Sitting in a Florida airport back in March of 2006 waiting for a delayed plane to eventually fly me out for a show, I got an overwhelming sense that I was stuck here for a specific reason, I was about to open up my laptop to catch up on emails, when a young woman walked up and asked me for an autograph.
I gladly signed the napkin she had given me and she went on her way. It wasn’t until she was long gone that I noticed she left a book I assume she was reading. The book itself was some general fiction, but when I picked it up, a bookmark fell onto my lap. Any other time I wouldn’t have noticed this, but the icon on the bookmark had an artist’s rendition of a figure skater, skating out the perfect figure eight. I smiled at the drawing until I read the saying below… it hit me in the gut.
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. T. S. Eliot
I knew at that moment that 2006 would be my last year for skating. I didn’t know at the time why this phrase had hit me so hard, but I knew my decision was the right one.
After the August show in Barrie, Ontario it was like the entire life that I knew ended, and a new life and a new Elvis had begun, and I didn’t know this new Elvis, but what shocked me even more, I didn’t really know the Elvis that I said goodbye to on that final skate.
My pilgrimage had indeed begun the moment I ended my skating career, T.S. Eliot was exactly right. But where would this journey take me? How would it start? Where would I go? I researched sacred places, read divine expressions of self-knowledge, and traveled to destinations of soulful influence, all just left me hollow… they all seemed touristy or so manufactured that I actually felt emptier for being there. I returned home to Mexico with more questions than I had left with… as soon as I got home I sat down with the only person I had left, the last person I thought would know what to do, but I was desperate… I sat down in front of the mirror… I sat down with Elvis.
2008 was turbulent as I stood up for Tibet, human rights, and made as many enemies as allies – but it was the first time I felt alive, not the soul energizing vision I had imagined, but a tingle of something was starting to live inside me, but I had no clue how to harness it, how to feed it, make it grow…
Back to Mexico I went and I stepped away from modernism and went back to basics. I worked on my land, went hiking, mountain climbing, anything to try to connect with the earth… I challenged fate, jumping over dangerous chasms, dirt-biking up suicidal slopes, anything to try to coax the “spirit of me”... out into the open… to show me life.
More weeks passed.
Late on a Sunday I sat at home after 12 hours of dirt biking along some dried lakebeds in Mexico. I was exhausted, not physically, mentally, but spiritually. I thought back on my past 2 years of sacred space, places, and faces. I reminisced about nature, life, death, man versus man, human rights, human wrongs, and everything in between. Every experience I had rushed through my mind like a lightning fast slide show until I had to stand up and let out a scream that would wake the Gods. Then it was calm again… and inspiration struck.
Everything seemed to start with that T.S. Eliot quote – perhaps if I revisited it, I would read more into the words.
I never kept the bookmark because it didn’t belong to me, I put it back in the book and gave it to an airport employee to put in lost and found. So I figured I would find the quote on the internet and I would print it out and keep it by my bed. I typed Eliot’s name into the search engine and the first thing that popped up brought tears to my eyes… I couldn’t believe the words in front of me.
And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot
I grabbed my skates the next morning and went skating… something I hadn’t done in two years.
Stepping onto the ice sent a jolt through my body that could power a city. The tingle was everywhere, not just in me, but in the blades, the ice, the air, the boards, the infrastructure, this was the religious experience I wanted.
Skating was never like this – in the past it was just something I did well… but why now was it so different? Because back when I skated, all my experiences were “A Skater’s Life” experience, the blades just expressed a linear being’s life of airports, autographs, and applause… but now I had experiences from every corner of the globe. I’ve laughed, cried, being the good guy, been the bad guy, been humbled, been called an arrogant ass. I’ve broken hearts and had mine broken, I’ve been brave, I’ve been scared, I’ve been honorable, I’ve been a rogue… and so much more.
Now my blades have REAL stories to tell… stories that I can’t hide from the world… stories that will speak to each and every person with every jump, spin, and motion.
I left skating in 2006 the king of the castle, and now in 2009 I return to skating as the dirty little rascal… wait until you see me now!
Elvis Stojko The skater of a life – not the life of a skater!
