Success in circuit lies
I learned what it's like to be so weak that you have to crawl. I mean that literally - I've felt the lack of strength fall back like the tides so strongly that I had to crawl on my arms and knees. Even my arms were wobbling with the weight of my body, and I gasped and gagged for air and eventually hurled myself in the corner of the boathouse. The Coach snapped at me. "Keep moving! Don't stop moving!" I summoned small ammounts of strenght, and hauled myself back up to my knees, and eventually my feet. My legs quavered, and then my knees locked into place.
I started hiccoughing and breathing shallowly. Part of me was ashamed that my body couldn't handle the exercises, and that I was so easily drained. I had always thought that crawling about was reserved for wanderers in deserts, not me. Another part was astonished at the entire experience, and amazed at how it felt to have one's arms and legs give way beneath them. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced before, and I doubt I could even find words for it. Being so weak that one is forced to crawl is not an image that I would have ever thought of as being alien, but the experience was very different from the image I had held in my head for so long.
I learn so much from crew, and I learn it through feeling it. I feel the lactic acid build in my stomach, I feel the boat rushing underneath, I feel the boat's momentum being checked by a sloppy stroke, I feel the thrill for hours after I've left the water, and I feel what it's like to have to crawl. My life would be devoid of any sensory excitement if I didn't have crew. And I think my live would be devoid of a couple other things as well.
I had been meaning to write another crew entry, because I was just beginning to realize what crew means to me. After the initial crew entry, a friend asked me why on earth I even bother with the sport, and at the time I was wondering it myself. But I knew why when I was hunkered down in a corner of the boathouse, trying to pull myself to my feet. I knew when we gracefully swung down the river. I didn't wholly understand it when I fell through the dock, but I think if I fell through again I'd be thankful for the opportunity to fall through a dock.
And then our coach left us.
The day she told us that NCAA regulations would prevent her from coaching us and a Minnesota team at the same time, we had come off the water after a breathtaking performance on the river. There had been only seven rowers present, so we had to leave the last seat in the boat empty. Crew coaches are fond of catch phrases. They throw a term at you time and again, and it becomes background noise. It doesn't make sense the first time, and it doesn't make sense all the times after. Rowing is a strange thing - the movements are hard to catch on to. However, once you really feel how rowing is supposed to feel, it's easy to forget how difficult that concept was to grasp.
Our coach knew that we hadn't experienced rowing as it was supposed to feel, and she knew how to get us there. She never threw meaningless phrases at us. On her last day, I felt for the first time what coaches had been trying to tell me for two years. My body moved in ways it hadn't in the boat before, and it was truly a startling sensation. It reminded me of times where I had learned that there were easier and more efficient ways to use my computer that I had never even fathomed before. And the pure shock of the sensation reminded me of struggling to even crawl on the floor of the boathouse after a dry land workout. It was very thrilling.
When she told us she would have to leave, I wanted to burst out with all the things I just wrote there. I wanted to tell her how much she mattered to me, how she had given rowing a new light and a new sensation for me. I wanted to tell her that I really liked her, and that I thought she was amazing. I didn't say a thing because I knew that if I opened my mouth, I would start to cry. My throat wasn't functioning either.
---
My parents have left me alone for a week to visit canyons in the south west. I realized that I've spent months away from home from a very young age, but I've never spent time by myself in this house. All I know is that I'm incredibly lonely.
There are many nice things about having the house to myself. All week, I had been looking forward to buying groceries. I got to buy my brand of pickles, and soup just for me, and this really made me happy. Being able to leave my email open, being able to leave ICQ without the password on, being able to leave my music playing is also comforting. Those things are all nice, but I miss my family. On the list of things I have to take care of over the week, at the very bottom, my mom scrawled "We love you." I didn't see it until they had gone.
It's unsettling coming home to an empty house. I had been watching movies with Kate and Becca, and had fallen asleep like clockwork. When I woke up, they gasped at my bloodshot eyes and asked me if I was even capable of driving home. "I c-can't spend the night," I thought. "The house is cold and empty and the computer is running." I felt desperate - too tired to move, and too afraid not to.
The other night, a friend's car was parked on the street next to my house. A person drove by and smashed her passenger side window with a baseball bat. Inside the house, we heard the crunch and breaking glass. I shuffled outside and surveyed the damage. The glass looked spectacular in the moonlight.
The other day, someone took ten dollars out of my purse. I had forgotten it in my sixth period class. I know that it was my fault the money was stolen, and tried to tell myself that the person who took the money needed it more than I did. I felt no monetary loss when the money was gone - it had been my parents in the first place and I was only planning to spend it on film. The person who took the money didn't know that. It made me very sad that someone was so inconsiderate.
So, with the examples of how inconsiderate humans are to other humans fresh in memory, I left Becca's house and drove home in something of a panic. I didn't feel safe in my car, and I was sure that I wouldn't feel safe at home. I got home, and was instantly calmed by the humid air as I walked into my house. The frogs rhythmically chirruped, and through the hazy fog I could see a gibous moon. And it was so warm - the air temperature felt the same as a lukewarm bath. My panic was dissolved into the watery air, and I felt alright.
2000-04-16, Stuff about crew and being alone at home.
before / after archives / website / hello book / diaryland