We Eat

There are a lot of sports I have a basic knowledge of, but whose intricacies completely escape me.  Football is on that list.  Top five, probably.

I blame my parents.  To this day, I have never watched a single football game with them.  They understand it even less than I do.  See, we grew up watching swimming and volleyball and gymnastics...you know, sports the Chinese can play. (shots fired)

I find football strangely fascinating.  But for the numbers, the helmeted players could be anyone.  There's some kind of battle formation whose cold, calculating logic is just beyond the reach of my brain.  They have commanders, too, and seargents.

I have always wondered if sports were a way for people to play at war.  War with their surroundings, war with their peers, war with with themselves.

So I took on the football spread for yearbook and went just last friday to take pictures at our first home game.  I've watched three years' worth of home games from the stands.  For three years I've found myself irrationally excited, because I'm sure my subconscious mind understands the game, though my conscious mind may dodder hopelessly around in circles.

But let me tell you this: watching from the stands is so, so different than it is walking up and down the sidelines, weaving in and out of players and other camera people, running this way and that.  There's this raw, primitive energy I hadn't expected.  Although I can see some of their faces peeping through the openings in their helmets, I don't recognize any of them.  Although I'd know them in the halls, in my classrooms, wandering around town, I didn't know them then.  They didn't look at me, or anybody else- they saw the team, they saw the field, and they saw the other players.

It was crazy.  I've never seen anything like it before.

They didn't even notice the crowd, although they fed off its energy.  When the other side scored touchdowns, groans rippled through their ranks.  When our side did, they celebrated as brothers, screaming, pumping their arms and jumping on each other.

Toward the end things got a little nasty for us, and the entire team breathed and held their breaths as one man.  They shared a single plateful of tension, of bundled nerves and expectation.

At some points, we gave up on taking pictures and simply stood and watched.  Watched the battle unfold and the blood spill.

Like I said, it was pretty crazy. 

I realize that if you don't go to my school, the title doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you.  I don't entirely understand it myself, so I'm not going to try to explain it.  It's pretty funny, though, to hear the crowd chant it like a prayer and make as though they're eating, holding imaginary plates and utensils.  Whoever knew the minds of teenagers? Freaking nobody.  Not even teenagers.

Waking Up

The sky wept for us on the first day of school.  Hordes of indignant girls trudged through the wet hallways, sheltering their carefully styled hair and made up faces.  Sandals had been traded for more practical footwear that thudded sullenly as they walked.  The schoolyard was shiny with a kind of wet romance.

But it hasn't rained since.  The California drought drags on, and the sun is hot on our cheeks.

I miss cold weather.  I miss rain.  I miss how walking to school in the morning, the wind would blow your hood off and your hair atumble.  I miss watching fat waterdroplets roll of my coat and taking it off,safe and snug and dry underneath.

Summer this year is like Summer in Westeros-seemingly endless. 

But I'm tired of sweat and soft, balmy perfumes and kicking off the covers at night.  I'm tired of the Summer breeze.  I weary of the scent of burning pavement.  I'm sick of being slow and languid-I'm ready for the speed, the briskness of Fall.

We talked about Speed in my AP Lit class just last week. My teacher showed us a clip of a man named Carl talking about slowing down.  Our society, Carl explained, was moving faster at a faster rate and maybe it was time to slow down and just Be.  He said that doing things slowly was better: eating, moving, spending time with our children, making love.

But I like to be fast.  I like the wind whistling past my cheeks.  Last month I would have smiled lazily and said that I liked to be slow, but last month I was a different girl.  Now that I am a different girl I need the sun to be a different sun.  You feel?

It's too damn hot for tea.  For whatever reason, I find this to be supremely insulting.

Someone in that discussion said that to him, being slow meant being able to stop and appreciate the silence and that speed was so noisy.  I had to disagree.  From my perch on the dusty cushion I sat on, I had to disagree.

Speed is silent.  Think of the engine in a really nice car; sometimes it purrs but mostly it doesn't make a sound.  You feel its power but sometimes you forget it's there.  Speed means rushing by so fast that you can't hear what's around you.  The warnings people shout at you as you pass are lost, sounds of laughter and of tears, the rumble of the sea, the clink of breaking glass.  All you hear is moving air.

Stillness is noise.  When you don't move too fast, you can hear things, everything if you want.  The sound a hummingbird makes that would be lost inside a Mercedes.  Slowness is nice, too, but I'm not in the mood.

I told you already.  I'm tired of being slow.  I'm tired of warm mornings and cold watermelon afternoons.