My arm’s been in a sling since mid December for post-op healing. A steep enough switchback, worn hiking treads, muddy conditions. That was the simple recipe. Done at 98.6 degrees for exactly one split second to the undesired tenderness.
The silver lining has been the time off work, reading books I’d been meaning to pick up. I also discovered I really enjoy an early coffee while watching my street clarify as daylight fills the time zone. It’s also…I was going to say it’s taught me about acceptance, but there was actually no such process. I just seem to have accepted there was no reasonable alternative to repairing the shoulder.
Ironically, I am using my backpack. It’s stuffed with clothing and at the head of the bed. I can prop up against it, making it possible to sleep on the bed instead of in a chair.
I’m actually doing quite fine. Very fortunate to have the resources to simply return to normalcy within months. And I have the silver lining described above. And have been reminded I have good neighbors and friends locally. Interactions are key; I don’t mean in relation to my recent event. I mean, I’ve been thinking about about interaction and the relationship between things actually over the last four months or so. Although I have enjoyed aspects of recent quiet, solitary time.
I’ve been walking mainly just in the neighborhood:
Freight carrier, passenger transport, metaphor, and euphemism all in one machine; what a versatile invention the train is.
The decision to go outside has even been different while on the mend and breaking from work. Since being forced to slow down to heal, I no longer feel a constant resistance to staying indoors and the draw of the outdoors for walks. The two seem in equilibrium. Getting outside is nice. But staying in is too. But I still like getting outside just as much as before. The sound of motorcycles, however, is a bit tormenting though, funny enough.
With not driving, I’m reminded my neighborhood has everything I need. And the bar serves good enough early morning diner breakfast. Some coffee talk with a regular and his service dog. I swear that dog barks at me only when I’m running late:
But back to interactions. A relationship between things. I guess an interaction is an active relationship. And it’s the relationship between things that holds the value rather than the things the relationship is between. Or at least more so. Like a collection of inanimate things can be animated by the things interacting. It’s the animation, or performance, that holds more value than the separate things. Maybe this is just “the whole is greater than the sum of parts” concept.
There’s a personal version of relationship that comes into play. I was following a riding buddy through the coast range, and thinking that the two of us experiencing the landscape on bikes together has a different value than the experience of just me riding the route (I’d ridden solo the same route months earlier, and actually enjoy solo rides). The experience has more value than that of riding the route solo. Bike 1, bike 2, person 1, person 2, and the landscape plus our interaction comprise the experience. Using just some of those parts for an experience (just bike 1, person 1, and the landscape) lacks, most significantly, the unique and more valuable part (the interaction). These personal variables in the experience (person 1 and person 2) are bigger or more complex factors than the others (bikes and landscape), provided the bikes don’t break down and there’s no natural disaster. Bonding also compounds the personal variable, and makes the variable variable.
And there’s an impersonal version of relationship and interaction: the creative process. At least seemingly impersonal despite a person being engaged in it. Take songwriting, for instance. The resulting music is an artifact of a person interacting with the source of the music. This sounds superstitious, but I think that the source is just nature, and the person is finding it (the source) and making something (the song) from it. Like finding clay and making a bowl from it. Or actually, the person is in a sense finding the actual song in the source. So, like an archaeologist finding a clay bowl at a dig. Songwriting is just a little more dramatic than archaeology. Anyway, the songwriting process is the person interacting with the source. So, yet again, the interaction is the most valuable part in the mix. And then there’s performing (playing) the song. Playing it is the only way the songwriter can later interact with what the source provided (the song), which is the next best thing to interacting with the source. Or it is indirect interaction with the source. And listening to it is the only way the listener can interact with what the source provided, or interact indirectly with the source. It seems to always come back to interaction. Maybe the reason I consider the creative process an impersonal variety of interaction is that a person is interacting with the source instead of with another person. Anyway, I still find it almost as mundane as archaeology.
An even more impersonal example of the interaction being more valuable than the actual involved parts/parties/participants is, I believe, just an idea that people got from doing math. I remember it in a physics book written for the layperson, which i am. If two subatomic particles are being pulled apart, and the particles’ bond is a certain strength or more, instead of ending up with two separate particles, the energy of pulling them apart (or the bond keeping them together, or some combination of the two forces if they’re discernible/separate things) instead creates or converts into a third particle, which is bonded with the original two. So, interaction/relationship (the particles’ bond and/or the force trying to pull them apart) has more value than the particles themselves — so much more that it can actually result in creation of another particle like those that were interacting/maintaining bond in the first place. Once again, it’s the interaction (bond, or tug on the bond) that plays the most significant part in the scenario. I’m no scientist, but I don’t think we can actually look at subatomic particles. Yet. But we can’t actually look at anything directly anyway, come to think of it; our brain just does its best to make something of strikes of light on the optic nerve. What if brains on strikes of light are no more reliable than math or tarot cards.
Hmm, is this all related to the concept that a god split itself in two so it could interact with/have relationship to something else?
Okay, enough of this unresearched prose. I will just go for a ride with my friend, once my shoulder heals.
Thoughts on Trails 