songs of experience

At the end of every season (whether as a coach or athlete), I feel a tremendous weight of melancholy. It may be physical (the extreme peak then sudden drop of adrenalin and testosterone … NO, not the illegal kind; women do produce testosterone naturally). It may be emotional (the feeling of loss and, certainly, grief over the death of a goal; even if your dream is realized, it is over). It may be social (and by the way, what does “psycho-social” mean?) due to the team dispersing and loneliness setting in. It may be even be the practical loss of routine that brings on the blues. Whatever the case, here it is the most gorgeous week in May in the Carolinas and I am not out on my deck admiring the azaleas; I am in this dark corner tinkering with melancholy.

When I tried to put this into words for my Janes, I used an excerpt from a poem by John Koethe:

“Let me try once more. I think the saddest moments
Are the ones that also seem most beautiful,
For the nature of a moment is to fade,
Leaving everything unaltered, and the landscape
Where the light fell as it was before.
And time makes poetry from what it takes away,
And the measure of experience
Is not that it be real, but that it last,
And what one knows is simply what one knew,
And what I want is simply what I had.
These are the premises that structure what I feel,
The axioms that govern my imagination,
And beneath them lies the fear
Not the fear of the unknown, but the fear of growing old
Unchanged, of looking in the mirror
At a future that repeats itself ad infinitum.
It could be otherwise so easily.
The transience that lectures so insistently of loss
Could speak as clearly of an openness renewed,
A life made sweeter by its changing; “

-by John Koethe (North Point North)