Liberation in a mudpit or the ease of pain.

2007-09-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

I felt like I was being left behind. Is it actually fun and rewarding? Is this why everyone else looks so damn happy sometimes? Maybe I too can write some stuff down, some of my own sweet smelling refuse for everyone else to enjoy. We'll see.
When lingering on the edge of anything, toes dangling, veins thumping, I like to stop for a moment and listen for something. Anything will do, as long as it stands alone for a moment in my mind, giving me something to savor and soothing my unraveling attention while I unconsciously hurtle myself somewhere or another.
That little note lately has been sonorous and ubiquitous. Pain. Simple, sweet, excruciating and ever present discomfort. It comes in waves for me, marking progress in time like tides while rhythmically crashing in as an endless stream of waves. Why does it have to come out so ridiculously metaphoric? It just happens that way. Three years now I've had pain come like clockwork, like the movements of the planets or some other such tedious repetition. It always happens somewhere between the last week of June and the first of July. Always. The first year it was knee surgery on both of my knees. This put a damper on my summer and made every box I dragged up the stairs of the old farmhouse I was moving into memorable. Summer rolled around again and as is customary for me I migrated across the country to live in Denver. Five days after arriving here I was in a car accident. Off went my neck and back and another summer was gone. I decided to take full advantage of my newfound pain and got a sun tattooed on my shoulder. A little reminder of all pervasive quality of awareness, which I was too jacked up and confused to have. Hey, on that note maybe I can drop out of school and just make business cards instead.
Last summer at pretty much exactly the same time I stopped at a light behind an old suburban and the gentleman behind me didn't even bother to slow down. This time it was my back, neck and a rib that went askew. The rib was the doosey. Ribs aren't meant to pop in and out. To commemorate I got one of my favorite metaphors from my Tibetan Drikung linneage tattooed on the back of my shoulder. A moon, red and white, male and female essences, floating in a cloud, appearance and emptiness, compassion and skillfull action. Does the suit make the man? I sure hope so, cause otherwise I might actually have to meditate everyday.
So, you ask, "what happened this year?" Nothing so exciting as a car crash, I dislocated my right knee while doing some silly household task on July 1st. Someone please donate a bubble I can live in. As it turned out my right knee had a bone bruise and cartilage damage. My left one felt a bit neglected and sympathetically started tearing cartilage hunks off as well. At that point I knew exactly what needed to come next... something to do with adding more wood to the fire, a little more pain to my addled nervous system.
Have you ever wondered about the "actual" permanence of tattoos? They say that skin is always loosing layers, sloughing off and joining those little flurries of particles you see in a ray of light. We breathe those skin flakes in, we eat them in our food, you and I are unwitting cannibals, but that's beside the point. Tattoos seem to stick around. What if you don't want them to, what if you want them gone? I was curious. I happen to have a little tattoo I'm not too attached to. Actually it's kind of stupid. It looks like a party hat. It can go.
Perhaps if I mix it up and get tattoo removal this year it will reverse the quantum pattern of pain and change time and space relieving my karmic tendency... or some such nonsense. I just like to mix things up. I settled on the strangest sounding and most technologically interesting option by following an advertisement for Laser tattoo removal. Since surgery was already scheduled for both of my knees, I figured that one big pile of pain was better than two little ones.
Here it is before.
Then it burned for days and days, blistering so large I couldn't really bandage it. I went into surgery with half my hand wrapped up... patiently waiting for the IV to start working and my hand to stop throbbing and my knees to stop aching.

Really, one thing at a time isn't all that bad. There is plenty of suffering for me to experience without piling it all up at once. I keep thinking that if I just get it all out of the way at once it will be done and I can relax and go on with a normal life without pain. Wouldn't that be nice? Ridiculous and naive is what it is. Pain, aches, discomfort and straight up misery seem to be as ubiquitous as breezes and rain, breathing and pooping. Maybe this time instead of trying to get it all over at once, I'll try and watch it instead. Like a grandfather watching kids hurtling around, smashing into each other, laughing, screaming and falling down. Just watching. Hey, I do use a fake wooden cane from Walgreens (very pimplike), I'm senile and ornery...
Or maybe I secretly enjoy pain? Perhaps I like the beauty that comes from it, in the form of tattoos and memories and understanding. It is a unifying factor, something we all live with from birth through death. I am studying to be a dr. I do love being able to relate to that thread and through it to everyone I meet. Is there liberation and understanding inherent in pain?
I don't really care right now. I just want to be able to go on a walk.

silently sunning/violently running

Liberation in a mudpit or the ease of pain.