March 31, 2006

I’ve had a heart attack and Cancer twice. The heart attack, appropriately, struck me after the Iowa-Iowa State football game in 2004. My first Cancer came in 1998, and again in 2000. So, if I open my eyes in the morning, and can get at an angle with the Earth, I rejoice because I’m still alive! Consequently, it’s unacceptable for me to plan too far ahead; and that has seeded my days with more value. Time has become a priority. I see things different now. The small moments take on greater essence. If anyone of my family takes the time to ‘make’ a gift themselves, and give it to me, that becomes the real gift, because they made it from their love. I can feel their hands in the gift; I can feel the love.

Actually, one-day-at-a-time is a good way to live; I wish I’d thought of it sooner! Maybe I wouldn’t have done some of the things that have delayed my awakening. Don’t get me wrong; I regret nothing I have done in my life; there is no value in that! If you regret what you’ve done, you regret that you lived, and life becomes penniless. There is no such thing as poverty in living.

Have you ever noticed that most rich people don’t seem to be all that happy. With all they have, and all they can get, there is still something missing. What’s missing is a natural connection to the Earth, and to other people. Now don’t get me wrong, not all rich people feel this way, I am certain. But wealth seems to cause people to lose their touch with others. Wealth causes people to defend their wealth. Watch little kids playing. Imagine yourself that happy. Nothing is lost; nothing is gained; it is pure, and perfect, happiness. Happiness is the profit of life.
I think that is why poor people are happy people. Because they have nothing, there is face value in whatever they do have. Sure, it’s a magic moment when a parent can give their child an I-pod for Christmas. Another gives their child a billfold (Bad analogy, Joe; you’re poor and you give your kid a billfold?). But it’s the same. It is not the gift that counts, it is the giving. “Tis better to, blah, blah, blah!
My life was turn, totally, in 1998. I guess I should start there.

When you hear the word “Cancer” spoken to you, it is devastating! Because my Cancer came from my Kidney, took a break and planted a tumor in the roof of my mouth, while on the way to my brain, my first thought was: “I’m dead!”. I was wrong. On June 8, 1998, two very good men removed the Kidney, and the tumor, and I was back to work in six weeks.
The second Cancer was of the Adrenal gland. This would be the test of my life. It took two surgeries, an 85-day stay in the hospital, and a death experience, to keep me from dying. I guess the doesn’t make sense does it? But, I came back from the death experience. When you die, you really do see your life.

When the epiphany came, it struck swift, and left that chilling conclusion that my life, having been led all these years in an abandon, may not mend, but very well may end at the conclusion of any second of my time.
I lay in a hospital bed, on December 12, 2000. I went into convulsions that closed my eyes to a dream of who I am. A storm appeared to my self. It raged through a valley of blood, swirling in a reddened river of sickness. (This was when I went into vomiting nothing! I was choking on my self. Within me, enzymes were attacking tissue, making me vomit, constantly). There was this messenger who came with me during the storm. They rode with me down my IV tube, and into the bloody river, in my veins. There were obstacles, always in our path. The sound of a huge machine droned throughout that night. I thought it was a saw that cut humans, and threw them into the river. (This is when I became “blue” and the hospital Nurses were flying about my room trying to bring me back). The last thing I remember was the digital clock on the wall. It was 1:11 am. Those nurses led me back to my life with the touch of their hands. I woke up the next day, clearly, remembering. It was 1:11 in the afternoon. The night that I died, was the moment of my birth. On the 85th day of my birth, I went home to my life, my wife, and Family.

Now, time lines every moment I have left in gold, and has left the color gray beautiful. It has made the rain beautiful; it has rendered the darkness full of the light; it has given new meaning, and reason, to the real tear.
Suddenly, I remembered things about my life that I shouldn’t have been able to remember. Things came back so clear that I wrote about them, and drew scenes from it. A lot of people have written about this. So, I will too.

In my past, my other self was never confident of a suspicious cloud, but always in dread of the next rain.
Now, I have come to know the rain, as a brother to my life. The rain bears a prospect of the Sun. As brother, it can sometimes be angry but, only in an optimism that will teach, and encourage the other. The rain floods the valley, and gives drink to the hill flower. Love mends that anger, through a goodness; love washes; it cleanses the day to come. So it is, the brother helps the brother to know.
I have come to know the Sun, as Sister to my life. The Sun, can burn; the Sun can heal; the Sun can grow all of those Roses, that smell of heaven, and thorn-stick with pain. It is the Sun without which, our lives would blend pale, in all objects. So it is, the Sister helps the brother to grow.

It is Nature, that comes to the mind, through an epiphany. This is the God that I have found.

Rest assured, with all cleansing, there must be some pain; but the balance is always goodness.
The sudden development of catastrophe is a minor intrusion. It brings with it, the view of reality, as it is.
My life, through tedium of work, became drone to the calls of the ‘average Joe’. I never dreamt of it being impeded, in any way, although the years passing, cumulative alone, should have forewarned of some inevitable calamity. I drifted from addiction, to addiction, dreamless of my end, in a dance, with the Pagan in me.

The arrival of truth, in the art of living, comes joined in the pain of what I have done with my life. That art is the rinse of my inherited self; it is the stew of my Father and Mother, and theirs also. Hopefully, with any kindness towards a future soup, my children will drift into the word, and keep us abreast of us. A messenger is needed for all of us to know their past bones. As life would have it, it is I who have been called to be my messenger. (Go figure that!). Therefore, it was only then, in a bed’s capricious grave, that I sought to grow. It was only then, after my scandalous ride through epiphany, that I felt something that I wanted to give to the effort of this so-called, family gruel.

I no longer pass off love and kindness as mere anointments of life’s phoney inclusion. Whether honest, or vain, love and kindness are, in themselves still, love and kindness. The God has returned to me. A faith in life will always be, from this time forward, a shining within every look of my, increasingly, tired eye. I dread against the touch that measures time without the feeling of life rumbling in its self. If I stop growing, I lose its movement. Without the embrace of loving kindness, eventual in its often mysterious pain, I can not grow. Steadfast, in its reverent meaning, relentless in its, sometimes exasperating, soul; without that God that has been lent to me, I can not grow. In a God, I know this will be the only source of my knowledge.

It is at the moment of ending that I begin. Up until this very time, I have been a mere child, wandering. I seek remembrances of a past life; the life of the Joe-child; the life in a Family, torn by the boast of war but sealed, by the Mother, in love and kindness. My previous life was dreamed, that I was to finally become my real self; the work to succeed; the success of the work, without a thought to who I was. Until, through the pain of an end, I become me.
I now live in this new skin. It has opened my pain-weary eye and, exposed my soul to a God. It is hoped that my final fault will not be in the way I came to die; but in the way I finally came to live. With that I pray:

God of my life, thank you for allowing me into another day.
I do not ask for my life; I ask only that my life I have left to live
be filled with kindness and respect for others,
and that I live each day as my last.
Please look upon my family and wonderful friends with kindness and love.
Let here be peace in the world, especially, for the children.
Let all that I know be all that I give.
Please know that I speak in peace to all.

To all those fighting survivors of Cancer, I love you. Hold on to the love in your lives. It serves well, the challenge in every day. Every new day you live, offers the chance to keep living. Pain teaches. Without suffering, we wouldn’t know the glory in the common moment. It makes us stop ‘the grind’, and brings us to our awakening. So, awaken! See the bad as good; see the good as infinite. Find your faith. I believe in belief; I believe in faith. The God in your life, is within you. With this, we are never alone. Have faith in your own self. You are a survivor! As survivors, our God has lent us the great opportunity to be totally free of any pretension. We are the lucky ones; we have come to know the positive faith of life, in life. Live on!

Joseph Coleman

Charlie’s way.

Evolution, sweet evolution! We have this extreme, religious debate going on, in my peaceful, little town, as to whether all living beings on Earth came about by the process of macro/micro evolution; or did they come about through the work of some creative genius, of sorts, who made them all in seven days (seven days!!?), then He rested. And, that this creative-genius made a woman out of a man’s rib. It makes me want to finger the bowl of my pipe, look up at the stars, and ponder! I mean, if you believe that God, the creator of all this is, made a woman out of a man’s rib, isn’t that one species evolving into another? For you intelligent designers, it’s kind of like, walking through your own sneeze? They had to remove a rib of mine, in a surgery once. I really don’t think anyone, genius or not, could have made a woman out of that! It didn’t have enough curves, for one thing. I believe in a Creator, or Great Spirit, much like the Indian Nation does. In that case, the Creator is Nature, the Mother of all. I believe in belief; I believe in faith. I have my God; you have yours and, you are right in your belief because...you believe it! I am right also.
I don’t care what they teach in the schools. It would be nice if graduates could read, and write. I believe in evolution, or evilution, depending on which side of the rib you’re on. We all know Charlie’s theory was, “survival-of-the-fittest” thinking. If you can’t change, and adapt to your environment, as the White Sox announcer’s say: “you gone!”. I believe one species can turn into another. As proof, I give my personal favorite non-human being, the Duck-bill platypus!
So now, I take you to the ‘swamp’. There, in the Swamp Belly Bar, on a cool, quiet night, sit two lonesome beings, a Duck, and a Beaver. Now, Chuck the Beaver has had a hard day at the dam, and he dropped in to hoist a few brewskies. Daphny Duck, well she’s just sitting there at the bar, alone. They strike up a conversation. You know how these things happen; some quiet music, two strangers alone in the night; they have a few drinks and, they dance a little gazing into each others eyes. The next thing you know, they’re at Chuck’s humble dam, rolling around in the sticks! Hey, the greatest of these is love, baby! And speaking of babies, here’s where it gets a little more sticky (a pun).
Momma and Papa Beaver come down to get their first view of little grand Beaver. Momma Beaver says:
“Wilbur, don’t you think that nose is awfully big?” Papa Beaver whistles:
“I’ll be dammed Ethel, you’re right and, the boy’s got webbed feet! Why, he can’t build no dam with them darn things!” The two Moon-eyed lovers, Chuck and Daphny, look at each other with a kind of, “I knew they would say that”, look.
Meanwhils, along come the Ducks, Papa Dicky, and Momma Doris. Now Doris, immediately, senses something is very wrong: “Oh my, he’s awful fat for a Duck, isn’t he?”. Papa drops his pipe: “That has got to be the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen!” Daphny begins to cry:
”But Daddy, you don’t understand; I love Chuckie!” Daphny screams. Papa Duck points to the baby:
“What the heck is that on the end of the boy’s butt? Is that a board, ‘er what?”. He turns to his tear-eyed daughter and says: “How’s this here boy gonna get off the ground with all that fat, and no wings? I ain’t a’takin’ that boy south with me! Why, there liable to shoot us down there!”.
Momma and Papa Duck leave the swamp in a flurry of flapping wings. And, Daddy and Mother Beaver leave the dam in a huff of Beaveresque fury! Our two star-crossed creatures look down upon their love-child. Daphny says:
“Our sweet little Platty. Chuckie says:
"I think I’ll name him Charles.” The Platypus family strike out on their own, reviled by their families, and into the annals of evolution.
So, if you believe that a God made all of this in seven days, you probably believe that Beavers can fly! You see, sometimes you just have to let Nature take her course.

Joe Coleman @ zapatashorse.com

On Abortion: Compassion, for Christ's sake!

Before I start this rant, let me say this first. I'll never have an abortion. If I do, you'll see me on the six o'clock news. Men shouldn't even have a say in abortion. We should just keep our zippers up and shut our mouths.
But I'm going to have my say anyway!

I don’t believe in abortion. Hey, no one...nobody... BELIEVES in abortion. Not even those who have one. Everyone...every single one...is pro-life!

To me, these people, the so-called ‘right to lifers’, are the people with no conscience, as if they are the only ones who believe in LIFE. They kill a doctor for performing a LEGAL practice. They condone murder! They believe that Jim Kopp, who killed a doctor for performing an abortion, was right in committing murder. In the words of one of their protest posters: “Kopp popped a doc”, and good for him. The angriest zealots were men! Go figure that! What the hell do they know about becoming pregnant, and in trouble? What do they know about not wanting to carry a baby through difficulty? And, what the hell do Priests know about ANYTHING involving sex, or sexual love, or the drive that causes this. They’re celibate, for Christ’s sake! What do they know about anything, period, except the Bible, and the Virgin Mary?

I am a man. So, I am not going to practice abstinence from sex. Hell, there is no consequence, for me, in that! And, abstinence sure as hell isn’t any fun! Of course, that is under the mistaken impression that I don’t have a conscience. It’s also pretty damn hard for a 63 year old Cancer survivor to ‘get it up’ or, let alone, perform the proper act. But I remember a time when I was hustling for ‘poontang’ and wouldn’t think of any thing like abstinence and, given my hoodlum priorities in those days, neither did the girls. I didn’t prowl the goody-goodies. Damn, I was an ornery little fart!

Of course, now the girls have a variety of birth control devices but, most of the people raising holy hell about abortions, are the same people who don’t believe in that either! They assail family planning rights along with the abortion clinics. Isn’t it considered libelous if someone calls an in-trouble girl, or woman, a “murderer” when they are trying to do something that is, constitutionally, legal? She’s having enough trouble in her life without a bunch of crazed idiots telling her what to do. Let those she loves help her decide. They’re the only ones who care about her, anyway. These crackpot anti-abortion people could care less about her difficulties. It is the most agonizing decision of her life! Far be it from anyone else to deny her the right to relieve herself of the obligation of carrying it.

To me, these people, the so-called ‘right to lifers’, are the people with no conscience, as if they are the only ones who believe in LIFE. They kill a doctor for performing a LEGAL practice. They condone murder! They believe that Jim Kopp, who killed a doctor for performing an abortion, was right in committing murder. In the words of one of their protest posters: “Kopp popped a doc”, and good for him. The angriest zealots were men! Go figure that! What the hell do they know about becoming pregnant, and in trouble? What do they know about not wanting to carry a baby through difficulty? And, what the hell do Priests know about ANYTHING involving sex, or sexual love, or the drive that causes this. What do they know about anything, period, except the Bible, and the Virgin Mary?

I’m going to say something precarious because, I’m not certain if I’m right or wrong. I mean, I’m a guy, and guys shouldn’t really have ANYTHING to say on abortion. Until a child is fully formed, I believe it should be considered a part of the potential Mother’s body, just like any other body part. This is a crass way of looking at it to me, which is reason for my doubt. I may be wrong, but I certainly don’t think of it a MURDER if she wants to have it taken, before it forms fully. She’s having enough trouble in her life without a bunch of crazed idiots telling her what to do. Let those she loves help her decide. They’re the only ones who care about her, anyway. These crackpot anti-abortion people could care less about her difficulties. It is the most agonizing decision of her life! Far be it from anyone else to deny her the right to relieve herself of the obligation of carrying it.

Conception? Get real! Anyone who thinks a human life is formed at the moment of conception, is surely delusional (I think?). Two things happen when the moment of conception occur. And, this is just from my mere ex-hoodlum perspective. In an unmarried setting, and in some married settings, the boy, or man, is having his greatest moment of triumphant Hallelujah! He can feed the world with his feeling, and probably, so is the girl or woman! She’s having enough trouble in her life without a bunch of crazed idiots telling her what to do. Let those she loves help her decide. They’re the only ones who care about her, anyway. These crackpot anti-abortion people could care less about her difficulties. It is the most agonizing decision of her life! Far be it from anyone else to deny her the right to relieve herself of the obligation of carrying it.

I hate the thought of some young girl, or woman, having to decide whether or not to terminate a coming birth. She has been put upon the bridge, in the silence of her nights, worrying and despondent, about her circumstance. She is this innocent child, who has made a human mistake. She is the one in trouble and, most very likely, she is very all alone. Who is the innocent victim?
She goes to a clinic, and I am very in favor of counseling, and parental consent. She decides to have an abortion, for whatever reasons. The doctor who, performs the abortion is killed for that–say, by some unknownn, and unconcerned killer, named Jim Kopp. He represents the anti-abortion crowd of Biblical hypocrites. He acts in their name! You cannot put it any other way!

Who is the victim–the legal doctor who performed the abortion; or the unborn child who hasn’t breathed real air yet? They are both innocent! And killing one does not absolve the other. These sanctimonious people who seek to vent their radicalism at abortion clinics are no better than any other murderer. They believe in the taking of an innocent life, be it unborn, or be it walking, and breathing in the open air, with all the rights of any other human being. I don’t care how they feel about the doctors being murderers; that is their own thought and, I say, let them have it! But, they are guilty of murder, when these abortion clinic protesters preach their belief in favor of it! Let hem honor the constitutional law, and be silent, and quit killing innocent people for performing legal abortions! Go home and take care of your own lives! In the words of many great humans, “mind your own damn business!” But, they can’t mind their own business. They are obsessed zealots, who believe they can take “an eye for an eye”. They can JUDGE! The can be God; and they are executioners!
They murdered an innocent person in the name of life? Isn’t that what we are currently, supposedly, fighting a global war over? It is blatant terrorism and, I believe that really IS against the law now!
“Hunt the bastard down, and kill them!” is that their epithet? Who do these people think they are?
Their solution is abstinence! That isn’t the way the world works–it never has been since time began. The days of woman sucking it up, and taking their fornical responsibilities is over, thank goodness! We are now enlightened by history’s mysteries.

Myth: “There are people waiting to adopt” (the child that is aborted). Put an ad in the paper. Say you have a pregnancy. If someone wants to adopt your child, let them pay the bills while you are pregnant, pay for the birth, pay your total subsistence, and see how many people come forward.
How many of these wonderful humans will take that up? My thought is, there will not be many.

Myth: Abstinence–like the world is going to accept that fallacy. Or, to get in my quota of puns, that phallacy symbol.
Hey, do I sound angry. I’d better take some medications or my secret admirer (Cancer) will jump up and get me! Wouldn’t you wonderful folks protesting in front of abortion clinics just love that? I’ll be sure and let you know if it does!

I don’t know a single person on Earth who isn’t pro life. Get that out of this! All the woman living, in my life, wouldn’t even think of it as a solution to anything!

But, there was one woman in my life, who did have an abortion. She was my Mother. My Father was killed on Iwo Jima, in WWII. She had men friends but, none that were prepared to take on the responsibility of five kids. Her daughter, my sister, was elected homecoming queen at high school; like I said, she had five children already, and we had a great deal of trouble just surviving. She stressed about a scandal; in those days, it WAS a scandal. She didn’t want to affect both of her daughter’s shining moment. She thought that we, her children, would think less of her if she had this child. With some help from some very good friends, she had an abortion. Years later, she still tormented over it. It was the most painful moment in her life, physically (they were not legal then), and mentally. The years healed, and she became her humorous, and happy, self again. She told me years later that she would never have had it, had it not been for the upsetting scandal it would have raised at a critical moment in her daughter’s lives. She would have carried it and, we would have been even poorer. We would also have had another little brother or sister, to love. The decision she made was, totally, unselfish. She gave up herself for us. Being a man, I can never know what she went through. I am crying for her now, at this moment, as I write this. God, I never saw this coming! Mother I hope you aren’t angry with me. I’m an old man now, needing my medications but, I’m going to get through this first! I have never respected one woman more, besides my own wife and sisters, for this unselfish act on behalf of us. Nothing pains me more today than her pain at that time. Second, is the thought that I would no longer have been “the baby of the family” anymore. Okay, where’s my medicine, damn it! Let’s get real.

J. Coleman 3-4-2006

I am a political hack. I become quite the junkie during an election year! This blog will be my daily 'fix'. This is an election year.
Just so you know, I am an independent--that's the verb, not the noun. It is my notion that in America, we have no choice! The two arrogant, money-grubbing political parties scrounge up all the corporate money and bust horns every four years. Well, hotchy-dah, that sucks!

I want somebody else; maybe two or three more, up on that stage to speak to us. Where are they? They are not allowed on the stage with the 'big two'! Perot ended that. Now the 'big two' are running scared of anyone who might be the least bit honest about the way things are. I may sometimes sound like a Democrat, because I'm liberal. I may sometimes sound like a republican because I like McCain. But, make no mistake, I am independent as hell! So, let's let that slider fly and see who can hit that baby!

1: Implied consent

When you see a thing happen around you that is wrong, if you don’t take action to stop it, you are giving it your own ‘implied consent’.

Something is wrong–very wrong. I think our government is doing a thing that is immoral, in my judgement. When you reject, an “assumed consent due to the absence of protest”, you then ‘redress’ your government, through protest. But, if you protest, you may go to jail, thereby becoming the political prisoner of your government. You have now become what you are protesting against. It is up to your countrymen to find, feel, know, and reject, through their own redress, that very same “implied consent”!

What is, currently, happening in my country is the most basic, egregious denial of the human reasons for this country's rising from the ashes of British rule, 230 years ago. We became a great nation because of our freedom to express our disdain for what our government might do in our name or, even worse, in the name of humanity! We rose to leadership because of our enate belief in the dignity, and equality, of men (men, being the generic expression for ALL). Granted, we haven’t always followed that diamond pursuit, but we have set the example for the world. We have become the role model for a generous kindness to others that has been, in my lifetime, the basic principle of goodness to humankind. I don’t claim any ground that I don’t give to any other. I am a citizen–a simple citizen–a soldier of the sunshine. To see my nation claim some higher purpose, above another’s religion, their culture, another’s land, their belief, is reprehensible!

We got into this war draped in the cloth of a noble cause. We sought to free a people from a despot, who tortured, killed, and denied basic human rights to his own people. Now, it is with great regret, that we are in dangering our moral selves! It is we who deny another people their basic right to live their own way; it is we who have become the imprisoned; it is we who torture, kill, deprive these good people their right to walk their streets in security. Even under the foot of the despot, most were able to walk their own streets, without being arrested, tortured, wounded, or killed. No one absolves the despot from what he does; no one should. No one is friend to the “brutal dictator”; that doesn’t mean we have to become him!

What we are doing to another country is, morally, wrong, and it is time to leave! We rose up against an empire that sought to take our taxes from us in order to line their purse with our meager wealth. Our rise against England sent the positive message of its day, that people could be free from tyranny! What happened in Boston is now happening in Baghdad.

I don’t want to oppose my government; it is my government that opposes all I believe us to be, in this war. I saw, and heard, an Iraqi citizen express it best: “Thank you for getting rid of Saddam–NOW LEAVE US!” It is time. It is time to leave this noble, but bungled, mission. There is no military strategy here. That leads me to believe there never was. If we did this for pure politics, or greed, then it is time for ‘the people’ to rise up against this.

I am a Veteran, and yes, I can support my brothers and sisters and be against the war. Anyone who thinks I can’t isn’t thinking like an American. I am not against the Soldier; I am against this foul thing our government now does! This government sends our daughters and sons to do a thing that has become, morally, wrong. We have placed them in the same position I was in while stationed in Korea. When you drag a man’s duty to the point where he becomes a latent bigot, he becomes an anti-soldier of a thing that was once right!

I was in Korea in 1967-68. I heard all the jokes about ‘slants’, ‘gooks’, and ‘Joe chinks’. I heard, and saw, the prejudice against the people we were supposed to be helping. A man would carry an A-frame full of mud to the top of a mountain to build his Rice Paddy on its side. To me, it was a beautiful expression of work. To throw rocks at him, I think, was an indignity beyond reproach. I saw it; I knew it; I was accomplice to it. I gave it my ‘implied consent’ by not objecting. The only thing different now are the names: ‘sand niggers’, ‘towel-heads’, ‘hajis’. It’s funny how the negative name, Hajis, is expressed. A Haji is the ultimate Muslim, who has taken the pilgrimage to Mecca. He has done the one great thing that all Muslims seek to do, at least once, in their lifetime. We have taken a noble thing, and turned it to something negative. It is time to leave.

My heart goes out to the Soldier who sits, in goodness, thinking he is doing this act of liberation. That is what we are supposed to be about!

We have rid the world of Saddam–NOW LEAVE THEM! Leave them to do what they have done so many times before. It was not Haliburton that built those beautiful buildings! It was not George Bush who created that culture! It was Iraq spawned the great mathematicians; it was from the Iraqi people that came the great engineers; it was from Allah that came this great culture. How dare we think we have this better way!

To me, America is the greatest nation ever! To them, Iraq is that greatest nation. For God’s sake, let them have it!

I, hereby, withdraw my implied consent!

J. Coleman 3-5-2006