Basketball, Part 2

Part One

There are certain transformative moments in life when you realize, for the first time, the shallowness of your previous understanding of a particular word. Though the moment passes, your understanding and appreciation for this word is forever deepened.

I vividly recall a moment -- an otherwise perfectly mundane, forgettable moment, standing at a bus stop, idly conversing with a friend -- when I looked up at the sky and, for the first time, saw how blue it was. In that moment, I felt my life break into two distinct periods. There was the pre-sky period, during which I had had an incomplete picture of what "blue" meant, and there was the post-sky period, during which I had finally completed that picture. For some reason, in that moment, the unbelievable, extraordinary blueness of the sky sank deep into my mind, and every other blue looked less blue by comparison. It was so memorable that I wrote about it.

I had a similar experience with the word "flight". As a student of physics, I had a vague understanding of the equations governing lift, gravity, fluid density; I was already amazed at the incredible pace of human flight (from Wright Brother paper skeletons on a beach to landing on the moon within a single human lifetime); I had even been on planes before. But one time, taking off from LaGuardia, I truly felt what it meant to fly, lighter than air, head in the clouds, gravity's bane, borne aloft on thin aluminum wings, piercing that exquisite blue sky. I wrote about that too.

These moments are often accompanied by pure, intense emotion, and have indelibly changed the way I perceive the world, as well as how I act within it. They are major underpinnings of my character, my personality, my very being. Tonight, I experienced one of them. The word was mercy.

I grew up in an abusive household, and I'm starting to realize how I've never really experienced mercy before. What I experienced was more like a sequence of brief reprieves, staccato calms-before-the-storm during which I tried desperately to keep my head down, doing my best to delay the inevitable hurricane-to-come -- and come it would, with no hint of compassion within its howling winds, no trace of mercy in the coldness.

Then again, mercy was not something I especially wanted. The thing I wanted was revenge. I didn't want to be free of suffering; I wanted to act, to punish, to inflict suffering on someone else, to show them what I was made of, to bring my ill-conceived notion of justice into the world, a notion of justice that had nothing but contempt for the word mercy. I'm reminded of a quote from James Baldwin's seminal civil rights publication, The Fire Next Time:

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

But hate is not an antidote to pain; it is an amplifier. My lashing out caused me nothing but suffering. To make matters even more confusing, the person I lashed out at responded with nothing but love. It was one of the biggest emotional shifts I've ever experienced -- so big, in fact, that it gave me a better appreciation for what the word love means. I've written about this before -- but even though the experience left me with a better grasp on love, I still had no grasp whatsoever on mercy. That changed tonight, as we got mercy-ruled out of an intramural basketball game.

From the first minute of the game, it was clear our opponents belonged in a different league to the people we played last week, who themselves already belonged in a different league from us. I want to make it clear that the league my team signed up for was the lowest-skilled, least-competitive league possible, ideally suited for people still learning the basics of that mysterious "hand-eye coordination" skill people seem weirdly jazzed about. The opposing team, by contrast, were routinely firing off behind-the-back no-look passes, slamming home effortlessly-coordinated alley-oops, swishing perfect-follow-through three-pointers under pressure, finding nothing but net.

When we were down 0-20, I started to wonder if we were ever going to score. When we finally do, I clap. It's a wretched, miserable clap, a clap that rings hollow with pathetic enthusiasm and woeful futility. It's the most our team celebrates for the entire game -- slaughter, if you prefer more accurate terminology.

My teammates start talking about how the other team are assholes because they are trying too hard, making fun of us, laughing at us. I don't agree with this assessment; if anything, I find our opponents to be surprisingly respectful and understanding. They are doing nothing but trying their best -- if anything, it would be more disrespectful to not try as hard, because it would ruin the spirit of competition. And I would interpret their laughter (which I never even personally witnessed) as an uncontrollable reaction to the obvious disparities being displayed on the court. It's hard not to laugh at the ridiculous, the extreme. It's even harder not to laugh at the extremely ridiculous, which are some of the candidate words I would use to describe this basketball game.

But losing poisons everything. It's almost impossible to keep a positive attitude when you're getting totally annihilated on the court, so it's natural to interpret the opponent's actions as more aggressive and disrespectful while not considering how bored and disappointed they might feel playing a non-game. It's just as natural to get quieter, to try less hard, to adopt a loser's mindset. And the cycle continues.

Our team's morale is in the gutter well before halftime. This lack of spirit is expressed in our silences, our "oh well" glances, our "whatever" eyerolls, but is most painfully manifest in my increasingly sad claps on the rare occasion our Star Player scores. The other team starts feeling bad for us, so they start trying less hard, which in turn makes me feel even worse. They are just standing there, halfheartedly waving their arms around, not even trying to block. The refs give us a totally bullshit foul call that results in one point from a free throw. Their pity nets us a double-digit score.

Then again, pity was not something I especially wanted. The thing I wanted was to win. I didn't want to be tossed some scraps under the table; I wanted to act, to practice, to get good, to punish everyone for their pity, to show them what I was made of, to enact grim revenge on them for their clearly well-intentioned actions. I had nothing but contempt for their pity, and nothing but frustration for myself, because I didn't have anything near what it would have taken to achieve these goals. I'm reminded of a Mike Tyson quote:

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

To me, that quote says that all the adversity I've experienced -- abuse, weakness, getting blown the fuck out at an intramural basketball game -- matters far less than how I choose to react to that adversity. I didn't react particularly well in this situation. I found it impossible to stay motivated, to not become demoralized -- and these reactions manifested on the court, as I started pressuring opponents less, walking instead of running, looking too often at the clock, wondering when it would be over, when we would finally lose.

I consider myself an optimist. I consider myself a competitor. I consider myself a person who tries hard to do things he's committed to doing. As the game went on, I considered myself to be less of these things, and more like someone treading water, clinging to the driftwood of these once-proud aspects of my identity, trying not to drown in my own mediocrity. Less than ten minutes into the second half, it finally happens: we are down by 50 points, which is when the mercy rule kicks in and the game ends -- not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It was in this moment that I finally understood the meaning of "mercy". Mercy, at its core, is about liberation. It is a compassionate liberation of a person's dignity from the all-encompassing quagmire of hopelessness. The healing process must start here to be effective. Agency is the beating heart of the restorative process, and mercy is its carrier. Mercy is not noble or pretty; it is pragmatic. It is not the knight in shining armor, come to slay the dragon. It is the browning, punctured life preserver thrown out to the drowning person who is clinging to driftwood, treading water.

More Words

Words are where I go for fun
and play pretend on monkey bars,
heedless of the noonday Sun
so far away when I'm on Mars.

Words are where I feel secure
A timeless vault locked by me
No need to be ashamed, demure
When I alone possess the key.

Words are how I sing my song
Catchy jingles, flashy tunes
Now and then I'll go along
With a slow and mournful, wailing fugue.

Words are water. Words are wind.
Words are where I go for peace.
I give my words, edit, rescind
But never erase, a paper crease.

Ode to Humanity

I am on mountaintops, tucked in forsaken alleyways, immersed in day-long binges, soaked through from the rain, craving water;
fixing plumbing, tightening pipes, scrubbing toilets until they gleam with the fire of the desert sun I sweat under for the sole purpose of taking the same touristy picture smeared across a thousand postcards;
wandering on deserted city sidewalks illuminated by flickering streetlamps, wandering across nonexistent trailheads under forest canopies, wandering through flat seas guided by the stars;
spending time with children, watching their eyes fill with wonder, wondering where my own wonder went -- where it wandered;
bound to sewing machines and cubicles, furnaces and office spaces, shop counters and laboratories, exchanging life for life while telling myself stories to the contrary;
coughing up blood on dusty roads, running marathons through city-sanctioned boulevards, mastering the use of crutches, slaloming down alpine slopes;
worshipping in cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, temples, petitioning inconsequential causes before a million different gods;
killing myselves in service of countless shifting motives, -- lurid voices, noble causes, petty squabbles -- and burying myselves under elaborate tombstones and forgotten graveyards;
stuck at broken turnstiles, defective vending machines, busted laptops, where my toe-tapping belies a lofty and prideful destiny.

I am working, resting, weeping, laughing, grieving, celebrating, studying, relaxing.
I am humanity.

Words as Water

Some days, my words are a hurricane, storming, swirling, surrounding, swallowing, whirlwind of watery madness, Poseidon's envy, confluence of pressure and heat compressed, twisted, gyrating, incubated under cold gaze of wristwatches and sunsets, calendars and generations, until they unleash at last as force of nature, primal tempest, liquid chaos. They hammer hulls, homesteads, hospitalities -- but they are not insolent; they are imbued with imagination, ingenuity, insight, pulled by passion, purpose, providence. They are supernovae birthing stars, and when they hush, you can see their children.

Some days, my words are a waterfall, churning, frothing, roiling, cascading over with frenetic energy, Angel's envy, bottom of a gravity well, bane of promontories, parapets, precipices -- yet still secluded, sequestered, subservient, dutifully, datelessly, deathlessly locked down the same cold cliffs tectonic caprice created, indentured to their own inertia -- and so I have condensed my sorrows into scabrous stone slabs and scattered them along the basin, that they may finally be eroded, and I have whittled my wishes into water wheels, that they may finally be harnessed.

Some days, my words are a tide, waxing, waning, swishing, sloshing, synchronous with celestial song, oscillating in lunar rhythm, Artemis's envy, lover's paradise, coastline kissing horizon, border of an infinite sea. They polish seashells, harbor secrets, deposit starfish, softly send sculpted strongholds back to soft, sweet sand. They are hidden under cover of darkness, shroud of night, cloak of shadow, never witnessed -- only glimpsed in furtive flashes, coy confessions, wistful whispers, receding at a moment's notice back to the vast and incomprehensible deep.

Some days, my words are a brook, bouncing, bubbling, babbling, careening with candid carelessness, Siddhartha's envy, meandering across forest and field, veld and valley, sierra and steppe, passing pastures, poppies, pathways, an ardent, adventurous aria with catchy, contented chorus, borne aloft by birdsong and breeze, sustenance of sunflowers, cradle of childhood, provider of peace. They are leyline, lifeblood, luminosity, erstwhile ending in echoey estuaries, now dissolving into diverse deltas, frolicking fluid phalanges filled with festive fantasies.

Some days, my words are a pond. They are still, stoic, silent. They will not stray from their solemn station, but they are not stagnant; they stay sparkling, simple, spotless, marker of mindful moments, motionless mirrors reflecting minimalist murmurings of my modest mind. They have no agenda; they are plain presentness, abbreviated to the point of pure apostrophe, emptiness in form, form in emptiness. I exhale and watch ripples roll across their surface.

Some days, my words are the bottom of a broken well. They are distant. Dark. Cold.
Unreachable.
I listen for them with urgency, with desperation, seek them out in lonely, forbidden places.
I hear only a mournful, howling wind that chills me to my bones.
Where is the hurricane? The waterfall? The tide? The brook? The pond?
They seem so distant now.
I will wait for their return.

Basketball, Part One

I joined an intramural basketball team. Here is an account of our first game.

____________________________________________________________________

According to this 2017 article, Michael Jordan signed a contract for $100 million to sell his brand of basketball shoes. After playing basketball tonight, I realize why: Shoes are everything in basketball. This realization comes within two minutes of stepping foot on the court. My normal shoes function just fine on concrete; on the court, they have the coefficient of friction of a well-lubricated Slip 'n' Slide. I drop the ball -- literally -- multiple times due to this bad choice in footwear.

My pre-game prep does not help my chances; if anything, it hurts them. My legs are sore from a workout the day prior. The duct-taped numbers on my makeshift jersey fall apart on-contact with sweat. I have no other pre-game prep. But these thoughts are for people who lose, and I came here for the opposite purpose. Winning is everything in basketball.

Our team has a couple of Star Players. I aspire to be like them. They are aggressive, running through people on the court, fouling opponents, getting fouled themselves. Maybe aggression is everything in basketball? I remember learning in middle school PE that you should never stick too close to the player you're covering, because it's really easy for them to get past you. I'm starting to wonder if this advice is actually good, because our Star Players are right up in our opponent's faces, experiencing more skin-on-skin contact than I did with my last girlfriend. The referees seem lenient to me, only calling fouls on rare occasion. Then again, I don't know much about basketball.

Unfortunately, there are people on our team who know even less about basketball than I do. One of them doesn't actually know the rules of the game, so right before it starts, another teammate has to hurriedly explain what dribbling, traveling, and double-dribbling are to them before running out of time and not being able to explain anything else. This is when I realize: Knowing the rules is everything in basketball. We're lucky our referees are so lenient.

The opposing team is much taller than us, with much bigger muscles, and with a much higher percentage of males. (They are all males.) This is when I realize: Height is everything in basketball. The guy I'm supposed to cover is so much taller than me, he can ignore me completely. When I raise a hand to block his shot, my fingertips come up to his chin; when he's blocking me, I can barely see past his thigh. I'm not sure what our rebound percentage was that game, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it in single-digits. Turns out it's pretty hard to get the ball when the other team can just pluck it from the air above you.

We start out strong, mostly because the opposing team starts out weak. Their basket attempts outnumber our attempts four to one at least (in one play, a single opposing player successfully rebounded his own missed shot, reshot, missed, rebounded his own missed shot, reshot, missed, rebounded again, and repeated this cycle six times while the other nine people on the court idly watched) -- but their shooting percentages are abysmal. Halfway through the first half, we are up 9-6, due solely to our Star Players and the opposing team's incompetence. Consistency is everything in basketball.

Our team has some slim advantages. A coach is one of them. She is a total badass, giving deep strategy advice about baseline runners to us during halftime from her sweet wheelchair. I love it and do my best to absorb everything she's saying. Strategy is everything in basketball. It immediately falls apart on the court, though. As soon as the clock resumes, my brain snaps back into the sort of beginner-level logic flowchart they teach on the first day of an Intro to Programming course: If I don't have the ball > get in position to get the ball. If I do have the ball > pass it to a Star Player. The latter half of this flowchart is not often successful.

Another advantage of our team is our deep bench. We have four players ready to sub in at any time, and we need them, because running at full sprint back and forth across a basketball court for five minutes is not something our team is cardiovascularly prepared for. I start struggling sometime during the first half, but I want to stay on the court. This is a bad decision; my performance gets increasingly worse, and soon I'm spending less time racing the opposing players to the basket and more time racing my own breath out of my mouth. My game impact during this time period is essentially zero. Finally, I sub out. From the bench, I am surprised to see that our opponents also seem to be tired. By the end of the first half, these big guys are all panting for breath, sweat rolling down their faces in heavy waves. This is when I realize: Running is everything in basketball. If we can outrun our opponents, we can go for uncontested layups, and they won't be able to catch up. It's a nice thought.

After halftime, the opposing team looks warmed up. This is when I realize: Being warmed up is everything in basketball. The people who are warmed up start making a lot more shots, and we start making a lot less. Their endurance outpaces ours by a wide margin; what I thought I saw during my time on the bench is revealed to be total illusion. These guys outrun us with ease, grab rebounds, fire off no-look passes, sink baskets. They are clearly superior on the court, and their noises grow increasingly celebratory as the game draws to a close.

Though we lost badly in the end, our team still has great heart, a strong emotional core. This is when I realize: Attitude means absolutely nothing in basketball. Not even a damn thing. Our words of encouragement, team bonding, and sportsmanship did not stop us from getting utterly obliterated on the court. But I only care a medium amount about that. Overall, I loved the experience. Being part of a team is a wonderful feeling; everyone is there to uplift and support each other. Competition pushes me to excel. And excelling is everything -- not just in basketball.

Part Two

On Monogamy

Consider the conventional sexual/romantic preference of monogamy as applied to friendships, and you immediately begin to see monogamy's shortcomings. I don't want my friends to have no other friends before me; quite the opposite -- I'd want my friends' friends to be as exciting and stimulating as possible, because I want my friends to be friends with exciting and stimulating people. It would be selfish of me to feel otherwise. What is different about romantic relationships?

Romantic relationships are an even more intense, intimate form of friendship heightened through physical intimacy. But this makes monogamy even worse, because it seems all the more selfish to deny my romantic partner a chance to form this kind of better, deeper relationship with someone else, however much I want my partner to be mine. Moreover, I am demanding of my partner that they fulfill all my romantic and sexual needs until I die, which seems to dehumanize them through overglorification, while I am also being arrogant enough to presume that I satisfy all of their desires. For these reasons, I can only conclude that monogamy is not borne out of love for one's partner, but rather jealousy and sexual possessiveness, which are terrible reasons to do anything.

Lifelong monogamy amplifies these problems. Lifelong commitments are unsound in general, because people are always changing. The person I was three years ago is not me; he is someone with a different set of opinions, ideologies, and dreams. His romantic tastes have changed. I don't think someone who committed to a romantic relationship with him should have to carry that obligation forward with a different person, even if they felt it was the right move at the time.

I would hope that I would be a person who is confident enough, secure enough, and loving enough to give my partner(s) the freedom to explore sexual and romantic experiences that fulfill them without feeling any resentment or jealously. If I truly loved my partner, then I should not be bitter or angry about anything that made them happy, especially something as amazing as a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, I am not so strong. The cultural tide of monogamy has swallowed me, and I am a hapless victim in its waters. Despite everything I've said in this post, I still prefer long-term, monogamous relationships, and I can't help but think this preference makes me weak, hypocritical, and morally flawed.

Maybe in this case, the immoral position is the only position that will make me happy, because I am incapable of becoming confident enough, secure enough, loving enough. Or maybe that's just something I tell myself so I won't have to try.

Inspiration is a flick'ring flame

Inspiration is a flick'ring flame
An unreliable source of light;
A wholly random gambling game
Played long and deep into the night.

Inspiration is a fickle muse --
Her beat is not a steady sound;
It syncopates, a mournful blues
Listened to, but never found.

Her countenance fills me with glee
A lover's kiss, a friendly hug --
Yet when I taste Her, I always see
Inspiration is a bitter drug.

I go to suck her tender teat
But I'm lapping at an empty bowl --
An oasis, dried in desert heat
That could never quench my dying soul.

On Weddings

I attended a wedding recently. Here are my thoughts on the occasion.

Weddings are an amalgamation of many things I dislike. For one, they are an iconic example of social exhibitionism, wherein the dearly beloved are compelled to demonstrate their commitment and intimacy in front of a crowd. Having to show your love in front of an audience feels inauthentic: If a couple's dedication to one another is truly lifelong, then they wouldn't have to hold a ceremony to prove it. In fact, holding such a ceremony actually dilutes the source of this dedication, in the same way a person who constantly says "believe me" dilutes his own trustworthiness. If something is authentic, you shouldn't need a special day to tell all your loved ones about it. It should speak for itself.

Weddings are also beholden to many formulaic traditions I find distasteful. There have to be a certain number of hierarchically-ordered bridesmaids and groomsmen, the top ranks for each being "maid of honor" and "best man", respectively, and these Chosen Ones must each deliver a toast. There has to be a cake, which has to be cut by the newlyweds in tandem, but only after they've danced to exactly one carefully preselected song. Particularly offensive to me is that the father of the bride has to walk the bride down the aisle, because it suggests that a woman is a male possession, and that a wedding is a transfer of property. These traditions trap weddings in antiquated times and make me apprehensive about having a wedding of my own. I don't want to be beholden to archaic rituals established by superstitious, out-of-touch, medieval elites.

Yet despite all these factors, I loved every moment of the wedding I attended. I loved the procession, the chaplain's speech, the reception and dinner afterward. The entire spectacle was an amazing celebration of love, family, and friendship. It made me teary-eyed to see two friends commit to each other in the most serious way possible, and to see the joy on their faces as they did it. The venue, the food, and the atmosphere were all phenomenal.

Even more significantly, I realized that the things I dislike about weddings were part of what made it special. The exhibitionism of the wedding made it all the more selfless, because the guests got the privilege to witness an earnest celebration of love. The traditional aspects of the wedding made it all the more meaningful, because the couple were rejoicing in the light of a rich religious and cultural history.

In modern times, with the relentless inauthenticity of social media, the endless babble of consumerism, the shameful discourse of our politics, I often find myself in cynical moods. Everything seems to be an attention-grab, an ironic detachment, a vestigial artifact of history. This wedding reminded me that happiness, love, and celebration can transcend all these impurities. Let's keep celebrating.