First Day Back

Strange is the best word I can find for today, though it doesn't quite cover it.

Not bad, not good — somewhere between the two, a kind of weather that doesn't have a name. All the forms felt slightly off, which I expected, but still found mildly dispiriting when it was actually happening. Legs tight, rhythm not quite where it was, the body needing to remember things it hasn't forgotten but has temporarily misplaced. The coaches are on holiday, so I'm practising alone, which adds its own particular quality to the day — a silence with a different texture than the usual one.

No real energy to speak of. The mind is busy with things that weren't offering themselves to be resolved. Tension sitting in the body in a way that was distributed and hard to locate, which always tells me the same thing: whatever is in the body started in the mind. It doesn't originate at the shoulders or the hips. It starts somewhere quieter and works its way outward.

I'm choosing tonight not to fight any of it. Some basic maintenance, some stretching, and then letting the day drift toward history the way all days eventually do whether you're ready or not.

With every dawn comes a new day. That's not a platitude tonight, it's just the plain truth of it.

I've been trying to notice when I'm sorting experience into right and wrong, high and low, productive and wasted. It's an exhausting habit and it doesn't clarify anything. Life is a series of moments passing through on their own schedule, more or less indifferent to how I feel about them. Today lacked enthusiasm. That's allowed.

Tomorrow will be its own thing.