Alaskan Odyssey: TravelBlog – Countdown

Countdown, Day 8: The Lord Giveth …

Oh, thank you thank you thank you, God! Got an unexpected e-mail from Verdure Tuesday asking whether we were available to leave for Alaska a day earlier, to take photos of a scenic mountain train tour in a gorgeous national park near Anchorage. Hells, yeah!

Came at the perfect time, just as the June NYC temperatures and my work-related frustrations were both beginning to climb steadily. Two day of 100-degree temperatures, the first week of June! Sandwiched between long stretches of 60’s and rainy … For weeks I’m sitting around my messy apartment and Joe’s, my noisy “coffice”, trying to find ways to introduce wellness coaching into corporate employee benefits programs. A longshot to say the least. Aetna, the provider for JPMorgan Chase, has been bouncing me from person to person, department to department. At least they’re responding. Even worse, a good work opportunity – a diversity training seminar with Orlando-Ward – conflicts with the only other good work opportunity I’ve had in months: A week-long photo shoot in Alaska. So looking forward to leaving the revolving-door disappointments and frustrations of life in the big city …

Countdown, Day 7: The Lord Taketh Away?

And then, a potential nightmare scenario unfolds: during the last 10 minutes of step class this morning, I miss a step off the step and crumple to the floor, turning my left ankle. Badly. I don’t realize how badly until a bit later on the way home, when I discover I can’t put any weight on it at all without pain. Serious pain. Then it began to blow up and turn a bit blue … Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck – did I break it???

Yes, thank you thank you thank you, God! I’m leaving for Alaska in a week, have lots of prep, laundry and packing to do before, rehearsals and dinners, and I’m hobbling around on crutches like a geriatric –

Will this keep me from being able to do my job in Alaska? Will I have to cancel my trip?

We had words, God and I. I cursed Him/Her/It out, told Him/Her/It to fuck off. And I meant it. I thanked Him/Her/It for my lack of a spouse, my lack of children; for toying with one of the few exceptional pleasures I’ve been allotted in this life. I don’t need You, I declared - I’ll try to heal my ankle with my mind. So far, not so good –

Blasphemous rumors. God’s sick sense of humor. (Fortunately, God doesn't take any of this personally.) Alas, my rant has not given me any relief. I’m still pissed. And sore. And nervous I’ll have to cancel.

Countdown, Day 6: Going With the Redirected Flow

So R.I.C.E has worked wonders – swelling’s down, and I can stand on it and gingerly walk, though not without some twinges of pain. Thank goodness I cleared my schedule pre-trip … Spent the morning getting referrals to see a chiropractor to receive A.R.T., active release therapy touted by dancers and athletes alike, only to discover my primary care will only allow me to see a podiatrist. Guess she’s right: supposed it’s broken? A podiatrist will decide whether or not I need to get an x-ray …

Dorothy gave me a spectacular haircut. And Tony-nominee Bobby Cannavale held the salon door open for me … Aotherwise, an entire day lost before I get to see a podiatrist. After poking and prodding and twisting and turning my poor unhappy ankle, she wants an x-ray even though she thinks it’s just a sprain. She wraps it carefully in a soft cast to inhibit movement, says to stay home and stay off it and stay mummied up at least until I come back Monday. "It needs to heal," she insists … (Unrelated Happy Revelation #1: I discovered that my revised medical plan no longer requires me to get a referral before seeing doctors. Wish I’d have known this early; would have saved me many phone calls to my primary care’s annoying assistant and much annoyance when the referral wasn’t sent …)

No way I can do our scene wearing this ridiculous boot. Cancelled tomorrow’s rehearsal with Cem and Laurie.

Keep bumping into Nick, a yogi-in-training, at the “coffice”. Cute but intense and trouble, I think –

Countdown, Day 5: Still Resisting the "What Is"

I’m so friggin’ bored. There’s only so much sitting around healing one can do in a day. Not much to work on. Thank goodness for my books. I’m freaking out, afraid to eat for fear of blowing up like an inflatable cow from the lack of activity. So I resolve to eat small quantities of only healthy foods. Under 1,200/calories a day. Chocolate is out of the question.

Hobble to Doshi to get an x-ray first thing in the am. Looks good to me -

Funny who shows up to assist and who pretends they don’t see you as you hobble down the street on crutches …

Going out to dinner with the girls if it kills me. After much back and forth, the GNOs come up to the UWS so I don’t have to schlep downtown. Only one cocktail for me. A great night of spirited (read: loud!), great conversation. I so needed that –

Countdown, Day 4: Letting Go

Slept in. What the hell do I have to get up at 7am for? I got nothing, can’t go to the gym. Just more waking hours in boredom, obsessing about not eating. But I did do 45 minutes of Pilates and yoga in the apartment, which felt pretty good. Hurt.

Hobbled crutch-less to the coffice to do a little work. What a luxury to have really nothing important to do but sit around, let elevated, and heal. Think I’ll venture to class tomorrow on the bus, keeping walking to a minimum …

Countdown, Day 3: The Little Things

Yes, I’m going to class. I can stand standing, I can stand walking. Little to no pain, just reminders when I overdo or try anything more exotic than standing and walking. Put in ½ hr. of Pilates before leaving …

To avoid the stairs and jerking of the subway, decided to take the bus. Which just pulled away without me. So I walked 10 blocks while waiting for the next to come. So far, so good. (Unrelated Happy Revelation #2: Can’t believe the ride from the UWS to Abingdon Square in the West Village took a total of 25 minutes, less than a normal subway ride, minus the walks to-from the station …)

Great class, some excellent work, including a scene from “Taming of the Shrew” that I helped direct. Much improved, if I do say so myself. Brunch, coffee, Sunday Times … bliss.

Countdown, Day 2: Finishing Touches

Big day – gym, laundry, errands, podiatrist. Walking naturally, frequently forgetting about the injury. Did 45 minutes of the aerobic arm machine, followed by 45 minutes of Pilates next to Matt Damon.

Three loads of laundry, started to pack. Weather looks cool and rainy in Alaska.

The doc insists that I continue to rest, stay off my foot as much as possible so that it continues to heal. No exercise for 2 weeks. I think I’ll go mad. However … I kind of like the freedom and the new, spontaneous focus on eating well, rather than life-ling the obsession of burning off as much junk as I consume. (Unrelated Happy Revelation #3: while I still have isolated moments of cravings and obsessing about food, overall my appetite has diminished considerably since the accident. Have my workouts been compelling me, encouraging me, stimulating me, to overeat? To think incessantly about eating? Capturing me in an exercise cycle of binge/purge, overeat/overexercise?)

Countdown, Day 1: Accessing the Metaphysical Through the Physical

As a result of my physical injury on the physical plain, several metaphysical subjects keep surfacing in conversation with friends:

1. Many insist that “everything happens for a reason.” If so, for what reason(s) did this “accident” happen at this particular time? (When there are no accidents?)

2. Many claim that this is a sign to “slow down”. From what? Personally and professionally, things couldn’t get any slower without going backwards …

3. Some wonder, might this be a form of self-sabotage? If so, why? What am I avoiding? (Certainly not success.)

4. Still others assert that this is an opportunity to learn and do better. What am I supposed to take away from the pain, inconvenience, freak-out?

Which, in all honesty, had really begun to piss me off. Friends and family patronizing me with new-age nonsense. (This from the queen of new-age, alternative, metaphysical methodologies.) The petulant child, preferring to strike out in anger, “poor me-ism” and “why me-ism”, wanting to figure out the reason and who/what to blame, pushed aside the wise and worldly life coach within, and sage questions asked her, as she threw her tantrum.

But this has re-raised some heavy but interesting questions. I started wondering, again:

1. How much of our experience in this lifetime is within our power,

-- do we instigate, create, co-create with our own thoughts, intentions, conditioning, actions?

-- exists for us in our mind, because we believe it exists?

2. How much is beyond our control, whether

-- in the hands in some higher power to which we can appeal through prayer and supplication?

-- already written in the stars, predestined by a divine source like some Rube-Goldberg contraption, over which there is no hope of or power to change?

-- at the mercy of the physical laws of the universe; everything, even birth and death, merely expressions of energy as it moves and transforms from state to state, in and out of existence?

-- something else, a seemingly random but wholely connected interplay of energy, matter, physics, consciousness, that unfolds as it will? Perhaps according to some plan or set of laws – or perhaps not?

The trained, professional life coach in me used to insist that we are all-powerful, 100% in charge of how our life unfolds. 100% responsible for generating successes, 100% accountable when things derail. Achievements as well as accidents, triumphs as well as tragedies, it’s all us, all the time. Which can feel incredibly empowering, yet extraordinarily daunting. If I’m so powerful, why wouldn’t I create more bliss, less stress and strife for myself and others and world? Why would I or anyone chose misery over mirth? I mean, WTF?

At the moment, the day before I depart for Alaska, left foot wrapped and up on a chair, I doubt that I, or God, or anything/anyone, intended to throw a wrench into the machinery of my life, to sabotage my trip. Even the narcissistic, ego-centric child, who thinks the universe revolves around her, once allowed to throw her tantrum, has mostly let this go. Maybe the event had nothing to do with me. Maybe it just happened.

Maybe events unfold as they will, sometimes explicably, sometimes miraculously, without any rhyme or reason that we can understand with our current level of intelligence. Maybe things happen randomly, completely indifferent to our wants and feelings and dreams. No higher power to hear and answer our prayers. No energetic ability of our own to shift the course of events. Or maybe there’s an intricate interplay of forces: a random unfolding of consciousness, of “what is,” with which our own consciousness dances. Our conscious choices tango with divine universal creation consciousness, with “what is”, one creating the other, one affecting the other. Without one there is no other -

Or not.

Feels like much of the teachings I study are beginning to fuse. While this hybrid doesn’t feel quite as empowering my former omnipotent if misguided self, it does feel lighter, like a load has been lifted. Absolution of some of the responsibility brings certain peace. Very Zen, this acceptance of my sore foot, my release of the need to figure out why and find a purpose and a meaning. Very que sera, sera.

That’s where I’m at today. Not sure about tomorrow. Hope I’m healed by the day after -

(Unrelated Happy Revelation #4: I’ve had chocolate twice in a week. Relatively effortlessly. Maybe not a record, but not bad. Could this be the lesson, what I take away? That what I insisted was a positive – proved to be destructive? That I can break entrenched behaviors?) Shut up and finish packing …

BLAST OFF!