Coming Home

My shoulder and left arm hurt, or rather they are stiff, and not in the usual way. My back hurts; not in the place it usually hurts, but on the right side. I must have twisted it when I fell off the bed yesterday. My experience with muscular pain, even this muscular pain, is that it will go away with time, as long as I don't over work it today. Of course, given my situation, all bets are off on that one. One bad transfer and I am back pain again.

I awoke this morning and, with much increased caution, got my clothes out of the suitcase, the one still resting on that table at the end of the bed. I've moved the case closer. This way I don't have to reach too far to get my underwear, shirt, socks, pants, whatever. It all worked; I didn't fall over.

As I returned to vertical, I found myself sitting, looking out the window, beyond the slowly fading leaves on the trees lining the street outside. I found myself, as I often find myself, engaged in that 10,000 foot stare, the kind of stare prisoners get after too long in their confinement. I was looking at nothing, my mind empty, seeing nothing. Every moment or so, my focal point would shift. I would see the yellow tinged leaves hanging limply from the maple outside the window, awaiting a fall wind to shake them from the branch. I would see the tree beyond, already clothed in brilliant red, as if in sympathy for some political cause.

After a few minutes, my mind would re-engage, re-entering the real world, then, after another moment or two, my mind would wander again. As the moment of mental vagueness passed, I dressed, at least some of me. Dressing myself means taking plenty of rest in between various elements of clothing. Once again, in those rest periods, my mind would wander off into the great blue yonder. In and out, in and out, slowly getting dressed along the way.

I don't really know what I was, or am, thinking about in those moments. I've left the room, wandered outside somewhere, someplace. After a bit, I come home again, once again to engage in my reality. I understand that prisoner's stare. I am a kind of prisoner too. Many of us are that way, prisoners in our own lives. I prefer not to think of myself that way; I prefer to be free. I like coming home much more than leaving it.