Random Thoughts While Sitting in the Wrong Office and Waiting for the Ass Cam

I had stumbled into the office for advanced pain management somehow, mainly because i forgot to bring my handy instruction sheet telling me where the surgery center was but it being a dual office they figured i was for the other window and told me to sit down and wait. Needless to say i could only grin at my bumbling because as i attempt to unlearn all i know i've realized that bumbling isn't a bad way to get through the day. It's a damn bit more interesting than having a plan but in this day and age it seems you must have a plan. So there i sat, thinking about the rise and fall of my hunger, this being Thursday and not having eaten since Tuesday all in the name of science and ass cams. I quietly watched the patients of the advanced pain management office. Many of them were elderly or infirm, i realized these pain meds, what i could only imagine were a delicious concoction of opiates and Valium and Xanax, were meant to soften the blow of the daily pain and an impending death. Of course i wondered if any had tried that wonderful herb and i also understand that at certain points even the most concentrated of extracts might not do the trick but i also know that either will the heftiest dose of opiates. That both would deliver relief but one would offer a peaceful and cognizant way out while the other would offer a crippling stupor. The difference i surmise is dignity and one of problems of this modern medicine is they are not much interested in dignity particularly when it comes to checking out.

Strangely that night i came home and was reading more Alan Watts who happened to touch on this very subject. The fact that we lie to grandma as she lay dying, telling her she'll get better and that things will be okay. Why? we both asked. If there is one thing (of the many) i truly loved and admired about Pops was that he wanted to die with dignity. He wasn't interested in quantity but in quality. He didn't want to take up space if he couldn't live the way he wanted and knowing that he wasn't going to be able to was perfectly fine with death. And so later that day as i lay in my gown i was grinning like the idiot. The last time i had been in any sort of medical facility i was looking at my father in his gown with his hospital footies and there i lay in my gown and hospital footies as they read off the same first and last name but different birth date and wheeled me away for the ass cam. Needless to say the cocktail of dope they gave me was fantastic and i was in and out faster than many local fast food drive-thru's.

Robert Anton Wilson often talks of the patterns or coincidences that occur every day. The day before in one of our more civil conversations i was talking to the Breadwinner about medical care and medicine and death. It was about how utterly lacking our country mainly is in this area, spurred by something Ms. Daisy wrote and how through my study of Watts, Wilson, McKenna etal that i was convinced that every disease and illness could be cured by something already on the planet. Not to say those substances once found wouldn't need a little tweaking but that while science is a marvelous thing it sometimes looks in the wrong places and goes back to another of Watts ideas of survival and profit. Big Pharma has no interest in pursuing ideas in holistic or natural medicine mainly because it cuts into the bottom line. Cannabis is the poster child for that and until they see where the shareholders can be happy they don't give a fuck about your health, happiness, or life. Unless of course they can keep you alive on a combination of chemicals that in a nutshell could cause: nausea, diarrhea, constipation, heart attack, internal bleeding, elephantitus of the nuts and whatever else you want to toss out.

So what happens when the cure is worse than the disease? Through the magic of religion the western world has stigmatized death as something to be shunned and avoided and sure we all want to live but what happens when the terms living and existing can only be loosely applied? I've watched people live in fear of death when what they should be doing is embracing it as the natural progression of life. As Neil deGrasse Tyson said one day, if we could all live forever what would ever get done? in short nothing, hence why we should take advantage of the days we have which in turn leads back to Watts and how when we get sucked into the game of profit and survival we lose sight of what actually is important. And no that's not to say we should just all chuck our responsibility to the wind and have orgies and get wasted but what it does mean is when we get wrapped up into the arbitrary-ness of things we forget what matters as life devolves into a struggle when it should really be a game, with joy, with pain, with things that have no tangible way to accumulate but just are. The fact the modern human needs to be in control is our greatest weakness and so we attempt to control the uncontrollable when we should really be sitting back and enjoying the ride...

The coincidence, to go back to Wilson, was that this procedure is something many people get and bitch and moan about and maybe what i may have learned is to sit back and not worry. Not in the shit your pants sort of way which the prepping for can easily make you do but in the relax and don't worry kind of way. The doc gave me a funny look when he told me the worst part was the prep and i told him i didn't think it was that bad. Sure i got hungry but that goes away and while some might be put off by the incessant trips to the can for anyone who has ever had an intimate knowledge of cheap malt liquor it was pretty much like the morning after, except probably less painful. Another afternoon come and gone, i'd say i'm looking forward to the next one but i don't like to get too far ahead anymore, i'm just looking forward to the now.