House Fire

We did what we could to save this house from falling
But it burns because it's wood, and now you'll never call me darling.


I wrote earlier this year that every season I have a "thing". It might be wearing sweatbands or Boston baseball caps or bandannas, but I always have some sort of "thing". I also have a motto of sorts every year, a mantra I can repeat to myself when I want to motivate myself to work harder. Last season was "Work Hard Get Bank". My motto at the beginning of this season was "Live every week like it's tourney week." I wanted to savor and treasure every moment of this season, and cherish every practice and every game and every tournament I was blessed enough to experience. I know it's corny, but I wanted every one of my weeks to feel just like a tourney week -- filled with good friends, good food, and good fun.

Once again, my intuition was on point.

I was cleaning my room this past winter break and found a basketball under my bed that my cousin Mike had given me when I was in middle school, just as I was getting really serious about basketball. He had written on the ball, "Life's Short, Play Hard." In case you don't know/don't remember, my cousin Mike was killed earlier this year in a car accident, so those words hit pretty close to home. I'm 21 years old and I've said goodbye to my fair share of loved ones, but I guess it's not something you can ever get used to -- the idea that someone just really isn't there anymore. You always expect to see them or hear from them soon, and it's just really hard to register that you won't.

I had a conversation recently that got me thinking about all the things you never want to admit to yourself in life, and all the questions you're too afraid to ask. For whatever reason, I've never been more aware of life's fragility than I have been lately (and I would classify 'lately' as the last year). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in the last two years, I've lost two family members very unexpectedly, or maybe it has to do with the fact that as I'm getting older I'm realizing that I have more and more responsibilities to take on.

The best way that I know that I am alive is my body. I can run around and I can swim (not in pools or in any other sort of chlorinated body of water) and I can throw and I carry things. In my mind, my body represents my life and the fact that I am indeed alive. But I have been extremely reckless with my body. Without having to go into detail, let's just say that it was both physical wear-and-tear from years of athletic overuse/abuse mixed with a little bit of youthful indiscretion ... slash abuse, to be honest. I have long believed that I am young, and therefore completely invincible. That my body is flexible, pliable, and even plastic, somehow, and that I can ask it to bounce back from anything I put it through. I always think that my body can give just a little more, and that it can always take just a little more. Some two-bit shrink would probably tell you that I do all those things to "feel alive", and maybe deep down inside, that really is the case. But I think I do it because I want to see if I really *am* plastic.

I don't really know why I'm writing about this. This isn't a cry for help -- I am by no means sitting around at night thinking about my own death all the time, so don't all seven of you reading this get concerned -- I guess I'm just ... curious. What is my body really capable of? How far can I really push it, and where is the limit past which my body won't bounce back? Or, what does it feel like to push your life to the brink, and is it possible for you to battle back to equilibrium, to normal? And can you tell, when you're headed for the brink, or does something push you there unexpectedly?

I'm always telling myself to live every week like it's tourney week, live every day as if it were my last -- not in a morbid way, but in a "enjoy this moment while you're in it" kind of way. I told myself this year that I'd live my life to the very fullest, not just because it was my senior year of college and it was supposed to be epic but because I just wanted to start *really* appreciating my life and the people in it while everything was still happening, while they were still in my life, before I could only talk about them in the past tense. There are so many little things I wish I had said to people I've lost, and so many things I wish I could have done differently.

I guess what really led me to write this post was my having read "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" recently -- just finished the book about a half hour ago, actually. Not to give anything away, but I was thinking about life, and events in life that can change your life -- for good and for worse. I was thinking about how we're all connected to each other in some weird, unexpected way, and how there's a lot of shit in the world, but as a whole, the world is a good place.

On June 28, 2009, my life changed for the better in every way possible. I'm pretty sure most of you know because it's all I ever talk about, but in the summer of '08 and '09, I worked with the Junior Statesmen of America Summer School at Stanford. I'd been there as a student in '05 (and at Northwestern in '04), and I decided to return as an RA. JSA Stanford '08 was insanely fun, because we had a crew of 11 (thirteen if you count Erin and Dave) who got along incredibly and just really loved each other and enjoyed each other's company. We were, in short, the best. JSA Stanford '09 was different, because it was all about the kids. My kids moved in on June 28, 2009. They started off as "my girls", but they became "my kids". They changed my life and made me want to live every day passionately, to live every single day with the same vigor that they lived their lives every day. They made me want to spend more time laughing and less time worrying. And I grew to love them so much. I loved my '08 Potter One girls too, but in a different way. Potter taught me how to laugh, but Adams taught me how to cry. I don't know that I have EVER cried that hard in public -- if you can believe it, I cried even harder than I cried that night at Firehaus when I almost got our team kicked out. A lot of people told me that they didn't ever think I'd be someone to cry like that, someone to get attached like that. But my kids reminded me of how short our time together is -- that you've really got to love every moment of every minute of every day, because they slip away, and you can never get them back. No matter how many pictures you take or how much video footage you get, you don't get those moments back, exactly as they were. I met my kids on June 28, but already on July 19 those little creatures were leaving me alone on that long empty floor, with all the doors open leading into big empty rooms. Their rooms always looked so small when I was doing roomchecks, but as I was walking through the night before I left, they all just looked so humongous. Is that where all our lost time goes? In that emptiness that's left when the kids leave?

One of the kids from '09 was recently diagnosed with leukemia. When I found this out, I started thinking of all the moments of his life that had led up to that one. I thought of all the people he met and all the lives he had touched and was involved in, whether he knew it or not. I thought about him and his brothers (sisters? I can never tell how Schiff Three wants to be addressed) of Schiff Three, and about the time they spent together that summer. Did they sneak out of their rooms when Sameer was over in Adams with us? Did they skip LPS and skateboard over to Jamba Juice instead? Did they try to talk to girls at the dances or did they hang out by themselves? What table did they sit at in Lagunita and who did they sit with? Thinking back on all those moments, I wonder if that's what his friends are talking to him about now. I know that whenever I'm feeling down, I love sending e-mails to my JSA friends and talking about those days and nights we spent together and just laughing and laughing about it. Maybe those moments -- what they mean to us, what the people in them mean to us how they made/make us feel -- are what fills us up and makes us whole as people. Maybe it's that love and it's that laughter and it's that safe, warm feeling that you get from a moment that constitutes your insides. If that's the case, I hope Jeremy is filled with excitement and happiness and joy and love and contentment and comfort and safety and warmth and everything that's good in the world, and everything good that's ever happened to him, and all of that is keeping him safe right now and helping him to get better by the minute. Leukemia seems like a pretty shitty thing to happen to anyone, so send your good thoughts over to Jeremy Cynamon, who always seemed like a good kid, even if he never said "good morning" to me in the mornings.

When I think about people like Jeremy and my uncle and my cousin, I think about all the good things their lives are filled with, and in the case of my uncle and my cousin, all the great things that people always wish they had said to them. People had nothing but great things to say about my cousin at his funeral, but did they ever say those things to him when he was alive? I'm sure that if they did, those kind words and that love they had for him surely would have filled him, even as he was dying.

For all the technology that exists in the world, we still can't find ways to say what we feel to the people we need to say them to, and we're always using strong words when we don't really mean it at all. Sometimes I'm afraid that if I say "love" too often, it won't mean anything the next time I say it. I wish that I could enjoy every moment as it happened, and I wish that I had enjoyed all those nights we spent in Adams Tower maxing on In-N-Out and bitching about our bosses. I wish I had enjoyed all those nights that Krystal and I spent talking on Potter 3 or in the Potter Lounge. I wish I had enjoyed all those walks to Arrillaga with Beardy. I wish I had committed all those hilarious Sam Ball games to memory. I wish I wish I wish ...

"It's always necessary. I love you."


Sorry for being morbid and depressing ya'll. Just got a bit on my mind. I probably shouldn't read sad books anymore. I'll probably put up a non-depressing post soon, like that wedding recap that I promised Kimberly! But for now, to lighten the mood ... my summer league captain thinks all Asians look alike?
Go Bulls?
10 Hours: Too Much Titties?
And I just ruined it by saying "titties" and being twelve years old. (See, I'm still the same ol' me, for better or for worse.)
Welp.