Notes from the Editor's Desk - 2/21/22
A commuter train line runs along the court, separated from it by a lot, in which my car is not infrequently parked, and by the court’s fencing and the fencing along the track. Growth, too, indifferent to the fence’s obstruction, mutes the court’s exposure to the fuming engine and its charge. When, in the spring, the melt creates pools, it makes me wonder if heavy metals have not accumulated in the soil. A grime accumulates on my hands after I retrieve a bedraggled Spalding and leave its silty wash to the court, in suspended curls, if the court is also wet, or in concise tattoos, if it is dry. My joy of these intricacies, however late in life I realized them, compound and compound.
Transistor radios can be gotten for cheap at a second hand store. Besides a ball of vulcanized rubber with panels of a dimpled synthetic leather, there may be no better investment in the attentive enjoyment of an afternoon than a transistor radio. Eventually, a sweat breaks out to the sound of horns and piano, and the inflexible mood likewise begins to grow fluid. The joy I take in handling, that is in coordinating my movement within space, within the restriction of the dribble, in shooting, as in play at the rim, makes me appreciate what other unknown joys have yet to grace this life bound to its own brevity.
There was nothing about my life, not in itself, that should have precluded basketball from its hours. I passed courts frequently along my common goings through Park Ridge and Niles. Where exactly those were, and what their description was, would require an affirmative, if not concerted, act of remembrance. To be sure, considering that a hoop of high quality stood in the driveway opposite the backdoor, right at the end of the meandering brick walk through the back yard, I could have learned to master my long form as I grew to uncommon height. Why not? What diverted me, or seemed to divert me? To derive an answer to that question, and to ever so many questions produced in the wake of that prow, is the substance of thought as I elevate and release, enjoying the successful fall of a ball through the hoop. What strange complexes command us. It seems that ease, when it is discovered, is almost unnatural. It is, indeed, for the exploration of these thoughts, for this escape, that I have come to look forward to time spent at play upon the greentop; but this is only the start of matters that run much deeper and cannot be elucidated in a day.
