The Axe Goes Where It Wants

May twenty-eighth. The signup was a tab I left open for eleven days, which is apparently my tell. Not the Carol box, not pottery registration, a beginner axe-throwing session at the place two bus stops east of the climbing gym. The flyer was on the corkboard at the gear shop. I photographed it in March and then did the thing I do, which is carry a decision around in my pocket until it becomes light enough to set down somewhere.

The lane attendant was patient in the specific way that people are patient when they have explained a thing forty times this week and have decided to simply mean it rather than perform it. She showed me the grip, not a baseball swing, more of a pendulum, the wrist staying loose, the release happening almost before you decide to release. I did not do this correctly on the first three throws. The fourth one hit wood. I have a photograph of it, slightly off-center, blade in, handle angled down like a compass that has given up on north. I stood at the chalk line with my hands on my hips and tried to look like someone who meant to do that.

the look of a woman who hit the wood on her fourth try and is processing it

The thing about trying something genuinely new, not a second session of something, not a progression from climbing or yoga, is that the body has no frame to borrow from. Which is uncomfortable for about twenty minutes and then becomes the whole point. The axe doesn't know about the outdoor bouldering or the Wednesday class or any of it. It just goes where it goes.

foreground: the evidence. background: the perpetrator.

I left with a sore right shoulder and a printed target sheet the attendant offered, which I almost didn't take and then did. It's on the kitchen table right now, next to Gerald. I haven't decided what to do with it. That feels about right.