Circus Phénomène.

Benefits, to having crohns.
It brought me a discomfort then
it brought me this song.

laa laa laaa laaa na na na la la la.

The sickness forces
you to take care of your body.

One of the many things people
take for granted is the durability
of human biology.

I have a hard time to digest, when I'm
rotten, watching healthy people
gorge themselves in fat and nicotine,
sweating out grease and tobacco
at each incline. And thinking. Christ.
What a waste. I aint talking about
no self-destructive clown, I'm talking
about slow death and I don't care.
I'm talking about waiting for delivery
and demise, about negativity and all
those people who have to work under it.
bang!

What does it take to appreciate life.
Why do we have to come close to death
to understand how lucky we are to be
alive.

I chalk it up to bad education. A lack
of interest. What makes a person seek
out the source, as opposed to those
who float through each day humping
dead dreams. Even worse, other peoples
dreams. Automation believers, as is written
out silly on the wall to my right.

Disease is not so much an unwelcome visitor
as a quotation around the mark.
It's an inward journey, an opportunity
to see what your truly made of.
It's like your a child again, where every
emotion is raw. Every decision is instant
and instinctive as you've not the energy
to think anything through.

It's an opportunity, a blessing. An
obvious trial. Like navigating through
societal rhythms with a head full of
hallucinogen.
You're guaranteed to garner a curious perspective.

I look around and appreciate the change.

Yes. I am in control.

While ill, I was apt to notice the animal
in people and I'm reminded of something my
father told me. " You will always know who
your friends are, when you ask for money."
(In that case dad, you and mom are my best friends)

The same goes for when your sick. People's
true nature comes to light. Whether it's the
R-Complex.

What the hell is that?

Well, it's the seat of aggression, ritual,
territoriality and social hierarchy. A place
in the brain which evolved just above the brain stem
hundreds of millions of years ago from our
reptilian ancestors. People, friends, will
take this opportunity, while your in a weakened
state, to pounce on you, right for the jugular.
It's weird, to be sure, but very true.
As I'm prone to notice these things, I'm always
curious if they do too. Or how they rationalize
their behavior.
People always know when your sick, whether they're
conscience of it or not. I suppose it depends on how
aware they are. How honest.
It's as if a sense of fear arises in them. A fear of death? How
can you be afraid of death. Could it be your
regrets haunt your memories, like a mouse in
the cookie cubbord.
I remember when I started getting a hard-line
of Remicade.
What's it like? I'll explain.

You sit in a lazyboy for two hours,
the drug dripping steadily into your veins.
When it's time for a morning movement, a morning
poo is good for you, you wheel the IV down the corridor
and into the toilet.
I started to notice how people were looking
at me, giving me queer looks,
or looking past me as we crossed paths.
Judging, always judging aren't we.
I found it so bizarre as I feel perfectly
healthy, in this persons eyes, I'm sick, and
diseased, a leper.
The lizard, and the leper.
It made me laugh. Still does. I'm laughing right now.

To balance the scale you've the limbic system,
or the mammalian brain. The next step in human
evolution. The limbic system is the major source
of our moods and emotions, of our concern and
care for the young. These are the people you
want to have around you. People who shower you with
love, and understanding. Patient people who
will take any bombardment of negativity you
can throw at them. They take it, absorb
it, rinse it out with compassion, and empathy.
These people will get you through the hard
days.
These are the ones that stick around.

And as your fight with disease progresses just
as many people exit your life as come into it.
I look at it like passing through a sieve,
filtering out all the corrosive energy
that got caught between the gears.
It's a cleansing.
No pun intended, but it fits don't it.
You come out of the illness free of
some of the burdons that bound you.
You have a new perspective on life,
you are reborn, without the help of
evangelical lizard linguistics.
Now your spinning around in awe and
can faintly hear Ogives, Ogive n° 1
whistling welcome on the morning breeze.
Cold comfort, a blatant solace.
You start to feel embarrassed.
You look back at past behavior
and it's like looking at a wild
tumultuous child ravaged by pain and
confusion. Fighting against everything,
abusing love, and setting fire to
anything with extra tinder.
This neglected savage who wears
your face pitted atop a skeletal
body seems alien to your reflected
person. And you find it's hard
to swallow.
You deny what your told, and find
a truth inside.
You've begun a new life, you have
been reawakened.

Pain has brought you out of misery, how
can it be?

Intense pain will wear away any exaggerated
self opinion, any loftiness, any pomposity,
any conceit, it will abort any misconceptions
you have about life.

Someone told me once, in a bashful abuse
of a friendship gone awry. "Your not the
center of the Universe, Man!"
I had understood that he, had just learned
this lesson, and that he had had a terrible
time adjusting to what he believed to be
a very hard truth.
Little did he know that there are an infinite
hierarchy of universes. That within a elementary
particle, an electron, if cracked open
would reveal itself to be an entire closed universe.
Inside would be an immense number of smaller particles.
Which are universes at the next level.
An infinite downward regression, universes within universes
within universes.
We're all the center of our own universe.
Watching galaxies wobble
with each pretensions swagger.

Sounds like automatic writing, without
the speed.

The point I'm trying to make folks is that
nothing is everything. Depending on your point
of view. I once heard a man dying of pancreatic
cancer, that's a bad one, say the doctor's only
gave him six months to live. He lived a year past
expectations stating to the reporter, "I bet
I'm the luckiest man you've ever met."
As he was in the rare position to appreciate
every second, every inanimate object, every
sound, color, mother and brother. He
was glowing through his pale skin, he
was free.
The same as I yearn to be.
You, me, we be free,

"freedom is just another word
for nothin' left to lose."
he said.
"get it while you can"
he said.
"because it aint gonna be there when you
wake up man."

la la na na na la la la

...gatsby~

The Silent Majority.

I didn't know where to begin.
The pain was so intense each
thought came out a scream. I was
clawing at my chest just to
see the pain on the outside.

All of the sudden the howls
stopped, and in a moment of
clarity I heard...

" Lay off the
dairy products,
Chill on the Citrus.

Crispy Clean
No Caffeine."

I laughed at the fact, that
I had finally found where
to begin.

What triggers an "episode", a "relapse",
a "red bowl repeat".

Maybe it's what I ate
or maybe,
it's this confounded stress.

All the doctors I've talked to tell
me it's out of my control, I'll
never know when it's going to hit.

I think they get mixed up with other
diseases and lack the memory to distinguish
specific characteristics in the encyclopedia
of human genetic dysfunctions.

The last conversation I had with my doc, I
was trying to explain to him my goals with
regards to eliminating medication from
my life. As was the case with my last run around
with Crohns.
I woke up one day to
an empty medicine cabinet and a great
surge of energy filled my mind, a sensation
which could only be described as freedom.

I want to feel that again.

I was explaining to the doc that I understand
what brought about this episode of Crohns.
It was the incredible amount of stress I
put myself through in travelling around the
globe.

I told him of crack-head Newfoundlanders,
M.J. and his crazy cars.
A diet of frozen pizzas, rum, and magnums
of red wine.
Automated mutants driving boats two hundred
meters above the water mark.
Frothing and spitting and following and
chewing, tormenting our spirit with
the audacity of a machine bent on bad voltage.

The doctors perplexed smirk could only
be described in old Italian, hand gestures and all.

I believe this disease feeds off of the extra-sensitive.
People with a tendency toward anger, a pot easily
over-filled with stress and paranoia.

I believe by being aware, you can say to yourself
whoa! (like keanu) slow down, take a step back,
your working to hard.
Your meant to enjoy life, here's a pill, it's
new, it's called a sense of humor.
It's guaranteed to get you through any sort of
wild rancor.

I told the doc about my idea with regards to this "new"
drug remicade. I told him how when
I begin the infusions, I was already feeling better from
the antibiotics.

I said, Doc! as the pain from the infections I had in
the dark hole south of my lower
back subsided, somewhat. I was able
to pull myself out of bed and simply walk around.
When I moved back into the city, I began to
walk more and more, until it seemed, progress
was made. With this new energy I was able
to cook. A strict diet of stir-frys, protein shakes,
bagels, and bananas.
Doc! I was able to think again.
Oxygen to the brain!

By the time I received my first injection
of remicade I was already idling at
sixty percent. Remicade gave me the placebo
effect, and sped me into total remission.

It's easy to say it was the drug that healed me.
It's strange that for most people it's easier to
believe it was the drug that caused my record
breaking recovery, rather then all the hard work
I put into it.

It scares me to think about the addiction
people have to all types of medications.
Whether it be illegal or legal, if you
were able to visualize everyone who indulged
in these "meds", more then half the population
would be walking around on crutches.

It's like you break your leg, the doctor
puts a cast on it, but neglects to tell
you to stay off the leg.

Isn't it a little weird that you go see
a gastroenterologist, he gives you a handful
of pills, but doesn't mention diet or exercise,
or a simple change in lifestyle.
He doesn't tell you, that in order for the
medication to work to it's full potential
your going to have to work with the drugs.

It gets me depressed.

Bringing me to my next point.

Depression and disease.

Your sick, you've finally accepted that
all this pain, blood, and fecal failure
is far from being normal. You need to
see a doctor. He gives you pills, tests,
probes. etc. You loose all your energy,
your quick tempered, and slowly all
your friends trickle away. Rather you
pushed them away, or they just couldn't
deal with your negativity anymore. They're
gone.

Your body shrinks, your work begins to
slide. All you can think about is getting
home, wrapping the covers around you
and retreating to that dark cave at the
back of your mind. Where no one can reach
you, where you're all alone.

Depression is hardly the word.
Your much further away then that.

Now you find yourself in the worst possible
place. Sick, alone, and scared. Or in my case
angry. Very angry.

You sit and wait, why aren't these drugs working
GODDAMMIT! It's all happening to slowly.

Over time your body begins to pull itself together.

You have the energy to think again.
The screaming has subsided.

You begin to look at your brain and your body
as two separated entities.

You realize that it wasn't until you got over
the hump of being depressed and self absorbed
that your rapid recovery went into the next gear.

You realize that by thinking and figuring things
out, you were able to work with your body, and
feed it what it was asking for.

You realize your body has a voice.
If you've the right receptiveness it
will tell you exactly what what to do.

You realize the band-aids helped, like crutches,
it kept you on your feet while the real work
was being done. Inside your brain.

If you think about it, if I have this right.
The drugs tell your brain what to do. Sort
of like rewiring the great mechanism.
I believe without a shadow of a doubt
that by figuring things out, by training
yourself to live a different way, curbing
your stress. Looking at foods that taste good
but hurt you, as disgusting,
you can accomplish exactly what the pills
are doing.
Hard work indeed, if you want to look at it that
way.
If you have lived with pain, you learn ways
of controlling it. Like a weight lifter who
learns to love the "pump", the point where
your muscle reaches it's peak and begins
to rumble in contest. It hurts but you
understand that only by pushing the muscle to the max, will
you achieve the best result. Or a marathon runner
who learns to fight past the screaming in his thighs to
win the race.
Anything is possible.

Is it a wonder that the Asian population has
a dramatically lower rate of cancer then westerners.
Is it because of diet, or philosophy, or a combination
of the two?

I'm finding that all the stigmas we were taught
to believe, are crumbling with age.
People are learning to trust only in themselves,
and are beginning to be suspicious of the money
handlers.
People are beginning to notice that all employees'
at banks wear ridiculously large watches, why,
when there is a clock on every wall.

Something to think about.

Imagine two hands. In one you have natural instinct,
the other you have control.

You are to combine the two in harmony. Ying and Yang.

If you have one to the extreme you become un-scientific.

The other extreme you become mechanical.

A mechanical man is no longer a human being.

Wearing watches in a watch factory is like wearing roller blades
on a road of wheels.

All this to say that the first step in overcoming disease, whatever
the disease may be. (Because folks,
diseases like people,come in many shapes, sizes,
colors, and forms.)
The first step is simply to accept.

Accept - Separate

Depression - Illness

Mind and Body.

Harmony.


I'll end this with a quote that has got me thinking in a new light.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel,
a comedy for those who think.

...gatsby~