Sometime in the 2014 season, Lou introduced the concept of “the room” to us. We each had our very own room, he explained, a private mental space where we could enter and exit. This was a place of calm, inner quiet; we could enter our rooms in order to focus, to remove ourselves from externalities. He warned us that the room is not necessarily easy to find, nor recognize. It takes a lot of mental energy to truly find the room, and even more so to remain in it for an effective duration.
The 2014 team needed this concept; we were a young team, full of earnest but unharnessed energy. For the rest of that season, Lou would often say in huddles, “Go to your rooms.” And we would all get quiet for a couple of minutes. I would always spend the first minute with my eyes shut tight, as if to manually erase my environment—the noises, smells, emotions of the game. After a while, I would have a glimpse of the room, my room, a place where I could exist in a self-contained consciousness.
Seconds later, it would be gone, and I’d be back to the huddle, the sweating bodies around me, the anxiety of failure resting heavy on us all.
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It took me the rest of that season, and much of the next, to find my room. Even now, it’s annoyingly elusive. I can remain there for a little bit, but as soon as I start to realize Holy smokes, I’m actually in the room!, it disappears, and I’m back where I started.
My room is not something that can be accurately described in the moment. For me, the room has functioned as something of a vacuum, a quiet nothingness. Any sort of meta-reflection ruins the effect. When I’m in the room, I do not think. I watch myself existing in space. It is not a first person narration but a third.
My room will probably change, with time just as I will. But for the present, here’s what it’s like:
∴
When I get there, it is relatively empty. The furnishings are bare—a box spring and mattress, a small desk in the corner. The walls are white. Beams of light stream through a small window on the far wall. They break against the tiled floor, also white.
When I get there, I sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. The desk has a chair, but I like the floor better. Sometimes I am hunched over, writing. Sometimes I turn to the window. Sometimes the light seems to illuminate the fragments of floating dust. This only occurs to me as beautiful afterwards, when I am out of the room.
When I get there, I have no plan. I just sit in that room of quiet and light.
-Bethany Kaylor
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