I"m sinking deeper into the mire. The further in time I get away from the release the steroids gave me, the more it sinks in that this problem may only be getting started. I'm having to take a different view toward pain than ever before, because before, pain was mostly a temporary event that came and went like somebody I used to know. Now, it's 24/7 in some one place or the other, and even all of the above.
When this latest and greatest session of rheumatoid arthritis struck me down, and then I got diagnosed with it at the VA, and I'm being sent to a special clinic at the Durham VA Hospital, I'm finding it more and more difficult to act like it's gonna get better. No more cheerfully singing "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow..."
I sat in meditation for about an hour last night. Many times, If I can just find the right way to posture my body when I'm sitting or laying down, then it doesn't hurt so bad. I figured that if I gotta sit still to keep from hurting, then I might as well address my breathing and find out if I could remember how to get outta body. It seems like a long time since I've followed an established practice of meditation. I lost my habit a while back due to circumstances beyond my control.
I had a weird automobile accident on my way up to Nebraska to work. Nobody else was involved. I drove up there alone. I had gone through this small agricultural town and there was a railroad track that was raised about three foot above the ground. I guess it flooded occasionally in that area. The Platte River was nearby.
The road rose up to go over the track and then it went back down to regular elevation on the other side of the track. I couldn't see over the track to what was on the other side of it until I was on top of the tracks themselves. That's when I saw that the road made a sharp turn to the left and ran parallel to the tracks on out into the prairie.
I guess I was paying attention to the fact that the road unexpectantly turned left real quick after getting off the elevated railroad bed that I didn't see the huge pothole right in the middle of the curve. My left front tire dropped into it, but the body of the old worn-out van I was driving didn't start down until the wheel started coming up hard and fast on the other side of the large pothole.
The result was that as the wheel came up hard and the momentum of the van body went down, it drove the hard commercial-like seat up against my descending spine. The jolt ruptured a disc in my lower back, but I didn't realize it had for nearly a year. As a result of that accident I had to stop doing yoga all together, and I wasn't able to feel comfortable sitting in one spot until I get the ruptured disc repaired through surgery.
Yoga and meditation were old friends of mine since my early twenties. Particularly the very physical hatha yoga. I didn't always sit for a formal session of stretching and meditating because I was on the road a lot, and many times there just wasn't an appropriate place to get formal, so I did it a little here and there throughout the day, but I was doing it faithfully for a couple of decades or better.
Much of yoga and meditation is about breathing. Creating the habit of observing my breath took a while. I doubt if there's anybody ever who might brag that they knew everything there is to know about watching your breath. I just do it when I remember to, but it's not so infrequent that I bear shame. One of the most difficult times to do that is when I've stopped breathing altogether and find myself in a state of paying rapt attention to some activity or behavior that attracts my curiosity.
Sometimes terrified. Literally of the fear of death. hardly anybody has ever witnessed me encountering death. I'm always alone when that happens. For one thing, I don't like nobody to see me practice nothing at all. I don't care what it is that I'm practicing, I don't want nobody there. I want people to think that it's effortless to be me. Why would I not?
I usually encounter death when I'm practicing doing something that might seem impossible to do straight outta the package. Naturally, I don't read the documentation. I shouldn't have to explain why. How many people make a habit of taking things too far just to find out how far they can go? And, whatta ya do with that big a fool in the second place? Achieving a state of simultaneity in real time still gets iffy with me. There's still lots of things that I find difficult to let pass without being duped. Just one of those things can be a show-stopper. Nobody knows.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
