One, Love

Over the past few months, I've taken up playing tennis again. I played in high school and was decent. By decent I mean that I was generally able to make contact with the ball, most of the time with the racket. But I more or less gave tennis up after graduating and so it's been 6 years since I've really played.

So I started playing again, against a wall at the park, and have been regularly for a while. It's amazing how quickly and exponentially one can improve when you start with bloody awful. I mean, it was bad. I was more than a little worried that I just didn't have it in me anymore. But I'd even venture to say that I'm better now than I was in high school. Maybe it comes with age, the ability to take direction and apply it. Because I hear all the lessons from my coach in my head, but the difference is that I can actually manage an effort to do it right. Or maybe it had something to do with the coordination issues of an already klutzy-by-nature teenager.

I like to fantasize that the firefighters at the station next to the courts have been watching me improve over the past months and are cheering me on. But in reality they probably just do firefightery things and never even notice I'm there. And if they do, it's more likely that they see my goofy ass chasing after a stray ball and wonder how it's possible that I ever manage to hit it with the racket at all.

The weather is, however, absurd. It's already been above 100 degrees. And you can practically drink the air. I love South Florida, but it's officially ridiculous how hot it is here. Oh, August, how I dread your coming.

But, aside from a general lack of harmony among my body parts and the commencement of a typically mad South Florida summer, it's fantastic to be playing again, to be active. To exhaust and drench and invigorate. It is one great joy in my life right now. But that damned wall talks some serious trash.