accidents will happen

I had a fender bender on the way to work Tuesday. It had been raining, the roads were wet and messy. I was on I30 in the mixmaster downtown slowing down quite a bit because traffic ahead was slow and the guy behind me rear-ended my car with his pickup truck. I was pretty shaken and had a stiff and sore neck for a few hours but I think I’m ok. I was even hoping maybe a miracle occurred, that the collision maybe popped my bulging disc back into place (like Locke on the tv show "Lost"). I don’t know if it did or I psyched myself into it but I did seem to have less pain today in my lower back. The bike rack is bent but it may have saved the rear end of my car. I don’t know if there’s damage to the frame underneath the car. The truck hit the rack, bent the support bar and shoved the rack into the plastic rear bumper and broke a hole in it about four inches square and the rack also broke out the left tail light. I’m supposed to take the car to Mesquite on Friday to have it looked at. It was the truck driver’s fault & the guy had insurance so maybe it won’t cost me anything. I had forgotten it would be a headache dealing with the insurance. (see "allstatesucks.com")

hunting & gathering

I’ve just come in from my latest front-yard foraging. It must be a genetic harkening back to the aboriginal food-getting techniques that’s hard-wired into humans. But it takes something to uncover it. Crisscrossing the lawn, spotting each nut, stooping and collecting it into my plastic bag is somehow so very comforting. “Squirreling” them away for the winter. I recognize the technique in others’ motions. The Hispanic construction guy yesterday who, when I asked if he was looking for pecans, answered “nah” but when I pointed him in the direction of a sidewalk windfall, he went. Our scrawny tree has yielded at least 30 pounds of raw pecans this year. I wonder about the dozens of people, probably hundreds in this neighborhood that just let them waste away on the sidewalk and street and let the yard-maintenance crews chop the crop to pieces with their lawn mowers. One nearby house has a dozen pecan trees by my mom’s reckoning. Multiplied by 30 is 360 pounds and at $3.75 a pound at albertson’s foodstore that’s a cash crop of over $1300. Well, at least we have not wasted nature’s bounty and left plenty for the squirrels, too (the ones who do the “real” squirreling).

less

got about 4 to 4 1/2 pretty good hours at work today. was it the walk this a.m.? or the combo of aspirin and ibuprofen? I am willing to do the pain of the walk; it's not so bad and if less pain is the dividend it's really no pain.

i saw new things on my walk - things that were there before but i didn't notice. maybe tao is a new way to look at things.

p in the b

finally a few hours of only minor pain while sitting at work. Can pain make you more creative? I'm thinking of Frida Kahlo and the bus accident that forced her to wear a body cast for months on end and not just after the accident, but periodically throughout her life. Now I know why she suffered operations trying to get relief. emotional pain brings out creativity and they even have genres like emo-punk which is just a never-ending whine draped against fast guitars. Maybe creating helps to block out the pain.

die dream

The back pain just won't go away. I resist using the dozen or so Darvocets I have stashed but am frequently tempted. I have to ask myself "isn't this something aspirin or ibuprofin can take alleviate?" and usually that's what I take. But it's getting hard to be productive at work when the pain won't go away. Just bending, or sitting, or walking around without pain - something I always took for granted is now everpresent in my mind. Can zen or tao or anything help me deal with it? The worst part is seeing that some of the very simple dreams that take my mind off work involve movement and I can't accomplish them without pain. My ambition has always been somewhat lacking and terribly unfocused so now what? This mortality bit is depressing. I think it's that nagging feeling that here I am past the half century mark and my genius has never burst out, and that I in fact have no genius. How do you get THAT back?

karma kitty

What kind of karma results in a being coming back to earth as a kitten who at 5 months of age is hit by a car? Said cat, Pedro by name, was recently abandoned at an apartment with his brother when his caretakers moved away. After the accident he was rescued and brought to the vet who required the kitty to be neutered before placing his broken leg in a cast. Ouch! Talk about adding injury to injury. Toe to hip now encased in plaster, Pedro drags his useless limb about his new-found home. The two cats into whose home he has been inserted hiss and spit at him. His caretakers note his treks through the apartment by following the single unbroken track in the carpet pile. What will happen? Will his rescuers keep him? Will he and his brother find a home at Operation Kindness? or will they be LOST