Finally comes the backlash I've been waiting for in reaction to the US bullying the world.
I went back to aikido today (again), and boy was it ever what I needed. The falling, the throwing, finding strength in relaxation. Like a breath of fresh air after a week of being tired and foggyheaded. My body held up just fine, although after putting weight on it various times, my left knee started to get sore where it ran into the dashboard-light brightness knob in the accident. It felt so good to be back on the mat, though, back with that family. And I got to train with Sempai Jeff, which for some reason I rarely do.
(We have four Jeffs in the dojo. Most recently it was proposed that they be called "One" through "Four", but that feels impersonal and doesn't really help identify them, and I much prefer epithets. "Sempai" means "student senior to the speaker", and Sempai Jeff is precisely that for all but a couple of us. There's also Big Jeff, who at 6'2" is a full head taller than I am; and Little Jeff, a couple inches shorter (and easily 50 pounds lighter) than me. The fourth Jeff has a first-degree black belt ("shodan"), but hasn't trained aikido for six years, and that vacation is apparent enough that he actually doesn't wear a hakama (the blue or black split skirt worn always by black belts and sometimes by other people) while practicing. In Denver I started calling him Lapsed Shodan Jeff, which sounds much better than other alternatives, but I'm not sure it's entirely kosher--no one's corrected me or suggested that I not say that, so it may be okay. It's not judgemental or anything, just descriptive. He's a nice guy.)
We have some beautiful wind and rain happening tonight, I have the house to myself (Rachel is out and our houseguest of the past six weeks is gone), the heat is on, and I'm listening to Sarah McLachlan in the living room while I chat with friends and try to work up the courage to wrestle some more with these applications I have to get in order for work (the danger being that in working with Windows it's more than possible to hose your Windows installation for no good reason through no fault of your own...it's a little like trying to work with nitroglycerine when the only information you've got is that "it explodes under some conditions").
It's a good night. Very peaceful. I do wish there was someone I could talk to, over chat or email or something; but the people I would normally do that with are all busy with their lives at the moment, so I'm here amusing myself. I'm still feeling somewhat disconnected, not present in the way I was before the accident...I can create that presence, but it feels different. It's possible that it's permanent, and I think I'm okay with that: I still feel the Is-ness of things, and if something has changed in my brain that alters my moment-to-moment perceptions, it's not a crisis, it's just another shift, like having to adjust to my knees or my shoulders hurting. Just like those, there's not really any cure; also just like those, it's likely that the adaptation itself will be the cure. I feel like my knees have done what other parts of me have done: taken as much stress as they could in a misaligned position of tension, somewhat painfully cracked out of that misaligned position, and are now relaxing into a new and sustainable alignment.
Watch me say that and tomorrow I won't be able to walk.