A world to walk in and out of
Diversions, as distraction and delusion.
The fall continues its lockstep, though lovely, march, and the diversions are there for the taking with every tree exploding, burning itself out with colour in a death knell. Gold and traffic cone oranges, reds that range from blush to bruise, mauve and russet, lemon and pale lime. Yellows like a changing light. Yellows that signal speed up or slow down, depending on the day, the hour, the slant of sun and how my brain is, just then, driving.
I know I’ve been harping on it but this fall feels labyrinthian. Chambers into antechambers of the heart, the mind, and me, fodder for this seasonal minotaur. Blundering along hand over hand, feeling myself knock against walls, skinning knuckles, taking diversion as direction.
The day of the home opener ticks by quick. Buried in a deadline it’s 10am, then 2pm, then it’s time to get ready. I’ve never gone to the arena from the new place and I want to give myself enough time, though with the fog of a migraine pressing in I know I won’t. I’m moving slow. Waiting for a bus, the sky, brooding low and grumbling grey all day, opens up with the rain it’s been holding. I take the same train south to Union Station but swing in from the other direction. I do the same mental exercise of guessing who is going to the game. There is no Covid questionnaire to fill out on my phone anymore while queueing for security. The guard asks what I’m doing and who I’m with and when I say freelance he cocks his head. “Is that where the money’s at?” he asks. I smile, “That’d be nice.” He bursts out laughing and waves me through to pick my bag up off the x-ray belt.
Waiting for my credential, I think about the routine of this, games and being here, a season, the stories to come, all returning. And how the rush of that routine, even when it wears on, never relaxes for me. I think because it’s something I’ve built, independently and independent from the rest of my life. In this world, this place, I’ve started from scratch and been intentional about all of it. Assisted, definitely, with more than a few happy accidents along the way, but intentional. People do this every day, pick up something new and make a go and a life of it, fly blind for a bit on conviction and a sense of humour, but I still think it’s important to take a moment — and I try, when I remember — to pause and acknowledge that shoot, this is something.
A hand falls gently on my shoulder and a warm voice follows, “Hey, stranger.”
Sorted, Paul and I walk the still empty concourse, chatting through all of what’s happened in the wedge of summer since Summer League. He listens as I expel some worries about the season to come, encouraging, though he’s got a hundred places to be. We walk to a tunnel out to the floor but there’s a tall metal grate closing off the concourse to the arena itself. I move to turn around but he smiles and waves me forward, swinging the barrier open for us. Walking down the wide concrete steps, the floor shining under the overhead lights, the only sound all the ricocheting voices from guys beginning to go through warmups, trainers huddled over laptops, security being briefed, and team staff swirling, the distance between the last time I was here and now evaporates.
That night, well before tip-off, walking the winding arena tunnels again, running into and catching up with so many people rooted and integral, for me, to this world, the ones that know me smirking after a while and waving me off, “Go lurk,” they laugh. And I do. Down to the baseline to zone out on Robin Lopez’s two-handed overhead hook shots, fingers that could brush the rim if he wanted and he’s just up on his tip toes. Watch Donovan Mitchell bop his head with whatever’s coming through his headphones and take deep, unhurried shots from both wings. Get tapped on the shoulder by security and think right, the first time I’ll get asked about my credential when the male media around me do not. But no, it’s Charlie, who has recognized me from the section above and made his way determinedly down to the floor to introduce himself. I unpuff my pride, unwind my ego at what I thought was happening, have a wonderful conversation with him instead. Go breezing back down the floor to the opposite baseline, watch Fred VanVleet roll off his trainers to pop shots up under the rim, say more hellos and realize the pregame clock has run out, too quickly.
With tip, the arena shakes. Up in the gondola I lean over the thin plexi railing, as if I could be closer this many bleary feet above the game. I forgot my glasses. The game revs, sped up at time and half, every time I look to the scoreboard it’s tied up. Joseph and I compare expectations and share news from the other games on. Ben texts me about the Wizards. Marion texts me from her seat, pretty much right under the media level’s overhang. VanVleet gets hit in the face, Darius Garland gets hit in the face, both stay down for a length of time the crowd quiets in. Mitchell tries to make it to the rim and is walled in, mid-air, by the diversion of four out of five in Toronto’s rotation.
I wince, openly, each time Jarrett Allen is knocked to the floor.
Jerome plunks down beside me after the half and shows me the footage he’s got on his small handheld from the night up to then. With 20 seconds left I ask if it’s the 3rd and he says no, the 4th. The way time moves within an arena changes every time you’re in one.
Diversion as distraction I barely have to will, but have to focus on slowing to remember as I wind my way through the long, snaking lineup to the team store, back to the train and eventually out into the night, sinking down cold and so quiet the ringing in my ears takes on a new sonic depth. I get home, the apartment empty, the dogs crazy, this world eclipses that one. I read until I fall asleep.
Later, when asked how it was I’ll say “Good!”, unsure how to distill down the rest. Diversion a whole world I’ve made that I can walk in and out of.
Diversion can be delusion. Of self, of importance or place of self.
A lot (a lot) of people have chimed in about this clip that Kirk Henderson cut of the hosts of the Locked on Warriors podcast complaining about access. Their complaint, I think, is that fan hosted shows, or content by people who might consider themselves a fan first, are prevalent enough that people, other fans, might choose to listen to them or “get their information or are entertained by… people who have no connection, no background to the NBA”.
I say complaint because there’s no argument here besides the assumption that everyone in this industry has just dropped in, fully formed? I also joined the pile-on, but eventually deleted my part, because the worst thing about that clip and what stuck with me after is how full of derision the tone the comments were made in that it felt shitty, to me, to respond with the same. When Cyrus scoffs, “They’re just like, fans” of the people he’s complaining about, it’s with the kind of loaded venom that rankles anyone who has had not just their access (to a space, role, knowledge) questioned, but essentially their right to be somewhere in the first place and within that, plainly, their personhood.
What made me so angry about it in the first place, besides how the logic of what they were saying shakes clear of them quick as a wet dog, was what made me so sad: it was so mean. Hostile, rude, ignorant, scared, uncurious, yes, but mean. Vitriolic. I mean, maybe people who haven’t had as much experience with this kind of lazy speculation from those who are so territorial about maintaining their own toeholds at all costs don’t feel the same cold, probing fingers of disgust at the bare minimum of holding space or in this case, talking into a microphone, wend down their spines to settle, like an unwanted hand, at the small of their backs — but I do.
It isn’t that either of these guys seemed protective about a perceived hallowed ground of basketball being overrun; not that that would be a better, more noble, or any reason at all to go on like this. Their only cause for complaint is that other people are trying something, and people are responding to it. That other people are deigning to take a first step.
It takes so much effort to turn diversion into a drag.