rec ultimate

Had my first game yesterday with Team Eight, a.k.a. Quick Decisions (a name agreed on, appropriately, within a minute of starting to talk about possible team names). The theme for this year is Things I Hated About My Ex. Our opponents were either Whiskey Disks or Not Enough Hucking. They hadn't decided yet. At any rate, we won pretty easily, 15-7 or 15-8. I had forgotten how SLOPPY rec is with lots of newbies on the field. The best player on the other team was just a tall athletic dude that I could cover easily because he had no field sense and made terrible loopy cuts, and threw flicks off his thumb. (What's that throw called? Not a thumber but the one where you hold the disc on your wrist. It's not coming to me.) We have some people who can throw solid flicks and backhands and very athletic girls (especially our captain, Sarah) but I for sure had the best throwing/experience/athleticism combo of anyone on the team. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. It also shows me just how far I have to go. More laying out is needed, to begin with. This will become my mantra. Lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...

In other news, I'm leaving for Barcelona on Friday and still don't really know what I'm going to be doing there! Or, more importantly, how and when I'm going to get to Montpellier. Gabby sent some info about the train and bus. I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and buy a train ticket, but maybe I'll wait until I get there to see if I can get a better rate. I know I have to see the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park and buildings and the Picasso and Miro museums. More research must be done, although what I'm kind of hoping is that there'll be some cool people in whatever hostel I end up in and we can just kind of go traipsing around for a couple of days. We'll see, I guess. And now that the morning has flown by and it's 12:15, I'm going to get some cheap calories and tally up people's brackets. Cheers.

writing reflection

All of a sudden I write. In short, choppy. Sentences.

What's up with that?

frisbee

Last Saturday I played in the inaugural St. Hatrick's Day (no typo) Tournament down in Occoquan. My team, Kiwi Green (team cheer: "Fuck Australia!"), won the tournament. We led pretty much the whole way in all three of our pool games, but had to come back from a significant deficit to prevail in the championship. It was cool in the morning and cold and rainy in the afternoon (very sad I didn't bring my Under Armour), but a ton of fun. Winning usually is, but the people on my team were great, too. Our best player, John Agan (who plays for Truck Stop), also happened to be a really nice guy. It's always kind of a surprise when someone who's really good also manages not to be a douche. I played okay, but I've got so much improving to do. Hopefully with Spring League starting up soon I can find some people out in Silver Spring who are willing to throw all the freaking time. Or barring that, willing to meet up in DC to throw on the days I'm already going to the gym. My throws are pretty much where they've always been: so-so. I don't make very many turns but my deep throws are uneven and I need to be more confident breaking the mark. The only way to get better at those things is to do them a lot. If I could get three or four people together to just throw, do marking drills, huck drills, pulling... Really I should stop with the wishful thinking and just make it happen.

Not to mention all the speed and quickness I need to make up on a lot of more athletic people. In other words, it was a good reminder of how much I love ultimate, after a pretty long layoff, and why I've been in the gym so much this winter. And also a good reminder of how far I have left to go before I get to be as good as I can be.

(Note to self: lay out more.)

Yoooooo

From Gary Kamiya's piece yesterday about John Yoo's rape of US law:

And yet the wreckage wrought by the Bush administration goes beyond Yoo. The just-released memos remind us of just how radical, secretive and destructive that administration was. Its misdeeds are so grave and far-reaching that they must be thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators punished. Whether by a truth commission or criminal investigations, the dark history of the last eight years must be told.

So far, President Obama has been reluctant to call for such an investigation, saying he wants to focus on the future, not the past. But he's wrong. This is not about politics. This is about our American laws and values -- about our very identity. It would be easy to turn the page on the Bush administration, or to claim, as Yoo and his defenders try to do, that its sins should be forgiven because of 9/11. But it is precisely in a crisis when a nation shows its true mettle -- or lack thereof. To pretend that the last eight years never happened -- or to continue some of Bush's disastrous legal policies, as Obama shamefully appears to be doing -- would be to betray our nation's ideals, leave the door open to future misdeeds, and ultimately endanger our democracy itself.

We don't need revenge. We need truth.

Damn skippy.

okay, i am a muscle head

Just kidding. But I did set a new PR for my deadlift yesterday, at 315#. That means I've added 40# to my deadlift in three months. I'm still not especially strong, but that's not too bad as far as improvements go. I forgot to do the vertical jump test first, which was very stupid of me. I tried to do it after I'd tried and failed at 325# for the deadlift, but only got a little more than 26 inches. Needless to say, I did NOT feel fresh. Still, that's higher than my initial test in January, which gives me hope that when I do legitimately test the vertical, it will have gone up to about 29 or so. We'll see on Monday, I guess. I'm going to test front squat then, too. I need about 37 to dunk a volleyball or soccer ball (something I can hold easily). I also have no idea what my running vertical is. More like 40 to dunk a ball with two hands. I may never get there, but I think 37 is still possible. Not in the next couple of months, but I'll get there.

The past month and a half I've done two days a week of heavy lifting and one of plyometrics. No crossover (that is, no plyos on lifting days and vice versa). So my strength has gone up but I don't feel like I've gotten a whole lot more explosive. Maybe it'd be better to start doing a heavy lifting day (for deadlifts, probably, plus explosive squats and step-ups), a plyos day, and a combo day with heavy lifts (maybe just front squats and one-leg deadlifts) and plyos. For the upper body, I had been following the 100 pushups and 20 pullups programs, but they were frustrating and I wasn't seeing any improvement, so I think it makes sense to go back to overhead presses, bent rows, and other weighted upper body stuff. The bodyweight gymnastics skills are so awesome (check out Jim Bathurt's page for some of those), but it's too much. My upper body could stand to get stronger, but my real focus has got to be on my legs and hips. Especially because now I've got to start actually playing frisbee again and working on quickness and speed. I'm afraid I've gotten too gym-focused this winter. Oh well, I like the gym.

Mom and Dad have been in TN for the past couple of days, which means I haven't slept much because the dogs demand walking at ungodly hours of the morning. For example, this morning Izzie was pawing at the door at 5:45. Thbphbth. Maybe that had something to do with why I felt kind of out of whack yesterday. There's an interesting distinction. I'd definitely say "out of whack." But I'd never spell "that shit is wack" with the "h." That'd be wrong. I'm reading Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount, right now. It's really a fun read, even if he sometimes reaches juuuust a tad with trying to claim words sound like what they mean. I'll give him "sinuous," and that lots of languages use the "m" sound for mother-related words. But what about "with?" Even within Western European languages you've got "con," "avec," "mit." Or "copyright?" Or "copy?" I don't know, maybe I'm overstating his case, which wouldn't be fair. Sonicky words are fun, but I don't think they're as prevalent as Mr. Blount seems to believe. Still, he's a good writer and takes such obvious pleasure in words (a characteristic I share with him) that it's a really enjoyable read.

Other recently read or in-the-process books:
1) The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan. This guy could think with the best of them. Comes as close to articulating where I'd place myself on the God question as anyone I've read.
2) A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Speaking truth to power, even when it hurts. Maybe especially when it hurts. Should be required reading for everyone in this damn country.
3) Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges. Read this in Spanish, now reading it in English. Understanding some things I'd missed before.
4) Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I don't remember if I posted about this book already. Suffice it to say: holy shit.
5) Watchmen, by Alan Moore. Re-read in anticipation of seeing the movie tomorrow night with Jack.
6) Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook. Learning learning learning. I need to take anatomy and physiology.
7) Athletic Development: The Art and Science of Sports Conditioning, by Vern Gambetta. Learning learning learning. I love this stuff.
6) A bunch of other books that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Anyhow, I'm going to cut myself off for the time being. I was going to write some stuff about my upcoming trip(s), but I realized that I'd just get on a roll and not stop. See above paragraphs. Before I go, let me note the current temperature: 72 freaking degrees.

cabecita de musculos

Well, Vale has now officially warned me not to be a muscle head. This after she thought the protein shakes I was drinking after workouts (incidentally, I've decided to move to chocolate milk: cheaper and evidently just as good in most respects) were steroids! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! GROSS! For the record, I am NOT a muscle head. What a negative label that is.

However, I do seem to get more interested in training every day. It'll be interesting to see how all this translates to frisbee when that starts up again in earnest. The St. Hatrick's Day tournament in Occoquan on 3/14 ought to be a good indicator. Speaking of which, I need to figure out how I'm getting down there.

Here are some training thoughts that I will now collect in one place:

1) Last night I took the beep test (see here for an explanation). I got 11 rounds and 3 beeps, which translates to a VO2 max (a measure of aerobic capacity) of about 51. That's above average for my age group but not very good. My new goal is to get to 13 rounds and 3 beeps, for a VO2 max of around 58. This will mean more dedication to interval training at least once a week. I found some really appropriate-looking workouts here.

2) I talked with Jean and Fred a little about diet when I saw them this past weekend because apparently Mom and Dad are telling people now that I'm on a health kick. I've reached a point with this interest now where I love talking about it because it's very interesting to me, but I realize that a lot of people aren't really that interested or don't care enough to change their current way of thinking. Take eggs, for example. There's a whole heck of a lot of evidence that eggs are very, very healthy and have little to no effect on the cholesterol levels in your blood. However, most people are stuck thinking that eggs raise your cholesterol. This is at best an exaggeration, but when it comes up, how hard should I push back? Do I tell people that they're flatly wrong? People don't like to hear that, I know I don't. Or going on a low-fat diet. I read somewhere yesterday a brilliant quote: "All diets are high-fat diets." To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn. This is simple math. The energy deficit - the rest of the fuel that your body needs to function that's now not coming from food - comes almost entirely from the fat that your body has stored. So if your body burns 2500 calories a day and you cut back to 2000 calories a day from food, fully one-fifth of your body's "diet" is from pure animal fat, even before you get to what's in your food! Your body - down to each individual cell - needs fat to survive and be healthy. Plus it tastes awesome. Don't cut it out! But then, when dieting comes up, how should I bring that up? It makes people feel awkward to find out that everything on TV is wrong. Jared might have lost a lot of weight on the Subway diet, but he's still flabby and out of shape. WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT TO BE HEALTHY?!?!?! I don't get it.

3) This week is an unloading week. Next week I will retest the things I tested in December with Jimmy: deadlift, front squat, and vertical jump. Not in that order. My numbers in December were: DL 275#, FS 215#, VJ 25". I'm hoping for 315/245/29. We measured overhead press, too, but I have worked on that approximately twice since; I'm so much more concerned with lower body strength that I've mostly stuck to bodyweight stuff for my upper body (other than DL, obviously). This (the testing next week) makes me nervous. How am I coming along in my goals? Is all this training actually making me stronger and more powerful? It's hard to make this stuff up as I go along. I'm learning a lot but when it comes down to it nothing beats having a coach who knows his or her shit. But that's expensive.

4) It's lunch time.

barca?

Well, it seems I've decided to go to Barcelona. On the one hand, this is great and will be a wonderful trip. On the other hand, a big part of me really does want to go sit on the beach in Colombia or somewhere, really doesn't want to let Vale down. I talked to her today on gchat and I know she is. Let down. This is the first time I've decided to go on a trip for myself with money and vacation time that I've earned, and honestly I miss Cecilia and Rodrigo and Santiago, miss having not met Vale's brother and sisters. I miss Vale and still love her, friend or more. So why am I not going back there? Or at least going to the beach? I don't know. It's a weird feeling.

breakfast

Hello again, blog. My guess is that everyone has stopped reading you because I stopped writing you. That's fine. I'm just going to write some thoughts down.

First thought: I finally ate eggs for the first time a couple of weeks ago, albeit diluted by milk and smothered in cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheddar cheese and bacon. My ideal breakfast now consists of this omelet plus a smoothie made with strawberries, blueberries, a banana, two scoops of plain yogurt, half a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon or two of flax meal.

Second thought: Barefoot=awesome. The (very nice) shoes I have on at the moment feel cramped and limiting. I finally heard back from the FeelMax people and it looks like it'd be around $130 to get a pair of Pankas (here), including shipping them here from Finland. Also I'm going to check out the Terra Plana store (here, Vivo Barefoot line here) in NYC when I go up this weekend.

Third thought: Nursing? MPH? MPH. Nursing? The fact is, I want to do something helpful without three layers of bureaucracy and 6500 miles between me and whoever it is I'm helping. Nursing sounds like a great way to do that. But I don't think I want to practice nursing forever; what I really want to do at the moment (and this could easily change by next month) is disaster relief and humanitarian response for refugees/IDPs. For that, this program at Hopkins looks effing sweet. I actually got little excited heart flutters looking at this program just now. Innnnteresting...

Fourth thought: I'm going to NYC this weekend! Jenny invited me to come see the Will Ferrell one-man show about Dubya. Hurray! Also, I'm hopefully going to see Alex, Jill and Johanna, Jean and Fred, Anita and Sam. A bit more planned, this weekend than the last time I was there (in September), but should be a lot of fun. Jill and Joho are having a no-pants party on Saturday night, which I will be attending.

Fifth thought: Travel at the end of March? Barcelona, Montpellier? Cartagena? I've got to stop dilly-dallying and decide if I'm going to do this or not.

Sixth thought: People at this [rest removed due to good advice].

also

Dad was right. Pete Seeger for Nobel Peace '09.

back

Well, after quite a long layoff, I've been inspired to return thanks to fantasizing at work about what I'd like Obama to get on TV and say w/r/t the Republicans taking a stand against the stimulus package. Here we go:

"Good evening. Today the US Senate passed a stimulus package very like the one my administration suggested to the Congress several weeks ago, and I signed it into law. Tomorrow we will begin the process of expanding health care to include all American children. We will start to rebuild our roads, bridges and ports along with schools and hospitals. We will cut taxes for the people who are most likely to spend it and stimulate GDP growth.

"In the bill, a sunset date has been firmly fixed on the Bush-era tax cuts that gave so much to so few, and took away so much from so many. At the conclusion of those cuts, the marginal tax rate will be raised to 50% for the richest among us, but kept at the same low rate set in the stimulus package for the vast majority of Americans.

"Every effort at bipartisan outreach was made in the bill, including cutting programs, such as family planning, that I know most Americans support. I met personally with Republican leadership from both houses of Congress and listened to their input with an open mind. The concessions that their colleagues in the House made in order to win some cooperation from the Right were to no avail. Instead, Republicans put their hopes for future electoral success ahead of the aid that we all know is desperately needed. Their actions were the true essence of partisanship: selfish and unpatriotic in the utmost.

"I promise to you tonight that I will continue to extend a hand to all who are willing to cooperate with me in rescuing our country from this dangerous downward spiral. But I will not compromise with anyone whose fist remains closed while they issue shrill and unreasonable demands, demands that have been shown over and over to harm America and Americans. I will not throw this country's future under the bus to appease the most extremely right-wing members of Congress. The partisan warfare of Gingrich, Rove, DeLay, McConnell and Hatch is over, and so is the era of gutless kowtowing on the part of Democrats. Our ability to work together despite differences is what makes this country great, but when a lunatic few manage to hijack the leadership of this country, everyone is harmed. As of January 20th, the leadership is back in the hands of the American people, and of their faithful servants."

Then he whips out a guitar and sings a rousing rendition of "Solidarity Forever."

Not much of a conclusion, and maybe a little redundant. Hopefully the song makes up for that. Maybe the happy little boob-squeezer can polish the rough edges and make it TV-ready.

new york

A weekend trip to New York, free of expectations other than to see friends, is bound to be relaxing no matter how active. I saw three separate friends or friend groups this weekend and had a terrific time with each. Recently, especially, I think, being at home, I've been less patient and more sarcastic, which is frustrating for me and can't be pleasant for Mom, Dad or Lincoln. It's not as much of a problem at work. But this weekend, starting really with yoga on Thursday, I could almost physically feel myself unwind and calm down. I didn't have any plans in New York, only bought my ticket on Thursday afternoon with the hope of seeing a few different groups of friends, and that meant that I was never anxious about anything, or in a rush to get somewhere or worried that I was holding someone up or pissed off that someone was holding me up.

On Saturday I woke up on Anita, Sam and Charlotte's couch in Brooklyn, did some yoga on the floor in their living room, went out for a bagel and coffee with Anita and then walked for hours with her in Brooklyn and then the Lower East Side, first helping her with some errands and then just exploring. It was pure pleasure to be able to mosey along, stopping into interesting-looking stores, stumbling on a park dominated by gorgeous, towering weeping willows and eating a slice of pizza there, before moving on and pausing on the way back to Brooklyn to sit in on a free jazz show in a garden between three tall apartment buildings. The band, it's worth mentioning, played a rendition of "In a Sentimental Mood" that hit me so hard I listened to the Coltrane-Ellington version three times in a row as soon as I got back to Jenna's apartment to pick up my stuff. Seeing her (on Friday night) was also great, I can't believe it had been over two years! And last night, helping Alex move and then going out with some of her friends for dinner and then to a couple of bars for her birthday was really fun. But I think the daytime on Saturday, with Anita, was the best of all just for the, word escaping me, maybe the easiness of it. We did lose our first game, at home, to Utah, which is awful. But we couldn't find anywhere with the game on and I'm glad of that. Even such a painful loss, at the beginning of what will likely be a very painful season, couldn't ruin my good mood. At any rate, these couple of days were just what the doctor ordered. To celebrate, and because I haven't put up any music in a good little while, here are the two songs that capture the weekend for me. The first is "In a Sentimental Mood" and the second is "Slip Slidin' Away," by Paul Simon.

emerald isle, nc

This past week at the beach was just about as good as it could have been. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm, everyone was in (mostly) good spirits, Dad and I JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE, we played mini-golf and cards and Bananagrams and Apples to Apples and watched the Olympics and read and swam and on and on. So relaxing. And tomorrow, back to work. Oh yay.

Also, I skydived.

One more thing: Skydiving provided me with a couple of seconds of absolute clarity. Not really fear, but about as pure a rush of adrenaline and awareness of the present moment as I have ever experienced. Nothing existed except for me, the plane, the wind and the 11,000 feet between me and the ground. And then I jumped. Whew.

from the department of boo-yah

Just check this out: Represent with respect

camp coddling

Interesting piece in the NYT sometime recently about uber-high-end summer camps that coddle kids and (especially) their parents. Even more interesting, a response in the Times' op-ed section (link here). Most interesting of all, the comment below. Still chewing over how much I buy into this, but my gut reaction is that the guy has a good point:

“The sense of entitlement which enables them to navigate adult institutions”? Or do you mean simply the habit of ordering serfs around? Like the rich patients recently mentionned in the Times who refuse treatment and boss their therapist around because they can?
The assumption that these children grow up to be harmless is a dangerous delusion.
After being admitted as legacy ( something inexistent in Canada) and then accepted immediately into business and political circles of power, they reveal themselves as irremediably incompetent in their annointed role of god-ordained manager.( Recent example anyone?)
The U.S. class system, the strictest and least mobile in the developped world is now approaching in its inefficiency that of Britain in the mid-19 th century.
The U.S. is nearing the point where Britain, after the charge of the Light Brigade, realised that hereditary officers were a sure way of losing wars and instituted proofessional training for their officer class.
Fun thing is, until recently, the U.S. was on top of the world because it refused such a way of behaving and bred the best managerial class in the world.

salon

Two interesting articles on Salon this morning, which is way over its average for a given day, not counting the blog posts, which are too numerous to read entirely and often have good stuff just by sheer force of volume. So much writing, some of it's got to be good. Anyhow, these are both full-fledged articles. Good start to your Thursday, Salon. One is by my former professor Juan Cole, about the reasons for Bush's about-face on Iran. The other is by a guy named Kurt Giberson, and it's a cogent, thoughtful and strong, critique of people who would take up science as a new religion. Check 'em out, if you've got a few minutes.

whoa!

Sam Cooke doing "Blowin' in the Wind"

books

The other day, I was trying to come up with a list of books I've read this summer (that is, since graduation) and couldn't quite do it. This irritated me. So, in case I forget later, here they are, in no particular order:

The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (second time)
Darkness Visible, by William Styron
A Tidewater Morning, by William Styron
Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The Stone Raft, by Jose Saramago

Also, I started The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton, and All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, by Theodore Rosengarten, but couldn't get into either. Another time. Waiting in the wings, to be started tomorrow, because I just finished The Namesake, are Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth and Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, by Kenzaburo Oe (there should be a long bar over the "O," but I can't figure out how to do that in Blogger). At the moment, I have wasted a good feeling of exhaustion that had me collapsed on the floor in the front hall with Sherlock, Izzie and similarly-exhausted Dad around nine. Instead, I got wrapped up in The Namesake. It's a lovely book; the word that overwhelms all others when I think about how to describe it is "compassionate." Lahiri treats each of her characters with empathy and respect, even those who exist in the book to be resented or hated by the protagonists, or simply to introduce strife into the plot. This is profoundly different from Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, say, which is wonderful in its own way but whose peripheral characters are cartoons. None of the other authors I've read the past couple of months have come close to Lahiri's ability to make her characters so lively and intimate. (Gawande, obviously, is in a different category, because he's writing nonfiction. I loved Better almost as much as I loved Complications, but that's another story). I couldn't put the book down tonight, so I read most of it through, and I got that dreadful thrill at the end, when I knew, even as I feared to look to the right, that the facing page contained the last lines of the book. I didn't want it to be over. There's a lot to chew on in there, although Lahiri's themes are pretty basic - foreignness, sex, death, love, identity - and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. It didn't bowl me over the way "The Third and Final Continent" did, and I don't think I'll read it ten or twelve times, as I've done with that story. But still, it was a very good book and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Now I think it's time for bed, sleepy-eyed or not. I was about to start writing tentative promises to write more updates, but I realized that things like that don't goad me into writing and only look silly in retrospect when, three weeks later, I sit down to write here again. Let me just say that I have the intention of writing again soon, with something a little more newsy. For now, good night.

a+

The Dark Knight. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

ningún ser humano es ilegal

Haven't written in a while, got shamed into doing so again last night. Won't write much now because I have to go to work, but it's been a crazy month and I should keep in practice with this blog because it helps, sometimes. Not to mention I've been getting chided for not writing enough. In any event, the theme of today's post is: No human being is illegal.

can't sleep

Three-twenty-one in the morning and I'm wide the fuck awake. Damn it.

food for thought

Man, I didn't realize how long it'd been since I last posted. Anyhow, things are good, it's beastly hot-and-humid (there should be different words for the heat here and the heat in, say, Las Vegas; they're completely different things), job is going well, family all seems to be doing very well, etc. etc. The reason I'm writing is because I've been reading a lot recently as I got ready to start working out again (IT band finally okay, joined a gym on Thursday and am ready to get this show on the road) about exercise and training. There's a blog I particularly like (cfrostyrun) about training for ultimate, by an elite-level club player in LA who's got a lot of good things to say about how to train in sports-specific ways, that is, for ultimate and not for cross-country or weight lifting. This morning he linked to a 2001 article by Malcolm Gladwell about steroid use and cheating in sports. Here's how he concluded:

Even as we assert this distinction [between achieving elevated performance through better training vs. through pharmaceuticals] on the playing field, though, we defy it in our own lives. We have come to prefer a world where the distractable take Ritalin, the depressed take Prozac, and the unattractive get cosmetic surgery to a world ruled, arbitrarily, by those fortunate few who were born focussed, happy, and beautiful. Cosmetic surgery is not "earned" beauty, but then natural beauty isn't earned, either. One of the principal contributions of the late twentieth century was the moral deregulation of social competition--the insistence that advantages derived from artificial and extraordinary intervention are no less legitimate than the advantages of nature. All that athletes want, for better or worse, is the chance to play by those same rules.

For a long time, I've been a defender of elite athletes who take PEDs, because those drugs are simply another way in which elite athletes can improve their performance, like Lasik surgery for Tiger Woods or phenomenally expensive coaching and equipment not accessible to the likes of you and me. But there's something wrong with the comparison that Gladwell makes between PEDs and Ritalin, Prozac and plastic surgery. I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what I mean, but here's a shot. Athletes who take PEDs are already freaks of nature, separated from the masses by extraordinary strength, endurance, speed, quickness and obsessive drive. It's not like Ben Johnson was some schlub who took HGH and a bunch of other stuff. He was already above and beyond, and people like him are not competing with normal people, they're competing with each other, in a highly formalized, regulated world. Leaving cosmetic surgery aside, because it's not pharmaceutical and thus the comparison fails right there, Ritalin and Prozac are not for the already-strong. They're designed to make up for perceived deficiencies in the people to whom they're prescribed. People close to me have been on versions of each of those drugs, and many others, with the aim of allowing them to function with some kind of stability in day-to-day life. If you want to get all fundamentalist about it, you could say that in times past those people would just have been weeded out; unable to compete with "normal" people, they'd have died or failed to reproduce. But that seems perverse to me. Big pharma sells us all a bill of goods in a lot of cases. But not always.

This bears more reflection, but at the moment I should check to make sure the dogs haven't devoured the mail. Oh, one more thing before I go. Dad and I went to see "The Fall" last night at Bethesda Row. My advice is: Go see this movie. It was absolutely magnificent. But don't take small children.

a primer

I came across this poem today in this week's New Yorker, and really liked it. Here it is, "A Primer" by Bob Hicok.

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into a clay mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

i got a job!

Today I talked to Lucy, the woman in HR at CHF International, for the thirty billionth time, and the upshot was, they want to hire me! Mom reminded me to make sure I'll be able to take a week off in August to go to the beach, so I need to email Lucy again to ask, but, well, damn! Barely more than a week after graduation, I got a job. Sweet.

i got straight a's!

Well, almost. Only an A- in stupid Ecological Issues. But still, good enough for a 3.92, my highest GPA since I don't know when. And it's enough to bring my cumulative GPA to 3.52. Hurray!

springtime

Beware the lack of segues. Well, I finally finished all my exams and graduation business: got my tickets, cap and gown (colossal rip-off, I might add), poli sci honors rope and medal, confirmed dinner reservations, and got my plane ticket home for April 30. Sectionals were really fun, if a little disappointing in the end, and the weather has been non-stop gorgeous for the past week. Everyone is checking weather.com obsessively for the weekend forecast and hoping beyond hope that it doesn't rain during the ceremony. Even, it turns out, Mary Sue Coleman. I went to Bar Louie for dollar burgers last night with Anita and Jacob and apparently Jacob had run into Mary Sue on the steps of the union and talked to her for about half an hour about a bunch of different things. She sounded like a nice lady. My knee is finally starting to feel good again. I ran about two miles yesterday and jumped rope today and it feels fine. Today I ran to the CCRB and back and jumped rope and lifted a bit for upper body. Still not ready for lower-body stuff. But whatever, it just feels great to be active again after two weeks of rest and ice. I'm pretty out of shape.

Speaking of ice, I'm a complete convert to ice baths now. I took one on Saturday and another on Sunday after two hot days of frisbee, and definitely felt the difference in the morning on the following days, especially in my lower legs and hips. On an unrelated note, my interviews with CHF continued: I talked to Barbara Jones, the director program support, on Monday afternoon and then emailed back and forth with Lucy about coming into the office to meet her and Barbara and at least one of the regional directors for whom I'd be working (if they hired me) on May 2 and 9 in the morning.

Tonight a big group is going to the Tigers game against Texas. Anita got something like 20 people together so we got half-price tickets. It should be pretty fun. I've never been to a Tigers game, and it's been a good while since I went to any baseball game. Mom and Dad get in on Thursday night and then everyone else pours in throughout the day Friday. It's all very exciting but right now I actually feel kind of out of it and scattered. Oh well, maybe a shower will make me feel better. And some Primo Levi. I bought A Tranquil Star on Monday and have been reading the stories one at a time. That's all for now, hopefully I'll be in a better mindset the next time I write something.

finals and interview and sectionals

Well, finals are officially upon us. Some of my friends are already finished! I'm not, by a long shot, although I did just turn in my first paper. Modernity and nationalism in Latin America. Good bye, History 348! I won't miss you for a second! Now, on to the next: Polisci 497. I'm about halfway through my final for that class. It's a take-home affair: Four identifications of things we studied this year (for example, the conference of Catholic bishops at Aparecida in 2007); a 2000-word essay on how changes in religion have influenced political change; and a second essay, also of 2000 words or so, on a topic of our choosing. I've finished the first two parts. For the third, I think I'm going to write about gender issues and religion in Latin America. We read a whole book about gender issues, a lot of which has to do with the role of churches as interest groups, so this shouldn't be too hard. The whole shebang is due on Friday; I'd like to get it done today. Also due on Friday is my final for Polisci 389. Here's the prompt:

Huang argues that the Chinese state thinks of local capitalists as an adversary. That is why it gives preference to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). (a) Is Huang right? (b) Under what conditions might one envisage the state in China treating local capitalists on the same footing as SOEs and FIEs?

Fun, right? Politics and economic development of Asia has been an awesome class.

In other news, this morning I finally had a job interview in which I felt like I had a chance. I think it went okay, although she seemed disappointed that I have no professional correspondence-writing experience. Also, I wish I'd given a better response to the question, "Why are you interested in international development?" Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom! Talking and thinking about ID gets my motor running, now I want to help DO some! I'm fascinated by every aspect of it! Hopefully I'm just being overly self-critical, but I don't know. Lucy (the interviewer) did say she was going to set up an interview, either by phone or in person after I get home, with the director of administration and program support. She also elaborated a bit on the position, which was helpful. It's apparently pretty fast-paced: a lot of phone time, a lot of writing, a lot of juggling the needs of different people. Not really office administration, more like logistical and technical support for people in the field. It would be such a cool way to learn the nuts and bolts of how an organization like CHF works. She also seemed enthusiastic about my desire to go to grad school in a couple of years, which is good. Guess they don't expect people to have this job for too long at a stretch.

Sectionals is this weekend. Forecast calls for showers and temperatures in the mid-60s, which sounds just peachy to me. Way better than last weekend. However, I jogged through some drills yesterday at practice and my knee is definitely hurting today. Ibuprofen and ice for the rest of the week. I hope it holds up, at least through Saturday! It would be so disappointing to get all the way through the year and spend the last tournament of my college career taking stats and yelling on the sidelines. Being hurt sucks. Either way, I'm going to have to hustle home on Saturday night so I get back in time for the Bobby McFerrin-Chick Corea-Jack DeJohnette show!

Last bit, and then I'm going to grab some lunch before digging into this gender issues paper: At noon on Monday, at the conclusion of my Ecological Issues exam, I will be done with my undergraduate career.

a quick note about "red-baiting"

A piece on Salon today really pissed me off. Apparently, Bill Kristol has been comparing Obama's statement about depressed rural people clinging to guns or intolerance to Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses. Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that comparison, which whoever the Salon writer was did a good job of, I'd like to point out one little detail. THE COLD WAR ENDED TWENTY YEARS AGO! COMMUNISM IS NOT A THREAT! SOCIALISM IS NOT A THREAT! THERE IS NO RED SCARE! GET OVER IT!

religion and politics

To take a break from the papers I'm writing on this subject (two of them, plus some IDs, make up my final exam for Religion and Politics in Latin America), I came across the Critic at Large article in this week's New Yorker about the history of religion and politics in the United States. It's a great article, not much of a book-by-book review (can't really tell whether the books reviewed are worthwhile or not), but a terrific and concise overview of the history of religious freedom in this country. Check it out.

Okay, back to work.

an update

Well, I just wrote a letter to Jack updating him a little on what's been going on in my life this year. It turned out to be a pretty decent blow-by-blow of the things that have been important to me this year outside the family. So, since I haven't written here in a while, I'm just going to post part of it.

Classes have been pretty good, particularly my poli sci ones. I had two really, really great professors last semester, and I'm taking another class with one of them now, about politics and economic development in Asia. Partially because of that class, and partially because of how freaking sick I am of US politics, I've come to be more and more interested in economic development in the rest of the world. It's so complicated and so difficult to do fairly and well, and I think I'd like to join the ranks of people who are trying to make sure that the people "over whom the wave of progress is about to roll" don't get screwed in the process. That'd be a quote from Barrington Moore, Jr., in case you're interested. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. No, I did not have to look it up. As you might be able to tell, I'm still a giant geek.

No real transition to this, but it's important: Having Vale here for a month over winter break and then into January was really wonderful. I love her a lot and even though we're far away from each other now, and even though we broke up, it's still nice to know that I can be in love with someone as great as she is and have her love me back just as much. We still talk every week or ten days, on Skype.

I've gotten more and more serious about ultimate frisbee this year. I love playing for magnUM Reserve (the new, improved Tenacious B), going to tournaments and bonding with the guys on the team, losing and winning and getting dirty and hurt and having fun anyway. And I've finally found the motivation I always needed to get me off my butt and training hard. I love running and lifting and doing plyometrics and throwing and even doing drills. The most important tournament of the year for us, Michigan Sectionals, is coming up next weekend, and I can't wait to see if we can qualify for Great Lakes Regionals. We
don't have a prayer of qualifying for nationals, but that's okay. It'd be great just to make it out of our section. I'll be done with magnUM at the end of the year, obviously, but I'm going to try out for some club teams back in DC. Not elite-level open (men's), because I'm not good enough (yet), but maybe a regionals-level team, or maybe, just maybe, an elite-level mixed (coed) club. That last would be pretty sweet.

Things have gone really well with our apartment. It's big and comfortable and I really like all my roommates. That was pretty much a given with Gabby, but I've gotten to know Jon and Andrew really well over the course of the year, too, and now they're friends that I'll have for a long time. One big influence all my roommates have had on me has been in the music department: I listen to a lot bigger a range than I used to, including some electronic stuff that I probably would have scoffed at before this year. And a lot of afrobeat and soul, that I probably would have loved before this year but had never really heard. I can't wait to listen to some of it with you.

The prospect of all my friends splitting up is one of the hardest things to imagine and stomach about graduating in less than three weeks (!!!!). It's funny how friendships change just based on who you're around; I've spent a lot of time this year with kids I barely knew before, just because they're close by. It'll be interesting to see who I remain closest with after I leave Ann Arbor.

Speaking of leaving, and going back to Silver Spring, one thing that's given me a lot of anxiety this semester is looking for jobs. It's pretty rough trying to get hired, without a master's degree, in the fields that interest me (see above). I've applied at a bunch of places and no dice, but over the past couple of weeks I've started to calm down about that. My boss is going to keep giving me work through May, and I'll be able to look for jobs once I'm back on the street in DC. Might end up just bartending or working at a restaurant for a while, and that's okay. More time for frisbee! And running! Well, after my knee heals up. (I got me some iliotibial band syndrome: runner's knee. It sucks.) And more time for finishing the strange book I've been reading in my (limited) free time. It's called The Third Policeman, and well, let me put it like this: Some of the characters refer to a really hard problem as a "pancake" and believe that over a person's lifetime, that person become more and more like their bicycle, just as that person's bicycle becomes more and more like them, to the point that the person can't stand still without leaning on something, and the bicycle starts to tool around of its own volition.

And, speaking of reading, I'd better get back to mine. I'm doing well in all my classes at the moment, but the home stretch is upon me and work is starting to pile up, including about a bajillion pages on nationalism in Latin America and China's economic boom to do for this week. Woohoo!

There you have it. And now, home to ice the knee and read until I fall asleep. Good night.

mercedes sosa

I came to this song via Echidne of the Snakes. "Gracias a la vida," by Violeta Parra, sung by Mercedes Sosa. It gave me wave upon wave of goosebumps. I hope it gives the same to you.

some things to think about

Hunger precludes me from writing much of a post at the moment, but there are a few articles that I've read in the past couple of weeks that are fascinating, and to which I'd like to link here. The first is from the New York Review of Books: an article by David Bromwich called "Euphemism and American Violence". In a beautifully crafted way, it makes an extremely important about the centrality of language to our tolerance and even acceptance of violence as a country. The second is also from the NYR, and also deals with the importance of words in shaping the way we perceive and think about issues: "The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe". I might have posted a link to this a couple of weeks ago, but it's so interesting that I thought I'd go to it again.

The third and fourth are not print articles, but clips from Saturday Night Live: Tina Fey's defense of Hillary, from a few weeks ago, and Tracy Morgan's pro-Obama rebuttal from last weekend. Both are freaking great.

The fifth, is an article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki about the shortcomings of microfinance. I'm not ashamed to say that I've jumped on the microfinance bandwagon a little bit; if one of them would hire me I'd go to work for a microlending firm next month. But Surowiecki's article points out something important and kind of lost on people like me and Natalie Portman, which is that while microloans are undoubtedly helpful to a lot of individuals, they don't do much about systemic poverty. A large proportion of people in developing countries already technically own their own business, but typically they have a staff of one or two or five. In order to solve chronic underemployment, medium-sized businesses, which have staffs beyond the owner and her family, must be encouraged to a greater extent. Not as sexy as personal loans; nothing like Kiva exists for medium-sized businesses yet. But just as if not more important.

The sixth article is from the New York Times: David Berreby's review of Dan Ariely's new book Predictably Irrational. Turning conventional microeconomics on its head, how fun! There are a couple of other articles that I've liked recently, but unfortunately they've been for class and from sources that aren't available for free (tuition covers them, as it damn well should), so I'll refrain. Plus, six is enough for the time being.

It's time for lunch now. I've been ruminating about some things, and plan to post on them in the next couple of days. Maybe if I say that it'll actually come true.

immigration cartoon

I really liked this one. Brings the point home pretty hard, doesn't it? (h/t Slate)

tournament cancelled

This could not have been more last minute, but Boogie Nights, at Miami of Ohio, got cancelled just now because they're going to get a foot of snow down there. I knew about the snow and thought it was a bit odd that the thing was still on; we've played and practiced in snow before but never more than 3 or 4 inches. Well, that opens up my weekend a lot but it sucks that we won't get to play. There'll be practice tomorrow and Sunday instead. And there's a tourney next weekend at Bowling Green.

So now, instead of rushing around trying to get my errands done (paying dues for Pi Sigma Alpha so I can get my special Poli Sci honors tassel at graduation, turning in my time sheet, buying a book that I need to finish reading by next week) before yet another 4-hour slog down to southern Ohio, I can relax a bit, and get some work done. Good news. Hope you all enjoyed Sharon Jones the other day; I'm really enjoying her stuff with the Dap-Kings. What a crazy story, too: She sang with James Brown and Lee Fields back in the day but never got signed to a record deal, so she worked as a corrections officer for years, only a few years ago did she start to come back. Now she's got three albums with the Dap-Kings and, at 51, is kicking it (literally--check her out on YouTube) all over the world. If they weren't in Australia and New Zealand for the foreseeable future, I'd be making plans to see them ASAP. Okay, time to go eat some lunch and then work a bit.

A final bonus for the tournament's cancellation: The girls across the street are having a "Whiskey and Whiskers" party tonight. I'm not a big whiskey fan, but I've got the whiskers part down; it would have been sad to miss it but now I can go! Maybe this tournament got cancelled at just the right time.

song of the week

I realize I'm a little behind the curve on this Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings business, but I finally got one of their albums, "Naturally," last night, and it absolutely kicks ass. This is my personal favorite, "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" So so so good. And now, the moment of truth on my Enviro exam.

a hopeful note

Spring Break was wonderful; I couldn't have imagined it going any better. I'm not going to get into any specifics now because that would take too long and I have to go get some lunch or my stomach is going to eat itself. However, I just read a piece in Salon about the candidates' brands. It's a bit fluffy at the beginning (okay, a lot fluffy), but it ends with a really good point: The president is our most important citizen when it comes to how we're seen abroad. His or her image is extremely important in the way we're perceived by people around the world, and really only one candidate in this election fits the bill as someone who can revive our image. I don't much like Obama or Hillary, but you gotta admit, Barack's got the kind of image that we badly, badly need to project and Hillary just doesn't. McCain, it goes without saying, doesn't either. Here's how the article concludes.

"In Germany, they're fascinated with him, they call him 'Der schwarze Kennedy,' the 'black Kennedy,'" says Dick Martin. "They feel he has the same aura about him." In fact, just a few weeks ago, Germany's leading newsmagazine Der Spiegel ran a cover feature on Obama, illustrated by a paired set of images -- Barack on the left, JFK on the right -- and asking whether America will "finally have the chance to be loved again." The issue's cover line raised the stakes to a new level: It read, simply, "The Messiah Factor."

That's because, in Europe, and in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well, the perception is that an Obama presidency represents the potential for catharsis after nearly a decade of frustration with the U.S. "Our brand has been hammered recently, but beneath the anger, there's this underlying hope among people around the world that we can do better," says Patricia Martin. "And we can. We reinvent ourselves. It's what we're known for: We've had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. I think that's why you have people in every country eating up every little turn in this election's story. This election, the whole world is watching."

Boy do I want to believe that.

very sad

Tonight, this is how I feel. Vale and I just had a really hard conversation about what we're doing and where we're going and I just miss her a whole lot. We decided to try and be "just friends," but the idea of giving up hope of seeing her again for a long time really hurts. I'm glad I found a little corner of the fishbowl because I really don't like the prospect of a bunch of strangers watching me cry to myself. I was going to do more work but I think I'll just go home instead. Do check out that link, though. Good night.

my concession to valentine's day

thumbs up!

This morning I got an email from Terry Provance, of Oikocredit, saying he'd like to interview me for the job opening there! He suggested that we talk by phone next week and then hopefully in person when I'm back in DC over spring break. Hurray! I mean, nothing's settled yet, but that job looks really cool. Plus I just figured out that Terry Provance is a UCC minister, which is what Dad's going for right now. Cool! The place is maybe a little more ecumenical than I first thought (well, okay, a lot more), but that's okay. It's based in the Netherlands and has branch offices in Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, not to mention Germany, several places in Africa, and India and the Philippines. So it's a widespread organization, although the US office appears to be, well, Mr. Provance's house.

On an unrelated note, the teaser for this opinion piece by Condi Rice and Robert Gates in the Post today is "On Iraq, Trust Us." Are they freaking kidding? Those fucking people have SO abused my trust that they will never, ever be able to earn it back and I will assume that they are either lying, wrong, just trying to cover their own asses, or a combination of the three, for the rest of time. I'd be laughing right now if I wasn't so disgusted. Okay, class time.

thumbs down

Got my first letter of rejection from a job app today, from Arabella. That's okay, because it was the group I was least interested in working for and, as they pointed out in their gentle, if concise and blunt, letter, seemed like the least comfortable fit for me. Still, not very nice to get rejected from anything. Oh well, time to get used to it, I suppose. Back to work.

That means emailing Oikocredit (today) and Partners of the Americas (on Thursday or Friday, if they haven't emailed by then) to follow up on those letters, and Jeff about hopefully coming in to see what CHF is all about over Spring Break. Also, it means going through the little list I compiled of other places of interest and banging out apps for them. Somebody, somewhere has got to hire me, right?

But right now, it means writing this blasted essay about pentecostals and faith healing.

And buying a ticket to see the DALAI LAMA AT CRISLER ARENA ON APRIL 19!!!!

scattered thoughts

This weekend went pretty well overall, except that it was horrifically cold and windy and that I got clocked in the face by a guy trying to huck as deep as he could. Totally a foul on my part, but there wasn't any doubt who got the worse of the exchange and I don't think I played the rest of that game, deciding instead to focus on the bleeding and the ring of pain that had exploded in a horizontal circle around my head, right around the base of the bridge of my nose. The good news is, I didn't break it and I'm not concussed. The better news is, we finished in third place, of 22 teams, and played okay as a team. It's a rare, and nice, feeling, for us to feel like we outclass most of the competition at a tournament. But we did, going 6-1 and losing only to a Marquette team that had the wind on its side and a really great handler who killed us with upwind swings and some great looks down field. And, it was a good team bonding experience, sleeping 8 to a room and freezing to death outside and playing well together.

Hugo Chavez, it seems to me from my vantage point up here in the great white north, is a pretty small man. Not physically, of course, but just in the sense that he's become nothing more than a clownish oil despot who aspires to be the grand opponent of the US in South America. Not that we don't need a grand opponent down there, someone to really lead the "Pink Tide" movement against the Washington Consensus. I just don't think he's that guy. He's too busy preening in his red shirt and bloviating about how he's building up a badass army to fight against Colombia and the US. What a peacock.

I have a paper due tomorrow on the rise of pentecostalism in Brazil and how it's connected to Andrew Chesnut's idea of "pathogens of poverty." It should be a fairly easy paper, only 1500 words, but I'm kind of adrift still about how to focus it. Well, it'll come to me. This class, by the way, is still kind of unfocused in general as far as I can tell.

Klein gave me a book, The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. He wrote LA Confidential, which got turned into one of my favorite movies, so I'm excited to read it. Not sure when I'll have time, but that's okay. Other book notes: Development as Freedom is disappointing only in the sense that the writing is sometimes convoluted and unclear. Nothing like The Argumentative Indian, which is beautifully written. Come on, Amartya! Still, it's extremely interesting.

Vale and I talked last night, on Skype, which was nice except it's always a little weird when she has a camera and I don't, so I feel a little like I'm spying on her. But she seemed good, if a little sunburned and a little lonely. She works all day by herself in the office because Katty is doing other things and Isa left, then goes home to her single apartment. Some days she goes up to Cecilia and Rodrigo's house, which she likes, but still. Also, I miss her and, last night, found a job at OAS in DC that would be perfect for her, except that she doesn't have "excellent mastery" of English (the job requires Spanish, too, but she's obviously not lacking there). It's an HR job, requires a bachelor's in business administration, which she has, and at least a year of experience with human resources, which she definitely has. Oh well.

It's time for breakfast. Today, we must go to the grocery store.

i'm goin to disney world! i mean, cincinnati

This weekend is Arctic Vogue, in Cincinnati. The weather forecast is terrible. Saturday: high 45 with rain and snow in the morning tapering off into partly cloudy by the afternoon and winds 15-25 mph. Sunday: high 25 and partly cloudy with lots of wind. That could hardly be worse. Wind=sloppy play. Precipitation=sloppy fields. Below freezing temperatures+sloppy fields=pothole-filled, frozen fields. We're leaving around 4:30 this afternoon and coming back on Sunday probably early-evening-ish. We're also the second seed this weekend, which is a lot of pressure. The goal at any tournament is to break seed, so basically we have to win in order to call it a successful weekend. We can beat all of the teams that are coming; the only one we've ever gotten rolled by who's gonna be there is Bowling Green alumni. But we're a way better team now than we were then.

In other, also-sports-related news, I spent a little while yesterday looking through the Navy SEALs training book in Borders, where I was to spend the $50 gift card I got from being in some experiment or other. (More about the books I bought sometime later; one of them, A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid, I already finished and it was awesome. The other was Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen.) Anyhow, it got me inspired for this summer. Working out as consistently as I have been feels great, but still feels a little unstructured, like I could be getting more out of it with a concrete plan. So I'm going to keep on doing the team thing for the rest of this semester, and then this summer set myself up with a week-by-week, month-by-month workout plan. I can't wait. Right now, though, it's time to enter some data on German MPs. Yay! Wish us luck this weekend. And a break in the weather.

duke 89, unc 78

Boo ya.

political betting markets

I think it's safe to say that I've been following the betting markets (Slate keeps track of them here) for the presidential race more closely than most. That might not say very much, but I check them at least a couple of times a week and think they're very interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about them with Vincent Hutchings, a professor here who studies electoral politics. He said that they're generally pretty accurate measures of how things are going for the candidates. If you go to the Slate page and click on "All Candidates," you'll see that John McCain has taken the lead, by a narrow margin, over Hillary and Obama. However, if you click on "Winning Presidential Party," the Dems are still big favorites. McCain is the prohibitive favorite now in the Republican race, and in the Democratic race, Obama has made up a ton of ground on Hillary.

The point is this: McCain would be a gigantic disaster. Hillary sucks. Obama also kind of sucks, but not as much as the other two. In other words, I'm pulling for Obama. If I were more important, I'd say I was endorsing him. As it is, I'm just (halfheartedly) rooting for him. Let's go, Great Logo.

Check out the Post's Super Tuesday coverage if you're bored enough by whatever else you're doing. And now, to the fishbowl to do some work, and then to the gym to do some working out (Navy Seals today, baby, WOO!) and then back home to eat dinner and watch CNN until I throw up all over Wolf Blitzer. I wish I were abroad, we'd at least get the BBC 24/7. Oh well.

the windchill is -12

I lost my phone last night but got it back this morning, thanks to a couple of decent people. Hurray for being nice and doing the right thing. Also, the windchill is -12.

dream

Also, I just remembered my dream last night. I was in a room somewhere with Mom and a few other people whose faces I forget. I think I had just come back from some kind of physical exercise--probably frisbee practice--and I began to feel tightness in my chest. It was pretty intense for a few seconds and then faded, but didn't go away. "I think I'm having a heart attack," I said. Everyone else in the room panicked, but I stayed calm and ended up being the one to call 911. In the ambulance, the pain got worse and I guess I passed out, but the EMTs must have kept me going until I got to the hospital, because I woke up in a hospital bed, with a new heart and a gigantic, almost cartoonish scar down the middle of my chest.

weekend

This weekend has been discouraging and disheartening. Michigan Indoor, the tournament Magnum hosts here every January, was terrible. We played really unevenly as a team--gave A a run for its money, shat all over ourselves against MSU, crushed Oberlin, lost to a Purdue team we should have beaten by 5 or 6 points. I played great on Friday night (against A), then almost not at all against MSU, inexplicably because the people who were getting in point after point weren't playing well and I had the night before, then okay but not great against Oberlin with almost no PT in the first half and then a bit more towards the end. This morning, I played a little bit more because tons of people were hung over or still drunk from the tournament party last night but I didn't go. But overall it was a really discouraging, frustrating weekend in terms of my own play and value as a player. Compounding this was the disappointment I felt that none of my friends, particularly Gabby (obviously) came to watch. I dropped as many hints as I could to him, reminding him of when games were, telling him he should come, etc. But he didn't get it, that this for me is like all the times I've gone to see him in plays. I don't go to them because of an abiding love for student theater, I go because he's poured time and effort into them and I owe it to him as a friend to go. Well, I've poured more time and more effort into this than he has ever poured into a play, and the one chance he will ever get to see me play in college, he blew. I told him so when I got home this morning and he was reclining on the couch, that I was offended and insulted that he hadn't shown up, explained the play parallel, and went back to bed (our game was at 8, I was up at 6 trying to get a ride, and I was home by 11:15, having watched A beat Miami of Ohio senseless despite not playing all that well), without waiting for a response. To his credit, he got it, and left a page-long apology under my door while I was asleep. But I'm still angry, at him and at myself. Now I've got to buckle down and get this presentation on Barrington Moore done for tomorrow. It's on a chapter I love ("England and the Contributions of Violence to Gradualism") from a book I love (Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy). Deep breath. Also, if anyone is tempted to post an attempt at an encouraging comment or something, please don't. I can't take it right now.

vale should root for huckabee

Because if he gets elected, I swear that I will leave this country. Here's Joe Conason's piece in Salon about Huckabee's dominionist past and friends. Scary stuff.

new link

My roommate Andrew started working part-time earlier this month for an college blog site called The Campus Word. So I'm going to add it to my links on the right. He's in charge of the "World" section of the site. I've explored a little bit, and some of the writing isn't super great, but there's a ton of variety in the material and some of it is really interesting stuff.

first amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It's right there. No law having ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANY RELIGION. It's in the FIRST FREAKING AMENDMENT, BEFORE ALL THAT CRAP ABOUT FREE SPEECH AND FREE ASSEMBLY. Original intent THAT you stupid, small-minded idiots.

This makes my head spin.

old marx

Today is a sad day. I dropped Vale off at the airport at 1:30 for her flight back to DC; she's spending tonight with Mom and Dad and then flies back to Chile early tomorrow morning. A couple of friends are over, and all four roommates, and we've had a low-key, fun evening, but I'm still overwhelmed by loneliness. Whatever emotions and feelings are running through me now are too fresh to write about or even really think about right now. So instead, I'll transcribe a poem from this week's New Yorker, by a Polish poet named Adam Zagajewski. It's called "Old Marx."

I try to envision his last winter,
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thames' black water.
Chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?

He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world only
a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his own lids.

back to school

Well, in my one day of classes yesterday, I went to The Rise of the Southern Novel in Black and White (which I liked and which has Adrian Arrington on the class roster, but which I will probably have to drop) and Ecological Issues (which I can't drop, but I liked it so that's fine). I would have had discussion for Race and Ethnicity during the National Period in Latin America (REDNPLA), but we haven't had a lecture yet, so no go there. So far I'm pretty sure I'll be taking Politics and Economic Growth in Asia (with Ashu Varshney, my Gov't and Politics of India and South Asia professor from last semester), Ecological Issues, and REDNPLA (which is a 5-credit class because I'm taking my discussion in Spanish!). My other Poli Sci class is TBD. Currently it's Religion in Latin America, but two overlapping classes on Latin America might be a bit much. So we'll have to see next week.

Today we set ourselves to moving from room to room. Jon isn't back from Philly yet, but since he's not moving, that's okay. I'll be taking Klein's big front room, he'll be moving to the back room, and Gabby will be moving to the double, with Jon. Klein paid Jon off a little to stay in the double so that Klein wouldn't have to share. From my perspective, the whole thing couldn't have worked out more smoothly. Moving itself is kind of slow-going, but that's all right. I've got most of my stuff out of the room. All that remains are a few papers and my clothes. Although, to tell the truth, most of my clothes are either in my suitcase still or are dirty. Better do some laundry this weekend. Before I go, I will report that Gabby has apparently gotten a subscription to Foreign Affairs, which is odd because he doesn't know why that's the case. Whatever! Okay, time to get back to moving.

One more thing: first Magnum practice tonight, 8:30-10. Then Sunday, 8:30-10, Wednesday 11:30-1 every week until we move back outside.

idiots!

If you've been following the baseball-steroids-Mitchell Report story, then you know that Roger Clemens takes up nine pages in the report and appears to have used a lot of performance enhancers. So his HOF status is now in doubt because some people are freaking morons. Look, I don't give a shit if he used steroids, he's the Barry Bonds of pitching. Greatest of the last 20 years, no question, hands down, it's not even close. The point of this report is that in that time period, EVERYONE was doping, and he still managed to elevate his game above everyone else. It's the steroid era, you idiots. Clemens and Bonds should be mortal locks. They deserve it.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Ray Ratto said it right in this ESPN story.

"I would vote for Bonds on the first ballot, as I would vote for Clemens, because the Hall of Fame isn't church,'' Ratto said. "It's the history of baseball, and this is part of the history of baseball. I can assure you that Bud Selig will be voted into the Hall of Fame, and he is the commissioner whose name will be linked with the steroid era by first ignoring it, then profiting from it, and finally blaming others for it. I know that Cap Anson is in the Hall of Fame, and he was instrumental in the creation of the color line, which is way worse than PEDs. So this discussion ends up being an excuse for people with no institutional memory or understanding to claim a moral superiority they're not really equipped to display.''

giddy

Taking a break from my India paper to report an event that made me feel like a little kid who just opened the present he'd been hoping for all year. I've known for a while basically what I want to argue in this paper (which asks us to explain the disparity in economic growth rates between India and China). There's lots of peripheral support for the argument in the literature we read for class, plus some stuff I've found on JSTOR, Project MUSE, etc. But just now, on JSTOR, I found an article written by none other than Tom Weisskopf, the erstwhile director of the RC and professor of economics here. It makes my argument, but in 1975. Absolutely brilliant. The greatest possible thing I could have found: An article totally legitimating my argument but far enough removed that I can avoid being completely derivative. I could sing.

two new links

Two I've been meaning to put up: one for a couple of days, the other for months. CHF International is the IDP/refugee organization in Silver Spring that Jeff Meer works for. And Kalil's World Passport is the fantastically eclectic podcast site that I've been going to since the beginning of the year. It's got music from all over Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and a little from the States. So cool. Now it's time for bed. Although I'm kind of afraid because Jon has been talking so loudly in his sleep than I can hear him clearly through the door. Sometimes in French, sometimes in English. But definitely complete sentences or at least ideas. God I can't wait to have my own room next semester.

more books -- updated!

Two books reviewed in Salon recently really caught my eye. The first is Peter Hoeg's new book, The Quiet Girl. He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, which I read last summer at the beach and really liked. The second is My Colombian War, by Sylvia Paternostro, a Colombian-American who went back to Colombia after 22 years in the States and wrote a book about Colombian life outside the drug war. We essentialize Colombia so much, tie it so closely to drugs in our own imagination, that we can't think about what she calls "human dynamics, the relationships between employer and employee, between man and woman, teacher and student, government and citizen, artists and civil society."

In other news, I finally found the website of the organization that I think I remember Jeff Meer works for or is connected to in some way. It's called CHF International. Wouldn't mind working there right out of college. It's on Georgia Avenue, for crying out loud.

UPDATE

Also Waiting by Ha Jin.

rip sean taylor

For those of you who don't know already, Washington safety Sean Taylor died early this morning from a gunshot wound to the leg after somebody broke into his home in Florida. I find myself much more affected by this than I would have thought I could be by the death of somebody I don't know, and don't even really know that much about. Nothing I have to say about this situation is original, so I'll spare you (and myself) the cliches. Suffice it to say that it is tremendously sad. My heart goes out to his family and especially his baby daughter. If you want to read more, here's the ESPN article about it.

what a fucking disgrace

Well, the final opportunity of my student career for us to beat Ohio State comes to nothing because our offense was absolutely execrable. That actually isn't strong enough a word. We were pathetic, disgusting, an embarrassment. Ninety-one yard of offense. Fifteen yards rushing on 24 attempts. Dropped pass after three-and-out after dropped pass. Our D played well, held OSU to just 14 points, but the offense just didn't fucking show up. Walking out of the Big House as the band played the fight song one last time was one of the most depressing experiences I can remember.

new blog...by sebi brown!

Sebi is a kid I went to high school with until senior year, when he went with his family to live in Jerusalem. He's at Juniata now, and really into immigration and border issues. He started up a blog about them, so I thought I'd give him a plug here. Here it is, you should check it out. Sebi, if you find your way to this blog anytime soon: It's been too long, man.

300!

This. Is. Spah! Ta! I still haven't seen that movie, nor do I plan to. This is my 300th post, though. Anyhow, nothing particularly interesting to report other than that I called Kucinich's scheduler back today and left another message, which I'm afraid I kind of blew by making it too snappy. Not in tone, just in a particularly phrase... I'm probably just freaking myself out. Another thing, before I head to fascism class: Reading Sidney Blumenthal's column in the Guardian today, I got to thinking about the US Civil War. Now, I generally picture the war in terms of two massive blocks, blue and grey, going at each other around the Mason-Dixon line. Those blocks are solid on the map, the whole populations covered by each are incorporated by and support them. Of course many northerners were racist and had Confederate sympathies in that they favored slavery and weren't too fond of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln didn't suspend habeus corpus because Marylanders were his biggest fans. So the blue block begins to take on a bit of nuance. But what about the South? I still can't think of anything I've read or heard about that suggests divisions in southern opinion surrounding the secession and then the war. There must have been some southerners who supported the Union, or opposed slavery. Unanimity just doesn't happen on that scale. But who were they? Did they write anything down? How were they treated by everyone else? How did they make out during and after the war? Who knows. And now I'm going to be late for class.

my legs feel like napalm

After lifting Sunday, practice yesterday and a stair workout today, my legs don't feel like jelly. They feel like PETROLEUM jelly. In bomb form. No pain, no gain, though. In more exciting news, today I talked to Dennis Kucinich (!) thanks to Jules. He wants to set up an appointment for an interview as soon as possible! I was practically having palpitations in class this morning waiting to call him. I emailed him and called his scheduler, too. I keep telling myself that I have a pretty slim chance of this going anywhere, but it's cool just to have the opportunity. Also I went and hung out with Hanna Ketai today at her co-op, which was nice because I hadn't seen her in a while. One of the things we talked about was self-expectation and optimism versus pessimism when going for new things. She tends to have really high expectations for herself and other people, so she's disappointed a lot. I tend to have low expectations for myself and other people, so I'm constantly pleasantly surprised. This happened most recently with frisbee. But her point is that the laws of attraction apply; you get in life what you think you can get. So if you think you can't get very much or go very far or make that new friend or get that job, you're less likely to get it. You are what you project, in part. It's also a lot braver to have high expectations than low ones. I'm feeling really unfocused right now, so that's enough for now. But I'll return to this theme, I think it's an important one for me. Also, at some point, to the various discussions I've had recently with people about grad school. And my senior release! I can OFFICIALLY graduate on time as of today. Now, a badly needed shower.

caetano!

Because I'm going to see him at Hill tonight, and because I haven't put up a song in a while, here's Caetano Veloso's classic "Tropicalia." Enjoy!

i mean, you don't even really have to read past the headline

This post, "White House tells Pervez Musharraf to never restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism" at Crooks and Liars just kind of left me numb. It's unbelievable. What do you do with hypocrisy that deep?

short story

Well, I promised that I'd put this up once it was done, so here's my short story about being in Santiago on September 11 of last year. Hope you like it. It's called, in a stroke of creative genius, "El Once de Septiembre."

Eric took down his blazer, slacks, his one button-down shirt and tie from their hangers and laid them on the bed. Gingerly, using only his left hand, he took off the sweatshirt in which he’d slept, removing his left arm and his head before sliding it down his right arm and onto the floor. He held his right arm to his chest as he slid his pants down his legs and then took of his socks one by one. Shivering against the chill and puffing little clouds of condensed breath from the effort and pain of undressing himself, he put on his button-down shirt and his slacks and black socks. Tying his shoes was the hardest task of all. He crammed his knees into his chest and reached, panting and grimacing, until his right hand could just barely do its job in tandem with the left. The necktie he abandoned after visualizing the motions he’d have to go through in order to get it on. Last, he put on the white mesh sling that the nurse had given him at the hospital two nights earlier.

* * *

While Eric struggled to dress himself, shopkeepers across Santiago began to unlock their front doors and put their merchandise out on display. On this day, the thirty-third anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup against the ailing socialist government of Salvador Allende, many added a Chilean flag to their front windows, or made sure to have patriotic music playing extra loud. Pinochet ruled as a brutal dictator for 17 years, and the anniversary of his rise, so long officially celebrated as a great victory in the fight against socialism, had become a day of anger and protest. In the central places, the shopkeepers made sure they had brooms ready to clear the sidewalks of broken glass, and most did not remove the metal screens from their windows at all.

* * *

In the kitchen he put on water to boil for tea and made some toast with jam and then called a cab, relishing briefly in his mastery of this small interaction in another language. As the tea began to wake him up, Eric thought about the day. It had been a perfect morning five years earlier, as everyone recalled now. But his thoughts were interrupted by a beep-beep outside: the cab was waiting.

The taxi driver smiled at him as he got in. “Buenos días, señor, ¿a dónde va usted?”

“La embajada de Estados Unidos, por favor” said Eric.

The cabbie nodded and started to drive. “¿Le molesta si subo el volúmen?” Do you mind if I raise the volume?

Eric did not mind, so he shook his head and the cabbie turned up the radio, which crackled with the iconic voice of Victor Jara, of whom Eric had never heard before coming to Chile.

“Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Uno muerto, un golpeado como jamás creí
se podría golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse
todos los temores,
uno saltando al vacío,
otro golpeándose la cabeza contra un muro
pero todos con la mirada fija en la muerte.”

Eric translated to himself, Six of our own were lost in the space of the stars. One dead, another beaten as I had never imagined a human being could be beaten. The other four wished to remove fear from themselves, one leaping into the emptiness, another striking his head against a wall, but all with their gaze fixed on death. “God damn,” he said out loud, but the taxi driver didn’t hear.

The taxi turned off of Los Leones onto Once de Septiembre and five minutes later they arrived at the US Embassy, where Chilean policemen in formal dress checked Eric’s passport before allowing him through the gate. A steady stream of somberly-dressed Americans preceded and followed Eric out of taxis and into the fortresslike embassy’s garden. In twos and threes they addressed each other in hushed tones, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. In the garden, they gathered around a temporary podium by a small patch of flowers. Eric, alone, wandered off to admire the mountains to the east, beautifully lit in the morning light, and wished that Santiago’s urban planners had decided to build in a place that obscured less of the view, or perhaps to limit the height of new buildings. Behind him, the US ambassador began to speak, and Eric turned around.

First in Spanish, the ambassador talked blandly about the grief everyone present felt, the need for togetherness and cross-cultural understanding. Then he simply read from President Bush’s prepared speech for the day. “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other,” he said. The ambassador was serious but stoic and unemotional as he recited platitude after platitude.

Eric sneered and turned away. He was embarrassed by the ambassador’s execrable Spanish accent, by his lack of creativity, by the gigantic glass office buildings, by the Starbucks he knew was right down the street. This is what we have to offer to the rest of the world? Exasperated with the present, Eric slipped into the memories that had been interrupted earlier by the taxi’s arrival. He turned his mind back to the morning, five years ago, when he had been sitting in English class, close to the window, and his government teacher had walked into the room and said, “Turn on the TV.”

Ten minutes later the class was in total silence, its attention undivided as it watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. A second plume of thick gray smoke joined the first. No one could call anyone; the cell phone circuits were jammed. At quarter to ten, CNN cut to a shot of the Pentagon spewing that same smoke from a new, gaping hole and his friend Carla screamed. Both her parents worked there, worked in that part of the E-ring. They and their offices had been blasted apart. So much grief came out of that day. Anger, too, a desire for revenge, but mostly it was just pain.

The sound of “Taps” being played mournfully by a lone bugler brought Eric back into Santiago. Marines came out and laid a wreath of flowers on a small monument next to the podium and then the mourners, perhaps 70 of them, filed out just as quietly and gravely as they had entered.

His shoulder throbbed dully as Eric walked down El Bosque towards the Metro. As he passed Roger de Flor he saw one of the other kids on his study abroad program, Lewis, on the other side of the street. He called to him and Lewis stopped and waited for Eric to cross over.

“Coming from the embassy?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Eric. “Where were you?”

“Why freeze my ass off at some ceremony? I know what happened, I don’t need them to remind me.”

“True, true,” Eric said. “I mean, it was kind of bullshit anyway, the ambassador just read Bush’s speech. He barely mentioned Chile, I wanted to be like, ‘Dude, we’re ten blocks from a street named after this date! We know what happened to us sucked, you’re the fucking ambassador, why the fuck aren’t you talking about what’s up here?’” But I thought that maybe other people wouldn’t appreciate me yelling in the middle of the ceremony.”

Lewis laughed a little. “Yeah, probably not. Where you off to now?”

“Well, I don’t really want to go home right now, you know, my family is all pinochetista and I don’t think I could handle a lecture about how great the coup was right now,” Eric said.

“Yeah, man, sucks that your family’s like that,” said Lewis. “It’s so weird that people still think that way. I mean, most don’t but so many people still support him.”

“I know, right? Where should I go instead?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m about to go to Starbucks, do some reading, if you want to come.”

“Nah, Starbucks is not what I need right now,” said Eric. “But thanks, though.”

Lewis laughed again. “Fair enough. Alright, see you mean.”

“Chao,” Eric said.

They parted ways and Eric walked the rest of the way to the station. He boarded a train and stayed on past his stop, watching as more and more people got on. No one seemed to be getting off and Eric absently wondered why. He thought about the ceremony that he had just left. It had been so sterile, so disconnected and false. Of one thing Eric was sure: Everyone there had been truly sad and had come to the embassy desiring a meaningful shared reflection and recognition of their tragedy. What they got instead was a selection from the President’s official address for the day and a wreath. They left in the same ones and twos and threes in which they had arrived, talking together in the same hushed tones as before.

At Estación Plaza Italia, the central stop on the line, the cars emptied, and Eric flowed out with the crowd through the gates and up to the vast intersection of Santiago’s main arteries. When he arrived at the top of the stairs, Eric paused and looked around and his eyes opened for what felt like the first time all day. He took in the scene that faced him. An angry crowd had gathered, chanting, banging drums, waving flags and bearing bright signs and portraits of Salvador Allende. The current of people around him dispersed into the crowd and swelled it, and the plaza rang with their fervent shouts. In the middle distance stood a line of policemen on horseback, but the throng paid it no mind. Eric saw more police peeking out of every side street up and down the main road, standing in riot gear alongside their hulking armored cars. The people around him pulsated and moved in all directions at once, but the police were very still.

His pocket vibrated: a text message. It read, “US Department of State security warning: In light of day’s events, all US citizens are advised to avoid large crowds,” and Eric was suddenly very aware that no one else in sight was wearing a blazer.
He sat down on a bench and took off the sling in order to stretch out his elbow and take his shoulder through its still-limited range of motion. Just as he was finishing this already-routine exploration of his shoulder’s pain tolerance, Eric felt the crowd snap. A great shout went up and people who had been milling about aimlessly suddenly chose a direction and started running: half towards the mounted police and half in the other direction. Eric did not know what to do, so he remained seated and watched.

A short man with a moustache stopped in front of Eric, grabbed him by the lapel and pulled him to his feet. “Qué carajo estai haciendo ahí, huevón? Ándate! Vamos!” the man shouted. What the fuck are you doing there, man? Move! Let’s go! So Eric got up and ran. Over his shoulder, he could see the mounted police advancing on the crowd, shields up against a barrage of rocks. And down the street, the armored cars were beginning to move. As he ran, Eric found to his surprise that instead of being afraid, he was exhilarated by the movement, the noise, the violence he could sense behind him. Up ahead he saw a plume of smoke and as he drew closer he realized that someone had set fire to a car parked along the sidewalk.

The flames and heat and billowing smoke transfixed Eric. He slowed to a walk and then stopped beside the car. People rushed all around him but several stopped next to him, to watch. The heat became to much and he blinked and turned away and, his concentration broken, noticed that he no longer had his sling. He wanted to go back to get it, but he realized with a jolt that the ache in his shoulder was gone. Looking back up the street, Eric saw police beating back surging young men with sticks and high-pressured hoses and felt suddenly overwhelmed by the scene, by the seething fury of the mob and the cold, systematic advance of the police. Young men, his age, alive with fear and rage, were beating at each other to commemorate the anniversary of their deeply ambivalent national trauma.

He ran again, away from the truck and the burning car, until he found himself in the lobby of a friend’s apartment building a few blocks away. He called her to no answer but then remembered that she was visiting family on the coast, so he took the elevator up to the roof and joined a small, quiet gathering of people watching the action on the streets below.

The day slouched towards twilight and then night. His fellow audience members began to move back downstairs to their apartments, but Eric could not join them. He stayed on the roof, leaning on the railing and watching as more cars went up in flames, as new skirmishes started and finished, as shop windows were shattered by stray and sometimes not-so-stray rocks. It was in the small hours of the morning when Eric finally went back out onto the street and hailed a cab to take him home. As he climbed into the taxi, his shoulder began to throb again, and he remembered his dislocated collarbone for the first time since he’d jumped up off the bench many hours earlier. He thought ruefully of the pickup soccer game where he’d injured his shoulder a few days earlier. A mid-air collision with his friend Carlos had ended with him writhing on the ground in pain and Carlos frozen between celebration for having won the header and scored a goal and guilt for having rammed Eric into the ground.

Eric smiled to himself. “Poor guy,” he thought. “At least it wasn’t confusing for me. For me, it just hurt.”

PS: I kind of hate this ending, but I couldn't think of anything that would work better there despite trying at least eight or nine different things. Any suggestions?