Cancer

I have just finished my study on Cancer. Talk about F**ked. Sorry but it is true. Only those who have it can understand. Cancer is the deepest bodily betrayal of itself.

Cancer is both merciful and vengeful.  Cancer is you. You are cancer. I did not quite understand what cancer was before my education. I was under the impression that cancer was an invading source that only destroyed and left PBS specials in its wake. Cancer is that. But is is so much more. Cancer is unique to every person. Cancer is customized like a pair of boots suited to fit.  The Latin term for cancer is  “crab”. No star signs here, no dreams of astrological. Just a wipe out disease. Both a murderer and it’s victim.

Tonight I shucked 3 pounds of crab. The spiny legs, the dark body meat. The crab cut my fingers as I was seeking its flesh.  I ate the cancer with butter over newspaper.

My education has given me a glimpse of the process of cancer and so much more into the cellular destruction of the body and the consequences of treatment. This was my last unit of study and test before my degree; quite rightly so as it was the most difficult to read, to know.

Still I wonder what is cancer? I have “learned” what cancer is. Or have I?

When I was a child I watched an HBO special (back in the 80’s) of a child, male, who suffered from leukemia. Leukemia is cancer of the blood and one of the most fatal if not the most fatal of cancers. For years I feared that I too had cancer. But that was all that I could conceive before I discovered what cancer was. I am starting to see what cancer is.

Cancer is our bodies destroying itself cell by cell.

Why would any body do this? I do not know, they do not know. No doctor, no pharmacist, no chemist. No one knows why the body’s cells do this. They speculate but do not seem to know for sure. They have speculative causes and theories but cancer seems to touch each patient differently.

Cancer has now become my life’s metaphor. I feel cancer in my life. People that are like tumors must be cut or radiated or chemically stripped off of me. Cancer has now become a very unique understanding for me.  But this is all it can do for me. I do not have cancer. But now I know what cancer is. My every day life. Those who have died have not died in vain to compensate drug companies and blasphemous power seeking charities. Those who have died have given me an understanding of what is my body, yet foreign and clumsy, a knowledge of it. Cancer, cancer of  all.

I have just received my degree and for this I say to you. All of you whom I will meet. All of you who have cancer.

I do not have cancer. I have a disease of the mind that will inhibit my growth and my life. You have cancer. I can relate to your demise. But I want you to know I will see you and your sick cells. I want you to know that I will be there for you if you need me. I want you to see me as well. I know what it feels like to have your own body destroy itself. I know what is happening to you. I am just a girl who has learned what cancer really is. But I understand. I see you. I see you.

This cancer. This is so much. Why do we have cancer?

This is the rub. Why? Cancer? Why?

Why do you find us… so unique?

November

November. November. November.

This is the season of pain. The season of loss. The season of absolute agony.

This time of year. The depression is here. Depression; though comforting is cruel. She is truly a mistress of madness.

November is death. November remembers all that it has claimed.

This morning I could feel one more piece of my mind slip away from me. One more piece of happiness drift away like smoke in a damp sky. In it’s place is now another little black hole. My mind is covered with little black holes. All of the memories come back in November. My month of misery. It took me years and years to drink away the memories. In the process I took out the good ones to destroy the bad ones. Now just hundreds of little black holes. Soon I will be a black hole.

Will I survive this one? Will I collapse on myself like a dying star?

I am tired of pretending I am something I am not. Only one person knows me and only two people care. It is my own fault. My evasive lies and manipulative self expression are all false.

Who would want to see this? I have wasted too much energy hiding myself, masking myself and covering my tracks. Now I have no idea who I am.

But it is November. What will she claim this year? What will she rip from my spirit? What will she spit to the floor as she washes her hands of me?

Maybe she has come for my broken heart. My mind is filled with too many holes now. She will not accept it.

Will I survive as she rips my broken heart from my soul?

November, you cruel bitch you. How I have missed you.

Kill Baby Kill

So you are all headed out to “bag” some wolves. Lets look at this…in detail. I’ve had a couple beers and I don’t mind writing like a tree hugging, dirt worshipin’ bitch.

On the left side of the ring is The Hunter.

On the right (oh yeah, pun intended) side of the ring is The Wolf.

This may take more than one blog post. The wolf is my spirit guide after all. I should do my part. I will try to remain calm and neutral even though we all know that I can’t and won’t.

First up The Hunter and for this we will have to go into the “mind” of the man in his pretty hunting gear with his pretty gun. We may have to save wolves for another blog post. While I believe there is not much to The Hunters mind, I do believe he is backed up by many a government officials, so they too, will have to be analyzed.

“Montana has sold 7,120 wolf licenses. “The system is working, and hunters are excited to have the opportunity,” Jim Unsworth, deputy director of the Idaho department, said in a statement.” – Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times

– So, making money off of the licences? Underlying motive? I think so. What is a life worth these days? Excited Hunters? No shit!

“An Eagle, Idaho, man was cited for poaching Tuesday when he shot a wolf on a public road from the back of his pickup truck in an area not open for wolf hunting. The man told officers he thought he was in a legal zone until he later checked a map. The wolf was a small female, still a pup, according to the fish and game department.” – Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times

– Woops. Thats ok. She was just a pup after all.

“One of the first hunters to report a wolf kill in Idaho, Robert Millage of Kamiah, Idaho, said he had been flooded with hostile e-mails and phone calls calling him a wolf murderer and a fat redneck. “I have a thick skin and a good sense of humor. What am I going to do, yell back at them?” he told the Lewiston Tribune. “I obeyed the law and did what [the Idaho Department of] Fish and Game wanted us to do. I can sleep well.” – Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times

-Sleep baby sleep. The law will protect you. Oh wait, the law USE to protect wolves until they became inconvenient and turned a profit. Don’t worry Robert, I am sure they will take care of you when your old, inconvenient and sucking up the governments money. How is your retirement plan anyway?

” State wildlife officials say wolves have killed a fifth hunting dog in Clark County and other dogs have been injured. Three packs of wolves have been linked with killing hunting dogs this year.” – USA Today

– An eye for an eye? Wolves are very territorial. Why is the life of a dog worth more than a life of a wolf? Because people hate wolves and love dogs? People.. we may be getting somewhere now. People, population, land control. If we put the wolves somewhere and they want another square foot, they will have to pay. With their lives. But I thought people were God? We are arn’t we? We get to decide who lives and dies. Yea! We are God now.

I am going to continue this blog post. I think it may take a few. I want to get something clear. I know there are “good” hunters out there. Yes, you know who you are. Wolves are a form of “population control” for the vegan wildlife that in large populations can destroy an environment. However, wolves have it bred into their blood, what they are meant to do. They hunt and kill the sick and the weak of the herd. Yes, they are selective killers. I think they are confused, they can no longer do their job as we control them and their herds. Good hunters kill AND eat the animal in question. GOOD hunters kill quickly and do NOT take trophies. Good hunters keep the balance that is hunter vs. hunted. The problem as I see it is that we really think we can “control” any situation that involves wildlife. I place before the court. If the wolves are eating the cattle, they are hungry. Why are they hungry? We hunt their game and control it. They hunt the cattle. Wait. Hunting cattle? Whats to hunt? They don’t move to much. We take their land and put cattle on it. We hunt their food and put cattle on it. What will they eat? Cattle.

We are wrong. We are a sick race. This is just a pissing contest. I think we are threatened because the wolves are just to close to the top of our precious food chain.

P.S. Sarah Palin is an ignorant tyrant.

Robert Millage of Kamiah, Idaho. The first in Idaho to bag the "beast". Congrats.
Robert Millage of Kamiah, Idaho. The first in Idaho to bag the "beast". Congrats. (Source: Robert Millage via Associated Press / Los Angeles Times)

Dec. 10. 2008. StarDate3490.804.20080.12

Dear Dad;

I really, really fucking miss you. I am so mad at you for leaving I can barely control it anymore. Did you really expect me to be able to hold this family up? I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? You don’t talk to me for years then you come back to me and tell me you always loved me then you travel up to see me and die! Really, what the fuck was your soul thinking? Did you really think mom and I were going to leave the hospital and be OK? Did you really think she and I would survive your ignorant death? You know that it is seven years later and it is still the same for her and I as that night you died. You die everyday for us, over and over again. Do you have any idea what I went through? Do you have any idea what she went through?

Let me tell you, you absolute asshole.

After years of longing for our damn relationship to return to normal, after years of self hatred at the thought I had done something so wrong as to lose your love, after years of lingering around your bedroom door waiting for forgiveness you come back to me. You decide to forgive me (much to my shock) for being a crappy teenager. You travel your ass up here with my mother in tow, not once but twice, back to Oregon where we should have stayed. You forgive me, acknowledge me, hug me, cry, tell me you are proud of me, tell me you love me. Then you fucking die. You have some stupid heart attack that kills you while your on the fucking road.

So here it is you jerk. This is just me remember, mom has some words for you too.

My fucking day at work, I begged and begged my boss to get off early so I could spend as much time with you and mom as possible but there was so much to be done that I had to stay all through my shift. By the time I get home, so excited to plan our night together before you get back to California, I give mom’s cell a ring to check status on our plans. Let me tell you now how you destroyed every moment of my life, for the rest of my life.

Panic on the other end of the damn phone. I had no idea. Mom was on her way to the hospital with you. You were already dead. I didn’t know you were dead dad. I got in my Honda in a fury and started to drive in your general direction. You should have died in Portland, not so stupid town 30 miles away. You could have done the damn antique shopping in Portland. I had no idea where I was going, stopping at a Les Schwab in screaming tears to ask where the fucking hospital was in a town I had been to only once before and only in passing.

Oh, let me tell you about the traffic, see you decided to die right before rush hour. I was trying to get to you, putting cigarettes out on the floor of the Honda in panic screaming, no God, you won’t take him, he will be fine, it was just a heart attack, he is alive and we can get his heart fixed, no God, you would not take him from us, no God you just would not do it, never take my daddy, not now, not now when I just got him back.

You see dad? I thought you were still alive and it was too close of a call. Even though my panic was so bad I think I knew you were gone. But I did not know. After an hour in panic in traffic some miracle guides me to the hospital in a town I didn’t know, off of roads I had never travels to rush, crying into the hospital asking for you.

Listen up dad, it gets better.

The nurse did not tell me you were dead. She put her skinny arms around my shoulder and lead me to you.

See dad, she didn’t tell me. I ran to you on that hospital bed, telling you I was there and it would be ok from now on. You just had a heart attack and now we could get your heart fixed and you would be ok and we would be a family again and I loved you, God how much I loved you.

See. You were dead and she didn’t tell me. I really didn’t know until I had stopped talking to you and looked at my mother. You left us there. Alone. You left us for dead. It gets better still dad, see the Grim Reaper may not have taken our bodies but when you died he took our souls.

I screamed my way out of the hospital and put three beautiful dents in my baby Honda. They called the police on me dad. The stupid nurse, shit she probably called, “some crazy girl in the parking lot kicking a white Honda and screaming”. Lucky for the cops they didn’t even touch me. I was ready for the gas chamber.

After that the nothingness set it, not the good kind of no-thing-ness but the empty silence of absence.

I got in a fight with the clerk at the hotel you and mom had been staying at. That son of a mother fucking, ignorant, bastard. When my mom had stated (still in shock mind you) that you had just past away he did not care and demanded that she pay extra to have her room unlocked because she failed to check in. “Sorry, I thought, her husband was busy dying and she had just lost her entire world” but of course, pay the extra damn fee.

I threatened to kill him. If I had had a gun dad, I would have. He told me it wasn’t his fault you had died and I agreed but when I screamed that he could me more compassionate to a widow he just stared ignorantly with a supreme smirk on his face. He didn’t understand. I wish he was in the grasp of death, even now.

Dad. You left us for dead. Now it is Christmas time and you are not here. Oh, you ruined Thanksgiving too. You just had to die Thanksgiving Eve so we eat pizza on Thanksgiving and cry.

I have made every attempt to end my life. Life has little value. Even my beautiful husband, special son and enduring mother cannot convince me to stay. I am coming for you. It was all I ever, really wanted. Just want my God damn daddy.

-Cass