cleansing

I got another massage. Did I say that I work for a salon & spa? I don't get them quite for free, but the price I pay is a good approximation of nothing. I don't take even close to reasonable advantage of it. It's a shameful waste of the possibility on any normal day.

Since my back, stiff as an armor, is far from normalcy, I went for it again.

The massage therapist is a fitness fanatic and did a thorough job. Afterwards I felt as if I had been beaten with a meat tenderizer. Him and the chiropractor had contradictory explanations as to what is going on in my body, but I decided not to be a stickler for details. I don't mind the pain, as long as I can run through it. And I did.

I don't see the backache as a running injury, since it has bothered me intermittently for the last decade or so. But I believe its resurgence, and its vehemence, and persistence, are somehow related to running. As opposed to the pulled tendon back in autumn, I don't feel guilty, as if I failed myself somehow.

I feel it's a good thing. I see this episode - or imagine it - as a clearing process, as if an intimate mechanism that went wrong long time ago gets straightened out now. As if an old imbalance, maladjustment, tension is loosened, flushed out, eliminated.