I leave without leaving and have not yet arrived...

In five days I'll be on my way to California and then again Las Cruces, New Mexico.  I'm sad.  (Great blog...)

The good news is that we are all atman, that the static of life is the same as the static of death--the blind eternity of pre-birth in reverse.  I leave nothing, because leaving implies a separation that isn't teleologically possible considering the arrival we all face.

  I keep thinking of Italo Calvino's story in Cosmicomics that describes a love triangle during the Big Bang when the universe is condensed to a single point (I may be wrong about the details here...if you care read the whole book, it's fucking worth it).  Regardless of the impossibility of love or triangles or self or other or anything, the impossible ego feels the impossible tug. Regardless that we fall to the same end (or rise fly sing cry), our pettiness is kind of the point.

Pettiness being the point, it's no longer petty.  It's always the small things that break my heart: the broken chair on Brownie's porch, Bill's nerd lamp and the cushion stuffed under his cushion, the cardboard box keeping Brisby from going downstairs, the peculiarly Woodstocky stickiness of the floor in the bar, Doughnut's resume, the ten million corners and spots and inconsistencies of this beautiful and maculate life.  Everything else is always already forever.  

You all know how I feel about you.  You know the word I use to describe this feeling.  You know that this word is simple, ancient, and perfect.

In which I resolve to stop doing stupid things, without resolve

One year and two months ago, I tore the ACL in the right knee (I use the spanish body part construction--the knee is no more mine than the tree or the idea...I don't really know what that means, but I like the idea that ownership is impossible and unnecessary...or that even though we may have the illusion that we can freely will the bodies around, they are controlled by the greater and invisible forces of history in the broadest most evolutionary sense...).  Three days ago, I was at my friends' camp on beautiful Chazy Lake.  We've been having a summer of intense rain and thunder storms punctuating a culturally standard summer of warm breezes, sunshine, and impossibly crisp and puffy clouds, and three days ago was no different.  I drank beer.  I rode a standup jet ski, my first jet ski experience of any kind.  I rode on an inflatable chair (tube?) pulled behind a motorboat.

The last got me in trouble.  Of course, with cute girls in the boat and a confusing compulsion to do things I know are bad for me, I challenged the captain to throw me from the tube.  He couldn't.  Those who know me will remark on my almost divine strength, balance, and grace.  On my last run, I hubristically released my hands, plugged my nose, and waited to be thrown to the emerald surface at 25 miles an hour.  When I hit the water, I twisted the left knee.

I should say that this day was also the last of my health coverage.

I can't say that I've torn anything, or that this latest injury will ever require surgery, as the symptoms are much less intense than the verified and surgered tear.

I will say that I've learned that should I want to continue having adventures on one level, I need to give up adventures of another.  

I don't know what my resolution to end my stupidity will look like.  No more drunken tree climbing?  No more running down mountains?  Now that I think of it, my problem may just be motors...and (for Kurd) gas...

So...hoping and praying that I have not hurt the left knee seriously, I will try to try to remember that my future movement may depend on my current caution.