Most sports occur with two feet planted on the ground, but in hockey those feet aren’t so much planted as they are arcing gracefully over a surface engineered to be as slick as it can possibly be.

This is a game of barely restrained aggression. Fans are bored until two plus players come close for more than the few seconds it takes to clear the area. When they are shouting things that I wish I could hear (but probably actually don’t).

I am not, by nature, interested in fighting. I have taken great pains to avoid confrontation of any kind, many times to my detriment. But I learn two things on this particular night. First: I am not immune to the excitement of an upcoming fight amongst tall, bearded, and muscular young men. Second: by far the most memorable part of the game is the elegance of the motion of their feet.

This is a game that is thoroughly elegant below the knees and unabashedly violent above them. These humans soar and dance and sidestep and sprint with not one iota of attention paid to what their skates are doing. All focus is on the other players, the maniacally pinging puck, and where their actions fit in all permutations of what will happen in the upcoming seconds.

Left to their own devices, the feet of these players each contain a mind and those minds work with little interference from anything other than pure instinct. As if they say to the signals issued by the brain, no thank you. We've got it. You have better things to do. Then shake their toes at the slow ineptness of the organ perched atop their neck.

It seems to be a lesson in what happens if you practice diligently and then get the hell out of the way. What else could I accomplish if I allowed my body to do something it does well while focusing entirely on something else? Thousands of hours of practice later, I could be a thing of grace too. I certainly am not now; putting me on skates would be like watching a baby giraffe attempt, well, just about anything.

Pair grace and violence. The two meet somewhere around the middle. The abdomen, where many dichotomies come to spar. Embodying both. Accepting both. Allowing the coexistence. Being one and the other instead of one then the other. Not feeling the need to explain that it's party up top and business down below. You can be simultaneous.

People stand up and cheer for the fights. Apparently it's one of those things coursing through all our veins. But the game is moved forward by the skating, by the elegance, by the practice. By the thing that you don't really notice. By the thing that seems a means to an end.

We can be both. We are both, actually, whether or not we give ourselves permission. It is a thing of truth. And we would be wise to allow it.

Share to