A Recent Fall

When I was running 2 weeks ago, I fell. Not stumble or trip, I quite literally hit the ground rolling. Luckily it was a dirt path, luckily I rolled into a ball and didn't try to brace myself. I ended up with only a scraped knee, a sore shoulder and hip, and an incredibly bruised ego. The good thing was I realized I could survive a good tumble.

Since then I have been anticipating the fall. I can picture myself tripping while walking, running, or crashing off my bike. In my mind, it's like the typical comic fall. One minute up, then next minute flat on my face, laugh track plays.

Of course I have been pondering the meaning of this because that's what I do. I realized today as the anxiety and stress completely overwhelmed for the nth time this quarter, then I feel like I am falling all of the time. My life has felt like one big crash. As with the running tumble, I realize I can survive it.

In the lecture for which I teach, we had a guest speaker. We were looking at an amazing play, Riviera's Cloud Tectonics. The play deals with diaspora and trauma associated with settling. One of the characters is pregnant and she has come to America and is trying to settle (which is such a simplification of the play totally ignoring its brilliant manipulation of time conventions), but where I am going with this is that the speaker said as we try to settle in our lives, we are all pregnant. We are pregnant with possibilities and its very traumatic to uproot and then find a place to settle and sort out all these possibilities. I have been pondering this as I ponder how the heck I ended up here (in California) and what I am doing (getting my PhD). I look out with watery eyes from reading so much in so little time and I see a palm tree and I think: What is going on? How did I end up here?

So I'm traumatized and pregnant, basically.

This will be a good quiz to see who actually reads this closely and who skims.

I do feel traumatized but I don't know if it's the stupid quarter system, the classes I am taking, the surrealness of being of running outside in a T-shirt and shorts while my friends and family are dealing with seriously sub-zero weather.

And I am not pregnant but the possibilities are slightly overwhelming. What am I supposed to be studying? What does that mean? What classes do I take? What exactly am I going to argue in my presentation next week? When was the last performance of the Chester Mystery Cycles? Is 1604 still Medieval?

And thus ends my rant. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better.