Good sentient beings! Someone… anyone? Good morning!
I think that it may be useful at this point in these spontaneously arising confessions… this last will and testament to the void… this urgent transmission from beyond the grave… this parting gift to one and all
I feel that it is important to lay down one simple piece of advice.
If you will allow me. Good sentient someone.
Please consider the following, gleaned from the internet just now:
Deaths from colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and women in the United States. It's expected to cause about 50,630 deaths during 2018. Jan 4, 2018
“Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and women in the United States.”
And. Colorectal cancer is 100% preventable!
Yes, folks. That’s the real headlines.
The Number Three Killer. Colorectal Cancer. Lung and Breast Cancer’s nearly equal rival on the obituary page.
Is entirely preventable, if found in its early stages and removed.
It’s just that simple.
Never mind “the (holy) war on (colorectal) cancer”
all the needlessly tortured, murdered martyrs
the grandstanding hyper heroism
and the super sales pitched
hoopla of modern western medicine
it’s million miracles a minute might
and the billions and trillions of dollars being spent
in blind desperation on
all the needlessly tortured, murdered martyrs
the grandstanding hyper heroism
and the super sales pitched
hoopla of modern western medicine
it’s million miracles a minute might
and the billions and trillions of dollars being spent
in blind desperation on
the “magic bullets” of illustrious
immoral-if-not-illicit
chemotherapy cocktails
immoral-if-not-illicit
chemotherapy cocktails
The fact is. Colon cancer. Just like I have. Could have been avoided if I had had regular colonoscopies in my early fifties. So. Fellow sentient precious someone, if you are reading this now— Go do it! Get er done. Do the smart thing
And while you’re at it. If you are that kind of compassionate, activist person. Please. Start a movement to raise awareness about the risks of colon cancer and… Start another movement to make colon cancer testing affordable and readily available to all of us. Hell. Start a movement to make it mandatory if there is a history of it in your family!
And. While you’re at it. Start a movement to make universal health care and cradle-to-grave education a shared purpose of our great nation.
Our human future, if there is to be any… depends upon our physical, mental and emotional well being, and, our unified, moral intelligence
Our “penetrating wisdom”, and, Our demonstrative compassion, Our “skillful means”
As Gautama Siddhartha, Sage of the Shakya Clan… a really smart guy, by the way… and a billion other Buddhists might say
Yeah. That’s right. Make America Great… not as a profoundly paranoid, angry, self-delusional, schizoid military “super power” trillions upon trillions of dollars in debt
Been there, done that
Make America Great in Wisdom, Love and Compassion!!
Aim a little higher than nuclear extermination.
yadda-yadda…. I know. I know.
Don’t want to hear it this early in the morning.
So. There it is. My two-cents worth of advice… my offering upon the altar of… the chemo-fogged trenches on… the irradiated frontlines of… the battlefields against cancer.
And then. I simply must answer this question that keeps gnawing a hole in a far corner of my head.
“Why didn’t you get a colonoscopy at fifty”!? as put to me by my first-of-eight-and-counting oncologist, Herr Doktor Meyer, on day one of my current ordeal.
Yeah. Great question, dok.
Well. First of all, I must admit to arrogance. The mistaken, smug assumption that my superior, healthy “organic whole foods” diet, (devoid of most toxic, processed, refined and “junk foods” that are typical of the Standard American Diet), my lack of inhaling of highly carcinogenic cigarette smoke, and a simple, vigorous, physically active country life on a certified organic farm with fresh, clean air, wholesome, delicious artesian well water, etc, etc…. would protect me from a blind date with Señor Cancer.
Well, I was wrong. Señor Cancer is an absolutely unethical slut! He will sleep with anyone available or not. Regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. He has the most extensive, openly welcoming, black book ever imagined.
And. He is a fervent equal opportunity employer. He was perfectly content to put my certified organic colon to work manufacturing murderous polyps by the intestinal yard.
So be it. In my humble estimation, in my admittedly narrow… not “double-blind tested”… experience
Death, like your average roadside raven, is not a picky eater.
Although, some are convinced that a purely vegetable based diet is the superior… morally, politically, spiritually… healthy path to take, in order to avoid the congested superhighways more frequented by Señor Cancer—
I’m not going to argue against the many benefits of an organic vegan diet.
I think it’s a very noble gesture. A grand sacrifice!
I think it’s a very noble gesture. A grand sacrifice!
I applaud all vegans. And all turkey vultures. And I thank you.
Good health to all… and, to all of you kind, compassionate, animal loving, plant chomping, environmentalist vegans out there. I’ll be thinking about you, and urging you on to your noble roasted tofurky feast… as I wolf down my certified organic ground elk burger from Murphy’s Market in Trinidad, Ca, on Brio’s toasted sourdough bread with melted Cypress Grove “Lamb Chopper” goat cheese. I was the smug, longhaired freak with the extra firm tofu steaks on the cherry wood fired grill at the backyard barbecue way back in the seventies when the “healthy lifestyle movement” was in its infancy
I get it. I really do.
But.
Please consider this tiny crumb of… admittedly unasked for advice… from this well meaning salty old sea raven
Please, kids. Consider a colonoscopy around fifty just to be safe.
Secondly, having a personal history of… being so “close to the land”… of being so feverishly focused upon my singular task of “saving the planet” by growing organic veggies and baking “godbread” twenty four and seven… (see Waving Hello, the first confession in this series, for a brief elaboration upon the true nature of god bread)
Then, living many winding, dusty… gated and locked… washed-out, wind-torn… washboard dirt roads off the grid… swooning deeply into the green goddess… hidden in the rural heart of the steaming Emerald Triangle… learning to serve the Mother… keeping my head down
Being so out of touch with the alternate reality of television… the rest of the world… the space beyond my nose, footstep and navel. Being so narrowly self-obsessed with my own righteous livelihood…
my self-appointed holy cause… my moral and political superiority
Being young, dumb and healthy. If not quite blissful in my ignorance?
Whatever, dude. You didn’t get the message.
Exactly! I wasn’t paying attention.
And. To make matters worse.
I believed: There was no known record of cancer in my family history.
It never occurred to me that I might be next in line.
So, actually. Not only was I not paying attention to the nightly news that men over fifty should be screened for colon cancer.
I was operating under the totally false assumption… the supercilious belief bias… that
There was no record of cancer in my family history.
Wrong!!! BUZZZZZZZZ!!!!
Actually. My very own father had had a polyp “go off” quietly in his late seventies, early eighties?
But. Well. You know how each new generation has a motto more or less…
My seventies generation’s motto might have been:
“Save the Whale!”
“No nukes is good nukes!”
(The environmental “crown of thorns” for sure.)
But. My father’s generation. Let’s see. He was born in 1925 in Birmingham, Alabama. So, when he was in his twenties… that was during the forties
Ah. Of course:
“Loose lips sink ships” Or, in other words—
“We don’t mention or talk about those things”
(As in, those deep, dark, repressed memories which threaten to explode and overwhelm us bodily, emotionally…) and/or
(As in, those deep, dark, repressed memories which threaten to explode and overwhelm us bodily, emotionally…) and/or
“What would the neighbors think”?
(Like, yo, man— I want some a what day got…)
(Like, yo, man— I want some a what day got…)
No, that’s probably the fifties.
The point is.
Yeah, yeah… For the sake of all sentient beings sitting on their asses in sea caves
Get the fucking colonoscopy!!
And sail on, pirates. Sail on…
Treasure awaits us. Immense Treasure Abounds!
Just over the top of the next green wave, beyond the blue horizon
Or at least some scrambled eggs and spinach to go with all this hyperventilating, pretentious, pseudo-buddhist philosophizing
