Yeah, that one.

I have injured a small piece of my body, and I am very unhappy about it. It seems to have thrown everything off, and the punishment does not fit the crime.

Think about them for a moment, the small lumpy bits. They stick out and get caught on things. Or else they’re a passageway from Point A to Point B. Maybe they get ambitions of grandeur, like when your earlobes get those tiny cysts that feel like lentils of pure pain. Whatever. We’ve all got them, we all stub, overexert, and endanger them on a weekly, if not daily, basis. It’s their job. Somebody had to be the toe on the end; them’s the breaks.

But how then, I ask you, do they then turn into such divas? I’m always reminded of those useful homunculi illustrating the relative intensity of the nerves, although right now I’d say they’re wrong, because my small body part is carrying the rest of me along in a wagon.

So I sit here, alternately trying to ignore the discomfort or to acknowledge and embrace it, occasionally flexing my owie in experimentation, and in general letting it harsh my mellow. I find that the “acknowledge and embrace” school has some pointers: When I concentrate on the actual pain, it seems to pull in its snaky tendrils of domination and once more become just one of the little guys.  An abused, underappreciated little guy, now in rebellion.

However, I have meditating to do and a ferret to exercise. (When you are mindful, the two are not exclusive.) Come along, wee wound, dry your eyes. Human consciousness 1, somatic distraction 0! Woohoo for the home team!

Or maybe my fibro meds are starting to hit. Whatever; I’ll take it. Wouldn’t you?