Aching.

Today my fingertips are sore and tingling from practicing every spare minute yesterday. I like the feeling. It reminds me that I have a body and that it is useful for things other than toting around my brain.

I love to learn new things. Usually I focus on academic subjects like history or literature or, if I'm feeling brave, science. But I especially love to learn things that require a tiny amount of physical aptitude. Granted, playing a guitar isn't an Olympic sport, but it causes some discomfort and some strain. Strange as it may sound, I enjoy a little of both.

My favorite part of learning to snowboard years ago was falling. I displayed my black- and blue- and green-bruised legs with pride. I liked the way my cheek felt when it scraped against the ice as I tumbled down, down, down. That's what being alive is about. There's no adventure without a little blood loss.

I loved learning to play pool just because I was entranced by the cracking sound of the cue ball slamming into the other balls. I loved the weight of a pool cue and putting a bead on the eight ball, squinting my eye and pursing my lips.

I spent a whole summer on Beech Mountain making my old boss Jimmy play catch with me out on the softball field. The sun would glare in my eye and sometimes I'd get hit before I saw the softball at all. But I loved stretching out my arm, feeling my shoulder blade pull away from my back, feeling my spine stretch out of its usual alignment, feeling my calves tighten and lengthen.

I ran track in high school, and I enjoyed it more for the sensation of being a modern day Atalanta or Athena than of being a competitor. I was thrilled by the sensation of my heel peeling away from the asphalt, then my arch, then the ball of my toe, and at last that final captain toe lifting off. It felt like grace.

I love the piano because I love to feel my fingers reach and pull apart. And sometimes I love writing for the writer's cramp in my palm.

It's just so easy to forget what being human is. That it's more than philosophy or religion or science. That it's also pain and pleasure and stretching.