Wise Like A Stone, Dumb Like A Rock
Maybe I feel too lighthearted to think seriously today. I can't really tell. It may just be that my brain has been steadily flooded with endorphins for the last 48 hours or so, resulting in a mild sensation of euphoria and disconnection, or it may be that it's just a nice day, or it may be that my mind feels suddenly, unexpectedly unburdened.
My left leg is a burden though. It is still largely inoperable. Somehow, though, that doesn't bother me. "We all have to accept our own mortality and physical fallibility eventually," I keep saying. Or, "getting hurt is just part of being human, and feeling pain is just part of life." This feels like breathing a tremendous sight of relief. Sometimes everything that is great seems to tower so ominously, invincibly overhead, and everything small seems to retreat alarmingly into the deep, inscrutable unknown. It's overwhelming. I look up at the stars and wonder how I coexist with things that produce trillions of kilowatts of power continuously through millions of years; I look down at the pebbles and the weeds and the dust and the insects crawling across the ground and wonder how it is that I'm entitled to walk all over them; I look into the tiny cuts and scratches and lines and creases in my own skin and wonder how it is I came to be in charge of such a tremendous multitude of tiny organisms, all working together for me. Sometimes it's just too much. "I'm too small. I'm too big. I'm too weak. I'm too strong. I'm too different."
I feel as if I've gone down to a different plane. I'm so accustomed to quick, fluid, easy movement. It's amazing how much difference one disabled limb makes. You would think that still having three of four major appendages working would mean very little diminution of physical ability, but it seems that's not the case. Suddenly, the basic operations of everyday life are completely reconfigured, and everything has to be rebuilt from scratch. What was easy is now hard, and what was hard is now out of reach. And this for only a minor injury.
"But I always wanted to practice being an old man, just to try it out." Here I was training to fight because I wanted to fight, because I wanted to feel capable, and here, in the process, I got hurt and became even less capable than before. It felt like a failure. Traffic was sluggish and the light was low and I had to take the long detour around the bridge that the road workers are methodically deconstructing, out past the manufactured home lot with the two fiberglass oxen out front, steadily pulling an empty covered wagon into motionless homestead-oblivion of rapidly fabricated suburban units, pioneer weeds and raw clay. I felt sour and resentful. Walking aimlessly about is one of my few pleasures, and I felt sorry to have it suddenly and unexpectedly taken away. Knowing that I felt sour, and not liking it, just made me feel more sour. At some point, dragging my painfully useless leg along after me, it suddenly occurred to me, "You can't make things part of yourself." Strength wanes. Health fades. Energy dissipates. The sun goes down on everyone, no matter how far west we go.
So I stopped being sour and resentful about it. At least I'm in good company.
The essential impermanence of everything is a universal principle in which I have the highest faith. Sometimes it makes me kind of a buzz-kill.
And still it was a strange sort of amusement. It became a new kind of physical challenge to get around with only one good leg. I love challenges. It's weirdly like the joy of being a kid again, of learning to walk, run, jump, swing, any of the innumerable interactions that take place between this mechanical being and this mechanical world. Maybe limping doesn't seem exciting, but it is when you've never had to do it before. I try to see how fast I can get up and down stairs without pain. I went out on the town carrying my staff as a makeshift walking-stick to bear the weight. The bright percussion of the hardwood meeting the concrete makes cheerful company, almost background music; pushing myself along this way feels strangely like rowing a boat. It's a curious kind of ad hoc wooden leg; it gives wholly new meaning to the old aphorism, "this isn't a weapon, it's an extension of your body." Besides, crutches are lame. (Does that mean that voice synthesizers are dumb?) I feel awkward and clumsy, but perfectly content. I know that I'm doing all that I can.
I feel dull lately. I've sat here in this empty field so long that I'm slowly starting to sink into the ground, and the dust is starting to cover my face once more. In one way, I don't object; stones have a strange sort of wisdom to them. There is something profound in such a quiet thing that knows its place so well and seems to need nothing. In another way, I do object; rocks are heavy and boring, they don't do anything. I've already lived among fossils and relics and buried secrets, and worked hard to dig myself out. I never thought such a windy, airy person as me would settle into the mud. But I also don't know what I might be when I emerge once again.
Going down into the dark, earthy strata of the deep below, everything looks different because everything looks the same.
My left leg is a burden though. It is still largely inoperable. Somehow, though, that doesn't bother me. "We all have to accept our own mortality and physical fallibility eventually," I keep saying. Or, "getting hurt is just part of being human, and feeling pain is just part of life." This feels like breathing a tremendous sight of relief. Sometimes everything that is great seems to tower so ominously, invincibly overhead, and everything small seems to retreat alarmingly into the deep, inscrutable unknown. It's overwhelming. I look up at the stars and wonder how I coexist with things that produce trillions of kilowatts of power continuously through millions of years; I look down at the pebbles and the weeds and the dust and the insects crawling across the ground and wonder how it is that I'm entitled to walk all over them; I look into the tiny cuts and scratches and lines and creases in my own skin and wonder how it is I came to be in charge of such a tremendous multitude of tiny organisms, all working together for me. Sometimes it's just too much. "I'm too small. I'm too big. I'm too weak. I'm too strong. I'm too different."
I feel as if I've gone down to a different plane. I'm so accustomed to quick, fluid, easy movement. It's amazing how much difference one disabled limb makes. You would think that still having three of four major appendages working would mean very little diminution of physical ability, but it seems that's not the case. Suddenly, the basic operations of everyday life are completely reconfigured, and everything has to be rebuilt from scratch. What was easy is now hard, and what was hard is now out of reach. And this for only a minor injury.
"But I always wanted to practice being an old man, just to try it out." Here I was training to fight because I wanted to fight, because I wanted to feel capable, and here, in the process, I got hurt and became even less capable than before. It felt like a failure. Traffic was sluggish and the light was low and I had to take the long detour around the bridge that the road workers are methodically deconstructing, out past the manufactured home lot with the two fiberglass oxen out front, steadily pulling an empty covered wagon into motionless homestead-oblivion of rapidly fabricated suburban units, pioneer weeds and raw clay. I felt sour and resentful. Walking aimlessly about is one of my few pleasures, and I felt sorry to have it suddenly and unexpectedly taken away. Knowing that I felt sour, and not liking it, just made me feel more sour. At some point, dragging my painfully useless leg along after me, it suddenly occurred to me, "You can't make things part of yourself." Strength wanes. Health fades. Energy dissipates. The sun goes down on everyone, no matter how far west we go.
So I stopped being sour and resentful about it. At least I'm in good company.
The essential impermanence of everything is a universal principle in which I have the highest faith. Sometimes it makes me kind of a buzz-kill.
And still it was a strange sort of amusement. It became a new kind of physical challenge to get around with only one good leg. I love challenges. It's weirdly like the joy of being a kid again, of learning to walk, run, jump, swing, any of the innumerable interactions that take place between this mechanical being and this mechanical world. Maybe limping doesn't seem exciting, but it is when you've never had to do it before. I try to see how fast I can get up and down stairs without pain. I went out on the town carrying my staff as a makeshift walking-stick to bear the weight. The bright percussion of the hardwood meeting the concrete makes cheerful company, almost background music; pushing myself along this way feels strangely like rowing a boat. It's a curious kind of ad hoc wooden leg; it gives wholly new meaning to the old aphorism, "this isn't a weapon, it's an extension of your body." Besides, crutches are lame. (Does that mean that voice synthesizers are dumb?) I feel awkward and clumsy, but perfectly content. I know that I'm doing all that I can.
I feel dull lately. I've sat here in this empty field so long that I'm slowly starting to sink into the ground, and the dust is starting to cover my face once more. In one way, I don't object; stones have a strange sort of wisdom to them. There is something profound in such a quiet thing that knows its place so well and seems to need nothing. In another way, I do object; rocks are heavy and boring, they don't do anything. I've already lived among fossils and relics and buried secrets, and worked hard to dig myself out. I never thought such a windy, airy person as me would settle into the mud. But I also don't know what I might be when I emerge once again.
Going down into the dark, earthy strata of the deep below, everything looks different because everything looks the same.