profound insight number 47

I was playing basketball, at a YMCA type scrimmage which isn't the best way to do the thing, I know. At my age I get my fix anyway I can. So be it. There I was on the tail end of an extended period of excessive physical stimulation. Dead man walking, sometimes running, all the time repping it for the old school white boys who wish they had game. Is that racist? Probably. You know I always say that if I was black, 6'8, 260lbs, and my name was LeBron James, I'd be playing in the NBA. It makes you think doesn't it? My gene sequence could have been entirely different. Well, I turned out white and not in the NBA. Oh well. It's always there wafting like an unidentified floating object through my water. If things had been just a little different this may have been a splendid glass of water, as it turned out things are the way they are.

The point Loren? If any? Ah, yes basketball, that most musical of sports, resplendent in it's grace and beauty and barbarism. Anyway, I was half-assing it, because I've got a reputation to uphold; perennial slacker, the uber slacker, the slacker of all slackers, "running" up and down the court and then this: What if I actually tried? Like the whole time instead of the usual randomly occurring spurts. Even when I'm tired and such, What would happen? What if I really run, the whole time? Facticity be damned. I was reborn in that moment.

They say you need to save secondary performances (and/or efforts) for secondary occasions (is there such a thing as a secondary occasion?). Nietzsche said live each moment as if you were doing so for the second time (thus undermining any need for regret). You always go with Nietzsche, especially when the alternative is advice from they. I feel real zen right about now.

warning: this was written on April Fool's day