Episode Fourteen: PETA relax. No animals living or dead harmed on my behalf

Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Fourteen: PETA relax. No animals living or dead harmed on my behalf

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) true believers, relax. No animals living or dead were harmed on my behalf before, during or after my cardiac surgery. I'm not sure if there is a certification for "animal free" surgical procedures. But if so I'd pass all animal suffering tests with flying colors, like old times passing exams at my high school.


See I was good, sickeningly good, at taking exams in high school. More than a few types desired to cheat off my papers. Freak hippie chicks, not just dumb jocks. Hmm, dumb jocks - there I go, redundant again. Not so lucky at cards or at love was I mind you but the very floors in high school classrooms seemed to roll good exam grades over into my corner.


Yeah, the classroom floors must have been canted in my favor grade wise, in unseen hyper space dimensions. I'd say it was the 5th, 6th, and 7th dimensions jacked in my favor. Maybe more. Stephen Hawking says reality in toto might be as many as 11 dimensions in all. Our only big catch (and it's a big one, natch) is how curled up tiny would be the dimensions past # 4. The fourth dimension (time) is familiar and is most people's big worry. The time dimension and how we might be running short on what's in it is a big concern to most. Out of time is eventual, since time leaks out of the 4th but not back into it.


Yep, no reverse tidal flow on time as far as we know. Those who don't worry enough about time pass it like water. Those who fret to excess over time's one way flow just burn a lot of it up with nothing to show for the worry. Time? Not a dimension useful for controlling outcomes if put into the hands of the apathetic or anxious. Other dimensions work better for them than #4 time.


Got to be a better middle course way to deal with time besides ignorance or worry. But what higher dimension that path lies in, I dunno. Could be inside the 10th or 11th dimensions.


Usually I'd take the trouble to find out which dimension that is, before I wrote this, so's I can tell you. But after my divorce I don't get out much to travel, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, the stellar exam outcomes they rolled my way, maybe across the floor via these unseen higher dimensions. Whichever were the dimensional ones that affected exam grades. On tests for spelling, history, literature - never had much to worry about. Not to worry about like time, running out of time, anyway.

One might wish (as I did) that those tiny curled up higher dimensions past the golden #4 of time could have distilled something in high school more like rollicking good fun, versus just good grades. Yeah, something that works better like how coiled copper pipes do when they trickle out drops of moonshine. Or lines of sonnets, how they work to seep into pens of poets, scratching out lines that punch the gut and send the mind of writer and reader alike reeling.


What plumbing in what unseen dimension does those things I dunno, but I gotta find what dimension to go to, to get me some of that. How do I buy, where do I sign?


Just time trickled out of dimension # 4. Maybe choice or fate factored more in the outcomes of grades, love and luck at cards. But my twist to the old nature/nurture, fate/choice dilemma that I hope to market for profit is: Blame the unseen curled up dimensions of reality for distilling all your bad luck. Point fingers at action behind the curtained stage of the seen reality. Leap beyond the limiting restrictions of causality and personal responsibility. Don't blame yourself for anything. Blame the unseen dimensions.

In regards to PETA's animal suffering test, that old Unseen Dimensional mojo from HS was in effect, sputtering pennies from heaven down on me. There was no need to take parts for transplant from the innocent animals to keep me ticking. My chest crack to repair an aortic aneurysm involved no borrowed flesh. Not even a vein from my own leg had to change places.

Much like elections in Chicago and dead Texans voting in alphabetical order for Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, the fix was in and the fix was all artificial. Two inches of arterial real estate - all replaced by dacron tubing.

When your personalized Medical Prophecy of Deadly Aortic Diameters is 99.9 percent realized, you get medical religion and act pronto to get medically righteous. Not that in this newly gotten religion any repentance was needed.


Moral dilemmas about child labor practices, or ecologically destructive packaging need apply at the back door of this experience. And no repentance - this cardiac gift of the gods was not caused by what I did/didn't eat, smoke, shoot, sip or snort. So as Teddy Roosevelt might put it, it was merely time to "Get action". Some surgical action.

Honestly I'd have to force this to be a moral issue for me. Unless I want to unbless myself by subscribing to theologies of Original Sin, it's time to move on.


To anybody waking up in a bathtub of ice sans a kidney, a vein or a chunk of artery I say - hey, it wasn't me. Go over to the Unseen Higher Dimensions to round up your usual suspects.


Yours Truly and Ridiculous,
From Across Cardiac County Line Road

James Sullivan