the vomiting tumor:
An ageless fable in 3 acts
There comes a time when, at long last, we must all look at our personal morality straight in its bloodshot eyes and make a fair attempt at understanding our own “body politic”. Inside each of us a war is raging, our bodies rebel against us with relentless fortitude. Our flesh can poison our blood, a trick it uses with unabashed frivolity. Flesh is just meat, and like any meat, our flesh is slowly rotting away. For your consideration:
Every once in a while our flesh gets ancy and attempts to overthrow the governing forces of our biology. Plague, pox, scarlet fever, these were the tools of our archaic flesh until humanity’s beloved, (and in some circles, much maligned), “science” found a way to make those tools of our rioting flesh obsolete. Cancer, Aids; these are the primary tools of today’s flesh, a flesh about town, our modern 21st century, commercially appealing meat. And what style our flesh fights back with. Panache and grace are of course just a few of the words undoubtedly popping into your mind as you read about cancer and aids patients. What outstanding levels of showmanship our flesh has achieved. Dysentery is an hors d’oeuvre devoured in spectacularly decadent and slovenly grace. For all intents and purposes these simple tools were enough fun for the meat on our bones, but being the tempestuous and wickedly playful organism that it is, one day it decided more = better. And so flesh had an immense collective discussion on how they could improve cancer (they decided to start with cancer simply because, as is a well known fact, flesh is dyslexic and it thought it was going in alphabetical order.)
In any event, flesh had gathered together with the intent of developing a new technique that would bring us (the collective “us”) down. You might ask, “Ok, that’s all well and good, but if flesh develops a potentially deadly disease to bring ‘us’ down isn’t it also just killing itself off?” Well, you smarmy little bastard you, how dare you question the rationale of this story… but since you did, I guess I’m somewhat obligated as storyteller to clear this matter up. You see that is precisely what flesh has always wanted. They (and they just being us in our most basic form) have always held the entire human race in utmost contempt, you see they are quite aware that they are in effect killing themselves off. However, they are willing to martyr themselves to the greater good. Just think: flesh has been around for a long, long time and it’s managed to see Homo Sapiens run the entire course thus far. That means it has seen just how evil we humans really are. It is startlingly familiar with the absolute black that covers the interior of our souls. It’s misanthropy is perfect, honed to a razor sharp edge and complete. It has lived through ancient civilizations with their cannibalism and slavery, witnessed the Crusades, the Inquisitions, it knew Hitler and Stalin, Pol-Pot and Mussolini, it’s seen Dr. Phil and Jerry Falwell on satellite and is completely convinced of what it must do. It has been in the front aisle the entire time, privy to every horrid act we’ve ever committed, and believe me, it has the statistical paperwork to prove it, the bad far outweighs the good. So now think back to a few sentences ago when I told you it was ready to martyr itself to the greater good, now are you beginning to see that perhaps it is on the right track? Flesh has been able to achieve some sort of distance from it’s emotions, the Holy Grail of enlightenment. It is capable of divorcing itself from the base instinct of self-preservation and it is the stronger organism for it. Our inflated sense of self worth will be our downfall. Flesh knows what we really are and it knows that it is in their hands alone to stop us once and for all.
So they try… new strains, new variations pop up every other day. Modern medicine keeps pumping out the drugs that slow things down, stave things off, so flesh must continually try and find loopholes. Flesh does of course, find loopholes that is, it just never manages to find one significant enough. It wants things to happen on a grand scale, at a brisk pace, but all it can ever seem to slip through the firewall of science are the long, drawn out solitary cases. True; you think of how many of these cases there are all over the world at any given time and you start to think flesh is doing an admirable job…we are our own harshest critics so the saying goes, and flesh is no exception to this rule. Flesh is just never satisfied; it has the work ethic of a Japanese man on methanphetamines. Flesh feels great dishonor in the fact that it has, as of yet, been unable to achieve the truly high numbers it shoots for. Imagine a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross… now imagine a tumor, no, a mass of tumors all sitting at the round table of a conference room vomiting on themselves and each other… now you’re starting to get the appropriation. Are you significantly frightened? You should be able to taste the bile at the back of your throats now. So flesh slaves on, in bondage to its’ own ambition, in pursuit of the coup de resistance. Mankind waits, we, with our usual pompous disregard, blinded by our own trivialities, asleep to the great and secret show. The seeds are being sown, the gears of our demise are in motion and we sleepwalk through the signs. We deserve what we will receive, as surely as flesh works, diligent and methodical, complete in its’ convictions. They are us, we are ending. Hallelujah…
