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A review by jdscott50
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
"If I hadn't made it clear there, this is all about the good fortune of who gets to make it out of somewhere and who doesn't."
"You are going to have to catch me. You are going to have to climb, and I know you want no part of the world this high up. Find the point where you are unkillable and jump toward it if you can."
Hanif Abdurraqib's book is a sort of essays, sort of poems, on what makes watching sports magical.
"You are going to have to catch me. You are going to have to climb, and I know you want no part of the world this high up. Find the point where you are unkillable and jump toward it if you can."
Hanif Abdurraqib's book is a sort of essays, sort of poems, on what makes watching sports magical.
With a countdown clock running, we reminisce on our dreams. In sports, in basketball, miracles can happen. We see them in the big games, the come-from-behind game-winning buzzer-beater shot. But it is the miracles on the small court that can stay with us. This magical game at your high school or pickup game—something unbelievable that will never show up on a television set but will be orally recounted and remembered for generations—stories made legend.
Hanif weaves this tale of legends and myths: guys who had a miraculous game but never made it out, a team that was unkillable for a season and then quietly disappeared, a season of bad-luck teams suddenly becoming champions, that feeling near midseason when you look at your fellow fans and think this might be our year—all wonderfully captured. Of course, so much of this is about Ohio, about getting out and making it big. It is about watching the Cleveland Cavaliers and seeing something magical come together, if even for a few moments. This book is one of my favorite this year.
Favorite Passages:
But please believe me and my boys made up handshakes that were just ours, ones where we would slap hands and then make new, shared designs out of our bent fingers, pulled back and punctuated with a snap. We would break them out before parting ways at the bus stop to go to our separate schools, and break them out again upon our return at the end of the day. The series of moves was quick, but still slow enough to linger. Rarely are these motions talked about as the motions of love, and since we are talking about our loves over our enemies, lord knows I will take whatever I can to be in the presence of my people. To have a secret that is just ours, played out through some quiet and invented choreography. A touch between us that lingers just long enough to know we've put some work into our love for each other. We've made something that no one outside can get through.
“…you are going to have to catch me. You are going to have to climb, and I know you want no parts of the world this high up. Find the point where you are unkillable and jump toward it if you can. “
When he started at one end of Market Square Arena in Indianapolis and ran, catapulting himself from the free-throw line (yes, the actual free-throw line!) and remaining, suspended and extended, for what feels, even now, like a glorious hour. Your finest hour. The hour you've dreamed of living again ever since the final grains of it kissed the mountain of sand at the bottom of the hourglass. Have you ever been in the air so long that your feet begin to fall in love with the new familiar, walking along some invisible surface that is surely there, that must be, as there is no other way to describe what miracle keeps you afloat? How long have you been suspended in a place that loves you with the same ferocity and freedom as the ground might, as the grave might, as a heaven that lets you walk in drowning in gold might?
If we don't talk about what we do beyond the frantic moments of what we do, then we can convince ourselves that there is a newness to each clumsy encounter. That we're mostly strangers, drifting toward each other, desiring only touch and nothing else. And in the hour that is our hour, a window opens and we can breathe out all the sad stuff. Find a closet for our tapestry of aches. Both of our mothers had died, which might bond us in another world, if we were considering falling in love and not simply pouring ourselves into what would otherwise be vast, lonely gaps of living.
Your ball is your ball, and depending on how you and your folks are livin', you might not see a new one for a while. And so, of course, praise to the person who made a way with a bald rock, and a little path of concrete that was their concrete, and a rusted rim with no net. Those be the noblest of hoopers. The ones who, back then, you had to keep an eye on. Cuz they've done all the hard shit already. Once they get a little bit of a grip on something new, it's lights out.
Yes Lord, I am thankful today again for every reminder of how I have outlived my worst imagination. I will walk slowly through the garden of all that could have killed me but didn’t.
The people I trust most understand a love like that, understand it even if the money from the record deal got them out of a place, or if ball got them out of a place. Call it war, call it whatever you want. You wouldn't know what to do with your face turned toward the blaring dawn, having survived another handful of hours that someone didn't want you to. There is no language I can find for the affection of repeated survival. To know you haven't been caught just yet. That with some luck, you never will be
If things have gone wrong enough for a long time, anyone can become a god.
With enough repetition, anything can become a religion. It doesn’t matter if it works or not, it simply matters that a person returns.
There are things we know about cities—the ones we live in, the ones we visit, the ones that seem like ours during the right run of hours. But this story ends in an act of forgetting. At least for now, in this moment. Which, I must tell you, is almost over. It was a delight to drink from this dream, but know, the bottom of the glass, tilted to our mouths, is visible enough to offer a reflection. Hold whatever sweetness you can in your mouth for a little longer. Ignore the glass, dropped to the floor, fractured into an army of shards. This is how we begin the other story.
to be nothing but rage I know this to be what comes after swinging wild punches at the air and imagining the faces of your worst demons the cops the politicians who call the places you love war zones the helicopters that won't let you sleep that claw through the walls and wake up elders and children and goddamn I remember at my feet that blood-stained concrete just split right in half and opened up and I want a whole city underground if it does not love my people I want to bury the new condo developments instead of my people I want to bury the craft breweries and the barcades and the mixed-use helltowers instead of my people I want the statues melted down I want the mothers of murdered children to do it I want the heat to rise from a statue's vanishing and last for ten summers I don't want apologies anymore no not this time I want the mayor to walk through a place he called a war zone at night I want people to get real honest with themselves about what war actually is I want the schools to have heat I want the schools to have air I want the riot gear thrown in the river the river that was blue when I was a boy but now leaves brown streaks as it runs away from the city I want the brown river to carry the riot gear to some other hell and I want the babies to stop passing out in school do you hear me I want a whole city under the ground some days but I at least want the rain I at least want something to wash the blood away so that no one who loved him has to and somewhere beyond the blood what I don't remember is
If I hadn’t made it clear there, this is all about the good fortune of who gets to make it out of somewhere and who doesn’t.
Hanif weaves this tale of legends and myths: guys who had a miraculous game but never made it out, a team that was unkillable for a season and then quietly disappeared, a season of bad-luck teams suddenly becoming champions, that feeling near midseason when you look at your fellow fans and think this might be our year—all wonderfully captured. Of course, so much of this is about Ohio, about getting out and making it big. It is about watching the Cleveland Cavaliers and seeing something magical come together, if even for a few moments. This book is one of my favorite this year.
Favorite Passages:
But please believe me and my boys made up handshakes that were just ours, ones where we would slap hands and then make new, shared designs out of our bent fingers, pulled back and punctuated with a snap. We would break them out before parting ways at the bus stop to go to our separate schools, and break them out again upon our return at the end of the day. The series of moves was quick, but still slow enough to linger. Rarely are these motions talked about as the motions of love, and since we are talking about our loves over our enemies, lord knows I will take whatever I can to be in the presence of my people. To have a secret that is just ours, played out through some quiet and invented choreography. A touch between us that lingers just long enough to know we've put some work into our love for each other. We've made something that no one outside can get through.
“…you are going to have to catch me. You are going to have to climb, and I know you want no parts of the world this high up. Find the point where you are unkillable and jump toward it if you can. “
When he started at one end of Market Square Arena in Indianapolis and ran, catapulting himself from the free-throw line (yes, the actual free-throw line!) and remaining, suspended and extended, for what feels, even now, like a glorious hour. Your finest hour. The hour you've dreamed of living again ever since the final grains of it kissed the mountain of sand at the bottom of the hourglass. Have you ever been in the air so long that your feet begin to fall in love with the new familiar, walking along some invisible surface that is surely there, that must be, as there is no other way to describe what miracle keeps you afloat? How long have you been suspended in a place that loves you with the same ferocity and freedom as the ground might, as the grave might, as a heaven that lets you walk in drowning in gold might?
If we don't talk about what we do beyond the frantic moments of what we do, then we can convince ourselves that there is a newness to each clumsy encounter. That we're mostly strangers, drifting toward each other, desiring only touch and nothing else. And in the hour that is our hour, a window opens and we can breathe out all the sad stuff. Find a closet for our tapestry of aches. Both of our mothers had died, which might bond us in another world, if we were considering falling in love and not simply pouring ourselves into what would otherwise be vast, lonely gaps of living.
Your ball is your ball, and depending on how you and your folks are livin', you might not see a new one for a while. And so, of course, praise to the person who made a way with a bald rock, and a little path of concrete that was their concrete, and a rusted rim with no net. Those be the noblest of hoopers. The ones who, back then, you had to keep an eye on. Cuz they've done all the hard shit already. Once they get a little bit of a grip on something new, it's lights out.
Yes Lord, I am thankful today again for every reminder of how I have outlived my worst imagination. I will walk slowly through the garden of all that could have killed me but didn’t.
The people I trust most understand a love like that, understand it even if the money from the record deal got them out of a place, or if ball got them out of a place. Call it war, call it whatever you want. You wouldn't know what to do with your face turned toward the blaring dawn, having survived another handful of hours that someone didn't want you to. There is no language I can find for the affection of repeated survival. To know you haven't been caught just yet. That with some luck, you never will be
If things have gone wrong enough for a long time, anyone can become a god.
With enough repetition, anything can become a religion. It doesn’t matter if it works or not, it simply matters that a person returns.
There are things we know about cities—the ones we live in, the ones we visit, the ones that seem like ours during the right run of hours. But this story ends in an act of forgetting. At least for now, in this moment. Which, I must tell you, is almost over. It was a delight to drink from this dream, but know, the bottom of the glass, tilted to our mouths, is visible enough to offer a reflection. Hold whatever sweetness you can in your mouth for a little longer. Ignore the glass, dropped to the floor, fractured into an army of shards. This is how we begin the other story.
to be nothing but rage I know this to be what comes after swinging wild punches at the air and imagining the faces of your worst demons the cops the politicians who call the places you love war zones the helicopters that won't let you sleep that claw through the walls and wake up elders and children and goddamn I remember at my feet that blood-stained concrete just split right in half and opened up and I want a whole city underground if it does not love my people I want to bury the new condo developments instead of my people I want to bury the craft breweries and the barcades and the mixed-use helltowers instead of my people I want the statues melted down I want the mothers of murdered children to do it I want the heat to rise from a statue's vanishing and last for ten summers I don't want apologies anymore no not this time I want the mayor to walk through a place he called a war zone at night I want people to get real honest with themselves about what war actually is I want the schools to have heat I want the schools to have air I want the riot gear thrown in the river the river that was blue when I was a boy but now leaves brown streaks as it runs away from the city I want the brown river to carry the riot gear to some other hell and I want the babies to stop passing out in school do you hear me I want a whole city under the ground some days but I at least want the rain I at least want something to wash the blood away so that no one who loved him has to and somewhere beyond the blood what I don't remember is
If I hadn’t made it clear there, this is all about the good fortune of who gets to make it out of somewhere and who doesn’t.