Life Marches On and So Do I

After a really fun couple of weeks with a seriously aching back (read: not fun at all), I am on the mend. Kinda.

Even though I'm on desk duty at work, my doctor advised me that I could stave off a relapse by lying on my back with my legs propped up on a chair. Let's just say that I've ended up a few times lately with this as my view:

This end up.

At one point, my boss plopped down in the floor beside me, held up a stack of reports over both our faces, and we managed to have a meeting down there. Don't knock it. I'll bet her back felt better, too.

I have been going to physical therapy for a week now, and it has been an interesting experience. By interesting, I mean painful, mostly, but also rewarding.

One day while I was working on my "sit-stands" (which is exactly what you think it is, 10 reps, 2 sets, and yes, you can do it wrong--trust me), I scanned the room desperately, starving for anything to look at that would tear my mind away from the images of dull steak knives sawing me in half with every sit and every stand. I finally lit on one of the stretching tables where a therapist was working diligently with a determined-looking older man and his new artificial leg.

Suddenly, my sit-stands were a little less tedious. A bit. My PT, way too sweet for all my grumpy growliness, ushered me through my own paces and stretched me out like a stubborn piece of stale taffy. Eventually, she tucked me into a room with a heating pad, strung me up to an electrical thingy (yes, that's a technical term...or a brand name...or it should be) that basically electrocutes you a tiny, tingly bit, and then flipped off the lights so I could relax.

But I didn't. Not really. I thought about the man with the missing leg. I thought about him being my age, when he had two good legs. I wondered if he had appreciated them. I wondered if he wanted to go back in time to when he was four, when he scraped that knee and it bled real blood and pain. Would he tell himself to look close at that knee and that blood and cherish it because he might not always have the privilege? Would he go back to when he was a young man, in his twenties maybe, when he spent all his time on those legs, walking, running, dancing, kicking off the covers in the middle of the night? Did he ever think that there would come a time when he couldn't? Maybe he had played football, a kicker with a golden toe. Maybe he didn't and wished he did, cursing his own leg, which might have had a birthmark just like his father's, and never knowing that he would regret it with all his heart while he lay on a table to stretch a brand new leg that couldn't even bleed.

We were the last ones to leave in the evening, my husband, the nice PT, and me. I was stiff and sore when I hauled up off the table and waddled my way to the door. Just when I felt a self-pitying grumble well up in me, I glanced back to the table where the man had been. He was gone, finished for the day, probably eating his dinner and living his life, laughing to his loved ones about the ignorant people he caught pitying him, he who had two perfectly good legs as far as he and anyone who counted was concerned.

So I didn't pity him. Instead I respected him.

It's a funny thing about respect. It earns you so much more than pity. I did feel sorry for the man who didn't have what I have, what I got for free and didn't earn or especially deserve, but if I stopped there on that thought, it would have been pity. So I didn't.

I thought about what he did in the short time I watched him that I could do, too. He worked hard. He took advantage of opportunity. He went about the business of living his different-shaped life, and he made it look easy.

I could do those things, even with a messed up back. Maybe even better because of it. Anything, even pain, can be a gift if you sit still and get over yourself long enough to unwrap it.

Tools of the Trade: Facilitating Daydreams

Today I thought I'd highlight some important tools of the trade that are crucial to my creative consciousness, but which do their work quietly and without heralding their importance to the world. Without these things, I could not do the one thing that fuels my every creative and not-so-creative endeavor: daydream.

I could write an entire post about the necessity of daydreaming (and I probably will), but there are a couple of things that help me be able to daydream, and therefore, to write:

My feet.

My iPod. (Actually, it's my husband's. Shh. Don't tell him.)

A solitary place to walk.

That's it. Without those things, my creative engine short-circuits and my energy is off kilter. Sometimes I have to go and "walk it out" to give my brain time to fire off all the sequences it's processing and pair them to the mood of the music I'm pumping into my ears. From there, I can begin to make sense of the little ideas and snippets that I can't figure out how to put together. While I'm walking, my mind gets a chance to wander in cadence, and it helps get things in line. Not to mention that having an opportunity to open up my senses to new stimuli that I can't directly control can send my mind off in unexpected directions, unlike my desk where nothing changes except the smell when it's time to bathe the dog.

The Feet

Mine are the big ones on the right, pictured with fellow Converse Comrades.

My feet kind of suck. They are flat and they hurt. A lot. They were actually the reason that I stopped working as a bookseller. I put a big ol' stress fracture in my navicular bone and very intelligently worked for six months with a limp before I went to the doc.

Do not do this.

I was in a boot with crutches for the better part of a year, and this turned me into a soggy ball of anxious laborador who waited by the door for Husband to come home every day so that he could drive me in the car while I stuck my head out the window and wagged my tail. I wrote a lot during that period of time since I couldn't go for my walks, but none of it was good...because I couldn't go for my walks.

My feet still hurt, and I still abuse them, but I love them so. They are more than transportation. When it comes to my creativity, they are basically an extension of my brain.

The Music

iPod 5th generation, 2005-2013 RIP (Died of battery cancer. Very sad.)

I am a musician and I married a musician and most of my friends are musicians and I imagine that most of my characters are musicians even if they don't say so. Music is not just an important part of my life, it is part of my DNA, like blue eyes and sarcasm. I devour songs, stringing them in one ear and out the other, sucking all the inspiration off of them and leaving nothing but bones behind. I am always trolling for a new song or band or melody or lyric. I slurp them all up. Without music to keep up my energy and set the mood, my walks become painful and exhausting and my writing empty and without ambiance. I can say unconditionally that I am addicted to music. I hope I never recover.

The Path

I am a solitary creature. I crave aloneness like oxygen. If I do not feel alone, I cannot think. At all. Ever. I do my best writing in the middle of the night when my brain finally feels comfortable that every other sentient being in perceivable range is locked firmly in the "off" position. 

That goes for my walks too. If you're sitting on your porch and see me coming, I will pretend to tie my shoe and walk the other way. I will go back into my house and come back an hour later praying with all my might that you have tired of porch-sitting. Don't take it personally. It's not you, it's me. I go it alone, or I cannot go it. Period.

My neighborhood is great for walking. It's quiet, it's safe, and there are multiple paths I can slink and slide around if I see any other person stick their head out of their home. (Obviously not having gotten the memo that when I am outside NO ONE ELSE is allowed outside. Anywhere, for any reason.)

Achieving Success

If a walk is successful, it means that I have managed for some short period of time forget who and where I am and absorb myself in the more fertile patches of my mind where story ideas and characters are spawned. The music keeps the pain from my feet at bay, keeps my breathing steady, and helps me forget. My feet keep moving, one step and then the next, keeping my energy pumping a cadence. The road sits a silent servant beneath me, rolling on and on until my idea crests its apex and sends me running back in the house for a pen.

Of everything I love about my walks, my favorite part is, was, and always will be running back in the house for a pen.