New Moves

My lower back turned into an iron rod this week for no particular reason. I was doing dishes at the sink. Quietly and patiently. I had just come off of a very easy week full of administration, client work, meetings, and a little bit of easy construction. We replaced a couple windows and trim, painted the trim, replaced some fence boards, no big deal.

After I placed a plastic cup in my drying tray, my lower back seized and nerve pains shot through my body down to my feet. My hands have been subtly shaking ever since. The deepest part of my skeletal core is struggling to maneuver through the world, so that's bad.

My body has spoken to me before. It's screamed at me sometimes. I almost died in 2010 I think it was, 5 days after I was baptized. Jesus spoke in the Gospels of being baptized by spirit, raised from the dead and born again. That's happened to me. His words are the perfect allegory for my experience, it cannot be said better. It was ultimately Jesus's poetry that convinced me he was God on Earth. 

There was another time when my ex wife left me and I finally stopped drinking whiskey all day. Soon after I met an angelic woman who decided to fill me with love. It was a gift I can never repay. When she entered my life, she began to nurture my bones and I soon fell into a deep and fevered sickness. When the fever spiked my mind stopped working, I couldn't produce linear thought. It was an electrical storm in my head and then I blacked out and woke up feeling crystal clear. I had a seizure, a reboot, one of many to come. Reboots I mean, that was the only seizure.

And now, this. I am temporarily or indefinitely a full time single dad. I'm optimistic that the mom of my children will create her own stability that she can then share with the children, but I've learned to not project into the future too far. I can project my visions for my life, those projections seem very useful, but my projections that involve any other people are totally futile. So in this moment, I'm on 100% for my kids. I recognize the opportunity in that as well as the deep responsibility. So much could go wrong.

The day after that was decided my back seized out of thin air. Amy my Chinese massage therapist just worked on it for an hour, gingerly touching the effected areas. It's so injured it went from hard to soft. I have a disc bulging and will certainly have to see specialists. I'll have to pray again, because life without prayer is a little messier than it has to be.

What is my body screaming at me this time? Find some new moves man. Stay home. Write. Don't unload sheets of drywall by yourself. Stretch. Go for big long walks. Write. Stay here. Lay down. Be still. Write stupid.

I'm pretty sure that's what it's saying. Those things and that I need a bath.