After Gravity.

A still from Erika Janunger's short film 'Weightless'My son and I were out in the 5-a-side court yesterday afternoon, lying on our backs and pointing our feet at clouds. It was pretty cool. And yet, as we lay there, a decent chunk of my concentration was taken up with worry about when the gnawing pain I've been getting in my stomach for the past few days would resurface and start shredding my insides again. At the same time I was telling myself, well, it's probably nothing, just a nasty bug. And then another voice was saying, sure, this is nothing, but if it isn't this one, it’s only a matter of time till another one comes – a more serious one, with an impressive sounding name and long pedigree, that won’t be gainsaid.

Quite morbid, I’m sure you’ll agree. But it’s the kind of thought process I imagine a lot of people find themselves dipping into, on a subliminal level, after a certain point has been reached in their lives – after certain people have been lost and certain inevitable facts have been accepted. I guess the part that most confused me was the disjunction between what I was happily doing in the real world and the tendency of my underlying thoughts.

In the gaps between ensuing games, I found myself wondering how two such contradictory states of mind could possibly co-exist in one person's head. I mean, how could I be thinking about the inevitability of one day shitting, coughing or bleeding myself to death whilst at the same time kneeling down on the tarmac, nose-to-nose with my kid, revelling in the knowledge that he, too, was listening to the way the hot summer wind blew over our heads and a jet roared somewhere overhead?

The answer, obviously, is because I had no choice. I have to accept paradox as a concomitant of experience, and I need experience because without it I wouldn’t have the wherewithal either to care for the people I love or to accept what time is doing to me. The engine driving this paradox is that life and death suddenly got serious, in a way inconceivable to my younger self. Perhaps that's why I need those moments that compel me to be carefree or quiet, and expectant of magic like I was as a child, because now I know what my son cannot: life depends on it.