Skip to main content

On Basketball

It is an activity that demands speed, timing, quickness, strength, agility...one that requires running at top speed, jumping, gliding, pivoting, stopping on a dime, moving sideways and backwards, using hands, feet, legs, shoulders, core muscles, abdomen and back - allowing one to feel obscure tendons and joints - one that creates an ebb and flow of motion, generating a time-bending montage of sweat, soreness and fatigue happily obscured and subordinated to the greater task of mental focus and concentration...it is an activity that sends teams back and forth along a hardwood floor,  ninety feet at a time, shifting haphazardly between defense and offense, necessitating make-shift, ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment, decision-making and instantaneous moves in ever-changing configurations arising out of nowhere and dissolving into other combinations of players....it is a game of rudiments and fundamentals - building-blocks and skill-sets, including but not limited to: dribbling, passing, shooting, rebounding, blocking, screening, diving, defending - all relating in some way to a necessary ongoing obsession with an orange bouncing ball .....a game that balances team spirit and cooperation with individuated talent....a sport that like few others makes the experience of inhabiting a body on actual ground a living-and-breathing visceral reality - a massive contrast to the bulk of our sedentary down-time or the awkwardness of a life tilted toward exclusively non-bodily cerebral pursuits...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of Moonlight Beach

  It was several decades ago now that the rumors were swirling about a possible ghost @ Moonlight Beach. There was a definite "buzz" among the Coast Highway vendors and their customers - enough to keep the conversation rolling...  Ronnie, for example, the short-order cook at the 1-11 Diner used to compare notes with Sue-Ellen - owner of the guitar shop about the latest "sighting" while Eduardo who owned the Taco Shack near the corner of D Street asked Mel who ran the old movie theater across the street if the real headquarters for the poltergeist might be in one of the older buildings - maybe an attic space. Maybe it's a ghost that goes on field-trips now and then - agreed Manny Uwanco - proprietor of the used book store and cousin to George Uwanco - the owner of George's diner.  Everyone tried to convince Lou - of Lou's Records that this thing was real - but he proved to be the skeptic of all skeptics.  Truth be told - it was hard to imagine a less hau...

The "stupidity" that often afflicts otherwise intelligent people: believing that logic can be applied in every situation to solve a problem where human beings are involved...One expects of humankind, a certain amount of prudence and foresight as part of daily decision-making, but at some point a logical approach to problem-solving is counter-intuitive. One must learn another kind of "logic" perhaps - a stratagem utilized by fools, knaves and con artists alike - each accustomed to navigate amid a daily outpouring of overwrought emotion, each expecting impulsive passion to rule the day....Behold the hidden puppet-master lurking in the shadows....

Under Dark Clouds

We don't choose the age we live in...rather, the age chooses us...enveloping, dominating, shaping our destinies - the sheer immensity of it all, the overwhelming scope, the global reach, the unavoidable impact - like the air we breathe - like a horrifying weather event - no choice for most but to endure these "storms" of history - living through wars, pandemics, upheavals, famines, revolutions, economic downturns, malaise,  lost decades, years of austerity, autocracies, dictatorships, purges, reprisals,  repression,  pogroms, displacements, mass migrations, expulsions, coups, abdications, guerrilla wars, killings, genocides - these "dark clouds" that take up so much of history for so many...(think: Czarism, Bolshevism, Great War,  Fascism, Great Depression, Franco-ism,  Stalinism, Hitlerism, World War, Cold War, Peronism, Maoism....) and oppressive, unwanted, annoying tyrants, autocrats, generalissimos, monarchs, premiers, prime ministers, presidents, people...