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+---
+title: 'Hitting Bottom'
+date: '2007-12-11T17:55:18-05:00'
+permalink: /hitting-bottom/
+tags:
+    - 'general whining'
+    - work
+---
+
+Every semester has an emblematic moment. This semester’s finally arrived today, in the moment when, walking along talking with the dean, I stumbled on a bit of uneven sidewalk and completely face-planted on the pavement.
+
+Falling gets harder every year after 30, I think; one has both come to assume one’s verticality to be stable, given, and lost some degree of the flexibility that makes sudden changes negotiable. Actually, I think both states might be summed up in the term “dignity,” and boy, is mine bruised.
+
+I keep reliving the moment, and its aftermath: turning to look in the direction the dean had just pointed, turning back to ask a question, feeling my toe hit the obstruction, and that clear interval in which I knew I was going down, but had not yet hit. And then: lying on my back on the sidewalk, saying “oh, shit” and trying to start breathing again; seeing the dean’s quite evident shock and concern as he asked whether I had hit my head; attempting to reassure the two students who stopped to see if we needed help and offered to call security. Then limping off to the meeting I’d been heading toward.
+
+I’m banged up, though nothing is more bruised than my pride, I think, with the exception of the notebook I was carrying and the sunglasses I was wearing, each of which has a pretty good case of road rash. I don’t want to make too much of this, but it’s awfully hard not to feel like there’s something allegorical in this moment.
+