“Some of you are thinking that you won’t fight. Others, that you can’t fight. They all say that, until they’re out there.” – Proximo
Until they’re out there. I’m out there.
I take life carefully Friday through Sunday, just in case the unforeseen I am constantly foreseeing happens and I require medical attention. Health Care here is an oxymoron.
“Crank it up” on Monday through Thursday. Possible recovery day therein. Try to push a little at least. Yesterday – I admit it – turned around at the second sign of a new twinge. The fear is real.
Goal now is two thousand steps in day. While keeping my knee aka “Neal” as pain-free as possible. Neal’s current condition, praise the Lord. Imagine somebody pulled your leg off at the knee. And stuck it back on but just not the same. ‘We didn’t have the screw, so we used a nail kind of thingy.’ The fear remains.
Just watched the original ‘Gladiator’ with Russell Crowe. Who would have been a much better choice for the role of Jack Reacher than that dwarf Tom Cruise. Don’t get me started.
I was struck as I studied Maximus’ fighting style. There’s a system to chopping a man down.
Old age knows the system.
Neal is stiff and the kinetic chain is a savage set of dominoes.
Yeah, that’s the problem (besides arthritis). IT-band to sciatica to plantar to knee. That was the route the pain took. Not unlike the LD-1000, it must be noted. Possibly coincidental but I think not. Think not.
If not, however, I have to ameliorate all I can that is not arthritis.
I am back to stretching. Could feel my back fading…. Imagine my left knee – “Neal” – is a bottle of nitroglycerin, now try to do a hundred stomach crunches. With crippled hands.
By the way, I am lean enough you can see the plastic mesh holding my stomach together.
Suddenly reminded crunches might not be the best idea.
Following an illness, John Steinbeck got the usual advice – pace yourself, act your age, eat better, drink less, quit smoking, yada yada blah blah whatever, can’t hear you.
Not his style.
“For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobber for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason she should inherit a baby.”
I hear what he’s saying but pacing yourself IS my style. Well, it sure is now anyway.
Some years ago, saw a neighbor shuffling along the road behind his walker and I said to him, cheerily, I thought: “I hope that is me some day.” He was insulted at first until I could explain my admiration. He was still going. He was not about to quit.
Thought of him as I walked the same street with a cane in each hand.
Proper cane tension is key. While basically balancing one-hundred-and-sixty-five pounds on two thin sticks, keep your hands relaxed. Cane discipline also important. It’s like what Pete Hegseth told Kyle Rittenhouse about muzzle control. Otherwise, somebody could get hurt.
54 degrees, headed out. Three layers, two canes. Maybe fifteen minutes.
I am back to worrying if I am doing too little. Fear is a brake. Also a shield.
Worried I wasn’t doing enough until I shuffled for twenty-minutes, bent to pull some weeds, stretching, braced with a cane. Caught myself designing a cross-country course about the house and across the yard and around the Wild Dog Gopher Tortoise Preserve.
Watching the sun glint off a marbled shell, I am careful not to spook the creature with my looming shadow.
My looming shadow, the fear. Walking again, I renewed listening to Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke. Burke is a lyrical philosopher disguised as a crime novelist.
”I suspect it was foolish to be musing upon the allure of a young woman when there was a possibility that we might be blown into bits in a snowy, tree-lined gulch in the heart of a medieval forest. But the prospect of death sometimes creates an interlude when time stops and you see a portrait of what existence should be like rather than what it is.”
The prospect of not dying creates a portrait of existence in the near term. Must not be fear full.
Mother – my genetic source with seven (7) surgeries on one knee, including three replacements – on my advice took up tai chi and blew out that same knee.
Ironically, now I’m dancing on a pin every day, I remember my mother was a gladiator. They chopped away at her and hacked and chopped but she refused to go down.
Shaving my beard was doubtlessly a form of self-flagellation. I think. Felt like I needed a new beginning. Unload something. Change somehow!
Some things are best left alone; old age can teach you that. Like gladiator school.
Missus Sweetie could not stop staring the first few days. “You look so, um, different.”
Started re-growing the beard the moment I finished washing the luxuriant foam from my face.
And, yes, those forty-plus-year-old Nike jackets remain stunningly stylish and still fit great.
So, there’s that.
