frisbee

A longer view

For years we have been on the move. For years when people ask what we’ve been doing the answer has been “working” or “playing sports but mostly working”. In so many ways that has been the truth, the collective summary. In another view, though, we’ve been collecting people, discovering an ever-expanding group of humans we enjoy. It’s the best undertaking, and gains from motion, from working at a variety of companies, playing a variety of sports, and living in a variety of cities. Part of leaving, part of changing, is the joy of meeting new. Here in Hong Kong, at the end of our second strange year, I’m so grateful to all those who’ve been part of our teams.

In the late summer of twenty twenty one we rode out on a boat, past the city’s edge to a bay facing the ocean. The water was cool but not cold, the sky hot but not boiling. Falling off the third deck to the waves I felt free, and light. It’s a feeling of pleasure so simple I repeated the action a dozen times. Each time the release was easy, and the water welcoming.

The boat was full of friends, teammates, partners. They’re a happy group, a third or so just out of quarantine and back to the bubble of Hong Kong, celebrating their release from confinement with extra abandon. We are glad to be back, to be on the water, and to be with friends. In this journey, in this odd bubble world, we are each other’s crew. It’s a simple designation of friendship grown deep through repetition, through boats and hikes and beach days. Mostly, it’s a friendship grown through frisbee.

In the early winter we again are on the move. This time the vessel is a party tram, rented from the Hong Kong Tramways for a two hour loop up and down Hong Kong Island. These rented vehicles serve as gathering points, rallying cries for a group of disparate people who like chasing plastic on grass. The community, formed through training, across games won and lost, is transient. There are new faces and faces of those who will move on. There is even, on this tram ride, a child barely a month old. It’s a glorious group, and cheering people on passing busses and tram stops we float through the city. Like most of us I wear a santa hat and a mask covered with a fake beard. It’s a silly outfit, an attempt to bring Christmas to us. Most of us are foreigners far from home, and the season is a strange one, with few of the flights to distant lands that used to dominate this time of year. Yet as we totter off the tram back to solid ground, like from the boat back in August, we are happy, and together. Tomorrow many will play sports again, focusing on throws and cuts. Today, this afternoon, and tonight, we are on the move, laughing at each other’s stories and playing silly games. I meet spouses and partners, and am grateful for this time together.

Saying goodbye

Barefoot on a rock

Every time it’s a surprise. Every time I wonder if this will be the last such surprise. I’m learning, slowly, that they will all be a surprise, right up to the end. I won’t ever be ready. In that sentence is the truth about all of this, the truth about how I feel. I am not ready.

We met years ago on a frisbee field in Shanghai. It became a favorite legend, recounted to each other often. You were lying on the grass at the end of a tournament, off to one side, reading a book, a novel I think. You always remembered which one. Le Guinn, maybe, who you loved. It was a strange thing to do, read a book alone on the grass. The end of a tournament is usually such a social moment, everyone milling about, barefoot, having a drink, enjoying the sunshine and friendship, so glad that the running is done. It’s my favorite time, probably ever. Especially on Saturdays. On Saturdays, when the tournament isn’t done, when we’ve all just paused for the evening, it’s beautiful. There’s no missing anything yet, none of the sadness that comes at the end of the weekend. It’s golden hour and the world looks so beautiful. We’re often somewhere odd: a field in Manila, a field in Korea, a field in Shanghai. I love to get a beer and wander through the crowd, watching people and watching the world, appreciating how lucky we are to be fit enough, to be rich enough, to be free enough to travel and play. Every time I’m amazed, from my first international tournament in Shanghai in ’04, to the most recent, Manila in December last year, or Shenzhen in January, or Los Angeles the week after. It’s a luxury, it’s our church, our community, what we spend so much of our money and time on. What we give our bodies to.

I remember you so clearly: such an odd picture, all arms and legs, so skinny, reading. I was curious, and never shy. I probably poked you with a foot and asked about the book. Somehow it worked. After that we were friends.

There were tournaments in between, on different teams. The Hong Kong one is a famous touchpoint, ’07, 6 of us jammed in your tiny apartment to save on housing costs, playing Blockus and relaxing on the rooftop in the evenings. It wasn’t my first time in Hong Kong, but it was formative, the first time with friends from all over in the same house, people from Korea Manila Shanghai all jammed on top of each other, friends at last despite our different teams and competitive natures. I looked at a picture from that weekend yesterday. You look just like yourself, still all arms and legs and a ridiculous beard I’d forgotten. So young, in retrospect. Your youth always wore a heavy disguise.

I remember that apartment so strongly from half a year later. I was between jobs, between everything. You told me to come stay, a month, you said, and so I did. By then you’d abandoned the kitchen, a step prior to abandoning the whole house. But for a few weeks in the spring of ’08 we were lazy, barely working. We went to the park, and played Blockus on the roof a lot. Those weeks were the kind of peaceful break that becomes so rare in life as we age, where there really is nothing to do save enjoy each other’s company and explore a bit. You knew people, we played some disc, but those aren’t the parts that stick. What sticks is lying on our backs looking at the dark sky and talking about life, about where we would go, as soon as we could be bothered to leave that roof.

The details of those conversations, like the boys that were holding them, are gone, lost to time and all the nights since. All that remains, like with most of our time together, is a patchwork of memories, maybe a single photo, and gratitude. Years later you would lie on the windowsill of our apartment in San Francisco, in 2012, as though no time at all had passed. In some ways it hadn’t. We were before so much then still, in such an early part of our lives. In between those two reclined evenings you’d moved to Taiwan, and briefly LA, and then Portland, into a domestic life. I’d done the same, left Shanghai for Houston and then San Francisco. The apartment you saw was already our second there, in the foggy Richmond district.

In twenty thirteen we’d come north to see you, in Portland’s summer, but you’d already moved on, headed to the UK. Instead we picked berries at what had been your house with other friends and reminisced. That’s how it works with scattered friends, there’s a lot of surprising joyful overlap and a lot of near misses. Years later I’d stand in front of your old apartment in Sheung Wan and call you in the UK. I was thinking of moving to Hong Kong, I’d say, and I missed your rooftop. I wondered if I could get one of my own, and whether you’d come visit. You said you would, that you were thinking of moving to Japan anyway. I promised not to abandon the kitchen before you did.

There were other moments, of course. Quite a bit of frisbee, some wonderful book swaps via post, and long phone calls. But the most important moments were in person. They always are. I remember wandering the Mission together one morning of our last year there, just enjoying the San Francisco air before you packed up your airbnb and went to the airport. That was a great visit, the whole family in town for a weekend. We had dinner with a group of old friends as well, the first time we’d been all together in years.

Now, sitting in Hong Kong, I think of our last evening together in Osaka, wandering small streets, eating good sushi and eventually drinking gin until we had to run for the last train. Or the weekend prior, in Kyoto, horsing around on the streets near Nijo Castle. I remember your face as you biked home, that wicked grin and those long limbs. When recalled like this, working back through our years together, I’m amazed and happy at how much there was. For two people who never managed to live in the same state, who spent most of their lives in different countries, we did pretty well together with what little we had.

I wish so much that there was more to come.

Sickness and work

October passes in fits of frisbee, sickness, and work. We see friends from distant cities and chase plastic in mud together. Weeks later the fields are still bumpy with the memories of our bids and cuts.

We are sick too, a common occurrence in the fall, especially after sharing water bottles and meals with dozens of friends from cities across Asia. We’re lucky in these illnesses, though we may have gotten them from Shanghai friends or given them to Tokyo friends. Hopefully the folks from Manila and Singapore went home without the horrible colds of the fall of 2019.

In between the high energy days of games and the low energy ones of frequent naps we work. In offices and factories we spent much of our weeks solving problems no one has had a chance to resolve before us. This is how it works in startups, every problem something no one has yet had time energy money or knowledge to fix. In our new roles we bring at least energy, and occasionally knowledge. It is the luxury of a decade in San Francisco.

These are good times, if blurry. I feel that I finally know what kind of year 2019 will be. I hope we will remember the best parts with enough details to grant it length, but am not optimistic. Some years are simply spent this way, building blocks for all of our lives.

Mostly, here in the first faint whispers of Hong Kong’s fall, I am glad to wear jeans for a trip to Shenzhen, the first time in six months I’ve contemplated denim. The seasons return, belatedly, long after we’ve forgotten their feel on our skin.

Teach a body

In the afternoons, after our team is done sprinting, we teach each other head stand technique. We learn to put our hands in a triangle behind our head and push up gracefully. Or we try to learn, waver, and collapse. After a while we move to hand stands until our shoulders are too tired to support our weight against gravity. Exhausted, we lie in the sun on our backs and laugh at each other.

These are the good days of summer. We run together and work on what our bodies can accomplish. In the space of a few months I learn better sprint starts, higher one-legged jumps, and get closer to hand stands. These are good things to practice at any age, let alone turning thirty seven. Together our group pushes each other to new levels of fitness and agility. We go climbing together, swimming together, and mostly, running together. Along the way we practice tricks. Some take up acro yoga and become adept at spinning each other. Some work on dynos at the local gym, practicing power moves until our shoulders and fingers are too sore to grip.

These hours spent training are the gifts of being able to live actively, with leisure time and in good weather. On a Saturday afternoon, biking no hands down Folsom to a baseball game, I think of how lucky we are. All these skills, learned over years that have been punctuated by injuries, are my lasting memory of San Francisco. These abilities gained on beaches and fields are a reminder that we live close to the ocean and in the gentle weather of the west coast. Here, where it is never too hot or too cold to go running, where bicycling is always an option, and where a group of friends will push me further than I would ever have pushed myself.

Coasting along like this I think of climbs I have not mastered and my still-imperfect hand stands, and tell my body we are not done. There are so many tricks we have not learned.

And miles to go before we sleep.