I love the word deadline. I love the sound it makes as it whooshes past.
– Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
There is a photographer in Iowa, Mark Hirsch, who photographed the same tree
for 365 days. There is something very loving and methodical in such a commitment. It reminds me of a long marriage or the way a man will go to the same dead-end job every day to feed his family or the way a woman will keep putting her kids first and do without every single thing she needs just to watch her
kids grow up with what they want. More than that, watching the report on the photographer, I learned that things happen that change your perspective. He had a job and they let him go. They didn’t need any more print publication photographers, thank you very much. Next, he had an accident. There had been this tree Hirsch had passed on a rural road nearly every day. It had always been there. One day after the accident, the man realized he needed that tree. He needed to stop and photograph it. He needed to capture it.
The Cherokee believed that a camera snatched your soul and stored it in the box. It must have sure seemed that way to look at that great square chamber with the fire pluming out and embers burning into the air, and the image appearing under water like something from another dimension. Poof! Another soul, gone! In the old days, developing a photo must have seemed like creation itself. There’s something to that line of thinking, that a photograph captures the essence of an object, person, or living thing,
maybe even catches that thing or person showing off its true inner self with its guard down, how it really is all the time. Even when no one is looking.
I used to think of deadlines as arbitrary dates set by a boss or a blind bureaucratic
organization beyond which, if not observed or adhered to, penalties would be
assessed, heads would roll, jobs would be in jeopardy. Steps would be taken.
I now think of deadlines as points in time when something comes down out of another
dimension, snaps a picture, and serves up the truth. For me, it was a neurological illness.
I discovered that everything I ate was either part of the problem or part of the solution.
That had been true long before I got sick, but now it was a matter of getting well or getting
worse, a choice between living and dying.
I have learned bits of nutrition wisdom in the most unlikely places. At my son's Tang Soo
Do class, the master teacher told me about the healing powers of honey: specifically, he said,
honey attacks bacteria. A woman from a Georgia mountain community shocked her grandson's Vanderbilt physicians when she applied a honey paste to the boy's bedsores. The bedsores healed. The doctors discovered that the honey destroyed the bacteria.
I'm on a journey to discover the healing properties of food. I am cooking my way through a year of
decadent gluten-free recipes to prove to myself that it can be done. These recipes will be my own creation or collaborative efforts with others. I discovered an organic store on the square in my
hometown, Pa Bunk's, and I made my fourth shopping trip to stock my pantry. My first challenge: To make a tortilla with buckwheat and brown rice flour. I picked up creamed honey comb and cinnamon
which happens to be made very near my rural home in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, and whole, organic
milk. I have this idea of making crepes out of buckwheat and brown rice flour and stuffing them
with various combinations of food, like salmon and mushrooms.
I'm gathering the ingredients and hunting down recipes while my son licks glutinous, raw brownie mix from bowl and spoon and watches Master Chef with me. There are chocolate eclairs all over the screen. I
start wondering if I'll be able to make cakes, pastries, pies, even cookies, out of the gluten-free flours. It will be a matter of trial and error, which I will record here.