Today’s episode is guest hosted by Myka Kielbon.

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Myka Kielbon, and this is The Slowdown.

Last year I was watching a baseball game, Padres v. Cubs, and one of the announcers asked: What is the slowest fastball we’ve seen today?

It was a genuine question, or at least a rhetorical expression in appreciation of the pitching. I checked the ESPN play-by-play, and the answer is 90 miles per hour. In the eighth inning, they started breaking 100 miles per hour.

Since then, I haven’t been able to shake that phrase from my head. What is the slowest fastball we’ve seen today? It hit me as a startling metaphor for how much intensity we seem to have normalized. When the game ended, the broadcast switched to my local LA news, announcing that Jane Goodall had died. She was in town to speak before students who were replanting trees that had burned in the Eaton fire, which devastated Altadena earlier that year. A tragedy on top of a tragedy.

This year, I haven’t been able to watch baseball. For so many of us, the annual rhythms of sports seasons are a comfort. They provide structure, camaraderie, and something to look forward to. But they also project normalcy, business as usual. I poured myself into baseball last year because of personal grief. Going through the season again would tear me open.

Sometimes, I feel of two minds about it all. There are positives and negatives to coercing ourselves into normalcy. This year, I did watch the World Cup, and I’m still watching Formula 1. I crave what these communal activities have to offer us.

Recently, I saw pictures of another sporting match. In the Jabalia refugee camp, the Palestinian Football Federation cleared rubble and laid down turf amidst the ruins of buildings. There, teams of Gazans who have lost a limb were playing, using mobility devices and modifying, doing what they could to still come together and play soccer.

Though under ceasefire at the time of this recording, Gazans are still living in unimaginably difficult conditions, largely uprooted from their homes and experiencing limited access to resources and information. There has been a massive loss of human life in Palestine in the last three years, making it impossible for anyone to be without personal grief. The awareness of loss and trauma is undeniably constant.

Today’s poem is from a recent anthology of new poetry out of Palestine, a project that was completed, as the introduction notes, out of the poets’ “bravery and genius.” Amidst genocide, poetry is a testament to life, as sports can be, too.

Are You Not Tired Yet?
by Mohammad al-Khatib

From which song did you arise?
You’re repeating yourself.
Reed flutes play in my dream.
All paths (and everything on them) travel to you.
I still sip the sorrow.
I sleep on the embroidered wound of a pillow.
I sleep under the evening’s apologies.
My blood is on fire,
aren’t you too tired yet?
In which window did you appear?
From which death did you emerge?
Each step down the path counts my breath.
If I arrive,
in what tone 
should I announce myself?
In what voice? 
I can’t hear the horses' neighing. 
You vanished. 
I saddled your routines with my mourning.
But the night staggers on.
I stand at each entrance.
I ask the streets about you.

Gaza, 2024