The Unknown

Turning my attention to my training these days -- but it's not as much as I want to. My lower right leg, the knee, and part of the calf is somewhat numb. This causes me concern, as it is the result of doing a rather easy isometric exercise about two weeks ago. Meanwhile, I try to adjust mentally from a fast, efficient first-world pace to something rather more suited to the Zimbabwean culture. Or at least how I imagine it will be. Today (let me put it this way) is my adjustment day; a day to ponder every sort of vaguely imaginable contingency, and to come to terms with it.

I reflect today on how I often employ the most anomalous paradigms to deal with the unknown. When I was writing my thesis, it was like, "Okay, let's do another round with this thing. Plan the strategy and pursue it. Enter and exit as hard and as fast as you can all on the basis of the single strategy. That way you will get the better of it, rather than it dominating you."

And then I think of this horse-riding safari at the beginning of the trip, and I realise I have been making preparations for boot camp. We will be sleeping outside and doing an exercise I haven't properly trained for -- horse riding. Squeezing a beach ball with my knees for about an hour was when I obtained the strange numbing in my knee and calf. A partial tendon dislocation? (I'd torn a ligament on this knee as a child, and then re damaged it as a few times as an adult, once by learning leaping crescent kicks.) "Horse ball" seems unwarrantedly violent.

Communication, however, also seems redundant, post Ph.D. With the vessel of communication having been so thoroughly emptied, I'm down to focusing on the pure physicality of my being. It's me against Myself.