7 posts tagged “injury”
I do not like:
- Getting up at 5:30 a.m. to make a 7:00 physical therapy appointment.
- Wet shoes from the pouring rain.
- Having to interview intercity bus operators (nothing against them, only out of fear of talking to strangers on the phone).
- Most of the selections in the two short film packages I saw on Sunday. This year’s shorts curators at SIFF have tastes very unlike mine. Often disturbing tastes. [The ones I did like were the lushly animated Far from Ural, Night Vision (though I did not “get” it, it has such beautiful imagery), the hilarious The Tourists, and the surprise-ending un certain regard.] Dear SIFF marketers: please do not describe a shorts package using the words “road to happily-ever-after” and include stories about children in Ecuador becoming guerilla soldiers who shoot other children, a pedophile violating a little girl while she is feeding calves, or a seal-hunter coming upon a bloody neighbor-on-neighbor murder in the tundra. I feel scarred from seeing these two days later.
- The absence of crowd in the sculpture park on rainy Saturday, which I believe made small metal objects less effective than it would have been seeing it within a busy train station.
- Feeling so negative about the films and performance I saw this weekend.
I do like:
- My physical therapist, who has started me on the path the pain-free shoulderism and Audrey Hepburn posture.
- Finding a lucky breakfast of the stale peanut butter sandwich I failed to give away yesterday. (I did give one away, but packed two).
- Remembering to pack a fresh peanut butter sandwich for today (which might not find any takers in all this rain, but there is always breakfast tomorrow).
- Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler and Jonathan Carroll’s From the Teeth of Angels, both of which I finished this weekend. I started the Carroll book a couple of weeks ago, interrupted it to read the Calvino book, then resumed the Carroll book at a point where there was a coincidental parallel with the Calvino book – a woman exploring the book and music library of a man she loves in his absence. Both books also contain stories within stories (though they are actually related in the Carroll book).
- The documentary American Teen, which I was fortunate to see during my Saturday SIFF ushering shift.
- Buying some wonderful photos.
- The songs of Juana Molina.
Show us a part of your bedroom/apartment/house that could use a little work.
Submitted by arrkann la sida.
I am feeling a bit daunted by my to-do list for the holiday weekend, so today's Vox Hunt seemed like a good way to procrastinate.
I don't own a dresser/bureau. Instead, my clothes are mostly hung up semi-neatly or piled sloppily into a bookcase in my closet. I will spare you the appalling disarray of the closet.
Not having a dresser means I don't have the convenience of a dresser top on which to place decorative and functional items. For this purpose, I use the top shelf of a bookcase located just outside of the closet, facing the bathroom door.
Here is a detail of the "dresser top" with actual dust unretouched (though I did move the Hello Kitty hurricane lamp out of the way of the photos framed in black of my grandmother and mother):
Somewhere inside little box of cards and papers behind the Hello Kitty hurricane lamp, I hope I have stashed the Post-It note on which I scrawled the password to my PayPal account which I haven't used in months but suddenly have a need for. I really hope it's in there somewhere.
While we are on the subject of unretouched dust, here is a shelf in my kitchen:
By the way, that blue apothecary bottle was unearthed at the farm in Maine where I last lived with both parents.
What's up for the weekend?
- Finish draft report for work on impact of SAFETEA-LU on rural transit operations (yawn).
- Volunteer usher at the Egyptian for SIFF tomorrow for four hours during the day. (If I'm lucky, see part of a film during shift.)
- Figure out which SIFF movies to see (why did I wait so long to do so?) and buy tickets and sign up for more usher shifts accordingly.
- See officemate Seth's folk band in Ballard tomorrow evening. Record-shop at Sonic Boom in Ballard beforehand.
- Farmers' market early on Sunday.
- Limp through Sunday dance class without using right arm. Apply ice. (Prognosis from Thursday's doctor visit: shoulder impingement supraspinatus and subscapularis = curtailing activity, icing, and six weeks of physical therapy starting 7:00 a.m. June 3. Grumble.)
- Plant basil in the remaining space in the P-patch. Harvest some of the burgeoning lemon balm and borage. Learn more about borage. I planted it as a "companion plant" for the tomatoes and strawberries and it is outgrowing everything else in the patch.
- If weather is nice, spend Sunday afternoon/evening at Folklife. Hopefully find my brother and sister-in-law in the crowd. Be on the lookout for Festival Guy as well.
- Random household chores (which I never get around to doing because I cannot bring myself to be more specific than this on any "do" list). At a minimum, re-shelve the hundred-odd CDs recently purchased or pulled off shelves that are teetering in dangerous piles around television (because my DVD player doubles as a CD player) and clear off the small table which currently functions as horizontal storage rather than dining surface.
- Chip away at current book. Finish it if weather is like it has been and movies aren't commanding attention.
- If the weather is nice, dust off Sparky (my bike), inflate tires, and go for the first (sad but true) ride this year.
- Meet Karen for a beer after her filmmaking class.
- Finish draft report for work on impact of SAFETEA-LU on rural transit operations after procrastinating all three days of the weekend.
I don't expect I'll be retouching any dust this weekend.
The shoulder injury has prompted a change of routine effective immediately: the laptop stays parked at its docking station at the office, at least on weeknights.
The smart person would have decided to do this the day the Dell boxes were delivered. The smarter person would have requested a lighter-weight notebook or a desktop to begin with. Instead, the foolish person decides she can tough it out and add intensity to her daily hike and uses this as an excuse to spend $140 on a flash messenger backpack that is proportioned for someone taller, makes her stoop a bit to get the full advantage of the waist support, eventually realizes this is not good for her spine, reverts back to the shoulder-hugging urban commuter pack in which at least she can stand upright, and pushes on by golly until something is clearly damaged.
The smart person would also recognize an injury for what it is, go to a doctor, get physical therapy, etc. soon after it occurs. The foolish person relies on self-diagnosis of mere underutilized muscle soreness, stretches it vigorously for a week before realizing that is making it worse, and persists in dancing “through” it anyway, takes on new yoga classes, continues to strap on heavy backpack, etc. for weeks and weeks. Then, one day, she can’t raise her right arm.
In case you are in any doubt as to who the foolish person is, let me tell you that once I stuck my finger in the beater-bar of a vacuum cleaner (in the “on” mode) that I thought I wasn’t working. It was. In addition to the pain of the shredding of the fingernail, there was the added humiliation of the witnessing of the seven-year-old I was babysitting at the time. She knew better than to do that. (She probably learned quite a few useful life lessons by observing two years of babysitter foibles.)
Anyways … I will leave the computer at work tonight and I will see a doctor at a sports medicine clinic next Thursday and I hereby cease the self-flagellation right this minute.
Now I just have to get used to having no more monkey (i.e., Internet) on weeknights. This will no doubt do wonderful things for my reading, art-making, housekeeping, and living. I might even start riding my bike to work again. Hurrah! I feel better and lighter and freer and more productive already. And a bit wiser.
Work on Wake (or whatever it will be called) continues fitfully. The clouds briefly cooperated yesterday afternoon, so after class we went on a field trip to the sculpture garden. I messed around with a borrowed Hi8 video camera (thanks, A) while the dancers improvised in between the sculptures and curious passers-by. We got in a good 45 minutes and then it started to rain again. I was hoping to extract some still shots from the footage but it seems I first need to purchase a driver to extract the footage from the cassette tape. I'm feeling too technologically inept at present to deal with that. Instead, here is a poorly cropped photo of a small child who was having great silly fun running between the rusty canyon walls (Fig. 1).
In other dance-ish news,
... I took some pictures of the main Velocity studio last weekend that have been waiting for an excuse to post (Fig. 2).
... Saturday night I saw the SCUBA show, which is a collaborative “touring exchange” showing edgy dance works from multiple cities, which I think means these works tour together to the cities from whence they sprang.
- The first piece of the evening, Kate Watson-Wallace's HOUSE, took place in the former Reel Grrls offices, on the fourth floor of the building from which the arts organizations and other tenants are emptying out to make way for gutting and redevelopment. The dance started at a large table near the office kitchen sink, with six dancers entering and exiting the room, exploring the possibilities of support and balance using the table, chairs, walls, and each other, in various combinations. The audience was then led into a second smaller room in which a woman emerged from a closet in which she was supported door by the inside doorknob, stepping onto an electrical outlet box and onto another doorknob, to do some gravity-defying shifting and reclining on a couch had been secured sideways up a wall. (Earlier in the previous room, the same dancer had crept out of a kitchen cabinet, like some sort of spirit which occupies the cupboards of this house and comes out when no one is watching.) I like it when dances happen in real people places; the surreal furniture use was a bonus. I felt sad when we left the space and passed by the Chamber Theater’s closed doors, theater no more, on the way back downstairs.
- The second piece, in the Velocity theater on the second floor, was comprised of the six astounding solos from Scott/Powell’s Geography, which I had seen last year in its entirety at On the Boards. I am in awe of this company. Now I know why those gongs were in the studio last week.
- The third piece, Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater's The Revenge of Huitlacoche, was over-the-top clownishly weird. The program notes described a fungus that lives in living ears of corn that is considered a culinary delicacy in Mexico and persecuted by U.S. fungicides and genetic modification. I think the piece might also have something to do with border patrol and immigration. Near the end, after hurling corn kernels all over the stage and tumbling and stomping upon them, the solo performer (costumed in body paint and a skirt constructed of corn husks) distributed handfuls to audience members (Fig. 3) and chanted “A fungus has no seeds but it is the ferment of things to come.” I walked away from that work wondering “What the f…?” but that didn’t stop me from feeling entertained.
... and lastly, in the wake of the weekend’s classes and this morning’s extra-laden-backpack commute, it seems my right shoulder has decided that any rotation at all is to be painful enough to override my aversion to doctors. Thursday I have an appointment for the shoulder as well as the lingering hamstring attachment issue. I punted tonight's class (Fig. 4) but figured I should do Wednesday’s full on, so the shoulder will be good’n’torn for the x-rays, and as a last hurrah, in case the doctor tells me to stop dancing for more than a couple of weeks. I really want to do Strictly Seattle this year, but need the full use of my arm more. Grumble. Ouch. Whimper. Repeat. Of course this might just be the ferment to develop that ambidextrousness I’ve always dreamed about.
Not good:
My right shoulder. About a month ago, after a pretty vigorous class with a combination that involved rolling from one side to the other on the floor and then pushing up into a sort of monkey hand-gallop (because this is the sort of thing that happens in a modern dance class, in case you ever wondered), it started hurting. For the first week I figured it was just muscle soreness, carefully stretched it every night and morning, and then went through it all again after a second week with the same combination in class. By the third week I realized it wasn’t going away and kind of backed off from the stretching and class exertions, but continued the heavy-laptop-in-backpack commute. Now, after starting a new yoga class this weekend plus the same dance class (new combination though) I am experiencing searing pain pretty much every time I try to reach behind from resting. I should have learned something from last year’s left hamstring attachment experience … but no, I am reluctant to see a medical professional. I have health insurance, I don’t want another chronic injury perpetuated my own neglect/stupidity, but I also don’t want to see a doctor or stop dancing. Note to self: accept that my aging body can’t just “push through” injuries, adapt movement, embrace post-class ice.
Good:
Doctor Who, Season One. For the past 15 years or so (warning: self-righteousness ahead) my television viewing has been limited to 1) BBC/A&E adaptations of the novels of Jane Austen and Victorian writers, 2) the first two seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess, and 2) the first season of Flight of the Conchords, a very fine Xmas present from my friend Lucinda. Plus the bootlegged Max Headroom I bought on eBay a few years ago, and this, um, squirrel porn, but only for my kitties’ enjoyment:
I became aware of the new Doctor Who because the lead actress starred in the recent adaptation of Mansfield Park, and was curious since the first season stars Christopher Eccleston (who I happen to think is kind of hot. Michael Winterbottom’s Jude, anyone? I also wish to point out that the actress who plays Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale-North, had a supporting role in the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, which also starred the actress who played BBC’s Tess of the D'Urbervilles … oh, what an incestuous little world British television is), and checked it out of the library, and now am hooked. And more than a little embarrassed to admit it after ragging on G’s television talk in the thing I posted on five days ago, but feel I compelled to, perhaps as a form of penance. Plus it’s Guilty Pleasure Tuesday. And anything with alien zombies is all right by my book.
I'm working at home today.
Five impossible things before lunch:
- Cobble a web bio for one of my bosses in which said boss comes across as Thee Undoubted National Expert, yet humble.
- Remove aphids from potted spearmint plant by means of water and my bare hands. (Thanks, Lorelei, for the soap tip -- that seems so much less unpleasant!)
- Rotate my right arm in its socket any direction but forward and up. (oh crud, not another injury ...)
- Resist Muki's efforts to clamber onto the table/desk.
- Resist adding a can of coconut milk to last night's dinner [a soup of cauliflower, onion, garlic, leftover canned tomatoes, canned pumpkin I bought last fall, carrots on the verge, the little stump of ginger I at least had on hand, coriander (dried leaf and ground seed), cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, saffron, salt, and a dollop of peanut butter] and oh heck some yellow lentils would be good in there, too.
Today was my first dance class after a two-week hiatus, begun on account of illness and extended to see if a chronic injury I've been postponing addressing would heal with the extra rest. It feels good to move again, though hindered by tiring easily, a residual cough, and the extra layer of flesh that grew back after only two weeks (damn that was fast!). The injury (left hamstring attachment) actually seems to be mended, though a lower back ache that started just before I stopped, perhaps as a result of compromising alignment to compensate for the first ache, is still lurking. Bodies sure are tricky.
Returning to the dance studio after a break always feels like a homecoming for me. There is a sense of intimacy developed over hours of floorwork, feeling my bones and tissues supported by the floor, seeing and sensing the surrounding space, moving through the sunlit dust motes stirred up by moving bodies. The really special ones have satiny floors I've caressed with bare feet, had full contact rolling all over, flown from.
I have a particular gratitude and fondness for this studio (the big one at Velocity). During the winter of 1996-97, while my mother was dying and I was living in the Seattle area for the first time, this room was the only place in which I could feel happy. I was working part-time to spend more time with mom, and not working 40 hours gave me the freedom to take KT's weekday morning class. Her classes were my therapy and provided a life-affirming space and time even as I was losing my mom.
Since moving back here from the DC area last May, Velocity has again become a home of sorts and the only community I really feel part of so far. These past two weeks of being sick and not taking class compounded the bad-enough isolation of my home-based job, and it was such a relief to be back in the studio among friends.
There was also the homecoming of getting back into my body -- reawakening what it feels like to curve this way, fold that way, to lengthen, invert, quickly change directions and regain my bearings. To breathe. And breathe deeper. To find my center of gravity and will it to go that-a-way, shake it up, swirl it around, let it go, and enjoy the ride. Gasp! (cough!) I'm so happy to be back! Now let's see what it feels like to get back on my sadly neglected bike ...
