting the standard for what it means to be good at something

I want to go on & on, listing every family member downward & upward & out, but as you might imagine with a name like Kathleen O'Shea, we are rather Irish & rather Catholic, & so there are an awful lot of us. This, long enough even as a piece of writing, is my very long-winded Thanksgiving Grace. There's no god in it. There's not even very much luck. There is hard work, & there are lessons, & there is the sense that "goodness" is made, not inherited or chanced-upon. My folks are good, & I am proud of them, & I am thankful that they have shown me how good "good" can be. And, lastly, I hope someday to be as good as them.