Echo

closing note for tonight…

the thing you think you should be doing, is probably the thing you should be doing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24799880&GT1=43001

I really don’t even know where to begin.

Though I do feel that I would be more terrified being at a beach that collects right feet than one that collects lefts.

my left brain would like to share metacognition with you.

he’s been feeling left out.

i believe not every human being is a sapient being.

but i also believe it can be learned.

when the sun and the moon come together in an eclipse, the planet doesn’t disintegrate.

it’s silly to believe it would, isn’t it?

well, the same goes for the two realms of a person’s inner universe.

the first is the acknowledgment of both realms and the understanding that both are powerful forces.

the second is to understand that these powerful forces belong to you and only you. you have full ownership but ownership only comes fully realized when an understanding of responsibility is developed through wisdom.

the third is that the way to unleash this power, is to unite them.

david im’d me to say good morning today, at the exact time i woke up and got out of bed, going straight to the computer because i had a feeling he was around.

it still amazes me but i’m not as surprised anymore.

it’s really all about circles and completion.

i took some time to myself to meditate today, and i feel that there are friends out there who could really use a good hug.

so i’m sending one to those of you, to let you know i’m thinking about you and sending you support.

i just remembered something.

a couple of weeks ago, i had a really bad shoulder injury (nothing close to today’s but worrisome, nevertheless), but i totally dismissed it. i even refused to ice it, just daring it to hurt. so it didn’t. and i played well the next day, was actually kind of a beast, and no one knew i was injured. it was my secret that day, what was fueling me.

the next day, i was im-ing with david and he was telling me something about happiness and parks and his usual hyper-cheerful stuff, and i guess i wasn’t really paying attention. then he says that he meant to ask me…is there something wrong with your shoulder?

what’s amazing is i had forgotten about my shoulder. so i said, no, i don’t think so.

he asks me if i’m sure. because his right shoulder had been really aching the last couple of days and he had wondered if my shoulder was hurting.

i’m still thinking, nooo…i have no idea…when i remember oh yeah, i had a shoulder injury that i am adamantly denying the existence of. so i say, actually it is hurt, and i tell him about it. he says i should really get it checked out and we continue on to other topics, never acknowledging if it might be unusual for someone to psychically pick up someone’s ailment from a continent away.

well, today i fucked it pretty badly and still, i honestly feel this injury was a warning. i knew i should tell him about it.

so he’s at work and we’re im-ing, and i’m telling him about it and he’s slowly freaking out. he’s telling me me how i have to be careful and i should take the injury more seriously. i’m telling him that i am, and i truly believe i am serious, because otherwise i wouldn’t have told him about it. he’s getting worked up but he’s so polite about it, and he’s at work juggling customers and wanting talk about this and i think he might have snapped at someone for browsing for too long because he was trying to get back on. finally he just calls. he’s kind of laughing and himself when he calls but he’s serious. he says he’d thought about it before if there’s anything i could possibly do that could make him mad and he’d decided he couldn’t think of anything, but that i’d managed to find something that makes him mad, by not taking better care of myself. he’s laughing but serious and i’m laughing but serious, and it was this thing where we’d finally broken through another barrier for a small but vital victory, my fear that he might demand that i be perfect replaced with an insight that this man is happy when he’s taking care of me.

i’m taking you seriously, i told him. everything you’re saying, i’m taking it seriously.

well well well…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24777532/?GT1=43001

i was playing basketball today and i could already feel it was going to be a weird day.

the little hispanic guy was at me again, insisting on giving me a hug. even while we played, i think he grabbed me too hard at one point, trying to hug me from behind and i had to buck him off. because I have a massive bruise on my right wrist where he was pinning my arms. i ended up saying i didn’t want him to guard me after we beat his team. he asked me why and i said, because you’re a pervert. i think i was also worried about how physical he was. we went up for a rebound at the same time and i got bumped, and it was one of those things where I got flipped so I was parallel to the ground, and the moment it happened, I knew my legs were spun out from under me and I was going to land on my back. I was able to twist just enough so my left arm took the brunt of the fall, but it was scary. it knocked the wind out of me. of course, i got up right away because i really believe you can’t give a negative reality too much time or opportunity to set in.

i guarded the fast asian kid who wears goggles instead, and i sagged off because i knew the guy making the inbound pass would see him and make the lazy pass in, giving me an easy steal. i saw him see the guy standing in the key and i knew he wasn’t even going to look to see where i was so i jumped as the ball left his hands, a clean, easy steal.

but then something kind of terrible happened. my shoulder, which has been annoyingly popping out and back in the last few months when i raise my arm too fast or when i catch a high pass one-handed, popped out. and for the first time in my life, it didn’t pop back in. it felt like my deltoid had gotten twisted so my shoulder couldn’t get back into the socket. i was holding my arm and trying to figure out which way i would have to jerk it to push it back in, but i couldn’t and i was calmly freaking out because any injury on the basketball court means they call in the “doctor,” and i didn’t want to see the dark dc. this encounter needed to be avoided at all costs. yet the pain was so intense and i was honestly more worried about preventing this encounter.

fuck it hurt. i couldn’t bend my arm or lift it, but somehow, i pushed it back in with a pop. then i shook it out and kept playing. i couldn’t really lift my arm for a while and had no strength, but after a few minutes, my arm did come back to life and make the game-winning shot. a driving bank shot from the right which was an unusual shot for me in and of itself. but i’m glad it ended the game, though i must not have taken it very seriously because i stayed and played another and then went and did some light weights to try to strengthen the areas around my shoulder. but in hindsight, i realize i basically dislocated my shoulder and it got locked out of socket, then i had to pop it back in manually, which is kind of serious, though a little lethal weapon, but without the mel-gibson feather-mullet. i saw a shoulder dislocation happen to a guy on the court once and he was on the floor crying so they had to call the paramedics. i didn’t really think about how serious it was until i was in such pain tonight, i managed to sit through an entire movie and have no recollection of a good hour of it because it was so distracting. i don’t know why i didn’t realize how much pain i was really in.

i have to rest it. it’s a little scary, what happened. it made me realize again how my will is stronger than my body, and i have to be careful because i have an incredible capacity to ignore physical pain, which can be detrimental to my health. i think this is something i really have to start seriously considering.

on a different note, why’s everyone staring at me and commenting that i got tan? i think i look different and people can tell there’s something different about me, but they seem to relate it to the tone of my skin. even when that guy ben, whom i’ve never met, commented on me being tan as though he was surprised that i’d gotten so tan…there’s something they’re seeing that they don’t seem to quite know what they’re seeing, and i can’t figure out what it is.