I started writing this on my phone, actually (and then I passed out). I was confused, a little (slash vurr) emotional, wild tired, and laying on a dirty tatami. (Sorry.) (Italics is what was written in Japan. Everything else was written after the fact.) (Also I wanted to name this post “We Found Love in a Hopeless Place” but then I heard a *foghorn* so I changed my mind.)
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I do this super embarrassing thing sometimes where I am just overcome with emotion and I just feel super uneven and awkward. Tonight was one of those times. We were walking around Shin-Imamiya and I was just overcome with this need to cry. It didn’t come completely from a sad place, though; it was bittersweet. I don’t know where this is coming from, exactly. I feel helpless against the ebb of time; I can feel this all ending but I’m trying desperately to make sure I don’t lose this feeling, lose these memories, this happiness. I understand that there’s nothing I can do to make time flow slower, and I also understand and accept that trying to do so would just make me miserable. But I can feel myself soaking everything in and putting it all in little mason jars for later, for when I need those feelings and memories again.
It happens to me a lot more now that I’m older — some of those jars open themselves to me at random times, and I’m completely washed — no, bowled over with these emotions and memories and senses. It’s weird and not at all something I can or want to control. The memories come back to me as moments sometimes, and sometimes they are intense and detailed. This will probably make little to no coherent sense as a series or anything of that nature, but sometimes I just need to get it down. A collection of photos and words.
- During the winter, when I don’t play frisbee and can’t (slash won’t) run outside, I do double-day workouts at the gym. My first and normal workout is usually at 7:30am, give or take a half hour swing each way, depending on how I’m feeling upon waking. When I was coaching, that meant my second workout was late at night. Especially when the Bulls were playing, I didn’t end up at the gym until after halftime and I ended up staying until closing time so I could see the end of the game in its entirety (a lot of shit could have gone down in that two minutes it takes for me to drive between the gym and my house). I have a vivid memory of power cleans with the guy who closed and his boyfriend, watching the end of Bulls/Clippers. (We won.)
- I will miss Thursday night Spicy practices in September and October, when all the college kids (save Northwestern and Loyola) have returned to their respective schools and towns for the year and our practice attendance takes a major hit. The circus is in town and it’s brighter than usual on the fields. Most of us have had to park our cars much further down the street than we typically do, and one by one or in groups, teammates emerge from the dark of the nether parts of Wash Park. We warm up to popular music being blared over the circus speakers, we marvel and admire the circus animals in their cages just beyond the fence. Ibex is usually sharing our light by then, and we can all see our breath hang in the air when we exhale. It’s annoying, because it’s too cold to not be wearing a longsleeve or a light jacket, but it’s also too hot with either of them on. There’s something about the lights, something about the way that cool feels, something about the feeling in the air that I just can’t describe. I just know that I’ll miss it when it comes.
- Hearing The Killers’ “Human”, and being transported to under the bridge between Schiff and Adams, hearing and feeling it booming from above. Or remembering sunny afternoons in my room on Adams two, door ajar, all the shades open, “Human” playing from my laptop, looking down at the courtyard.
