Brass Tacks: 9.58 Seconds and Every Distance Going Somewhere

There is something special about being alone in the film room watching play after play. Football, as violent as it is harsh and unforgiving, is a sport that demands respect and a quiet, somber isolation more than the cheers and yells of the congregation gathered on Sunday. The film room was always one of my favorite parts, one of the experiences that taught you what it means to play football; it determines what great football is in a chair with a clicker in hand, watching play after play after play. Your team, the opponent, the best in the league, the worst, your favorite player, the best defense, the most unique. The film room is a place out of time where everything coalesces into a solidified form on the screen, asking to be taken in. It is the bible study, the learning, the study of what is required to enact the violence ordained by the Lord. Not a calm before the storm or inside the eye, but it is in every part of the simulation, the recording of life and death, past and present, brought together as time is flattened and the old guides the new. It is an experience that directly ties to your greatness as a student of the game; the greatest student is what separates those who are good from those who are born again, bound in gold jackets and visages cast into gold, signifying the breadth of their career in one mold. As do Solomon, Jeremiah, or Job, so do Doug Atkins, Joe Greene, and John Randle; the blessing is carried forward through the text, the words spoken with action. There and only there, within that moment, is everyone who has ever played, ever existed, ever thought, or ever contributed brought to the same place, the roof under the Lord, in order to grow closer with themselves and be brought in line to the procession with God. Early in the procession, a question commandeered my focus, “What keeps them in sync?”

9.58 seconds. 9.58 seconds to finish a distance in that span of time; you are covering 35 feet every second. Each stride carrying you 8 feet forward. From a standing start, laying a 30-story building on its side, it is traveling 328 feet in less than ten seconds. The feat of human will, want, need, and passion all brought to one event on that one day to move 9.58 seconds. That is the current world record held by Usain Bolt, the Jamaican 100-meter runner who, on August 16, 2009, crowned himself, for a second time, the fastest man in the world. Now, this event, this day, is etched in my mind forever. Yes, you can watch it online, but it’s one of those things you had to be there to see. But how can a man achieve this? It is not impossible, as he did it. Not inconceivable because the world watched. It should be a thing of imagination, of sheer will, hope, and projection. The will of man spoken into the world, brought to the forge of reality and made manifest by God; that is the significance and the power that requires a man, a human being, to run 9.58 seconds. It must be God-given; it has to be. Usain Bolt is six feet and five inches tall, a height that, in sprinting, takes more away than it gives most of the time. It makes your start out of the blocks hard to move that much and length to accelerate to keep up with other elite sprinters who are usually around 5’10 or 5’9, but even though his start was always in question, he led the race after 20 meters. After this, his height became his blessing, with a stride that was longer and more frequent than the other sprinters’, allowing him to secure the world record in only 41 steps. The sheer force and distance he traveled are unheard of. As great as his cycle was, it was his force propelling him forward, like the clashing of titans and the retaliation of revolting gods; each step was an attack against the Earth itself. Once he fully accelerated and reached maximum velocity, the rest is history.

This description and breakdown are nothing compared to the real experience of watching him win that day, as an eight-year-old boy would see history made again on the biggest stage in front of the world. The only thing that still stands out to me, and that defines me even today, is the question that was fighting for life in my head amidst the excitement and wonder my eyes witnessed. As the question fought for air, gasping for life and drowning while the other emotions and followers watched in awe, my question berated me, asking, “What was he running towards?” It makes sense; the question was killed back then, the finish line, of course! Why even waste time when witnessing greatness like that, but now and then it comes back with the clip. Like the headstone speaks quivering words from beyond the grave, I never understood it then, but now I think that after all this time I may be able to answer my question, and if not, then at least hypothesize what has plagued that young boy for so long and brought him to this point.

It is like all those times within the facility or the park, surrounded by nature and all the winds and elements of the world, an audience spanning millions, just for one boy, one teenager, one adult, one man, to run through the same drills, the same cadence every time. Those are some of my favorite times. Alone in a place, reaching out towards perfection, like every man who was made in the image, remembered in the heart like no other. It is only there that that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday holds the weight of what it means to be great, to be remembered for your actions done that day. It brings me such joy doing the same move two hundred times, the same steps a thousand, and still it seems wrong. It was a conversation with God. In that park, he was next to me as the wind grew tiresome and ran like a typhoon breaking the sea or the sky’s assault on the Earth, as those tiny beads glistened and tore the ground, making it weak all to test me. It was after my Bible study, after my understanding of the Lord, that I realized how lacking and wanting it was. It was that time speaking, arguing, and clashing in a battle never won but continually fought. With the world itself bearing arms against me, I stood firm in my questions within my deeds, asking and begging for not the world but just my little slice in it. To achieve perfection, to hold it so tightly that none after me could obtain it. That as much as I gave this, I should at least be able to have it to myself to keep more than anything else. It was there in those cold mornings, hot afternoons, and deafening nights that my relationship with my Father was built—an uncanny one, sure, but a relationship all the same. A son wanting to live up to him, and a father just being happy with a son. Something that went over me back then is now clear.

Maybe that was it: all those times on the track, his many injuries and his many triumphs were dwarfed by the anguish and the want he felt as he ran the hundred meter so many times; even words, past and present, cannot still describe the distance, the length, the time, the emotion it means to run so much. So maybe, like myself, like those before him, he was running towards the Lord; he was running towards God. Out of love or spite, recognition or safety, he was running towards him with those 41 steps covering 100 meters in 9.58 seconds. It could have very well been the opposite as well. Running away from something in his past, his follies, the many things that plagued him. It seems trite to ask that question and pose the event as that, but all questions deserve some light to be cast within them to see the bones of the beast that claws at your legs and gnaws at your thoughts. It’s one of those questions you can never answer and may not be worth answering because, as men, we lack the ability to know. For all my conversations with the Lord, all my laughs and arguments in the park, deep down you can never fully know why you do what you do. Feel what you feel. What you are running towards or from. Even if you answer the question, it most likely isn’t worth much, and it may not even be true. It is just the answer you have come upon that makes your lived reality make sense, keeps the world whole as the mounting calamities of life knock on the door. In there, it brings me back to the emotion of his presence, watching him run the race in 9.58 seconds, back to the feeling the young boy saw as if his triumph was thrown into the world, providing recovery and inspiration. It is the same as me enjoying improving, and seeing it each night, each day, and each morning. Growth and achievement, twin brothers cast to live separate lives, apart distances never meant to be reached, but each guiding the other. That is the truth of it, is it not? All the numbers all the examination the will or want to it’s just boys and girls living and doing what they love fulfilling dreams created in front of television screens actualized in the moment through hours that span the small grains of sand that permeate the eternal shore all for it to passed down to another to break the record and if not break it then do the same deed the same number of times over because that is where the love is. Creating another outcome, giving life to the boy or girl by the fence watching them.

Sadly, the way my mind works, it begs me to rise from the grave, bony fingers pointing down the line to the next tombstone: “Where did his come from?” Was it when he watched Asafa Powell? Or did it have to be Maurice Greene? Before then, it had to be Donovan Bailey or Leroy Burrell. No, it was probably Carl Lewis and the great Jesse Owens for all they meant past the sport, even as they held the record of fastest man. Then Aaron Donald’s jumping cross chop comes to mind, but that pushes it to Michael Strahan’s length and power, and, on top of that, always loving to go back and watch his tape and study the player he was to inform what I wanted to be. There is Warren Sapp, the originator of the cross chop; John Randle’s undeniable quickness; and even further to Deacon Jones and the now-illegal head slap.

A thought that has plagued me since starting Throwing Rocks at Tanks is that time is a flat circle, cube, straight line, or whatever it is in Primer or Coherence; it is built on every day by men and women who saw others pass on their passion and inspiration. That is the thing about it: as much as you are born with it, your first love is enhanced through the sight of others who hold it; you grow to learn of its importance and can add to the pantheon that understands its truth. Within that pantheon, it houses people and figures whose names have been, and others will be, lost to time; that is simply the way of things. We forget their names; their actions remain with them as people who live on within us, and it is a brotherhood and congregation that lives on simply by another walking on the field. In the film room, in my favorite study of watching the opponent that week. It is more than them placed on that screen in front of me; it is an eternal war of men long since dead and many more to come, all built from their solitude, making beautiful the art, the very painting of the field that day to be studied and understood by the next that in the hour will do the same.

Aside from the old and new judges, what has made my time special, and what made Bolt’s time special, is that a mother and father cultivated it. They made it make sense each step, each cycle of the foot over the years and through time. Even if they never ran or never played, their essence, their quality, has given you the pieces to help make it whole. As much as his coach helped, or Carl Lewis did, so did his father. As much as Dwight Freeney helped, my father did too. My dad was always there with me, alongside God in that facility in that field hundreds of miles away or in the stands; his voice was beside me, hand on my shoulder. Besides his words, his ferocity in believing in himself and each decision that he makes and in staying true to the man he is has brought more to me than any drill. Getting that far because of him. A gift bestowed to him, given to me, that will one day be given to another. I thank him for it and for who he is every day. A thankfulness that I wish to pass down to my own son or daughter one day, with fear it cannot be lived up to. Did he feel the same about his father, and did my grandpa feel the same about his dad and his dad before him? Men who lived lives of difficulty that can only be read about, but difficulty that has made me, even though their names leave me the same as mine will leave in generations to come.

All of this love and life has been passed down, and my time and Bolt’s time are over in those fields and feats of athleticism. My love for so many things and people was found there, especially with the Lord. It is most likely something unique and specific to me, as it is with everyone; that is how God presented himself outside of church and Bible study. As much weight as my grandmother’s words held, the field cast made my belief material. It made me, at times, love the Lord and be in conflict with him. Each time, my understanding of what he meant and how he spoke to me grew. That is gone now for me in that form, at least still; now only watching and love from afar. It is gone now how God spoke to me, how he healed me and allowed me to heal others through leadership or giving someone a reason to keep playing. A relationship that is cultivated now must be found differently. Does Bolt feel the same, retired now? Whether his relationship is still the same as it was on that television screen. Whether he still has it or lost it. I never put my whole persona into that sport, but it was my first love, and that is always hard to lose. I am blessed enough to have a second, to have this. In his first and second careers, with all that he does on TV, Michael Strahan continues to show me and others that more is possible; there are always other ways to share the gift of inspiration and love with the world. God speaks to me in this second love as well, closer or farther away, I am not certain yet, but this is a love that has been here as long as Ball was in different and varying circumstances and realizations—brought on by both my father and brother, and by figures who gave it to them both long ago—a new way to be a boon, a shoulder to those I encounter. As a human, I cannot grasp the weight and severity it carries, but I can understand its importance and the emotion it evokes for me at this moment. The distance it carries, the meaning it has here; I see it outside of all the small details, structure, rules, and laws. I understand it for what it truly is, what it means to be seen in that way. Same as the film room, same as those lonely days in the facility, and similar to a game day, this art and that one have always been the same to me. Trails of varying difference and similarity. Blessed to have a love after the first was lost. As time takes hold of me here, as it did there, placed into the annals of its palace, all I ask is that it uses me to illuminate to another the inhabitants of Carcosa as they bow to the yellow king. That, like Bolt’s 9.58 seconds, small or bigger, it does the same for others that in its infinity-wait? In the corner of my dark room there stands the next question.