VI | No Word from “Coach”
An interstellar adventure about coaching
This is the sixth chapter of No Word from “Coach”. If you have not read it yet, I recommend starting with the first chapter:
11.29: We did not assume that the worker who told us that “what we were about to experience today, not everyone can say they have lived it” was saying it from a negative perspective.
11.30: Once Citcat of Snorom and I, Duarf of the Euqinchet, gather enough evidence to certify that his words have indeed come true, we continue in search of “coaches”; we proceed with mission E.C.
11.31: In the first meters of our intentional displacement toward the outside of the facility, the presence of several humans using the athletics track around the grass field catches our attention.
11.32: There is a human with a little belly —we assume that is where he stores inside it the immutability of unfalsifiable human knowledge he speaks from, the levels of faith high enough to obtain the title of “King of the Mediocre” in Optimiam, the conviction in what he says that not even a certain Josep Guardiola i Sala has ever displayed… who tells another human facing a mattress: “No, you can’t enter from the left side and jump with your right foot.”
11.33: The young one opens his arms like that human they have everywhere with a cross behind him.
11.34: The belly-man continues: “Dick Fosbury took off with his left foot and entered from the right side. You can’t take off with your right foot and enter from the left.”
11.35: Instant investigation: who called Fosbury to his dick? Result: turns out he was a “madman” who, without meaning to, changed the sport of high jump. A madman is a person who interprets reality following a logic that is not that of the majority point of view. Reflection: who is crazier, the one who can’t help being so, or the one who chooses to be?
11.36: The young one drops his arms and starts moving his head, looking to the ground, side to side, while another young one jumps; when he lands, he hears: “Very good technique! So clean!”
11.37: The jumper does not share the evaluation and answers that he did not clear the bar. Another young one jumps, and once the jump is done, he receives the comment: “Remember: drive your lead-arm up high! Arch the arm so it is the first part of your body that is over the bar.”
11.38: With no ability to anticipate the event, I observe Citcat of Snorom, fist closed, showing his extended index finger as he raises his arm above his head.
11.39: I analyze his finger. At the same time, the belly-man asks what the hell is wrong with his finger, that the movement he is describing is totally different, and that, please, he should not distract his athletes with insignificant gestures.
11.40: Just as I am about to tell him he is right and to stop bothering people, Citcat of Snorom apologizes for the inconvenience but explains he could not help it, because he had never noticed that —even though it is daytime— Optimiam is visible.
11.41: “What the hell is Optimiam?” asks the belly-man without waiting for an answer. He tells us that, as the team “coach”, we should leave because we are an impediment to the muscle memory process.
11.42: We continue our displacement toward the outside of the coliseum. Instant investigation: what is muscle memory? Result: a symbolic tale of the human collective that does not match reality.
11.45: No word from “coach”.