I'm Better Than an Actor; I'm Really Real...

Can we go ahead and agree that we have all felt, at one time or another, that giving up would certainly be a hell of a lot easier than continuing? I think at some point, whether as children or as adults, we have all concluded that the road ahead just appears to difficult to travel and so along the way we have all sat down on the side of the road, refusing to navigate the course. I am making it a point to say that we all have done this because I believe it is a very human reaction. Humans instinctively shy away from difficulties and lean towards the easier of two choices. This time I say this not as an indictment of mankind, but rather as a characteristic that is shared amongst us all. I cannot say whether it was quitting a sport as a child, or giving up on a particular section in geometry, not bothering to talk to that girl for fear of rejection, refusing to argue with a friend just for the sake of keeping the peace, or accepting one's place in life because it affords comfort even though one deserved a better slot. There are so many different ways that we give up in life, which is why I can say with absolute confidence that we have all done it before.

My REAL concern, however, is when the giving up, the sitting by the side of the road, is done when it comes to life and death. I think this has become somewhat of a recurring theme on this blog, but I think that's because it is a subject that is so near and dear to me. It also happens to be a subject that we take for granted more often than we would like to admit. What amazes me is that people tell me that somehow I'm amazing because of what I have to go through in fighting cancer. 

That sounds silly to me. And it sounds silly because the assumption made by calling me amazing is that by fighting as hard as I can against my disease, I am somehow doing something different than what most people would do in the same situation. It is amazing for me to believe that anybody else in my position would NOT display the same fighting mentality as I. That is, I expect that they WOULD fight just as hard as I am fighting. If that's true, then what I am doing can hardly be said to be amazing; rather, it should be considered the norm. I understand if someone wants to connote that my reaction to my disease, although normal for anyone in a similar situation, is not normal because most people do not experience that situation. In that case I would classify my struggle as respectable, not amazing or inspiring. Any man who choose to sit himself down on the side of the road when the path in front of him is a choice between life and death is the one who is amazing to me. The man who chooses life rather than death, and to keep pushing forward no matter what the difficulties are is the man who is smart, logical, normal though not amazing, inspirational, or extraordinary.

(Before moving to the next topic I want to post a disclaimer stating that each individual cancer patient experiences even the same cancer in drastically different way, just as multiple individuals can experience the same event in dramatically different ways. As such, my opinions here are geared more towards the willingness to accept defeat, rather than an inquisition or assessment as to the relative difficulty to the particular people mentioned below).

It is also amazing to me the number of public figures who publicly announce their unwillingness to continue with cancer treatments. For instance, Farrah Fawcett, an extremely well known "actress" and individual, has had a difficult battle with cancer. Originally, she was diagnosed at the end 2006 and after chemotherapy treatments and radiation, she was declared cancer-free in the beginning of 2008, roughly a year and a half. When she was told that she had a malignant polyp return, she responded saying that she no longer wished to deal with the difficulties of treatment. Or Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed in in January 2008, has experienced the spreading of his cancer to critical areas of the body by the end of 2008. It was reported that he, his wife, and his doctors believed that the countdown towards death had already begun. In response to the news, it is reported that Swayze has begun saying his goodbyes to family and friends ahead of what he believes is his imminent death. 

I don't mean to scare those who care about me, but over the last two years and nine months, I have both been told that various areas of my cancer have returned or gotten worse and that my already aggressive, deadly cancer had spread to more critical areas of my body. I have been told on more than one occasion that I was on my road to death. I do not say this to bolster myself or to indict Fawcett or Swayze; I am only saying it to explain that bad news is a part of cancer. Reaction to the bad news makes all the difference. 

Don't call me amazing. Don't call me a hero. Don't call me an inspiration.

Just call me what you have all always called me: a stubborn kid who hated to lose at anything. 

I don't plan to start losing now. Just know, though, that you don't have to lose either...

Hi. This is the Home of "Are You Feeling Okay?"...

I am destroyed by the madness of repetition. The second-hand tick-tock of my life petulantly slamming down one foot after the other – left, right – like Macbeth’s tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeping forward until the movie ends, the credits roll, the reel flickers in the dim light. Wake up, take a pill. Go to sleep, take a pill. Two wednesday night, two Thursday morning, two Thursday night. Pill for pain, pill for nausea, pill for vomitus, pill for headaches, pill for pills. They tell me to take a pill to counteract the pills that I'm taking. The determined pursuit of relief is the ultimate opiate of the masses.

Democracy comes from two Greek words: demos - the power, kratos - the people. Democracy is the power of the people. To control democracy you must control the power of the people. In order to control the power of the people you must find a way to control their worries. The people worry about living life comfortably or without pain. Life, however, is pain. To control the people's worries then is to control their pain. An offer to relive pain is the way to control the power of the people. You give them relief and they gladly hand over their freedom and liberties.

You tax a man more and more every year and give that money to a multi-billion dollar company, only to force that man to watch that company give it to a few hundred people as bonuses. Meanwhile, the man's factory has shut down and the 8.5% of people who want jobs and are looking for jobs cannot get them. The man changes the channel only to watch a man going to trial who took billions of dollars from thousands of investors (billions divided by thousands is still in the millions by the way) only to enter the court, keep mum, and say he is "truly" sorry for the pain he has caused, though he in no extremity of reality plans to tell these people where their money is so that they may use it. I will ask you: why does this man still love his country? Because his pains in life are eased here more than anywhere else (in his mind). Two tabs of tylenol takes away the back pain. Two pills take away heart disease. Two pills takes away cholesterol. Two nuclear bombs takes away inferiority complexes. I have realized an important thing from studying history throughout college: people will always trade freedom for food and safety.

My back hurts and I walk like a ninety-year-old man who can't find his cane. My knees hurt as if I've played as a catcher in major league baseball for 25 years on my way to the Hall of Fame. My stomach hurts from the creeping, twisted invasion of restrictive cells making extension and flexion more cumbersome a task than Atlas' struggle to hold up the heavens. I grunt and sweat from the pain in the night like a working-girl on a busy Friday night. Sometimes the pain is so numbing my mind goes blank and there is a momentary existence of nothing that takes place between my ears. I'll tell you what: when drugs and avoidance are my only options to escape the pain of my existence, it's about time for you to take me out back and shoot me dead. We might do our work through the easing of the pain of living, but you can hardly call it work if you are self-medicated, either physically, mentally, politically, or otherwise.

Do the time. Make the investment. Embrace your pain. Pain is life, your job is to ease the pain, but if you never experience the pain for what it is, then you similarly never experience life for what it is. It's your choice as to how you handle your life. You can take the handed out help and give up your demos, or you can ease the pain through real life, non-segregated experiences. That's my choice.

Just as I've told my fiancee that I love her so much that I would rather be fighting with her than doing anything else with anyone else, I'd rather experience real life, then coast through it unscathed.

PEACE

I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation Destroyed...

Well, while I'm here I'll
do the work -
and what's the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow. - Memory Gardens, Allen Ginsberg

You would do yourself a favor if the only modern poetry you picked up and read was written by Allen Ginsberg. If you want some direction, try Ginsberg’s 1956 “Howl,” classically considered his most famous piece of work. If you want some further direction, then listen to the words this man writes and float away on a cloud of LSD just as he did. Ginsberg wrote the way your mind works: he wrote as a run-on thought string, each memory perpetuating the continuation of the sentence. But, more importantly, Ginsberg wrote the way you wish you could say. He believed that it was the poets job, his burden, not to write what came into his mind while he sat down to write a poem, but rather to write about the thoughs that crept into the poet’s head while he lay in bed at night – while his mind was most free and most truthful.

What more is our struggle in life except the struggle to ease the pains that life brings us? And if we are constantly struggling, surely we must say that we are constantly working. What option do we have, then, in our lives, except to “do the work?” More specifically it is the “Work” that is our job to make life as enjoyable as we can for ourselves and those around us (work – capitalized, thus connoting this is our most elemental form of labor; this is our Heavenly Work). It’s Ginsberg’s suggestion that everything else we do in our lives should be considered play time, here noted as drunken dumbshow. Though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Ginsberg believes, in essence, that anything we do in life that does not ease the pain we experience simply by living is a waste of time. In other words, our thoughts and goals should constantly be tilted towards the easing of our pains. In other words, life on its own is pain. Our jobs in life is to enjoy it as best we can with disregard for the pain, acknowledging that it is there and it hurts us, but without letting the perpetuation of pain become our work.

Chemotherapy is obviously part of the beat culture along with Allen Ginsberg. I dig that. If we are to agree that our work is to ease the pain of living, then chemotherapy does work as it eases the pain of cancer. I find that as long as I do my “Work,” then chemotherapy does his. Sometimes phrases become cliches because they are true, like when a sports player says, "Well, you just gotta go out there and give it your all." That's a truth-cliche. It pertains to life in general and it is a good life lesson. Other times cliches are formed because people do not stop and ask why, like the phrase "When in Rome do as the Romans do." That is an untruth-cliche. I'm not a fucking Roman. If I followed that cliche as a lesson for life it would tell me that I should change my beliefs and practices depending on the beliefs and practices of those surrounding me. If I'm off my rocker I want people to know about it. Do as the Romans do is death to you as you. I'll live doing unlike the Romans because I can rest my head on the pillow knowing that I heeded Ginsberg's advice: "Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness."

"The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction." - Allen Ginsberg

Oh, How Times Have Changed...

As many of you know, yesterday was April 1st. The infamous day of pranks and practical jokes known as April Fool's Day. Yesterday also happened to be the one year anniversary of my surgery to remove a potentially fatal brain tumor. As a form of habit we compartmentalize our days according to some habit forming method. The day starts when we wake up, the next phase being the arrival at work, the 10 o'clock pause to fill the coffee cup, lunch between 12:30-1:30, another pause around 3 o'clock and the punching out of work being the final. Yesterday, though, my day was separated according to a different set of references. 7:30 was not associated with my half-way point between work and home, but rather with my preoperative preparation at last year. 8:15 was not associated with my arrival at work, but rather the acceptance of my epidural. 7 o'clock was not quitting time, but rather the time I could remember being brought into the Neurology Observation Unit. It was certainly a different way to view my day, but I got through it.

It was very surreal though. I continued to recall blurbs from last year. The discussion with the anesthesiologist of preferring scotch to margaritas. His insistence that I would soon fall asleep, and my subsequent refusal to do so. His frustration and ultimate timidity in giving me doses that exceeded those he normally likes to distribute. My anxious dissipation into ultimate darkness. My cloudy immersion in the recovery unit and the shrouded realization of where I was and why I was there. Recognizing the nursing assistant in the corner who was the first person to know that I was awake who immediately called in the doctors and assistants. Hearing the question, "You are recovering right now. Do you know where you are." The shaking of my head indicating that I did not know. "Do you know why you would be in the hospital or why you would have had surgery?" The second shaking of my head in denial of understanding the situation. "Do you know who you are?" My occipital response of gazing off into the upper left corner of my eyes as if trying to recall my name and who I am. Observing the deeply concerned looks exchanged between attending surgeons and nurses who were immediately instructed to get the primary surgeon. I recalled the slowly cracking smile that stretched painfully across my face as I finally spoke saying, "Hey! April Fools." Watching as the surgeons and nurses angrily sauntered out of the room and hearing that initial nursing assistant hold back her laughter. 

I had told my brother Sam before the surgery that if I woke up after the operation and I could still make a joke that my family should know everything was okay. I remember the primary surgeon coming in to perform a quick mental test. If you recall, this is where I was asked to remember those three words: Cat. Apple. Table. I did. My reward: seeing the family members who had been sitting in the lobby of the hospital for endless hours. My mom came in holding back tears and my father came in with a happy smile on his face. I presumed above average news was relayed to them. I remember my brother coming in pretty even-keeled. My Aunt Lucine stayed at the entrance way and was hesitant to come into the room. My family could only stay for a few minutes and I asked them if things had gone well. They said the doctor gave them positive reinforcement that things had gone exceptionally well. They left.

I asked the nursing assistant to make sure that as soon as Katie got to the hospital to make sure that she was allowed to come right in to see me. She promised. And when Katie arrived she came right in along with my brother. Man, Katie looked horrified when she saw me. I don't know if I told her that before this. I told her that she looked horrified when they removed my bandages, but I don't think she knows how she looked when she first saw me post operation. To her credit, she tried to hide it. I was happy to see her. I was ready to be moved out of the recovery room immediately. Finally around seven-ish I was brought into the observation room. I spent the night acting as if nothing had happened and trying to avoid the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room. It was interesting to say the least.

Last night I was driving home around 7:00 p.m. I arrived at my fiancee's house after 8 o'clock. We watched shark-inspired episodes of Mythbusters. We fell asleep on the couch around 9:30. Then I went to bed.

A lot can change from one year to the next. That's the simultaneous beauty and disgust of life. But that's the way things go, so either deal with it or be destined to suffer because of it.

Call Miss Cleo for Your Free Tarot Readin'...

It seems to me that the existence of psychic abilities is something that most definitely exists. The definition of psychic abilities is the ability to perceive hidden information through means independent of the physical senses and independent of previous experience. This is more popularly known as extrasensory perception or ESP and it can be manifested through clairvoyance, precognition, or telepathy.

I tend to believe in the existence of psychic abilities because the main focus of the textbook definition maintains the ability to know things, or know about things, that already exist in reality. Clairvoyance and telepathy are the abilities to uncover information about an object, person, place, or action that actually exists. For instance, a clairvoyant could describe the actual appearance of a house in the Czechoslovakian countryside as if he were standing in front of it or had stood it front of it, though he has had no previous experience with the house. The point is that the house is actual and not potential and the psychic "power" is the ability to describe it without having experienced it. It is similar with precognition. Every moment of existence leading up until today has created a trajectory for the future. If we freeze time and prohibit any stimuli from acting on the present, then there will be a logically determinate future. I believe that precognitive people are able to tap into this trajectory at a given moment in time, but the prediction would only be true if nothing else changes, which we know is not the case. Therefore, any prediction a precognitive individual can make, though it may be true at the time of the prediction, will subsequently be subjected to an ever depreciating ratio of truth.

In a sense, psychic abilities are the abilties to access the mental atmosphere that encapsulates the earth and all of it's objects. This is known as the noosphere, which is the sphere of human sonsciousness and mental activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere and in relation to evolution (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noosphere). The noosphere is a global consciousness in which the knowledge and emotions of every individual in the world comes together in an ocean-like existence. The belief is that all people are able to access the noosphere, thus access the collective knowledge of the human race if they could only train their minds properly. It is in this light that I believe psychic powers exist. They are not determining something that is not there or does not exist; rather, they are able to manipulate their minds to access the global knowledge of the noosphere.

I'm crazy... yeah, like a fox:
In the 1960s it was believed that the Russian government was investing extraordinary amounts of money into funding and developing psychic research as it pertained to effective government and military usage. Apparently it was such an issue that between 1968 and 1971 the United States government developed a similar program that existed until 1995 under both the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). The Stragate Project was de-classified in 1995, at which point various members associated with the program authored books and gave interviews documenting their experiences with the project. This was not just a program that scientifically researched whether or not psychic abilities existed. The Stargate Project has documented well over 100 missions in which remote viewers (psychics) were used to gather intelligence that had not been recovered through any other possible means. The most gifted individuals within the prgram achieved over 65% accuracy above chance. The individuals of the Stargate Project displayed elements of clairvoyance and precognition. Even though funding ended in 1995, the actual use of people as psychic spies and over two decades worth of research entails the United States government believed in the existence of psychic abilities. They believed in it to the tune of $20 million (www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm).

Does this mean that some psychic reader popping you off at $60 per 30 minutes in "Earth Spirit" along the strip mall is telling the truth when they say you have an old soul, or that your relationship will/won't last, or that so-and-so will/won't die? Hardly. Consider: if psychics (and I mean street psychics that purport to know the future and delegate that information at a cost) were accurate, why would you ever need to go back? Is it any wonder why they only predict your life three to six months into the future and tell you to come back for more after then? These people should be avoiding death, anticipating stock market moves, curing cancer, predicting natural disasters, and betting the ponies. They should be doing anything with their skill other than peddling pennies from people who enjoy the theatrics and awe of magic tricks.

Any single, individual life is capable of progressing down an infinite number of paths. The decisions and goings-on of today dictate the possible futures that can exist. If we are to believe that all psychics (even the street psychics and Tarot card readers) are honest and legitimate, then a professed psychic AT BEST is able to predict one of the infinite pathways your life can take, but in no way can guarantee that things will manifest themselves according to the manner they have predicted. Again, if the psychic is real, then we must assume the reason they tell us to return in six months is because the decisions and happenstances that have occurred in the six months since your visit have dramatically altered your future. In short, they tell you what your future will be, but it's up to you to decide if you want to change it.

It's okay to believe in psychic abilities, it would appear it's even rational to do so. But then, on pain of irrationality, should believe in Judeo-Christian predestination, proclaimed prophets, UFOs, aliens, and God. Do me a favor though: let's not get all fidgety just because Sarah the psychic in Red Bank says I'm going to die before 30 after I have my first child, because last time I was having three children and living into my 60s, and the time before that I was marrying someone I don't even know yet and dying in my 40s, and before that I was not going to live more than a few more months.

Just like a story's plot doesn't progress if you never read the next page, your future cannot be determined until you decide to make it so. So fuck the psychics and forget the trembling worries of what may come and step outside of your bubble. Life is waiting for you to tell it what to do.