January 03 2008, 10:42 PM Falling Down

I am lucky: I have a friend with a boat. This summer past, I got to spend a bit of time on it, tooling around the waters here and taking in the country from that strange and level view. We got to see many things, and wonder at many others: hidden villages best visible by boat, the strange structures left abandoned that were place for other, larger boats now long gone, the odd calm of locking through between a monster of a pleasure barge and a guy in a kayak. There are wonders, if you look.

One of the more amusing episodes happened on one of the islands we made quick port on. There was a bit of sitting, a bit of exploration, a bit of juggling done with river stones (it turns out that river stones are quite good for this). At one point we were walking the shore line, and came up on a patch of mud made from silt. This is tricky stuff to walk on, oddly yielding and quite slick, and a moment after one bad step I had tumbled into a heap on the shore, landing with a wet grunt.

I was told it was impressive to see. There was, as I recall, some giggling. I was also told it was impressive how well I fell; there are tricks to falling down, the main one being to let it happen. Modulo landing on any pointy debris, folks more often get hurt when they flail wildly against gravity: bits of them strain and struggle, and come down to earth in awkward ways leading to injury. I was a greenling student of a martial art, long ago, an learning to fall well is a large part of that, letting the ground come up as gently as possible. I still know that part of it, at least.

It was cold this morning, but sunny, and I found myself in good spirits: I had thought it would be a good day for walking. I wrapped myself up, stepped out the door, and some ways down the block touched black ice and fell flat on my ass. It does not do to ignore signs: I took the bus.

I walked home in the gathering dark. That was pretty cold.