|
November 11th, |
2001 |
|
|
|
From the outside, you’d think I was just running around the basketball court draining three’s, cause I got mad skillz. But no, you’re just looking at a boy who IS drained. Thirsty. Needing something more. I don’t really excel at many sports or games. I think it comes down to attitude and approach. I’m pretty good at certain video games, unless the person I’m playing against has played them at least ¼ as much as I have, ..then of course they’ll win. But it’s funny, really weird and funny, that I seem to do better at such activities when I’m not thinking about what I’m doing, when distracted. I can be playing at my usual mediocre level, and if somebody chances to walk up from behind and distract me, I’ll keep playing; but I won’t be thinking about the game; It’ll fade into the background behind whatever the distraction is. And I’ll basically keep my hands on the controls for the sake of not totally walking away, and focus on who or whatever else. And it is weird. It really is. That when I return to actively “trying”, ..I realize that I’d been doing much much better while unfocused, participating without conscious thought. This has happened several times that I can remember, specifically at school playing Quake 3, and at the gym on an old NBA JAM arcade game. What the?!! “ I couldn’t perform this outlandishly well, even if I tried and got lucky.” But I guess that somehow, your brain, or at least my weird malnourished and underachieving brain, can participate in a select few activities with astonishing skill, if I leave it alone. For you see, we lead separate lives, my brain and me. Which is somehow connected to running around playing basketball with myself, which is so often the case, considering not many people play basketball at an indoor health club at 10:48 pm. I do this “basketball thing” better unconsciously; while focused on other thoughts; when making a basket is the last thing on my mind; while myself and my brain are playing on opposite ends of the court. In mid August, even after a day spent hunched over a never-ending steel rail with a yellow paintbrush, I can remember hitting 15 three’s in a row, during the minutes immediately leading up to my leaving to go Bowling. Brain: “Should I? She’s nice. But I don’t know. Then again I’d be stupid for not trying….” And now three and a half months later, after everything is said and done and sunk and gone, not much is the same, except for this. Shooting baskets, thinking about anything but. Except before you were nervous and hesitant, asking: “Will I take this on? Will I allow it to be part of me?” And now you’re still running around the court, agonizing over how, now, that part of you, that thing that you were just starting to depend on and value more than anything else, is gone. Except this time you’re in that place; that place you warned yourself about before; that place in which she even earnestly told you she didn’t want to see you in, because she’d been there before; that place you acknowledged you could very well end up at. “Why do I feel so much loss? Was she worth it? Was I worth it?” Except worth is a shallow, passing, meaningless, concept, outdone by confusion, hurt, and oh my god what ifs. And outdone by the reminder that she doesn’t really care this much about it all, kind of like the way you feel right now, about this ball and rim. I’ve never known what “jilted” meant. I still don’t officially know, and I’m not going to look it up. I’ve only heard other people say it. Swish. |
|
 |
|
|