The 5 o' clock fairytale

The air feels hot. The atmosphere is oppressive, burning. You cannot separate moving from aching, nor can you that fire in your heart from that in your skin. Two entities, so similar, yet so very apart. One will move you, nurture you, and let you rise above yourself, transcend for a second or less the barriers that we humans place upon ourselves. The other will pull you down, make you kneel and cough up spittle, and will burn till it soothes itself in a puddle of your own sweat. Remind us that we are all too human.

I know which one always wins for me… and life, unlike fairytales, is no fairytale...

“I’m out da… change?”

“Enough da… lights bad anyway”

If ever there was something pure and wonderful in the world, those words held it for me. I welcomed them with open arms like they were the eternal truth, in a neatly bound book with gold lettering “Why the sky is blue, and other truths” written gracefully on the front cover. Then I realised that the book had spikes, that embracing it wasn’t a really good idea.

“F***!!!”

You really don’t understand the true meaning of having 200 odd bones and countless muscles in your body until all of them decide to hurt at the same time. It was almost musical in a demented, sadistic way, like some arch rival of mine had voodoo dolled me into a guitar, and was playing Megadeth on it. And I’m pretty sure which muscle he had the bass mapped onto…

“Enna da… shoulder a?”

“Ya da…”

A collective sigh ensued. Normally, this would be treated like a complete lack of feeling. I mean, which sensible friend would sigh without a word of comfort.

Only the ones who’ve seen it happen everyday for a year. My life is so fractured. Or twisted. That depends on if we re talking about the wrist part of my life or the shoulder part. Yep, im injury prone. Each time fate hits me with one injury, I treat it till it hits me with the next. Fate MUST be a sadistic woman. The sort that’s going through middle age, with a drunk husband and a worthless kid, who has to earn and bake the dough, wear an apron over the business suit. That explains the sadistic part. Woman? Because she s so damn obsessed with me…

Going back to that fanciful looks at the two fires burning… Sport is about fire, isn’t it? The passion to win is so very different from the passion to play. The passion to play is so very different from the passion to excel. And the passion to excel is so very different from the passion to win. The passion of the Christ is so different from a passion fruit drink.

I just had to throw that in. I can’t stand seriousness in text. It reminds me of third grade, where we had to write between the line in the ruled notebook, and there was only one way to write a B or S, and there were just too many ways of writing BS.

Anyway, You go out there, everyday, maybe even twice a day if you re really bonkers… you sweat it out, do something so immaterial in life. Who give s a damn if that ball goes into the hoop or not, or if you did a hundred cool tricks before it? I mean, apart from the people who preach the butterfly effect, that is. Believe me when I say it, that s a theory for the zoologists.

Ah yes… passion. The passion drives us all, competing against fatigue, lack of sleep, cycle tests and the Gobi Masala you had for lunch. You can do wonderful things with passion, and by association with sport. I always believed, in other words, I just realised, that a game truly becomes a sport, when its players won’t have it called any other way. Which might be a stupid definition, really, but who cares for pessimists?

Isn’t it weird, or downright mental, that when you’re so tired, so physically rundown and phasing in and out of consciousness every second, is also when you feel so good, so active, so content with life? And isn’t it equally crazy that you have this big wide grin on your face, and later, even as your muscles ache in protest and make you limp to your bed, that you lie down with a groan and a smile, murmur something about the lights and find yourself overcome by a sleep so pure and undisturbed, it was worth every second of the pain?