A Place Called Home

Quick steps, lightly treaded, gentle as a feather's touch, falling softly in the darkness. The mild breeze flitted through the night, weaving between the many shadows.

The day had been long. The night was still young.

I stood in the middle of the world, feeling my nerves calmed by the invading cold, feeling my senses extending into the distance, filling up the spaces betwen the stars.

The unknown sometimes offers a better consolation than the known.

The court slowly materialized as the mid autumn moon emerged from behind the cloud covers. There was a subtle sense of relief as familiarity greeted me. It is a new court, complete with fibreglass boards and retractable rims. I could feel every cell in my body stirring as I breathed it in, as I felt it beneath my feet, as I tasted it on my tongue...

Tired as I was, I knew that given a ball, I would be shooting hoops for the next hour, alone, and in the dark.

It has not been very different for the past 14 years...

But I did something today which I have seldom done. I cancelled my ball game this morning. And it still bugged me.

Absentee rate was unnaturally high today. Two of us were down with influenza, one felt obliged to help out at a wedding, another just left for the United Kingdoms, and one other had to take care of his wife...

Fourteen years and poor weather aside, I figured I have cancelled less than twenty games. Even if no one was playing, I would be shooting hoops alone or jogging or doing weights training in preparation for the next ball game.

We played through junior college, through army, through universities. I have dragged myself down to the courts having only 3 hours of sleep... there is no offseason, no rest period, no excuse.

Even after my kidney removal, I returned to the courts three months sporting an thirteen inch scar, that is, after weights training convinced me that the wound will not split easily.

I am not a natural athlete. And I still suck at the game.

But I like the person I am when I am on the courts. It is a feeling of defiance, defying reason, defying logic, defying gravity, defying age, defying pain, defying fatigue, defying resistance...

Voices get blocked out, every moment is a tug of war between instinct, reason, reaction and intellect. Decisions are made in a split second. The brain gives the direction. The body moves in harmony. The mind reads the changes. The muscles reacts accordingly.

Suddenly you are air borne.

You have two looks, one chance and half a second before it is all over.

The rest is history.

The rest will remain in the memory.

Standing on the court in the dim mid autumn moonlight, memories overwhelmed me; memories not of images and pictures, but memories built into the body, into the muscles, the nerves... preset configurations of physcial actions created by repeating the same motion hundreds of times in the past 14 years, memories stored in the very fabric of my physical being...

I could not help grinning as a strange thought surfaced.

Home is where the memories are, is it not?