Sunday, March 31, 2013

Aragorn's question

Success yesterday and today, in the realm of "colossally boring but necessary." I did my portion of tax-return-preparation, and handed off the package to my wife to tend to her own chunk. Next step: send it to the Tax People, who will polish and submit it. I think we'll get it in just under the Tax People's wire for Last Minute return-submission.

Two things I've noticed about this year's tax effort; first, record keeping throughout the year makes things go a LOT faster. A lot less time is demanded by the "go through the pile of WTF-was-this-for" receipt spelunking.

Also... except for medical expenses, of which lemme tell you, there are plenty, when you're basically laid up and can't really do anything besides sleep, you incur significantly fewer expenses. Of any sort. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. Leaves you more cash free for, oh, I dunno, medical expenses?

Tragi-comic as always, the Neurological Highway is.

Joe Straczynski was known to frequently quote great artists who said "The devil is in the details. So is God." Well, it does take an inordinate amount of theological introspection to discover God lurking in the details of one's tax return... but there are certainly many, many details in my experience of traveling the Neurological Highway.

Getting a lot of focus, currently, are things that can be categorized under "My legs are different." One time, I walk across the room, and I feel like more data is moving between my legs and my perception of them. "Better," one might call this. A little later, I walk across the room, and the walking is significantly more difficult than usual. "Worse," one might call this. Why the differences? As Aragorn often asked in the Lord of the Rings, "Who can say?"

Last night, I got up in the middle of the night, having taken several hours earlier a specific formula that my herbalist was especially excited about, and the feeling in my legs was "Oh man, something very different is definitely going on." Neither specifically better nor worse, but clearly very very different. Was that good? Bad? Who can say?

Good thing that I've been getting so much experience with "hang on for the ride." I think I've put enough mindfulness into it that I can fairly call it "getting practice," rather than just "experience." But, as the saying goes, practice makes permanent; only perfect practice makes perfect. So, something else to work on: mindfulness; specifically, walking with mindfulness. Which, you gotta admit, beyond any Zen-esque benefits that might accrue simply by being more mindful in general, mindfulness in walking will (I hope) reduce the number of falls and pulling the TV off the shelf and onto myself and cracking a rib. Again.

But, my legs? Getting better? Worse?  Who can say?

Will that question ever really be answered? Well, as the 1960's Batman ended its episodes, "Tune in tomorrow—same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." And tomorrow: Will an answer present itself? Who can say?



1 comment:

Judy said...

Only you could turn a post about preparing taxes into an examination of the state of health, of life, of Psyche. Impressive.