“Whereas the typical Occidental hero is a personality, and therefore necessarily tragic, doomed to be implicated seriously in the agony and the mystery of temporality, the Oriental hero is the monad: in essence without character but an image of eternity, untouched by, or else casting off successfully, the delusory involvements of the mortal sphere.”—Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology

We’ve had a thousand years of this worshipping of the individual, but that day is slowly, torturously, coming to a protracted end. Good riddance.

I write these words sitting propped on a couch with one leg cradled on an ice bag. It’s called a ‘partial achilles tendon rupture’ and it’s just one more reminder that I am not twenty-five years old anymore.

We were on our third ball hockey game. We had won the first two and I didn’t want a third.

I had turned and was headed out of our end when there was what I heard as a loud popping sound and I went down thinking someone had slashed me behind the leg or that I’d been hit by a slap shot.

“What the fuck?…” came out of my mouth as lying on the ground I turned to see who had done it. But there was no one around and there was a strange sensation in my shoe, as if an elastic band had snapped and one end was balled up at my heel.

I rose and limped off the rink and knew I’d better get home and start icing.

So now, two days later, I’m off work and laid up for an indefinite time and not altogether distraught over the whole thing.

All these subtle prods by the fates are nothing less than intimations of mortality. Pushing forty-eight years of age, I’m alright with that. Thirty more good years is a long time, I figure.

It’s all a gift, this life of our’s, and I fully intend on accepting this little period of convalescence as one too.

Just finished watching Gonzo: The Life And Times Of Hunter S. Thompson, propped here on this couch of mine. There are books to read and iTunes movies to watch and blog posts and maybe even more to be written.

Damn, writing that has got me feeling sorry…for you!

But I won’t gloat.

It’s all in how we play the game.

“The game, if communicated, would then have established a tradition. And the endurance of the tradition would have depended upon the force of its appeal—that is to say, its power to evoke and organize life energy.”—Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology