The Press no. 3/2011
This is a story that seems not to end badly and possesses a strange sweetness. Glory, dust, abyss and finally clean air. We are usually ashamed to make ourselves like a good emotion.
Too often the miracle workers, a la Frank Capra to be precise, do not reach the “honors” of the news to leave the limelight to the smut, the sadness, the horrors, the futility. The facts: Gary Cole, a.k.a. Abdul Qadir Jeelani, was setting impressive records in Italian, U.S., and Spanish basketball at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s from the height of his six-foot-nine seven. Averaging more than 31 points per game in a championship, 47 points in four games in a single Nba championship, parades of mind-boggling rebounds. Wives and divorces. Then a work without splendor. Finally, debt, unemployment, sinking, decay. “Homeless” status as a culmination of life hiding from him, to engulf him in anonymity and disenfranchisement.
The path of existence, understood as the dignity of every man to be always recognizable, is interrupted.
But here, by chance, is a little light at the bottom of the darkness, made of memories, of gratitude, of respect of crossed memories.
The light is gradually approaching, sustained by the generosity of one, at first, educated to think about unfortunate fates and able, immediately thereafter, to infect many to the support of redemption.
That much complex bureaucracy that ensures the restoration of civil continuity is satisfied. A repatriation to the world, a cathartic smile, some almost exaggerated hugs as only disbelief and amazement at resurrections dictate and deserve. The giant returns to take back the honor and honors. He will teach the children the secrets of “choo choo” and the motions of “Muhammad’s hand.” The respectful applause becomes thunderous and convinced. The sporting world, more than other fora, succeeds in expressing a sense of possible revenge, of controversial defeat, of the “Caesarini zone” as opportunity and not agony. It may be because almanacs, Panini stickers, an old fan as a veteran, a collective emotion traceable in time, an autograph hanging in a bar, first of all prevent oblivion and, almost consequently, admit the fable of eternity. Metaphorical or real death, for once, recoils from the consistency of myth.
