Bodies are interesting things to have, because we know that not only can they break, but that they certainly will. Yet I fear understanding of that fact can only come crashing down; seldom is it a whisper, or words on a page that help us understand the flimsiness of our forms. 

I was walking in the woods today while it was snowing. It was just me and Archie and I wasn’t wearing spikes because I thought I knew the terrain well enough. I fell a few times on my way down into the valley and I was feeling fairly grumpy, then I lost a white earphone into the snow. I looked for it for a while with freezing fingers before I realized I had stepped on it in the haste of my search. 

The walk was not going well, then I hit a patch of ice by the flat spot where all the springs come up through heavy grey clay. I knew my leg was bent the wrong way even before I met the ground. 

I was in a great deal of pain and my leg was...wrong. I tried to stand and my leg would not obey, so I reached down and felt my knee cap about 4 inches from where I’ve known it to reside these past 32 years. 

I didn’t have much of a thought process about getting out of the snowy forest, I didn’t think about approaches or make a plan, I just realized in a flash that I had to get my bone back in place. But within that flash was a great deal of feeling, an enormous amount of emotional realization. There’s a before and an after to an injury like that, independent of recovery time (I’m looking at about six weeks, apparently).

To understand, not at all in the abstract, that our bodies are objects in the world and not inviolate concepts that move through it, is a mighty, mighty thing. The fact that our culture has attached itself to “Body Horror” as the primary genre for exploring that feeling says a lot, I think. And none of it good.

In anycase, I called Abby because I didn’t think I could walk, realized I could, barely, and that Abby likely shouldn’t carry Roby through such a treacherous environment, and got on my way. 

The closest thing we have to such experiences in my world are movies. I felt like I ought to be leaving the body of my enemy behind, or fleeing from the Germans. It felt almost heroic, very manly, and purposeful. I felt singular of mind, and while it wasn’t plaesant, it didn’t feel enormously hard. I mean, what else was I going to do? Wait for EMTs to hike in and come haul me back, freezing my ass off the whole time? I suppose I could have Abby carry our 3 month old along with some hot cocoa through a few miles of snowy forest. 

Had I not been able to get the dislocation back in order, or had it been a break, that would have been how I spent my day. I’m glad it wasn’t, and that I didn’t.

The pain really set in after I got back to the sofa, but some pills and a few fingers of scotch at 9:30am helped me get through the day. It was really this newfound knowledge, that made me most uncomfortable, or at least uneasy. It felt very emotional, to have reached down and felt...wrongness. It was alien and it implied a very different future from what I had imagined when I began my walk.

In anycase, I feel fine, I can get around as long as I don’t bend my leg.

I should probably start doing Yoga again...