On The Eve of My Cancer Lobectomy - Again

Things are moving right along, my lung lobectomy is tomorrow. If it is successful, I take two steps forward, if not, I try something else.  All signs are pointing good.  On my last update I told you about birds, a favorite sign of mine.  And it took awhile, but yesterday a few returned.  After I cut back the tropical forest, and then changed out the feed, a few returned.  Not the cluster that use to feed, but enough to know that that part of my life is back in balance with the universe. Like I said, Birds stop coming, I get cancer, they return... you do the math. 

Before I go any further, I've seen comments about my reading signs in everything, like it's not practical, or it's superstitious.  I disagree, for one, according to ancient sanskrit text, during his six years of austerity, the Buddha had reached a point where he thought he might turn around and stop seeking enlightenment, and so he placed a golden alms bow in a river and said to the universe, "...if I am to go on and reach enlightenment, let this bowl go upstream, against the current, if not, let it simple float downstream." Of course the the bowl goes upstream, against the current, and Siddhartha Gautama becomes enlightened, or as we Nirhiren Buddhist know, became enlightened again for the up-tenth time as he had done numerous times before -- according to the Lotus Sutra, that is, the most important sutra of them all in my humble opinion -wink, wink.  But that's a conversation for another time. 

All religions have signs given by their god/gods, in Matthew 2:2 God places a star in the the sky as a sign to the wise men looking for the birth of a savior -- of course, the wise men are actually the Magi which represent the essential stages of our inner transformation on the spiritual path, none-the-less, they were given a sign, and had not they followed it....

Emperor Constantine the Great saw a luminous cross of light in the sky while marching his troops, and took it as a sign from the Christian War God to go kick ass and take names for his new found faith. 

Simply stated: signs are there for us if we choose to see them.  So as they say in Vegas, deal with it... or is it deal the cards(?) All the same. 

So the sign I yesterday was a kingfisher bird.  The first one I've ever seen in my life.  Actually, I thought it was a deformed bluejay that might have escaped from Chernobyl - for you young ones out there that's a reference to the Russian nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986 which evacuate a whole city with parts still inhabitable today.  But this was no nuclear mutant bird, this was the kingfisher bird with its long beak, and he/she/or its nonbinary self was staring right at me. I mean given me the look like, "what took you so long with the food?"  It wasn't moving, and so I went to get a camera, but it was gone.  If you remember with my last post and the Avian Oracles, the kingfisher was a sign of peace and prosperity.  So I'll take that as a positive sign. 

Yes, tomorrow is the same surgery I had five-years ago when I first had lung cancer.  I know the routine, it's difficult, excruciating pain to inhale, but they make you.  Excruciating pain to walk, but they make you. But it's worth it, and I've never been happier to endure the suffering.  For I am committed to being here for my family, friends, and you, both of you - hi mom. 

That's it for today, here's the shower kit I have titled "Ready to Prep," for my surgery.  And I learned last time to read the instructions.  For this stuff is bad on your head and private parts down there, I mean, wow, especially down there. Not again, not me. 

Please stay tuned, I'll post again as soon after the surgery as I can.  

Peace out

~~ Eso Terry 

Today, I wish to talk with you about birds.  Yes, those creatures in the skies we pay little attention to; however, if we did, our lives would have more meaning. 

Before I was an Esoterist/Nichiren Buddhist/Nice Guy After Coffee, I worked as a banking software guy.  On one of our install trips we hit a bird with our car while driving to the client.  The driver thought it was funny, and said something like, "That 'ill teach it."  For me it wasn't so funny, I knew it meant something, and it did, the trip was a disaster and we all ended up losing our jobs.  I'm not saying it was a bad thing, but it was the warning that change was coming, in my book.

In the Navy, many moons ago, in San Diego one of those crazy Cuckoo Birds who are crying all the time, took a flying dump on my white uniform as I was headed for a Friday morning inspection.  Because of the yellow crap on my hat, shoulder, and sleeve -- this must of been a sick bird --I failed inspection and got two-weeks detention which kept me from leaving the base.  During that time, a few buddies I most likely would have been out drinking with, got into a terrible car accident. So that Cuckoo Bird with its undiagnosed bladder ailment, was really a stroke of good fortune from the heavens. 

When my mom was dying in the hospital, of lung cancer, I slept in a chair beside her bed next to a window.  It was a cold, dark, rainy day outside that window where I noticed a pidgin and her kids, cubs, chics, whatever a birds offspring is, shivering close together on a ledge. I knew it meant something; something like a message from the heavens reminding me that I needed to be thankful for the time I had with my mom, who protected me from the winds and rains with no help from a man, during a time they still called boys like me a "bastard child."  A few minutes after seeing those birds, mom woke from her morphine-induced bliss, and spoke as clearly as ever, as she said, "Terry, I didn't give you much, but I did give you love." 

Those were her last coherent words to me as she morphed into a living skeleton before finally giving up the ghost and dying.  Seeing those birds was a sign to enjoy that last encounter with my wakeful mother.  

I could go on and on about birds in my life, how a bird flew into our garage door and was suffering, and my wife took garden cutters to cut its head off and end its suffering.  I buried that headless bird in the backyard, soon after that we divorced.  

I have always been sensitive to birds, so sensitive in fact, that I've actually been feeding them from a bird feeder outside my bedroom window.  And over the years they have even pecked at my window when their feeder was empty. However, something changed a few months ago, they stopped feeding, and my luck changed.  I haven't won a a cent in daily-fantasy sports, something I do for fun, just a few dollars a day. Nothing big. Then there is my cancer, which I'll talk more about later, right now I was to talk birds. 

In esoteric traditions, birds serve as living metaphors for our souls, some consider them psychopomps: a spirit, or deity whose job it is to guide our souls from Earth to the afterlife. 

In Persian mysticism and Sufi tradition, the Simurgh is a giant bird that represents divine wisdom, unity, and the realization that ultimate truth is found within oneself. 

To the alchemists, the firebird, or Phoenix, represented the rebirth of one's soul, rising from the ashes of failure.  

The Native Americans honored the Thunderbird as a celestial being whose wings generate cosmic rumblings to alert us of trouble. 

Then there are the Avian Oracles, tarot type cards of birds and the meanings of their chance encounters.

For a better understanding of bird symbolism you can go to Journeytreehealing.com, and be prepared to have your mind blown away. In their Bird Symbolism section you'll find that the kingfisher bird represents peace and prosperity; and that the crow, which is often linked to “darkness,” is actually a symbol of change and transformation. i.e., it was a crow we killed that day my software career unraveled.

The Humming Bird symbolizes the nectar of life and teaches us to draw on life’s sweet essence to sustain ourselves through challenging times.

Seeing a sparrow is a sign to recognize your inner strength and use it to bring about the change you need in your life. i.e, dump the guy.

Birds are always around us. And everyday we should take a moment to stop, look, and listen to them, for they really are messengers to help guide the way.

Now, let's turn to today's post, titled, My Birds, My Cancer(?)

I've been feeding the birds around my condo for ten years now. Actually, they've been fed here since my neighbor, Goga, was feeding them before she died around the time I started feeding them.

I call them my pets because they are always chirping outside my window, and sometimes they look at me from my window ledge to remind their feeder is empty. They've even tapped on the glass a few times.

The problem now is that they've stopped chirping and eating. There are a couple reasons to consider why this has happened:

    One. I changed feeders when the bottom fell out of the old one they had been feeding out of for ten years.

    Two. The store ran out of the cheap stuff and so I used the more expensive seed.

    Three. Global Warming - yes, I'm old enough to call it what it is.

Okay, "Climate Change," that word we are not allowed to say in Texas anymore without being looked down on as a radical... Who cares, what I want to tell you is that there is this tropical plant that grows next to the bird feeder, and it has been there since the place was built. Every year it starts out as nothing but little plants and by the end summer, it is a nice shade bush just above the feeder that the birds sometimes land on to keep the rain off them. Every winter, it dies, and starts over again the next year. It has been that way since 2007, the year I moved into this condo.

Last year, for the first time since I've been here, the tropical bush didn't die, it just kept growing because of the mild winter. And so it was already full grown when this summer started, and within a few weeks It had grown over the bird feeder with a cave of tropical leafs.

I kept telling myself I would trim back the leafs so the birds would use the feeder again. But I didn't. Too busy. That was about three months ago. Since then, I have had no luck with sports gambling, as I said, and, most notable of all lung cancer.

Are the two connected? Who knows, but what I do know is the cancer in my lung is now the size of a dime, and I am scheduled to have that section of my lungs removed, just as I did five years ago. I'm confident I'll survive this, that is, if my birds return.

~~ Eso Terry

Eso Terry's Video Diary: Cancer Update, Hotel Review, and more....

 This is the video blog of Eso Terry, he has lung cancer and is chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to call on the Mystic Law to help him cure what he can, and get the right help where he can. It's not sad. He's a buddhist. This is also a Houston Texas Stuio 6 hotel review. For free!