The summer season was flowing like honey. The knee replacement is a dream, help was good and the business a perfect balance between, patio dining, inside restaurant and the bar crowd. I cooked every meal except for a few rare exceptions when I absolutely needed help.
August 8th I suffered a complete mental and physical melt down. I usually weigh in at 175 pounds and IF I'M WORKING OUT AT THE GYM usually around 185. I went from 180 pounds to 141.05 pounds. Some days I weigh in around 144. Last year I suffered with unrelenting pain on the left side of my body. End of July I began experiencing severe pain in the right side of my lower back which radiated down the into the front of my thigh. I could hardly stand and I stand up to 15 hours when I work. I awake around 6:30 AM walk to the kitchen by 7:15 AM and stand until after lunch. I return home and lay down for about two hours, I return at 4:30 PM prepping for the evening. I cook from opening until closing then the clean up and more prep work returning home between 11 PM and midnight. My left arm is healing thank God. That was a nightmare that I never want to relive and pray that it does come full circle. Possibly Beethoven would understand the loss of something that relates to making music. Last July I could not play a full octave with my left hand. The 3rd, 4th and 5th fingers of my left hand were numb until end of March this year......... It has been a slow and dreadful experience, but I can play my piano again. (Back to the leg)
Everyone told me I had sciatica. After weeks of pain and all kinds of advice I went to a sports medicine man in Jackson Hole. After X rays and examinations he said I have scoliosis of the lower spine. I am in therapy three times a week doing the Lordex treatment. They seem to be working. I am still in pain, but as of next week I will have inserts made for my shoes, I walk with an insert under the left heel of my foot that is to help turn the pelvic bones and align my inner frame... Two days ago I discovered a hernia on the right side of my Adonis belt! I go tomorrow for a consultation with a surgeon to see if there is a chance in hell I can avoid surgery? I swear by March 6th of 2009 I should be living in a new body!
Yesterday was a rare day. I actually felt like taking a walk into the forest behind the house of which I have written about time and time again. My sacred Rock with The EYE! I posted a photo of this rock in a blog I wrote soon after I returned from NZ this year. The forest is lovely at this time of year. Yellow aspen and the cedar and pine trees are amazing. Yes, the foliage has died, but I recall years ago a dear friend telling me that there is a certain beauty in a dying garden!
One has to crawl under the barb wire fence to enter the National Forest behind the house. In Wyoming barb wire is like cement is to big cities! I decided to take the lower trail because I have been feeling so weak and wanted to simply breathe in every scent, memorize every scene and listen to the symphony of wild life and the gentle breeze. I was walking along and suddenly stopped. Something was amis. As I looked ahead I caught sight of the destruction... a new road. Piles of crushed flora and fauna, felled trees of which I counted 72. My Rock with the EYE GONE! It had been smashed into a mountain of broken life.
Tears streamed from my eyes. All I could hear was the opening tragic theme of the Brahms first symphony! C minor is a tragic key. I dropped to my knees and pulled out my I Pod setting it to that very symphony. Thank the universe for music because that language was the only thing that could express my emotions. I thought of the poem by Edna St. Vincent Milly,
"Apostrophe to man!" "Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out, Breed faster, Crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes, HOMO CALLED SAPIENS!"...
I kept walking step by step up the new dirt road. It was a steep grade and the higher I went the more my leg ached. I walked through the damn pain. Midway I discovered a makeshift tree hut I had assembled years ago. O my God they had not knocked it down. I crawled inside and laid on the soft pine needles. I gazed out of the limbs and the view was celestial. Clouds racing like helium balloons across a turquoise sky. The horizon of mountains and the winding mighty Snake River calmed my soul and I felt the urge to shout for joy!
I left the hut and kept walking up the road, then I figured out where it was taking me. To the new water system that is to feed water into three new subdivisions. Alas. I turned and started the steep descent. My knees were holding up. Yes, they ached, but I was happy.
This mountain is blanketed in a quilt of wild flowers every spring and during the more part of the summer. Dried stalks of Iron weed, sand burs and other plants stood erect with hard pods full of seeds hanging from brittle stems that would release their life into the soil before snow fall.
Time will heal all things that I think are wrong with the world and the world will remain an interesting stage and setting where human life will play out drama after drama after drama, lifetime after lifetime. I gaze at the very same moon and stars that inspired Beethoven to write the Moonlight Sonata, Debussy to paint a musical painting, Clair de lune... could it all be an illusion?
I walked in the back door, dropped my pack. Put on the tea kettle and sat beside my cats. With cup and saucer in hand I climbed the stairs to my room and sat at my desk gazing at all the beautiful art work and books and keepsakes I have in this chamber. Then my eyes landed on a piece of sculpture I love, "Walking Wounded"... Again a piece of art saved the day.
Will write more later. For now I am off to dream land...
