The fall when it came was a surprise, in theory it shouldn't have been, after all there had been warning signs of the impeding fall for quite some time. There had even been a couple of serious slips that almost turned into wonderful falls of their own. I had survived those slips, and near falls by the skin of my teeth, and I suppose the lesson they were trying to teach me went unheeded. I didn't stop on my trek out into the wilderness, I didn't think "hey it's been raining hammers and nails for a long time now, and maybe I should come in out of the rain." Or if I did think it, I ignored my own advice, which is usually a bang up thing to do considering I am pretty sure no one needs to ever heed my advice, not even me. I do not have a career as a Life Coach. But maybe for once, I was right, maybe I needed to come inside, sit by the fire, and enjoy the Wilsonian 'splendid isolation' that I had created for myself (if only for a little while). Truth be told, (for once) I had planned my splendid isolation for quite a while, and was looking forward to the glorious absence of people, certain people more than others, but just people being absent was the point of my trip into the wild.
Of course planning a thing, and executing a thing are two very different kettles of fish. It is easy enough to sit in your ivory tower, behind a keyboard that (you think) gives you access to all of mankind's knowledge in an instant. That kind of planning is simple, or so it seems. It requires very little real thought. Vague search terms, and a scant knowledge of geography will get you a long way in that type of planning. You don't need to have the woodsman's skill and knowledge possessed by William Clark to plan the trip of your own personal Corps of Discovery (though I guess technically speaking, one man cannot be a "Corps"). The planning is the easy part, I've made plans before, we all have, be it dinner plans, plans for a drink with a work buddy, plans to rule the world, or plans for your collective future with that special someone. We have all made plans, and we have all had those plans fall to shit for one reason or the other. Usually, when they do fall to shit it isn't that big of a deal, after all, you will be able to have dinner some other night, you aren't going to stop eating forever just because your flake of a friend decided her "hair hurt too much" to come out and dine with you. You certainly aren't going to give up drink because your buddy's child decided that puking all night sounded like a fun thing to try, and decided to give it a go. The world still needs a supreme overlord, and why not you? Why not now? Well you might need some sort of army at your back to make that happen, and so far you, and the cactus you've recruited to your cause are lacking the necessary military hardware to rule anything other than your living room (and that is a close run thing). And just because the "other one" in the collective future plan has decided to return to their true nature, and determined you're good enough as a playmate, but not quite good enough to take to Christmas dinner with the family, isn't a reason to give up planning, what is now to be a solo, future. We all need something to live for, and you are best served figuring out what (not who) that is, and do it sharpish like.
Which is were the fall comes into play, whilst you were being the keyboard explorer, and planning the serene, no frills, simple trip into the wild that every misanthrope dreams of, you neglected to take certain things into account. Such as the weather, and other people, and the fact that food might be a necessary item to carry along with you on your trip, or that hey it might be glorious to not be around other people, but I still have a lot of time awake to kill, and it might behoove me to bring a good book or two. And, by the way, the 23rd book on Bolsheviks, doesn't count as a "good book." However, despite, or perhaps because of, all this piss poor planning here you are in the wilderness, and mostly (praise the gods) alone. You are occupying a broom closet, but how much room do you really need? It isn't like you're going to be entertaining the Queen of England, or the Margrave of Baden. All you need room for is to eat (once you've solved your lack of food problem), to sleep, and to poop (after eating the bad food you've obtained this might be the most important concern). In a pinch, mother nature, that murderous bitch, can provide you the room for the latter, if you are both lucky and careful.
Being lucky and/or careful didn't put you in the position for the fall, and since that position was a long time coming, it is unlikely you are suddenly going to become a cautious fellow who finds four leaf clovers everywhere he looks. It's fine to be unlucky, I mean someone has to lose at life, it is a zero sum game after all, but a lack of caution is generally a character flaw, not a quirk. Recklessness can, in the proper situation(s), be a whole hell of a lot of fun. Charging hell bent for leather up a hill is all well and good if you are Teddy Roosevelt, but if you're you (and you can't be anyone else no matter how much some people want you to be) well, you should make sure it's the right hill. Getting to to the top of the "wrong" hill, and sorting out you are there by mistake is not the happiest of realizations. The time you spent in that charge could have probably been better used elsewhere, but time waits for no man as the saying goes, and as you stand there panting for breath, and wondering where it went all so horribly wrong, the right hill has probably already been climbed by someone else. Someone with more style, sense of direction, and brains than you. It's a pity that your mother told you there would be days like this, even more of a pity that she didn't tell you want to do when they came.
None of this lately coming wisdom is presently doing you any good, because you are too busy falling. It was a slip, minor you thought, but that is what you get for doing your own thinking. Slips are slips, the minor fall becomes the major disaster in an instant, and that instant just passed you by on the way down the slope, no one falls in a major way, on flat ground. Down is the way of most falls, and yours is no different. It is not even unique, even though you think it is, in some ways you want it to be different. You don't want your fall to be so common that a toddler could have avoided it, that isn't how you want to fall. You want your fall to be unpredictable, that way after you land (and if you survive) you can justify the reason you fell. As if that matters, but I suppose when the fall is all there is, it matters. The tricky thing about falls is that one they start two things generally happen. They become faster, and your control of them fades generally in proportion to the speed. The faster the fall the less control you possess. We all like to think that when we start to fall, that we can somehow make the landing graceful, or at least less painful. Maybe some of us can, you are not possessed with that skill. Your fall, once it started is the boss of you, you are just along for the terrible, out of control ride, and are just awaiting the jagged rocks below that promise you a very, very painful landing.
And you will hit those rocks with an unsatisfying crunch, and it will hurt a lot, a whole lot. That's why those rocks are there, to teach fools like you (because in spite of you thinking it, you are not the only fool who falls). When that crunch happens, something in or on you will be badly bruised. The severity of the bruise depends on the speed, and the distance of your fall. And you gained a lot of speed on your lengthy fall to the bottom. Something may even be broken, and that something may never mend properly. You may acquire a limp, that will be with you for the rest of your life, and will serve as a warning to others, and make for a good conversation starter at parties you likely don't want to attend. Maybe, if you are lucky, whatever you broke will mend, and all you have to show for your fall is (hopefully) the wisdom not to fall (at least that particular way, each fall has its own unique set of circumstances) quite so hard again.
If you are very lucky, and most people have some luck (and not all of it is bad), there will be someone who comes along after your fall (but before you get up). They, again if you are lucky, will look down upon you, and out of something other than pity (because no one ever wants pity) offer you a hand up off the cold, hard, wet ground. It behooves you as you lie there, to think very carefully about accepting that hand. It is the normal reaction, almost a reflex, to take a hand that offers you help "out" of your current situation. It will be very difficult to refuse that hand, and you don't have to, what you do have to understand (eventually) is even that hand has it own set of problems attached. It may be offered out of kindness (you hope) or it may be offered with strings attached (you hope not), or it may be a way for the other person to pull themselves up from their own fall (a mutual get off our ass way of getting up). Problem is, you don't know, you can't know, even as you lie there and stare intently at that hand, studying it, pondering its reason for existing, you won't know the real reason that it is offered until you grasp it. All you can really do, in order to not become a joke to the world, is to get the ever living fuck up. Here's hoping that you do, with or without that helping hand.
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