Sore Knees and Anxiety

My knees felt stiff and sore coming downstairs this morning. Nothing major, but enough to have me holding the handrail, taking it slow. I'm not getting any younger. I accept that. Besides, I knew what to do. While the coffee water boiled, I did knee lifts and squats to loosen things. It worked. I felt better. Still do.

Also this morning, Ive been feeling tightness across my chest as I hold my breath and spin up about tasks and expectations I have today. Doing my knee lifts and squats, I worried there wasn't time for all that and I had to get going. Where I needed to go wasn't clear. I just felt anxiety about it.

I made coffee, moved to the couch, settled in to write Morning Pages, my mind wandering toward anxiety. The voice in my head demanded all sorts of things I should have been doing. Anxiety darkened the weather in my mind, all clouds and no sun with a threat of impending storms.

Loosening my knees is easy. Stretch and move. If that doesn't work, rest and ice. But what can relieve this anxiety? I place a hand on my chest and take deep breaths. One and two and three and four. Again.

This loosens things some, but the anxiety creeps back. My knees only get looser as the day goes on and I forget about them. Forgetting anxiety, I forget to breathe and accept, and then here comes the anxiety.

I just took a big breath and went back to typing but noticed I was holding my breath and felt the tension. Turns out I haven't figured out how to work with this anxiety, which is why I'm talking to you, whoever you are, guessing it's better to share this than carry it all on my own.

The weight of the anxiety, after all, is enough to really wreck my knees.

Better. Faster?

Went for a slow run this morning. Barefoot. As I often run. I got thinking of another barefoot runner in town. An acquaintance. Someone I'd like to know better. A much faster runner. But they hate to run and so don't run much.

This was two miles into a run I was loving. Felt like I could have run ten miles. Slowly. I felt joyous. Bare feet padding pavement. Moving steadily down the road.

Later in the run, another runner came off Peck Hill onto Tecumseh and passed me. They asked how long I'd run barefoot. Almost fifteen years. They said they only do it on grass fields. Everyone says that. I joked that I do it because I'm a broken down old man. They laughed and ran ahead. Steadily pulling away. Another faster runner.

Again I imagined being faster. Thinking it would make the run better. I envisioned keeping up with that faster runner. Going faster than the other barefoot guy. Doing a 5K in fewer than twenty-five minutes. Faster is better. Common sense on which I get stuck.

Even when I'm in the midst of a perfect run. When I feel completely happy. Unlike the faster guy who hates every step. Faster is better? Maybe better is better. Speed might have nothing to do with it. If walking feels good, that's fast enough. If I'm happy crawling, that's fast enough.

Boom. Insight. Enlightenment. I kept running down Tecumseh, hung a right on Old Lyme, and left onto Standish. Each step joyous. Complete. Better.

An hour ago, I got thinking about how to crack that twenty-five minute 5K.

Enlightenment, it turns out, can be fleeting.

Universal Concepts of Expansion

I got stuck this morning on a bit of philosophy and science. The universe is expanding and thus bounded rather than infinite. I struggle with the question of into what the universe might be expanding. If nothing lies outside the universe, how can it expand? Where is it going? What is it replacing?

Then in the shower, where insights come, I thought of numbers which go on infinitely. I thought of children topping one another: I bet infinity dollars followed by I bet infinity times infinity dollars, and so on. No number lies outside math. Even the square root of negative-one is inside. There is no outside of math. It's inconceivable.

I still wonder how the universe, a physical space, can expand without going into something else, but I can conceive of math doing it, so maybe someday I'll understand more about the universe.

Even if I can't quite conceive of the universe's expandsion, I can, through the example of numbers, accept it and believe someday I might come to understand.

In this way, my thinking expands. Not into something that it replaces. It just expands.

The universe began from an infintesimally small point, the beginning of the big bang. I began from a very small thing, beginning a much smaller bang. Now here I am, expanding continually and still somehow inside myself.

Breaking News

The headlines tell me that Kevin McCarthy, Republican member of the House, can't seem to get elected Speaker. I'd tell the details, but I no longer have subscriptions to The Times or The Washington Post, hardly listen to NPR anymore, and no longer read Twitter. I'm missing all the breaking news.

Oh well.

Two things strike me about this. One, McCarthy and his election will soon be nothing more than trivia. Try naming that last ten Speakers of the House. Second, the more important thing is the date on which I'm posting this: January 6.

A couple years ago, the orange maggot and his minnions attempted a bloody coup. Focus there. Kevin McCarthy is part of that. He was faux-outraged on the sixth, but by the seventh or eighth was licking the orange maggot's ass. He's having trouble being elected Speaker because he's a kiss-ass piece of shit who doesn't care enough about anyone but himself to be a good public servant. That news isn't breaking.

Breaking news breaks over us like waves crashing to the shore then receding back into the endless ocean. Real stories come later with reflection and professional, trustworthy journalism and editing. This takes time. Knee-jerk reactions (tweets) published in the moment do little good and too much harm. I'll wait.

This is why journalism can do good why citizen journalism is just so much bullshit. True journalism sifts through details to find the story and relies on a team to make those determinations. I'm thinking of the rigor of Woodward and Bernstein and the team at The Washington Post rather than the random nonsense of @SomeRandomAsshole on Twitter.

Elon Musk wants to sell citizen journalism as a good idea. If you didn't believe in reincarnation, ladies and gentleman, may I introduce you to the second coming of P.T. Barnum? Hucksters are in it for themselves and swindle us out of our money, time, and good sense.

McCarthy and the orange maggot are hucksters too.

I'll skim the headlines, let breaking news break and try to see the bigger stories. Like the one about Republicans attempting a coup and distracting us with nonsense about a pathetic man who sold his soul but still can't seem to get elected Speaker.