I
dropped off my car to get a trailer hitch attached to it today, and then I walked to a nearby cafe. Yesterday, the thermometer sat, taking it easy, at 60 degrees. This morning, it was 15, with 30 mph winds, and I was walking directly into them. I drained my coffee, stuffed the mug into a side pocket of my backpack, and set my face directly into the torrent of cold.
It often happens with pain, that when you look at it directly, you have to admit that it doesn't hurt all that much -- but it is attended by an overwhelming desire to get rid of it at any costs. It's a particularly potent kind of discomfort, which takes an iron will to resist. The pain trudging into the icy blast was something like that. When I drilled down into my perceptions, no one part of it was excruciating -- not the headache, not the burning ears, not the chapped lips. But taken as a whole, with the backburner of my mind screaming at me to get out of the cold, the experience was abysmal. It wasn't that bad; but it sucked. I remember looking around at every street corner, desperately trying to assess where the unfamiliar cafe was, strung taut with the idea that I might soon be in a heated building.
Then I read a math textbook over coffee for three hours or so until the hitch was installed, and I walked back to the U-Haul. It had turned into something of a nice day on the way back, and the wind had stopped blowing -- and I simply couldn't believe how short the walk was. It must have been literally five minutes; but in my struggle that morning, I'd have sworn it was almost twenty. The intense firing of every nerve just overloaded my circuits, and I genuinely lost sense of time. I'd barely had time to squeeze in a thought on the second trip before I was there. Remarkable how malleable time is, and when it choosing to get all bent out of shape.