by Jinryu

You listen to the motion of the ocean… And then,
bang. 

You shout out capitals with an exclamation, like,
“BANG!” and it says something… But you say simply,
“bang.”  Small letters.  And what? 
I say the quiet bang, the one word oath, is that much more
powerful.  It loses the immaturity of
the bazooka fonts of 16 color comics, and instead, takes on that haikuish black
cowl of simple means more.  Behind all
the noise of the ocean is that huge motherfucking mountain, which no one can
move.  A bird flies into it. 

Bang.

It’s got a terminality.  It is suggestive of violence, and yet, it is a distinctly focused
kind of brutality.  It’s not a rushed
word, it’s not a word among repititions, it’s not about *quantity* so much as
it is about *quality*.  It’s a simple
singular thing that just strikes like the sound of the nail, not being hit by
the hammer, but finally stopping in motion, it’s head flush with the wood.
Decisiveness.  Finality.  That one way direction of energy has finally
reached it’s goal. It’s followed by the period, literally and figuratively.

“Bang” is what I say when someone’s been
messing around, underestimating me. 
It’s something I said a few days ago when some folks at the YMCA were
actually taunting my partner and I.  We
were fighting not because we could win, but because we had to.  For trying to take our courts, sure, in the
end… They were desinted to get them eventually, because they outnumbered us,
and by that fact alone the ‘winner stays’ rule of king of the hill made it
unlikely that two guys would have more stamina than about ten others
combined.  They’d just have to take
their turns while we weakened with each onslaught.

But even if they were bound to win eventually, we
weren’t going to let them take our courts unscathed.  And so when they thought that they could get cocky, the
opportunity arose to show them the error of their conceit.

A slow crosscourt drop is a shot that moves, as the
name implies, slowly.  It’s not like a
gunshot, it doesn’t hit the floor hard. 
It won’t bruise someone if it hits someone. I’d say that even if you
took it in the eye, you wouldn’t even lose your eye. It won’t make much of a
noise when it touches down.  In fact, if
you want to picture it, imagine a five year old kid throwing the bird up in the
air and watching it fall down.  That’s
how fast the bird is, it’s acting on the beauty of natural gravity.  It’s something simple and soundless.  It’s a force of nature.

Which is why, when the opponent is trying to be fancy
and does all sorts of loose shots in the name of finesse, when you see that
opportunity and throw in a slow crosscourt drop, you have to say
“bang”, in small letters.  You
don’t have to shout it, you just sorta say it, mutter it loud enough and with
enough disinterest that they think they heard the word from the bird itself
hitting the floor.

And then the period follows, where they just look at
the bird and wonder where the hell they went wrong.

For all their acrobatics, their atheleticism, the
bombasticness of their sheer brute strength— an opponent is still nothing
more than a human, with skills, physical capabilities, tactics and spirit.

And so when you’re tired, when you’re physically
weakened and your skills are losing accuracy, that’s when you get
tactical.  That when you show them that
you’re not going to just roll over and die. 
That’s when you show them what you’re made of.  Which is what I love most about games against other humans.

Lets rewind. 
Play.  The bird floats.  The slow crosscourt drop. 

Bang.  They
look at eachother.  They’re wondering to
eachother, was it luck?  Did they just
mess up?

Play.

Bang.  No way
that was luck.  They’re not goofing
around anymore.  With some nervous
laughs they look at eachother with those eyes that say “that was your
bird, not mine”.  And play resumes.

Bang.  And then
they worry, then they shut up.  Their
sweat goes cold because they’ve burned their fuel on the fancy stuff.  It’s down to the strings of every muscle,
it’s desperation. And then, everyone plays for real. 

It’s alright guys, I forgive you for not taking us
seriously.  But even if you call this
place home, don’t forget– it’s our home too– you are not playing against rank
amateurs.  We are not intimadted by the
casualness of your demeanors.  You
laughter sounds nervous at best, your smiles are just marked on faces dripping
with cold sweat.  Don’t try to pull that
amateur shit on us.  Let’s just cut the
crap, and play for real.

And it all makes for a beautiful game.

It’s just like Bruce Lee said about martial arts… It
applies to everything.  You can break
the rhythm, it’s a devastating thing, like an alpha counter, like a parry, like
the ducked hook countered with a haymaker on the noggin.  It hurts, because it’s outside your
timeline, and it slams hard no matter how slow, because it comes out of
nowhere.  It is outside your perception
of the possibilities, and in that way, everyone is a xenonphobe when it comes
to alien things that jar our realities.

The thing that we’ve learned as a team is that power
is important, but it’s never unstoppable. 
You just have to build them up, let them think that they’re on a roll…
Let them settle themselves to the pulse of blood in their ears, a rhythm of
confidence and of shots… And then when they’re set up in their foxholes,
that’s when you drop it on them.  The
napalm.  The bomb.  Bang. 
You come from an angle that they don’t see because they’re so holed up
in their walls of confidence and repetitious tactics.  You counter their force with subterfuge.

The bird chimes off a racket in a serve, the feathers
catching into the air and bringing it into a counter-clockwise spiral as it
arcs to ennemy territory, all eyes watching with an intensity that might make
you think that it was moving on telekinesis. 
Everyone is all eyes now, because they can’t afford to play with
blinders on anymore, they can’t just look straight anymore– they have to pay
attention to everything that’s really going on.  They have to look for the traps. 
They have to be afriad, because sometimes, being afriad is the only way
you’ll be aware of the possibilities of all the bad things your opponents are
trying to do to you.

Okay boys, playtime is over. My muscles are aching,
I’ve got a cramp.  My partner’s not
looking to good either– everytime we pause between plays, he puts his hands on
his knees and he bares his teeth in ragged gasps. We’ve won two rounds, but you
people, *you people*, you just won’t let up, will you?  Fine, bring the next challenger.  Take youre time, we’re not going
anywhere.  You’ll have to shovel us off
this court, and only after you’ve beatn us.

You done with all that creamy fluffy icing shit? 

So now, lets play for real.

 

 

 

 

I love it when everyone just fights like there’s no
tomorrow.  You tell me that living in
the moment is doing something out of the ordinary– I tell you, living in the
moment is doing something perfectly ordinary, but something ordinary that
everyone is focused on your every interaction, where you feel ever fibre of
your body and your mind being stretched. Everyone is tandem parachuting tied to
the same brick.  Everyone focusses. That
is when there is no future.  You see a
moment in front of you and then it’s the past. That is when you just are
there.  Everyone is focused on that one
thing. A target?  A goal?  A victory? 
Or nothing so grand, perhaps just even that one small point?

We are all united by Drive.  There is so much going on in your mind and in your body that it’s
loud, it’s noisy– it’s so noisy, that you can’t hear it anymore.  But you can feel it.

And it all builds up to the quietest thing is that
occasional, terminal, one-word word– the ‘bang’.