BEADS OF DEW ON BLADES OF GRASS

Sometimes things strike me in a most peculiar way. Yesterday at the gym I was walking around between sets of exercises and I was 'ambling around'. It felt awkward and in my mind I was this cat to the left, John Mugabi.

My memories of 'The Beast' was of his clumsy (to me), wide punching Ugandan emigre who fought out of England. His fights were spectacular in the way that they ended.

As a kid, I would think that somehow I would get a chance to fight him, maybe meet him at a 'catchweight' and get my shot at him. Like I did with a young Mike Tyson, when I looked at 'the Beast' fight, I saw the holes in his style. The biggest in Mugabi's, was his awkwardness. He hit so hard that people were thinking more about what he'd do to them. He wasn't fluid and I would go to the gym after he'd fought on TV and tell cats that he was proof that, 'all black people can't dance' (so am I, but who is telling this story!).

He would remind me of the lumbering Frankenstein or Michael Myers chasing folks down... how did he corner ANYONE? He didn't have particularly fast hands and he looped a lot of his punches. But he did hit hard.

That is what I was thinking about as I walked around between sets of exercises. How clumsy that John Mugabi seemed to me then, being how clumsy I feel now and at other times as well. I never think of my vertigo (I haven't fallen on my bike in a long time... then again, I don't ride out too much either!) or worry too much about my tension tremors when they surface (because they come and go).

SO I COULDN'T REMEMBER ANN CURRY'S NAME...

When it comes to matters of memory, I shrug my shoulders. Right now, there are little things like that, trying to recall some odd piece of information that makes up the pastiche of my thoughts, that happen. Does it happen more or less than it did once before? I don't know... again, you'd have to tell me.

"Whether you think you can or you can't, you are probably right!" - Henry Ford.

One of the stories in my mind, is the one where I ride up from the back of the pack, forgotten and scarcely thought of, walking across a stage and getting my Bachelor's and being the first in my family to walk (I will have to 'go' too... my Best Sister got her Associates in a Fitness discipline... happy for her, for real too!) that walk.

It isn't like I don't know that there is something going on with me. But I don't know if you have ever read about or saw any of the literature about TBI, but it reads like you are 'allergic to life'. It is going to take a certain amount of ignorance and faith for me to overcome my challenges.

The Today show did a story on a young boy who had a stroke. They talked about how the brain at that age will eventually recover to a 95 - 98% efficiency. Because they are focus on this occuring to a juvenile, I don't think that it would have been relevant for them to talk about what matters to non-kids.

Like brain plasticity. There is proof that the connections that aren't working can be 're-routed' if you keep working at them. While there are some things that due to the area of injury that won't come back, the brain is an incredible thing. A lot of things will begin to 'happen', much like how a three legged dog almost instantly compensates and goes about its life much in the same way that it did before.

For me it is about overcoming the self. I have been doing the 'know your environment' thing for so long, that I immediately try to find where I can fit and work from that. And I am cocky without being arrogant (but man, I can get annoying if you have to be around me after I get going!), and I am unshaken in my belief in myself.

"Some men are born great. Others pursue greatness. I am still waiting for greatness to be thrust upon me!" -or something like that, the Grandpa in the comic strip, "Pickles"

One of the reason that I wanted to share this, is that I was reading somewhere about a teenager who has to deal with some of the effects of TBI. My heart went out (but it is always in by 10 pm!) because he didn't have what I have as far as tools... and the most important tool that I have is that I did get the opportunity to try at some of the things I wanted to do most of all. Also, I got the opportunity to 'get grown' and mature enough to be able to appreciate life in a different way than you do as a young person in the end of adolescence.

I am mature enough to understand and expect for the 'greatness to be thrust upon me', because I know that if I keep moving and working towards something I will along the way have achieved something of note. And that still holds true even if I am in a lull right now.