In which Our Hero boils over, breaks down, and opens up.
I was milk.
Not your boring half-full breakfast glass:
I was milk on the stove that someone had forgotten about.
Warming gently, then rapidly, then dramatically.
I boiled, I foamed, I rose.
A glorious dairy geyser.
I was beautiful, exciting, energetic, light.
They loved me.
I was milking it for all it was worth.
And then I landed. Hard.
On the outside of my right foot.
The outermost digit rolled under the meat of the foot.
My milk, so recently ascendant, suddenly boiled over and ran down the sides of the pot.
Call it a turning point.
Or a turning-sour point.
Someone asked if I was hurt. I said no.
Classic milquetoast behavior.
They told me they loved my milk.
I felt genuinely glad: I’d worked hard yesterday—six hours improving myself, skimming off the emotional scum, clarifying my internal butter.
And today, between movement and improv, I stayed in the classroom to feel my feelings.
To laugh, to cry, to laugh-cry.
Just to be with myself.
A short personal pilgrimage to the Land of Milk and Honey.
No wonder my performance rose, like cream to the top.
Now I’m at the hospital.
I don’t think it’s broken.
I assume they’ll give me an X-ray, recommend some painkillers, and send me home.
A quick skim.
The triage nurse, Leo, asks if I’m a clown student.
The international ones usually are, he says.
Last year he had:
– a ruptured Australian Achilles (hi, A!)
– an American with a back problem, delivered via ambulance (hi, M!).
This year, he gets me: whole milk, 2% structurally compromised.
Leo asks where I’m from.
“California.”
He says “Alcatraz.”
I say I’ve never been.
He says it’s scary.
(It curdles his insides.)
Now I sit in the waiting room, surprisingly not souring.
Throughout this whole experience, I’ve actually felt my feelings pretty well—
and feeling them has made them less bad.
So much has to work in concert to enable walking, let alone clowning.
Bones, muscles, tendons:
a whole orchestra playing in tune.
Until suddenly the music sours
And my fifth metatarsal decides it has a bone to pick with me. (Alternate joke: “has beef with me”.)
The teacher who drove me here says I’m the first of the year.
The first!
The early bird. The early calf.
The first one to fall before the cows come home.
—
Diagnosis:
A fracture non-déplacée—a nondisplaced fracture of the 5th metatarsal.
Pain meds.
No weight on it.
Three weeks to heal.
A season put out to pasture.
Oddly, I’m calm.
It’s almost a relief to have a socially acceptable excuse for being bad at clowning.
(“Sorry, I should have been cream of the crop, but I was overwhipped/overbeaten and now I’ve split. Maybe I need to find butter things to do.”)
And despite the pain, I stayed with it—
full-fat presence.
—
I bought crutches, pain meds, and a boot from the pharmacy.
The pharmacist noted the challenge of carrying crutches while also needing crutches.
She asked where I live.
“Just across the street.”
She walked with me.
A small, wholesome kindness:
like a neighbor bringing over cookies and saying,
“Here, I brought you some warm milk for your soul.”
She knows my upstairs neighbor.
They have coffee together every day.
We bonded over our love for her cat, chausettes (“socks’ in french).
—
A surprising emotion: relief.
I told a friend about the injury and she asked how much of it might be emotional—
how sometimes a bone breaks when something else is begging to break.
She said when she broke a bone, it partly came from a life she didn’t love.
I get that.
My milk was already foaming over.
I wasn’t enjoying clown school.
I wasn’t doing it right.
I wasn’t satisfied personally either.
Then—splat.
Here comes God to shake it up.
And by God, I mean my own discoordination.
(Or the universe saying, “Time to churn.”)
As a friend sometimes describes about me: “Julian plans, and Julian laughs”.
So now I have a fracture.
And honestly… I don’t mind.
Sometimes the carton needs a dent.
—
My teacher offered to let me watch the rest of the course now and then take the actual course next year.
I’ll take them up on it.
The cows will come home eventually.
Perhaps it’s better that I watch this course.
I might have been trying too hard, mooving with too much vigor.
And at least—
miraculously—
I didn’t cry over spilled milk.
Julian Wise 