Don’t Try to Measure the Ground from Here

It’s a sordid affair, but it’s the truth that when two opposing forces face each other, gather momentum, and then collide, glass is splintered everywhere and no one goes away unscathed. That much is true. That’s some sort of law from where I stand – law of motion, law of mass, whatever you want to call it. I’ll let the big timers down at the universities correct me, but it’s a law of something, alright. It’s always a law of something.

A collision is felt on both sides, too. It’s felt in all its candid and brutal glory, you see. Even if one party is feeling more pain than the other party, both parties feel some kind of pain after the collision happens.

And sometimes the pain isn’t felt immediately after the collision. Sometimes it’s felt a few seconds after the collision happens, after the initial shock of the collision happens. And most of the time, the pain doesn’t go away for a while. After an hour or so, maybe. But up until that hour, the pain stays and it works with you good. Or I should really say, you work with the pain the best you can, because you’re the adult in this situation and the pain is just a meddlesome guest that must be rallied and then subdued. 

No matter how much pain each party feels after the collision, whether it be great or small, it stays around for at least an hour. 

I know all this because those close to me have told me, you see. I don’t know from firsthand experience. I only know because those close to me have told me as much. And I know that they’re telling the truth, because when I sit up front and I watch them after the impact, I can witness the fact that they are in pain after the initial shock happens. I can tell this by their wincing faces and their awkward body positions and by the way they sometimes hit the floor on their knees, on the way down. 

It would be too much to accurately measure the ground from that place that they have fallen to, hard knees connecting with the craggy floor, because distance isn’t distance down there and time isn’t time down there, either. The distance from their chin to the floor is just as far, if we’re being honest and objective about it, from my house on the hill to the Cliffs of Dover. I don’t make the rules, that’s just the way it is. The distance from their beating hearts to their knuckles scratching the floor is about that same distance, too. Again, I don’t make the rules when it comes to this. 

I’m not a chicken, by the way. I haven’t removed myself from the events because I’m a chicken. I’m just a bit too old these days, a bit too weathered. And if I were to do something like that, even once, I know that it would either put me in the hospital or put me in the ground for good. And that’s not just me saying that, by the way. Lots of other people have told me that. 

But I like watching. I get a real kick out of it. It brings me a sense of elation and fascination that almost nothing else brings me these days. I eat, I drink water, I sleep, I exercise, I talk amongst others just so I can get to that place at the front lines every afternoon. And every afternoon it’s worth it. I haven’t been let down once, not even on that day when it randomly snowed and the craggy floor far below us become icy and unpredictable.

When I’m sitting on the floor at the front lines watching them, set after set, collision after collision, I can feel the distance between my chin and my stomach and know that it’s a greater distance than when I’m sitting down on the carpeted floor of my house. That’s just the way things are. And depending on the type of person watching, they might feel a greater distance here too, watching the collisions.

You face off, you gain momentum, and you collide. That’s just how it goes. And then all the things that come after it, and the distance. A stretch so great that you could be looking down from yourself into the tunnel of a well. And you stay connected with everything even though the distance feels, and actually is, so great. 

And then you gather up the distance into your open hands –  zipping it along quickly, like bringing measuring tape back into the roll – and then you breathe deeply in and out, and then you rise from your knees and stand.

And then you get back in line, waiting your turn to go again. And there are those standing in both lines, and those sitting at a distance and just watching.

And that’s the way things go here. I don’t make the rules.