That still moment after physical exertion is when true ecstasy finds you. When you move out of yourself, and the world is gone, suspended, suddenly empty and yet more present than ever before. Exhausted, breathless, your body is newly anonymous and suddenly your own. Consciousness itself is little more than a glazed light looking up at the sky as though looking into itself. Time and place slip away, and the trees overhead glow and sway and become truly sublime, as one feels as a funeral or on a quiet mountain or beside a woman you love deeply or leaving a place that made you feel at home or when you stop for no reason on quiet Sunday morning walk in the park or see two people walking along and you feel they in love or when you wake up in the middle of the night and realise you are lying beside someones absence and understand true longing. Something magical exists in that moment, after the game, when you have fully exerted yourself. Time does not exist, senses burning, a truly privileged moment… when, for just for a few seconds, you see it, you almost see it, a glimpse of that silent beyond… and it floods down into your body and comes to rest in you, so that the world becomes a light unto itself, and nothing reaches you for those few moments, only the cool breeze, and that is all you need and everything you believe everything in the world to be fine, because it will happen in It’s own time and, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter anyway, because that cool breeze, or woman, or place, or whatever detail it is that found you and shrank time into your absence, will always be there whenever you choose to return, or rather whenever you allow your body to take over and lay you down again, in that long sudden-ended always, making time stand still. And you know your good girl looks so good, tender voiced and her kind smiling shining eyes get bright just for you and she’s waiting over town for your call and you know she’ll take care of you and feed you and then, the greatest thing ever happened, while I was driving over to her place in the sun, with the windows down and the music loud, grinning to myself thinking how good life can sometimes be if you just let it - as easy as that! I noticed in the car to my left a cute little Filipina girl in the passengers seat looking over her shades at me… I laughed and smiled and stuck my tongue out and she waved and with half a second to spare I turned off the highway and we were right back on the same road to continue the dance… We took it in turns to overtake each other, smiling and laughing as we did and, when we came to a stop at the traffic light, she wound down the window and said hello and asked where I was going…. she gestured for my phone number and I tried to give her the business card I’d already taken out of my wallet, but the lights changed, so I overtook her on the right and drove up along beside her so close our cars were separated by mere centimeters and handed her my card laughing and smiling like a kid and waved as I sped off in the sun with the windows down and music blaring again and feeling just about as good as anyone ever felt in the world surely, going to my good girl’s house with an empty belly and a full heart and the sun shining oh so sweetly and we ordered a feast and got a little tipsy and she called her friend up to invite her over to join us in bed for the afternoon…
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AuthorEnglish teacher from the UK. Living in Granada. Currently working in Doha. Archives
February 2022
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