Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill – Footnote – The “Accident”
On Sunday afternoon, January 22,2006, as I was building this page, I decided to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. Unbeknownst to me, Eva had just mopped the floor, and as I stepped on it – down I went! Under the floor tiles, it’s concrete. “High energy impact” were the surgeon’s later words.
I landed on my right thigh/hip, and as I lay on the floor, I had the sense that something fundamental was wrong. With help from Eva, I edged/ crawled/butt-slid into the living room – a little journey that took over an hour. After another 2 hours trying to convince myself that this was nothing serious, we called 911.
The X-ray showed a femur broken in two places. At the time of writing this, it’s 9 weeks later. Attached to my right femur I have a good sized chunk of titanium and 8 screws (see picture). It’s healing in record time but I’m still hobbling a little.
Now to a man that knows there’s no such thing as “accidents”, and who thinks that he’s sort of got things cruising along OK, manifesting a broken leg was a wake-up call. After getting past the “how stupid” bit, I was forced to take a serious look at what I was creating (or rather not creating).
Truth is I was creating by default. I had allowed myself to be operating in “should” mode – even in the building of this web site. During the first weeks, I came to see that there had been a sort of quiet tension that sat with me through my day, and it was such a fixture – it was so “normal” – that it was invisible.
All sorts of good things have come from this. My physical therapist got turned on to Abraham-Hicks, and there have been lots of friends providing support. Most importantly, I’m now renewed in my enthusiasm for daily quiet time to create. For a while in the ’90s, I was heavily into meditation – quieting the mind to the point of no thought. Now I’m more into visualization – getting to the point where the creation I’m seeking is in my mind and body – without qualification.
I always know when I’m there. It’s a high. My body twitches and moves – but it’s delicious. Sometimes I get there in 10 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes I can’t get there at all, but now I’m sufficiently aware that I miss it. I notice that familiar old tension starting to appear. Then it’s time to stop and go do something else. It’s more important for me than ever to feel good.
My good friend Wendy Yellen has been taking me through some eidetic imagery. If you don’t know what that is, she’s building a web site www.EideticLifeCoach.com – you can read all about it there. She’s had me visualizing the “accident” many times over. It’s a fascinating process in which I was able to eventually recall all sorts of details about it – the smell of the wax as I approached the kitchen, the feel of the carpet giving way to hard floor, the fall itself being slow enough that I could see it instead of “one instant upright, the next – down”. Then the image changed. Tupelo joined me – sat on my shoulder on the walk to the kitchen. We noticed the floor, joked about it and no accident happened.
The upshot of all of this is – I’m healing phenomenally quickly, I’m now creating with certainty, and I know it sounds weird, but Tupelo and I have become close friends – and that’s as real as it gets. Good lessons learned.
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