They paved the basketball court at the park in blue and it announces itself as not-lawn. The neighbors take their son to the playground, where he—barely walking—watches games through the chain-link fence. We hand him the ball and he drops it over and over again, delighted. Practice makes possibility more than it makes perfect. A dribble’s becoming. He can do it between swings and next to the slide and beneath the monkey bars.
I learned to kickflip on a concrete slab next to a horse stall in the middle of a mountain pasture, on the hundredth try. I Will Follow You Into The Dark by plucking every string wrong. Your Old Fashioned is over-mapled, tequila-soda not limed enough.
We are more at our best estimation than we are at the truth when we say it, or at least—what we imagine saying it might mean. It has yet to be the dead-end it drags as.
There is plenty awry, but I am not at all convinced that all of this was supposed to be a different way. How else would you find it—your way? How much time is wasted trying to mitigate mistakes, hoping to arrive in places you wouldn’t recognize without them?
For years, in Cleveland, Tennessee, at Cookout, after packed houses at Inman Street and before the witching hour, we’d story ourselves forward, bearing witness to cups that were not taken from us—led, cursed or choiced into now, over hush puppies and some flaccid quesadilla1; doesn’t matter—and the way life used them to illumine a through-line we’re still walking. It’s pure magic. Don’t give up. You’ll bump into no enough to find the yes you love. Fall in.
Forgive (or thank) every this is it! you found along the way, even when it wasn’t. Dribble. It doesn’t have to be scary, but it always is—a risk to stick the landing.
I’m delighted with myself for finding the words “flaccid quesadilla” and it makes me laugh good laughs. 😂
flacid quesadilla is the perfect descriptor lmao 😂 love this piece!