Disappearing Acts Returning Centered

Clarity eludes me and that's fine. Our lives merge together. The newsreel marches forward. The energy only changes form and once we meet we're never strangers.

The blurred purgatorial yearnings toss and turn around the periphery of inactivity. I'm waiting in a line of my own mind. There's a step to be made. A chess move to be had. While, all the while I continue my expression. All the while I bide my time. All the while I observe and live and love. Everything is here. I'm wrapped in a dark blanket of love. My mornings are beautiful. My days are alive. My nights are magic. You are mine. I am yours. Bursting with life. Overflowing with golden mercury. The people in our lives are reflections of our own eyes.

Exploring caverns of living. Darkness beneath baseball caps. The mystery of others. What's being said in quiet whispers. Life on the fringe. Self-imposed exile from functional sustenance and it's moments of panic. This existence provides with the kindness of others and I know I'll return the favor. So much received. I'm selling myself short. I've given until I've lost myself. There were days when I handed it all over. There were days of pain. There were days of disbelief and futility. There were days when I received parking tickets during tragedies. There were days. There still are. Days split between freedom and fear. Days when I don't know what to do with myself. Days where I throw away meaning for gratitude. Days when I don't give a shit about philosophizing. There are days when I effortlessly create. There are days where I connect to my purpose. There are still days. There are still days. There are still days and somewhere beneath them all is the engrained optimism. The ability to see the fire. The importance it seems is in continuing the exchange. Movement creates more of itself. The rust stays off the kinetic wheel. Be cautious, dowse yourself in paranoia, but let some of it go, there's too much to learn outside of yourself. In a world of sickness, patches of light. In a world of entropy, reservoirs of health. In a savage world, we face bravely. With always something to share, I encounter my excuses, I adjust my perspectives again and again.

Creation

I hope you haven't abandoned me. The beating heart of a dusty impulse. The sun came after my waking. A cricket chirped from between the walls last night. Oblivious to the time of year like all true Californians are, it sang against it's own metronome. A quality we have in common. Like a pencil drawn maze, we retrace our lines over and over until we reach the end. I've been setting my feet onto the same footsteps in the sand for some time now. While time does his best to blow winds across these patterns and for that I'm grateful. It's these altered subtleties of the familiar that help keep my flame alive. This is an understatement of what can quickly become a hurricane. I'm leaving out the storm of conditions and beauties beyond my control. I'm forgetting the endlessly wrapped around infinities of imagination. I'm failing to include the unknown. Dreams both remembered, told, forgotten, and manifested. Then there are the people. The souls. The traces of memories. The hints of actualism. The foreshadowed futures, altered states, activities, meals, loves, and the affluent tide. I also should acknowledge the looming feeling that somewhere-out-there west is a roving magnetic point. Turning back and forth like a prison searchlight. Scanning and affecting the coast. Manipulating the insignificant moving dots as they decorate/desecrate the shores. When my friend and I swam away from the safe beach on that fringe day between summer and fall, we were moving toward this source. Existing beyond the patterns. Defying the same institutions that gave us purpose. There is cemented land, fixed ground, and then the shaky sand that signals the last bit of control we have before entering a larger mercy. It was for this wild element to which we were leaving our feet. There, strongly we swam across an ocean of light navy blue, fading into dark shades of black. Driven by the primal fight and flight mechanism. The same fear of the unknown that lent an urgency to our motions was also the invigorating quality that drove us out into the deep in the first place. Solitary beings encapsulated in a liquid vault. I became alone. I had lived this experience in variations all summer. The panic always had a new face. I swam and swam but the land never moved. And as much as the fear slid across my limbs, the calm was in knowing that the choice was mine. The faith was in avoiding the teeth. The spirit was in the freedom of letting go to the sum. The pride manifested as the strength of my singular. The laughter was in returning to shore. The gratitude in the existence. The growth happening sometime after returning to the sand, maybe later, maybe still.

Surrender fate to another's home, with only the strength of your ever-beating heart as your greatest variable. The rest is left to probabilities, chance, facts, the time of year and just how much you want to live.

6th Row Center Court

Very close to me, I'm watching giants weightlessly stampede like blurs. They glide across the court like personified gusts of wind back and forth along a timed continuum and I'm in a daze. Squeaking shoes leave the ground, upward. Acrobats. Humans advanced, handling the ball like an extension of their own dynamic forms. Together moving like one violent organism cutting between liquid and empty space. Buzzing crowd, always buzzing.

This game is a rush.

Whistles blow, timers shriek, and the lady behind us continues to yell "Defense!" in a foreign accent that makes it sound like "Day-fez!". The man next to me quietly reeks of booze. The guy in front keeps bumping my leg as he puts his arm around his small girlfriend's shoulders. All the while, I watch these symbols in the flesh, closer than I've ever been. They're playing a game I knew as basketball, only it's not the basketball I've ever known.

During shoot-around these men never miss. The ball is shot in a looping trajectory and cuts through net again, again, again. The long limbs belonging to these men move fluid and loose as they go though their reps. Some of them work with coaches. Some of them by themselves. The Machine goes through stretching drills with bands wrapped around his arms, legs, and wrists. Even bound, The Machine never wastes a dull moment to scan the crowd for young women. Even during the game, he's always keeping his eyes on the prowl. During the game. During the game, you realize just how quick these men move. Bodies flash and disappear in front of the ball-handler at all times. Everything is coordinated on a higher rhythm, faster than life. A lightning intuitive precision. You have to be immersed in this flow since birth to stand a chance and then you must possess the skill-set to outwit the rapid hurricane.

Watching the small ones thread between moving giants like tornado chasers. The genius knows his limits. He wanders fast and drunkenly amongst the redwoods, with his stringy hair the last thing to catch up to his quick frame. "You have no chance Nash!" another drunk behind us yells. "Lakers are gonna win by twenty. You watch. They're gonna win by twenty," this seemingly useless blob continues repeating.

"No chance at what?" we ask ourselves. Though it's clear this two-time MVP has no chance of holding rapt the imagination when number twenty-four is on the floor in gold. Looking at this man from so close after admiring him for so long, I'm struck by just how made for this game he appears. Everything about him is chiseled to an aerodynamic absolute. His body composition, the shape of his head, his length, his height. When he moves, there is no wasted motion. Everything he does appears driven by purpose. Every step, shudder, look, is to better outwit this game. This game is his opponent and best friend. He does not belong to these other hyper-beings. He's somehow greater than them all. He has forged himself through thousands of meticulous hours of self-scrutiny and advancement. He's isolated and nurtured everything necessary to reach the potentials of his inherent genius. He sees a canvas. He aggressively creates. He effortlessly desires so much more than any man around him. He moves in reverence to this temple. He dedicates. He sweats in worship. He excites. He dazzles. He sees the patterns. He is the game.

Then there is the spectacle. The men bringing their Sunday's finest on their arms. Thousands of eyes rolling side to side watching the players or one another. The witnesses. Each one absorbed in separate lives, coming together, sitting beside strangers, acquaintances, or loved ones, packed to the ceiling, releasing themselves to a greater circus. We cheer is unison, file to the restrooms together at the half, admire what we ourselves can not do. A night at the show.

When it returns, the game moves fast. The rhythms ebb and flow. The known grows. By the fourth, the opposing subs have been sent to play in signal of defeat, like medics sent to sort through the carnage of a futuristic battlefield. The victors rest. Towels around their necks, a days work. It must be quite a way to live a life. Playing this game, because they're the best, because other people want to see them play. Living 82 games on a travelling carnival schedule adhering to an evolved infrastructure. These are dignified performers. The fans pay homage to their ability. They cheer, they follow, they identify, they love. Team colors. Histories. Cinderellas. Players. Personalities. Shots. Impossibilities manifested. Uniforms. Logos. Dunks. Spirits. Cascading leather. White Nets. Wood floors. Motions and boundaries of a higher purpose. Echoes of the basketball punching the ground like heartbeats, dribbled by losers, men, heroes, warriors, idols, caretakers. The ball beats the floor repeatedly, these dark bouncing echoes of sound and vibration are sent like phantoms through the fans ears, skin, minds, hopes, dreams, souls, whatever, you tell me how far it goes.

I love this game.

Walking Through Doorways

I sit in the sun. The night was cold. I have to engage the world. That came after you asked questions. Small steps turn to leaps of faith. Handshakes turn to doorways. Capability has never been the issue. It's been a matter of confidence. It's been a matter of confronting the inevitable.