They are in the Final. Year on year we went back to that same sports hall in that same far-flung place with the same people and their same antics, thinking hoping willing that in time to come, it would be our turn. For them, now a six-year-old dream is now a reality.
And like all six-year-olds, it tells me the darned'est things. I am not sure how, throughout this period of watching them compete on that stage, this six-year-old - in its wondrous capacity for questions people may never be able to answer - asks me how I feel.
There are parts of you that obviously wish you could be there, running, screaming, fighting - diving into every single loose ball. But there is also that all-consuming, immense thing inside when you see those guys you went to the same sports hall in that same far-flung place with, doing what they do in that same sports hall in that same far-flung place six years later - some kind of overwhelming glow of light that comes on and gets you thinking, "These are the same guys. This is how far they've come." You cheer, you get up on your feet, you endure some nail-biting moments and if push comes to shove - if push comes to shove you clench your fists and pummel them through the air; a boxer running out of things to hit, and still giving it the fight.
To be injured is to set it in stone that the hurt is never all that simple. Too often I have found myself following the cadences of a bouncing basketball - I always have - except this past year it has taken on an illusory nature, and as the sound fades, you can almost make out the surface that it is bouncing on from the little inflexions and metres; how it feels its way around, how it absorbs the shock, how - despite your best intentions - its direction may sometimes be unpredictable, no matter how masterful your control.
It is hard to think that people were not made to move, or that this court was not made to be a stage. People were made to move in all its 28 by 15 metres of glory; for four - sometimes five - times a week, we would feint, slide, leap, roll, pirouette - run, with that reckless abandon which comes with space. To be your very self.
Evanescence is best served cold but you would think I could deal with it; the same guys you've made at least a thousand passes to at the same training sessions at the same court, the same one that was built to be a home - you've seen them at their best and their worst, as they have seen you too. The intensity ensures that for four hours of up and down, up and down - just as the ball bounces we go up and down the lengths of the court - people are on the brink of breaking apart; you, are on the brink of breaking apart. When people feel at their lowest, when they think they haven't got anything left inside, they're tempted to cheat tempted to blame tempted to yell at everyone in their way
please, only your mind needs to know there is in fact so much left - so often that's proven true; when that knee feels like it's about to collapse but you want to make that last lap, when you are no longer sure about the air in your lungs but you are sure of the shared mettle in your minds
No - sometimes the mind is not enough. Sometimes you can only watch from the side, helpless but hopeful, as six-year-olds grow up before you.
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I recently performed a piece at a spoken word event - and it's all still rather surreal - with my friend Kim. You can check out the transcript here.
