He took one look at my face and said 'I can fix that hole in you.'

This probably isn't a huge surprise, but I really love Kate Bush. Well, I love Kate Bush's music. There is a documentary dvd something about her that's been on my netflix queue for years and it sometimes works its way close to the top, but I always bump it down. I think I worry it will be boring or tedious or she will somehow be even more weird that I already know her to be and will completely turn me off from her music. I have this with lots of creative mediums, when I get to know the artist exclusively through their work and not at all through their biography, and then I sometimes get scared to learn about their real-life at all and decide that really, its best to only absorb the art/music/words for what they are themselves and not know anything about the creator at all. Which completely contradicts the fact that are certain artists who I'm very intrigued and interested in not only their creative process but also their personal life. (This also reminds me of when wearemany visited and told me Chuck Palahniuk was gay and I was floored, even though I've read 2/3 of the man's catalog.) I'm a hermeneutics-relativist. I am also a big nerd because I just made up that term to describe myself. But that's not a huge surprise either.

I got home last night and felt super anxious about being home alone and no longer around people to distract me, so I watched a movie. Specifically I watched 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days which is maybe an odd choice to watch while feeling raw, but sometimes I feel like rather than distract in a light fashion, I'd prefer to just go all the way there and watch something brutal. And that movie is brutal, but not in the way I thought. I'd sort of been dragging my heels on watching it, kinda like I do with most movies in that category of 'should watch' but seem so emotionally pornographic and possible problematic for those reasons (e.g. Hotel Rwanda, Schindler's List, etc.) but this movie was not what I was expecting. I mean, its still wrenching, but for these different reasons, and it was powerfully done in ways that are not usually conveyed in films -- its not in the least bit histrionic, but its actually more painful because its really just staying in the moment of these people experiencing or absorbing trauma(s). I recently watched Michael Haneke's Funny Games, the american remake, and fck, that guy is brutal as a director. Brilliant, too, but at what cost? I don't know. But I'm realizing, oh maybe I like those movies. I mean, 'like' is a relative term. How can I say I 'liked' Dogville and Manderlay? Unless you defined the word 'like' as: I wanted to vomit then take a hot shower and/or kill myself afterwards but I can't stop thinking about the performances and ideas and stories AT ALL and I'm dying to talk about it with someone else who's seen it but I could never in millions and millions of years every recommend someone watch them. Then hell yeah, I 'liked' them. But anyway, 4 Months, etc. is intense but not nearly as assaulting as the other movies I've mentioned, and I appreciated the themes more and that it focused on a woman, on women, and that it wasn't totally misogynistic, which is often the problem with most brutal movies, they always seem to brutalize women unequally, which, even politics aside (which I don't think HAVE to be pushed aside either), creatively seems kinda lazy to me.

In Other News^TM, I spent almost the entire weekend around people and I think it was sort of necessary because I was kinda freaking out after going to the doctor on Friday and he told me his assessment of my rash is that I have discoid lupus, which is essentially lupus of the skin, which is essentially my immune system is attacking my skin, which means I'm causing the rash myself. I'm mean, quasi-metaphorically speaking, as is my thinking on a bad day/hour. Its not confirmed, he took lots of blood to have myself tested (also for systemic lupus, which is generally what people mean when they say 'lupus'), and I still have a dermatologist appointment for next week (at a different place than the I-Don't-Know-What dermatologist of two weeks ago) and I suspect they will skin biopsy as well. But honestly, it kinda feels right. It explains the non-responsiveness to all antibacterial and antifungal type treatments. It explains why it receded when I got sick, then came back stronger after (because my immune system was too busy fighting the flu to fight my own skin, thanks). It explains the face rash on my nose and cheeks that looks completely different from the rash on the rest of my body. It explains the intense flares of it after being in the sun. It explains why it seems to be doing lots better after applying steroid cream once and doing lots and lots of moisturizing -- I had been letting it dry out last week because I thought the dampness was making it itchy, but drying turned out to make me feel more miserable. So now when you see me in person, I will conceivably smell like coconut, because I am in love with rubbing that isht all over myself to get rid of the dryness and smell delicious in the process. Its also nice to have found something that makes me feel more pleased about my body and not so dissociated, which is what has been happening the longer this rash has gone on. So, who knows maybe in two weeks I'll be writing on here again saying, wait, no, its not scarlet fever, nor fungal infection, nor discoid lupus, its _____. But I sure hope not. Because as scary and troubling as discoid lupus seems to me in certain moments (there is a small but not statistically insignificant risk that is could lead to systemic lupus), its certainly not as bad as other things. It will probably involve lots of topical steroids and maybe even oral ones for a short period to make this outbreak go away, and then just ongoing monitoring/prevention.

I am excited to someday soon have back that 35% of my brain and emotional energy that seems to currently be permanently devoted to this problem. I'm glad that at least I care enough about all of you to not turn this into a total rash blog.