A little moment of bliss…
All week I’ve been checking the weather reports, hoping, wishin’ short of prayin’ that it wouldn’t rain on Sunday morning, because Sunday mornings I have my tennis lesson and it’s my 90min of respite and physical joy for the week.
This was to be the first lesson of the term, last week in a rain delayed make up lesson something finally clicked in my groundstrokes and I was in deep anticipation to see if my form would replicate.
Eight minutes out of the house and six more till the courts, the ominous grey clouds started weeping. Although I cursed the weather gods, the weather report was right for once as the weeping turned for the worse into a generous sob.
By the time I got to the courts the generous sob decided to take a step back and let the showerheads have a go. The coach decided to call off the lesson, disappointed, a few of us had a short hit when the weather gods decided to take an ad break, but once the waterfall resumed the others had enough and decided to call it a day.
I decided since I was already slightly wet I might as well go all the way and let the clouds finish the job.
I took to the furthest court, it’s a court without the double alley and every time I look at it I feel like I’m playing some crazy indoor masters event from the 1980s with Ivan Lendl or Boris Becker. The only other people who felt the need to indulge in this bit of wet masochism were on the court on the other side of the grounds, so I was alone and undisturbed.
As I started to practice some serves, the rain started bucketing down again. Once I smacked all four balls to the other side of the court, I dragged my lazy arse across the net for some ball retrieval.
Just before the net I stopped and looked up to the sky, the water was still coming down, in harsh and incessantly heavy drops, lightly drenching everything from my cap, to my racquet and my shoes but suddenly I was struck my this eerie quiet, I couldn’t hear anything but the rain, the water hitting the nearby trees and my own solid breathing. I looked at the grounds and across the courts, the green synthetic grass glistening and almost smelling like the real thing instead of some cheap plastic imitation filled with sand which would stick like glue to your shoes and every pore of your body. A peek of light came through the clouds and accentuated the contrast created by the okra coloured borders of the courts.
I reached out my hands, like the adorning Christ the Redeemer. Feeling the individual warm massaging drops, and in that moment I felt bliss. I sensed beauty, epiphany and contemplation in the one hit. And funnily enough my first thought was SHIT!, I need to capture this moment on camera like if only I would click my fingers and Wong Kar Wai would turn up with Chris Doyle and canvas this moment in my life forever on celluloid.
I was soaked but I felt the most free I’ve ever felt, this freedom bore me this incredible sense of elation as if I was finally defying sensibility, playing in the rain like some naughty schoolkid unafraid of been admonished by her parents.
In those ten minutes of solace I was drunk with both happiness and disbelief.
But all such glorious moments must be eclipsed by interruptions and endings and as the rain came down heavier than ever with thunderous vigour, common sense and self-preservation kicked in; the slight possibility of pneumonia and the ruination of a great pair of tennis shoes. I ran for the club-house, rueful that such spiritual bliss couldn’t last just a little while longer…
*written 24th Oct 2009
