Blogging Will Be Light-Headed

The following essay from June 2005 is the latest in the series “Dymphna’s Greatest Hits”.

Rereading it made me nostalgic. Readers who are familiar with Dymphna’s later travails will understand how amazing it seems (a) that she was willing and able to walk out to the car in the dark, (b) that she could drive it, (c) that she could sustain such a nasty fall and get up from it all by herself, and (c) that she could come back into the house on her own.

The situation was very different ten years later, as most of you already know.

Oh, by the way — I’ll bet I got in a LOT of trouble for leaving that wheelbarrow there, but I can’t really remember it…

Blogging Will Be Light-Headed

by Dymphna
Originally published June 3, 2005

It’s a loathsome phrase: “blogging will be light.” Go on. Just tell us you didn’t pay the electric bill and promise to return after you’ve hit up your brother-in-law for another utility deposit.

We’ll wait.

Around here, at least in certain quarters, blogging will be sparse and painful. On account of tripping over a wheelbarrow in the dark. One moment you’re vertical, walking toward the car, and then WHAM! you’re horizontal, lying in a large cold puddle next to the fig tree. Some unspecified period of disorientation passes. You feel the pulse of the rain and think vaguely of the Biblical observation that it falls on the just and the unjust at moment your awareness begins to take in the scent of roses nearby.

OK. Tactile sense of rain. Olfactory nerves intact: rose fragrance. Time for a body check: chins? Check. There, but bonging. Pain? Maybe a 3. Safe enough. Shoulder? Check. OK, just taking a cold soak in a puddle. Pain? No. Hip? Check. Padded and impervious. No pain there. Head? Resounding from the effect of cranium hitting ground. Pain? A 3, with some resonance.

That leaves only one problem: A wheelbarrow handle jammed firmly up and under the ribcage on the right side. Not such a great check here. Pain? Maybe a 5. The task, as it appears from ground level, is to maneuver the overturned and now wedged wheelbarrow in such a way that it won’t inflict further damage.

Fling it off? What if it doesn’t fling far enough? This is a wheelbarrow, not a frisbee.

Wait until someone notices my absence? That might be a while, dependent on whomever is hungry enough to look for dinner.

Slooowly maneuver the other handle in such a way that the whole thing shifts six inches and allows for a crawl out from under?

The last solution works, though the release of handle-jammed-under-ribs is probably akin to having an arrow removed. Since arrow-removal is not on my list of experiences, that’s just a guess.

Crawling out from under the wheelbarrow to the relative joy of wet grass, the main feeling is one of deep gratitude. Crawling means movement. Movement means life. Life goes on…

And so I get up off my knees the way a child does. Awkward, but it works. I bend over to… No, I start to bend over. No go. Ribcage/liver — whatever piece of damaged anatomy it is rebels at this movement. NO BENDING! Okaaay… Not so bad. Just don’t bend. Don’t bend that way…

So now, 24 hours later, blogging in a standing position is awkward. Blogging on my knees reminds me I need to pray more, but mainly it tells me this penance requires some medical attention.

We’re off to the doctor tomorrow, though not just for my pain. The Baron is getting noticeably jumpy at the sudden screams and moans when I bend that way.

It is fervently to be hoped that blogging will be under the influence of drugs next time we meet…

7 thoughts on “Blogging Will Be Light-Headed

  1. Corrina, Corrina by Ray Peterson

    I love Corrina, tell the world I do
    I love Corrina, tell the world I do
    I pray every night she’ll learn to love me too

    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    I love you so

    Oh little darling where you’ve been so long
    Oh little darling where you’ve been so long
    I ain’t had no loving since you’ve been gone

    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    I love you so

    I left Corrina way across the sea
    Oh me, I left Corrina way across the sea
    If you see Corrina send her home to me

    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    I love you so

    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    Corrina, Corrina
    I love you so

    Oh darling don’t you know
    I love you so

    Note: Read Dymphna for Corrina

    • Thank you. Dymphna loved Leo Kottke’s cover of this song. I think it’s on the album “Standing in my Shoes”.

  2. This predates my following of GoV, which makes it especially precious; I loved your Dymphna, though never having met her, and this rounds out my image of her. A brave (and very human) woman; a privilege for me to have known her, if only at a remove.

  3. Dymphna had a great talent for writing as we can see here. She was able to bring the reader into her own experiences with her very human way of telling a tale. I don’t think I was following GoV at that time so I appreciate these glimpses into her personality that round out the mental image I have of her.

  4. What I really like about this short piece is that theoretically we could all write this, that is something akin to this because we have all had experiences like this, i.e. banging a toe, hitting one’s head on a open cabinet door, etc. But who can convey an experience as well? Not many. I especially liked Wham! going from vertical to horizontal.

    Dymphna’s light writing (not that she didn’t suffer in this accident) was to fun and smilely (sp) self realization, as her serious writing was to contemplation, or something like that.

    Mike from Brooklyn

  5. Likewise all, especially Clarence. It just feels so badly, the missing team member, Dymphna. Thank God, however, for the Baron. But the team, the “balance”, periodic viewpoints……

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