grace

quick, how many definitions for the word can you think of? (e.g. appoggiaturas are often called "grace notes", and thanks, mom, for the music lessons)

i find it interesting how some dictionaries present the christian definition first (e.g. "state of grace", or "saving grace" or, relevant to my present condition, "fall from grace"), while others leave that for well down the list behind decidedly secular considerations of beauty and charm (like what it means to be "graceful" in both movement and disposition) or, the one i like best today, the connotation of an indulgence or favor. (last night, at the revs game, my accompanying gang of 12 yr olds and i received the pinnacle of sublime soccer-spectating grace: upgraded seats directly on the sidelines--literally ON the field).

this all isn't just because i rather like the greek mythological concept of a triad of hot, hedonistically-suggestive sisters floating about the aether dispensing favors. (i've always appreciated boticelli's diaphanously clad rendition of the theme). i also like the idea that there is something worthy that we can both BE, as well as give and receive. (medieval christian dogma that would hyperbolize grace in perpetual battle with apostasy seems a bit harsh to me, though i will say it's interesting that such a heathen/mythological concept would be married so closely with the monotheistically "sacred" through use of the same greek and latin words). anyway...

i like to think when we say grace, or behave with grace, or offer grace, we are being the humble and better selves we all wish to be. wonderfully, and as i can speak from the first hand experience of last night's game, when we truly RECEIVE grace, no matter how previously troubled we might be, we seem to be able to put aside those troubles in that golden moment to simply breathe in the joy of life.

those we love seem graceful to us. i'm wondering if part of life isn't about "doing"graceful instead of just looking that way...

demasiada tristeza

not sure when it changed, from past satisfactions of correctly predicting the perennially-talented spanish would flame out before their potential had been reached, to today's sympathy for the team and their long-patient fans, but i'm definitely disappointed this morning more than just would be explained by my disaffection for the french. (not to be underestimated, but still...)

is this more of my perverse 67-red-sox-inspired masochism that is drawn to whichever cause seems most hopeless?

i see parallels to my own self-characterized (self-determined?) underdoggedness, and i "get" how this might just be my own narcissism making logical rooting alliances with other hopeless causes. (then, again, maybe the ny yankees might just be as bad as they've been made out by sox fans to be). i don't find it a coincidence that i remained emotionally detached from the 60's celtics dynasty, while i was falling in love with the romantic dragon-slayer who was bobby orr. though i wonder how my kids are going to see the world, having both a baseball and a football team who actually win on more than occasional occasion...

got a favorite lost cause?

referees, and problems with authority redux

don't worry if you get confused and give up on this one early, it's likely to be one of my most convoluted...

life is like the world cup.

(hehehehe, it's all about sports, right?)

it occurs to me this morning how a soccer match can bee seen as a carefully orchestrated entertainment, balancing the independant objectives of the teams to win alongside the referee's efforts to ensure that the spectacle and wonder of fair and beautiful play is preserved. in some cases, as with argentina and mexico the other day, the results can be beautiful. (well, if you're argentinian, at least). in other cases, as with the disgusting farce accompanying the portuguese against the dutch, the referee himself corrupts the process and ruins it for everyone. (even the victors, as portugal will likely find when they have to face england without deco, costinha and possibly ronaldo).

so i'm struck by the parallel of this with human relationships in general, and with troubled human relationships in particular. to "win" isn't the perfect metaphor, of course, but it's at least partly appropriate if you consider "winning" the preservation of our selves combined with the attainment of the love we seek. (perhaps analagous to keeping the ball out of your own goal, along with the joy of success at the other end). trouble is, where the metaphor breaks down, as well as where the frequent problems between people who would otherwise love each other begins, is that "scoring" in love SHOULDN'T be perceived to include shooting it into your game-partner's defensive net, and causing them to feel violated, but it all-too-frequently seems that way to them.

so, about that referee...

sometimes people go outside their relationships for aid in conducting them. sometimes this is just the occasional comforting shoulder of a confidante or friend. sometimes it's on the couch of a paid professional meddler who is supposed to have the answers locked up behind his sheepskin. (far too critical and unfair, i know, but i can't always resist good, vicious sarcasm and hyperbole). either way, i'm struck by how far the results of these interactions can vary, from supporting the glory that was maxi rodriguez's strike, and the profound beauty of true love, to tearing apart the very fabric of the dance, til all that's left are the tatters and injury of the defeated dutch and the depleted portuguese, and the tear-stained bitter loneliness of a love lost.

yup, i've got problems with authority. i naturally bristle at even the possibility of malfeasance (how's "meddler" for a loaded description to preempt any defensive argument of intended fairness on anyone else's part) and i'm so highly tuned to my own defensive compulsions that i circle my wagons well inside the lines of any potentially helpful third parties. you want to know with whom i identify? i suppose it's not hard to guess i'm with the dutch and australians and americans feeling hardest done by at every turn, not just by those sharing the field with us, but most acutely by the forces perceived to be shaping the entire environment of my struggle.

what is it they say about love and war?

trying to break through all this is yeoman's work for the emotionally defensive. i wonder to myself if it's any wonder i choose to man the defensive back line, and take greatest pride in knocking down the threats to my goal while there are so many other things to be doing and in which to take pride on a soccer field. sure, i like to go forward and support the attack, but give me a miracle clear off the goal line every single time.

now put me in a relationship, and substitute "loving gesture" for "shot on goal", and it's little wonder i'm my own worst enemy. all she ever wanted to do was reach me. all i ever wanted to do was be reached.

and here comes the ref with his red card...

"are you NUMERATE, babe?"

my first familiarity with the emphasized title term was from a tim curry song back in 1979. (off the "fearless" album, you know, the one with "i do the rock"?). the emphasis is tim's btw...

anyway, i've been running around a writing website recently and discovering the same sort of personal horror i feel when i see kids trying to make change at mcdonalds. (repeat after me: take the total sale and start counting UP with the change until it matches what the customer is trying to hand you). they've chosen to use language as a means of expression, just like those erstwhile mcdonald's "would you like to have fries with that" folks are choosing to work in an environment where change inevitably needs to be made, yet they're seemingly wholly unprepared to operate the machinery involved. i'd like to believe, if osha protected apostrophe's from misuse as diligently as they require hard hats on construction sites, something like this would never be allowed to happen. oh well, apparently it has.

perhaps, as one of these "riters" would put it, gertrude stein would have said, about this as well as trying to return to her childhood home, that "they'res no their there". (and, yes, i put the closing punctuation outside the quotation marks when it's also part of my enveloping sentence, not to mention the upcoming closing parend, so you can just sue me for hypocrisy later). instead there are apologists decrying the stifling of all this artistic creativity (you tell me, i hadn't been able to see it through the quasi-illiteracy) and suggesting sticklers are the problem for having the temerity to try to defend language at the expense of its use. which, to me, is like complaining about the aclu when the cause defended to the supreme court doesn't happen to be your own (yes, this is a sentence fragment and the parentheses surrounding this observation lack cossetting commas) but i digress.

pointing out mistakes in grammar, spelling and punctuation absolutely distracts from what is otherwise attempted to be expressed. (just think how frustrated you are to have to climb over my own editorial digressions while trying to read this). but, at some point, it's fair to point out to someone when they've screwed up what they're trying to say, just the same way we feel compelled to correct the cashier at the fast food joint. (at least when the mistake being made isn't in our favor, but conditional morality is the subject of the other posts, not this one).

so don't mind me if i find it funny that a sixty-ish mother hen has become offended at the way i barged into HER web site to point out that folks just can't seem to communicate these days. (funniest part is that her reading comprehension is so poor that she mistook a phrase like "tragically under-circulated" to suggest i didn't believe the author was, well, tragically under-circulated, but that's a whole 'nuther kettle of codfish).

so, are you LITERATE, babe?

are you NUMERATE, babe?

do you get laid, babe?

(OOPS! that's a little off-topic, isn't it...)

but i'm on a lyrical mission to get ALLLLL the way to the end (don't miss it because it's during the very tail end of the fade-out) so i could enjoy the final line:

"there's a serious problem in personnel"

careful what you wish for

reward to all those left hanging on friday's cliff, there's karma.

no, there is no right answer, but at least there is the cosmic answer to hubris, hard words and hanging things and people out to dry. in the case of yesterday's laundry, it's global warning, el nino, and the better part of four inches of rain. with the aforecited "sting" to leave kad barma hard done verbally by, there's always the law of unintended consequences.

my best girl and i had a transcendant (even if damp) day--my fave renoir at the mfa (along with the discovery of a funny little sculptural ode to hypochondria nestled within the french impressionists) capped by communion with waterfowl and the vicarious thrill of appreciating all that is amy fazio (not her best game), with the operative aphorism being: "living well is the best revenge". it's all supposed to be about what an emotional cripple i am, but it turns out the early returns were misleading. dewey didn't, after all, defeat truman, despite the best efforts of the chicago daily tribute to write it that way, and, as don henley admonished in shameless homage to dylan thomas, i will indeed not go quietly.

so i suppose today it's a mexican standoff, except one is faced with the harsh reality that the mexicans were only able to stand off los albicelestes for 98 minutes. (glancing around in fear of seeing his own personal maxi crashing down to receive juan pablo's servicio esperanzado...) and though there may be nothing more than a kitschy alamo gift shop to mark the spot where our hero eventually falls, at least he's going out with his literary boots on.

(yeah!)

ok, you knew a rant was coming

and, no, it's not about the togolese and their inability to keep the french from advancing... (but wouldn't it have been fun if the saudi's had been able to manage a tie, and thus eliminated the french on goals anyway?) oh well, there's always next... next... next time.

so what is it with people and going just beyond the point they need to make to ensure that their point stings just a little too? i admit i'm vulnerable these days, and a little on edge, but this one *I SWEAR* isn't influenced by tin foil hats or thin skin. nope, this one was lauched at me out of pure insensitivity (i'd have said malice, but that would have been a stinger) and i'm just not inclined to take it today.

so what does one do? the obvious reflex would be to either withdraw or lash back, but i guess i'm saying that i'm smarter than that now. (or, at least, for now). but there's GOTTA be a "right answer" in here somewhere. (very soon, i promise, i'll do a whole thing on "there is no right answer", because that'll be a good 'un).

so, high roaders, i'm looking for pointers and advice. who's got a suggestion? what goes along with "turning the other cheek"? don't tell me that's all there is to it, cuz i ain't christian enough for that, not yet, not today. best i could manage for myself today was "i'll confirm it hurts, if that's the reaction you were hoping for", and you know my heart wasn't even completely in that, because i didn't even bother to clean up the trailing preposition. i SO wanted to pick a vulnerable spot and return the volley in another way, but here's me, just like earl, "trying to be a better person".

thanks for listening. :-)

cause and effect

easy sometimes to say "yeah, THAT was the problem". tougher to accept that we rarely understand how complex this life and this world really is.

for example, my opinion is that bruce arena failed the us world cup team most of all, but, of course, others' opinions vary widely. my logic would include the us being unprepared as a team for the czech match, their unused substitution in a close match against italy, and the fucking unbelievability of a little dipsy-doodler like claudio reyna on the back line in their biggest game of all. others' logic might cite referee conspiracies (the uruguayan and all his red cards combined with his prior citations for malfeasance, today's unbelievably harsh penalty call, etc.) or single out particular players for errors of both omission and commission. who knows who is right.

but i do know that most people (including me) get things wrong.

i'm in a life situation where re-evaluating my past is a full-time occupation for any number of involved parties and armchair analysts. (many of them professional, but sometimes you can only tell about that by where the money is going). on the one hand, it's highly comical and entertaining to see how far afield the theories and advice can be. but it's also highly troubling to realize that, being in the epicenter of it all, with both the greatest amount of first-hand information, as well as the least amount of perspective and objectivity, i'm either the most right or the most wrong about every little thing at any given moment. trusting who is right, about things like what might be a cause, and what might be an effect, is gut-wrenching and exhausting. and just like my blaming bruce arena, and somebody else whining about how useless damarcus beasley can sometimes be, (a point to which i coincidentally and completely agree), my daily saga includes many conflicting opinions based on the same set of apparently simple and obvious facts. (we all watched the same game today, right?)

today, and every day, i'm beset with the confidence (arrogance?) that i've got it right. just a few hours ago, regarding a detail on a subject she's always prided herself at being more knowledgeable and on-the-ball than me, i blew her mind (and maybe mine) by knowing something she had completely forgotten. (though did i get any affirmation or recognition for it? i guess that will have to be a rant for another time). it wasn't an insignificant detail either. something very important.

so was i the emotional recluse i'm made out (not least by myself) to be?

or is the truth somewhere less accessible, with causes and effects still unguessed and unknown?

all i know is that i'm continually amazed at how obscure the effects of unrecognized causes can be. think you were holding a grudge against your father all these years? don't look now, but don't consider yourself finished before you consider mom for a bit. it's amazing what will come to you when you peel back the onion of what you remember, and what you remember as causes, and what you think you know about their effects.

le pega...

48 world cup matches in 2 1/2 weeks is either heaven or hell, depending on your perspective and your access to a tivo. setting aside for a moment the frustration of a coworker telling you that germany is up 1-0 in the first half immediately after you asked them NOT to tell you, the hardest thing so far for me has been bearing the inanity of the abc/espn commentary. (between that and our present presidential administration, it's no wonder the rest of the world ridicules us, and, as you can tell, i'm with the dixie chicks all the way on this).

actually, i knew better before this all started, but i was hoping against hope that somewhere, somehow, the us media morons were capable of learning something from their past ignomies. (nods to bill s. for co-opting one of his better words). but, instead, we have a steady torrent of drivel and ignorance that all but drowns out the drama of the crowd and on the field. well, not any more!

thank you very much, my soundtrack is back en espanol, even if it can't be directly en vivo, and it's not a moment too soon. i'm quite sure my rudimentary spanish isn't catching even 10% of the deeper points being made, but even that is still 100 times more valuable than the alternative. no, when a us player is presented with a card, it's not always because the uruguayan referee had been cited for previous indiscretions. yes, it's worth asking why, as the 9-on-10 us vs italy match wound down, bruce arena neglected to make his third substitution and put at least one more pair of fresh legs onto the field to hold the precarious position. and, maybe, if a defender alone among his teammates actually had the drive and athletic ability to actually GET to a ball every once in awhile, he might not deserve to be singled out for one particular clear that happened to come back at them a bit faster than for which they were ready.

i can already hear the american concerns about not being able to understand a word those univisionists are saying, and why can't one just turn the sound down on the tv to escape the idiocy, but, and i KNOW you've noticed, it's the emotion of the crowd that defines each match, and it's simply not the same to lose the soul of a game in desperate flight from some bozos throwing up all over their microphones.

so, to all those who are with me, tell abc/espn (quoting one of their more ubiquitous personalities) "you're fired". and just say "si" to univision. (and to citizenship in the REAL world). enjoy the dramatic alliteration of "sigue silva", the hearty disapprobation of "entrega mal", and the rising anticipation of "le peGAAAAAAA..."

"GGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"

andres cantor, you da hombre

oeddy

"mother" sure is a lightning rod. while we're on the subject of song lyrics, (you really need to read blogs upside down to get them, don't you...) though a thousand come to mind across a pretty broad gamut of perspectives, my appreciation for cynicism entitles bbking to go first:

nobody loves me but my mother / and she could be jivin too

wow. how's THAT go with your corn flakes.

the punch line which shouldn't go unmentioned to this short but prescient little gem is:

now you see why i act funny baby / when you do the things you do

harville hendrix wowed oprah with his take on the mother myth (which is no myth, btw) opining (apologies if the paraphrase is faulty) that alot of us guys prefer to marry our mother and continue to wrestle with our childhood baggage well into adulthood. harville's "happy ending" is that we get to finally work it all out, though from my present and tortured perspective he appears to be, and as they used to say about murphy, an optimist.

so here's this morning's $64 hypothetical question:

if we repeat our mistakes,

and if we decline all those other women mom warned us about in order to pick "mini mom",

and if we then run into relationship trouble with mini mom (since it takes time to work out the mom thing for some of us) and stray with another one of those warning-worthy wenches,

which mistake did we repeat? or, would that be to say, if there are two pairs of bookends on the shelf, does that make everything inside both sets a mistake? is the highest level of bookend abstraction women in general?

all that would be fine, i suppose, if it wasn't so lonely out here.

shouldn't come around here, singing up at people like that

i love a good lyric. and i love mark's flip from serenaded to serenader, as if "singing up at people" carries an irresistible consequence... (ahh, yes, to pick a convenient streetlight and step out of the shade to say something like...)

would someone be both nearby as well as inclined to listen? (not here if the web stats are to be believed). what of the not-so-insignificant issue of knowing what to say? how does one create magic from just a feeling?

of course he should. i should too.

illusions of busy, illusions of leisure

folks often pay attention to date/time stamps on things like emails and blog posts, and they often seem compelled to draw conclusions. for example, it's 9:33 in the morning, and i'm supposed to be at work. so am i?

i can produce reams of output in an incredibly short amount of time. (i say "incredibly", because, literally, many folks can't seem to believe it, and would say i couldn't possibly be working if i'm churning out all this stuff during daylight hours). I can also spend hours and days on one sentence, or one powerpoint slide, as the case may be, and appear to be doing nothing. so which is the illusion?


i've often sent emails at odd hours on purpose to lend the illusion of busy. i've often allowed my penchant for taking short breaks to just unburden myself of these tiny little torrents of words to create for many the illusion of leisure.

the truth is nowhere in either.

the smile on a dog

edie brickell often invades my head with this one, with and without kenny withrow's music to accompany. she was talking about religion (i think) but i've never been able to get past the profundity of the metaphor. do we see it? (i suppose many would say they don't). if we see it, do we see the dog, or do we see ourselves?

through today's tears it's beyond any question of faith to me that mine could and did. (i miss him like the weight of the world sinking into the hole where my heart used to be).

a friend's mother (a faithful catholic) once congratulated me on my assimilation of the lutheran ideal of self in religion. (one of my favorite jokes is of the devout believer, having prayed every morning of his life to win the lottery so that he might do good with the money, being told by god in response to his frustration at the pearly gates that the least he could have done was bought a ticket). having a trial worthy of job in my life, (though since job didn't bring his upon himself, we can't take this particular metaphor very much further than this), i'm caught in a question of from where my strength is to come.

so back to my dog, and the memory of a smile...

he didn't do it very often, truth be told, which is spare acknowledgement of his own demons that he carried, but i'm without it today, and all the weaker for it. if i could believe, as perhaps some do, that the smile i recall was my own emotional projection, i might reach back and project it onto myself again... but i find today that i can't believe, which is to say, i can only believe that his smile was real, and himself, and a tragic loss....

how ironic, how my faith is placed. none in religion or god or anything outside myself to compare with the simple knowledge that my dog could smile...

cpr

took a cpr course today, and was once again struck (as i am every time) by how confused people are between "winning" (i.e. resuscitating someone back into normal breathing and heart rhythm) and what it means to simply do our best because it has to be done. (i.e. pushing oxygen into someone's lungs who can't do it for themselves). let's face it... most of the time, once they're unconscious, they ain't coming back without better help than we have to offer. but this doesn't change what we must do, and the effort with which we must do it, though it often discourages many from proper stubborn persistence. the "achievement" is for someone else... the effort is for us.

i wrote a nice little piece on the valiant trinidadian and tobagan soccer team the other day. (though it got lost in a perverse need for anonymity, so apologies as you can no longer read it). it seems my entire country is lost to the appreciation of what it means to do ones best. i would like to think i would have noticed in any case, but these days, for me, that sort of "light brigade" moment is especially poignant.

for how many has the absence of a tennyson invalidated their best?

i'm at a time in my life where it's all half a league onward. i'm square in the middle of those proverbial chinese "interesting times", without anyone to measure the effort it will take to even wrestle these demons to a draw.

check the airway... breathe... circulate... do it again.

it's not friday, but it feels like it

triskadecaphobia, like tin foil hats, suffers from bad pr. think about it: when you get to the end of "that" kind of a day and happen to see that little 13 somewhere, don't you have a thought about it yourself? or is it just me... (he says, adjusting his tin foil hat...)

it occurs to me that my impressionable idolization of bobby fischer all those years ago might have been when this whole thing started going south for me. back in '72 everybody else in the neighborhood was still humming bars from their impossible dream album (even though it was five years after the fact--"CAAHL yazzztremski, CAAHL yazzztremski"), and though i could happily and finally toss out my ken dryden voodoo doll in order to light more candles around my shrine to bobby orr, i was still drawn to contemplate the vicissitudes of p-k4.

but this isn't about sports, or chess, and it's not even about paranoia. (it very well COULD be about bad karma, but that's an entirely different kettle of codfish). this is about looking for affirmation and an appreciative ear, and hopefully being worthy of them in time for them to show up.