Dear Jordan,
We are 5,000 miles from home, you and I, writing alone in our small apartment villa in Northern Italy — Parma, Italy to be exact. I sit in a wooden chair hunched over a wooden table; the drapes are open, and I scribble words on paper, writing to us and periodically looking up to see the snow floating downwards. I see a Raven perched upon the European villa just to the left of mine and the sun’s light is hidden behind a thick veil of clouds. It is a gloomy day — a perfect reflection of what the world is going through collectively: Darkness — then again, maybe that is just me coloring the world my own shade of grey.
The people I have met here have the same spirit of the Texas that raised me: Hospitable and nurturing. They know how to dress too. If my bummy aesthetic wasn’t so comfortable I’d dress like the men here; suave and dapper. It seems to me that Italy’s people dress up for as something as mundane as walking the dog — it makes sense though. The city we flew into, Milan, is the fashion capital of the world just about two hours Northeast of Parma, closer to the border of Switzerland. I usually walk around the city in sweats slightly pulled up to reveal my socks and my feet comfortably snugged into a pair of red or black toms. My beige hoodie is comfortable and stained — it’s my fashion; the way I choose to express myself to the world and what I hope to communicate through my simple style of dress is simplicity itself. I can’t remember when I stopped caring about what I wear. I imagine it happened the same day that fire for football fizzled out. I just woke up one day and said to hell with it all. It’s becoming clear to me that I used to care too much about my appearances; that is to say that I tried to hard to fabricate a certain image to the world and, as a natural consequence, sacrificed the inner workings of my person. My sense of fashion, along with my mind, has left and never found their way home. If only I could lose the past just as easily, if I could leave it behind and be as empty as the sky above then all would be peace, but the past follows me like my shadow. I am in a place of limbo; aloof to the current trends of society and relishing in my own little world.
In a world where everybody else around me seems to know who they are and where they belong. I, alone, seem to be homeless and yet even the homeless man knows who he is and where he belongs. I am void of any shape or identity. Not knowing where to go I felt maybe that I would find my solace here. That here, in Europe, I would finally find my home; a place to settle my wandering roots and rest my tired and bewildered mind. Maybe here, instead of where I was, I could heal from the past that I cannot outrun. But this was my mistake to expect things to be different just because the scenery has changed; wherever I go, there I am. Now here, I am, finding myself isolated in the center of a pandemic locked away in this villa with one hell of an excuse to quarantine myself from the noise of the world but in the silence it only gets louder. I am afraid, not of Corona, but of human fear. The same fear that I feel beating through my woeful breast and breathing down my frightened neck. The very fear that is so often misunderstood like a forgotten stepchild. Meanwhile, fear looks for other means to be understood no matter the ends; just look at how fear has robbed the markets of food, deceiving man to believe the end is near and that he must take before another takes what is his. Just look at how fear points its finger, so quickly, at who’s to blame in a blameless and unpredictable situation, such as the one I find myself in. I feel the people share in my truth as I can’t help but think that maybe the world is catching up to the isolation, the darkness, the restlessness and the panic I have felt for so long. Like it is the twilight of the planet’s soul, and the world joins me to watch the sun sink much faster than it will rise.
And when it rises, because it always does, it shines on the truth that you and I are too afraid to be anything or anyone else and to completely give ourselves an identity. Why? Because losing an identity it is like dying but worse; worse because you watch who you were vanish like mist in the night, and, all the while, are unable to rest peacefully — as the dead do — because we are still alive grieving our own death. We are naked and as vulnerable as a newborn child fresh out of the womb; — but there is no momma, nor daddy to rock you back to sleep when you wake in the deep night terrified of your loneliness and afraid of your own shadow, there is just you. You beneath an idle star watching the sun descend much faster than it ever rises. And though the field is empty and the sweet pastures vast and the sky endless, you may as well be in a deep dungeon hoping, like Edmond Dantès, to one day escape. True it may be that your body is free, but your mind is locked away as a prisoner and we, Jordan, are both the captive and the enslaver. But yet, it is in the nature of life to change and change you will as you seek to realize peace — a slow and steady process, like Earth revolving around the sun and the body gradually decaying over time. One day you will wake up and see the world widen and your horizons expand. No longer do they look like prison walls but rather destinations to venture toward. You will wake one day and realize you are no longer that person who sends himself through persecutory doors, nor the person so hasty to prove that he is indeed a worthy soul here for a worthy cause.
I could have never known that football would bring us across the pond and down near the Mediterranean Sea. I made a decision to put our playing days behind us, and once that decision was made I never thought I’d be putting on a helmet and shoulder pads again. That is the nature of life though, mysterious and unknown. We can never really know what the future will become, no matter how many times we have our fortunes told or our palms read or try to predict the days events by reading our zodiac charts. If you would have told me that one day I would no longer love this game and dread practice and loathe whenever coaches have us do tackling drills, I would have laughed at you. Now here I am trying to summon the passion I once had for this viscious and beautiful game. The other day I got embarrassed on the football field by a kid just 18 years old and half my size. It probably made his day to know he got the better of a man who use play this game with the best of the best, not once but twice. We lined up in front of one another, five yards apart, and in my half-hearted approach to tackle him I missed. We lined up again and then again I missed. Truthfully, I did not want to hurt the kid. But like most men, pride got the better of me, and on my third attempt I tried to fly through his body, if nothing more to show myself if I needed to I still could. Besides that’s why I am suppose to be here; an American here to show Italians how this viscous game is played and, yet, it seems I have forgotten why I am here — and, what is more, who I use to be. I suppose that means I have forgotten that the sport I now loathe, was the sport we once loved. Why we loved it, well that question is all too easy to answer. Because when you looked up and saw the crowds of people watching you and the other twenty-one other men on the field you felt like you mattered. When the kids in the malls and on the streets approached you and asked if you where Jordan Sterns, you felt like you were making a difference. You felt like you had roots to keep you grounded when the winds blew; like you had a purpose, some sort of direction that gave us some shape to our formless and restless soul.
I don’t know when the flame blew out exactly — that is to say the passion for the game. I just woke up one day and no longer felt it burning in our belly like it did, once upon a time. A time not so long ago but feels as far removed as our childhood memories. Jordan — the Kansas City Chief, the once aspiring lad from Cibolo, the Oklahoma State Cowboy — has died and been reborn into Jordan, just Jordan; who after running away found his refuge in journals, In between the lines. In between those lines you will find the same passion that you once stormed the fields with, and in that same spirit I write these words to you. The passion, though it looks different, is the same; though no one encourages you or worships you because it is not glamorous to write but painstakingly arduous. There are no drunken fans cheering you on or booing in a hatred you will never come to understand. There is no measure of success here. Just the scratching sound of a pen against paper or the music of click, click, click, click clickity…click, click as these fingers dance across a keyboard. I remember, you felt like one million eyes were watching you and now you feel like no one is watching you at all. It’ll take some time, but you will learn to enjoy this silence that births the spirit of stillness within your being.You’ll realize that no matter what you do or how you act; people, the world, society, will think what they will of you. But what they think of me or who they think you are and how they choose to define us, is none of our concern because, deep down, we know who we are: Nobody, existing because it is in our nature to do so; a right given to us by life not man, or his customs — A truth you will learn as you navigate through the fogs of a confused society.
I am only left to wonder about who we were before the sport, before the Spirit of Football possessed us, and the game became who we were. What was our purpose then? Was it simply to live— to just be alive and be present. What was it like to be you, how did your eyes see the world before our peripheries were obscured by a face mask and our perspective was skewed by a drunken and concussed mind? Before I needed liquor and weed and attention and double taps to validate my existence. Before I had this need to be known and recognized. Before I needed a woman; a lady; a young girl by my side to ease the troubles of my spirit. Oh, the days I cannot seem to remember!
The days I can only vaguely recall, when all the love our mother could manage to give us was enough, and I did not need the world to know who we were. I miss you, who we used to be — before I was me: The days before the porn addictions and the instant gratifications — that are the root cause of our afflictions. Before you felt scorned by the world to conform to everything deemed a social normalty. Before the demons caused I to seek out noise to keep from insanity; it is in the silence where they begin to whisper and crawl from the shadowy cracks in my brain. Before God was a man in the sky who lived above his people and not with them. Before modern buildings were the adobe of spirit — when the natural world was the church, and God did not live in a building on Earth, but his home was in 8 billion hearts; saint and sinner alike. Before I was judgement, hateful, spiteful, envious and jealous. Before I began to gossip about others and drink that poisonous tea that obscures the sight of my own troubles. Before the attachment to profit and the aversion to lose, when there was no face to save because I was nobody. Before I was aware of the rich and the poor and began to lust after the material world— as if that would be enough to heal ancestral wounds and the scars I’ve accumulated as I’ve walked through multiple lifetimes. I miss you, who we use to be — before I was me.
My mind can’t help but drift into the unknown future and imagine how many more of us — me’s and you’s — there will be writing backward in time. I wonder whereabouts we will be when you receive this letter. I can see the look on our face and the thoughts of confusion in our mind. Is this some trick, you will ask, no no, I will have to remind you. It is just us, writing to you and to who I use to be, while together we reminisce and try to remember how we have gotten here so quickly. It is as if I have batted an eye and twenty-four years have passed me by and there, on the horizon, I can see May 28th rising and symbolizing yet another year of my sojourn on this Earth. This is why you should keep your eyes open and pay attention to life while you have it — or while it has you, no matter how dark or glorious it may appear.
I can see you, in the days before your soul was untethered and your gypsy spirit began to blow wherever the wind willed, in your Payne-Ellis apartment sunk deeply in that big navy-blue couch. In those days' life was simple. Life was football and laboring through my schoolwork with Ms. Nikki. Life was early mornings with Coach Glass and late nights with the fellas chasing tail, smoking weed, and drinking that burning liquor. And, after our long nights, we would come stumbling back into the weight room in the early morning to do it all again. The smell of liquor heavy on your breath and you catch the gaze of Coach Glass who, with a smirk on his face, asks rhetorically, “Long night, Hoss?”
I don’t know how mailing through time works or where you’ll be in space when you get this letter. Maybe you will be in Kansas City, losing your damn mind; believing yourself to be in need of holy water and priests because you feel like demons are crawling in the crevices of your mind. You may be back in that hospital bed, dreaming of your redemption. But you could be, ironically, right here with me; folded over the desk and laboring, writing like a man with something to say and looking for the heart to say it.
Football will come to an end and, when it does, you’ll pick up a pen and reignite your passion by opening empty notebooks and seeing pages as a painter sees an empty canvas and as how God once saw the void. But be careful, for man has a sneaky tendency to do what he does for vain imaginings to one day bask in glory. You are not the sun my boy; when we shine vainly, we cast shadows on others. Be wary of yourself and your want of validation from anyone. Write because you want to write, because you need to write, because it feels right to write. Most importantly, do not take yourself so seriously; devils fall because of their pride which calluses over the heart and burdens the other wise weightless soul. Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. Laugh at yourself and remember that stillness cultivated in those dark rooms illuminated by dancing flames where you learn to face those devils holding onto to your boots trying to drag you to hell. If you take nothing else from this lengthy tangent — that may or may not make any sense — do remember this: The heart whispers because it does not seek to control, the mind screams because it fears uncertainty. Listen to the quiet call.
Sincerely,
You