There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

With enough repetition, anything can become a religion. It doesn’t matter if it works or not, it simply matters that a person returns.

or a years-long romantic endeavor that eventually quieted and died down, you perhaps know this exact feeling. A heart, sometimes, breaks slowly and without ceremony.

An obsession with suffering on the path to triumph is not uniquely American but does manifest itself in uniquely American ways.

Maybe no one will forgive you, but you’re still alive and so someone has.

But I, too, love the dead who decided that the world was simply not tenable for them, or who had that decided for them. Who weighed the cost of suffering with how long they’d be able to survive it, and chose the math that brought them the most peace.