EXTRA

I was in prison and you came to visit me.
[Matthew 25:36]

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If you aren’t Ecuadorian, you might not appreciate this story. And if you’re very, very Ecuadorian, with no outsider’s perspective, you might not appreciate it, either. But I’ll try to explain it.

The Russian soccer league is on holiday. One of its employees — Felipe Caicedo, Ecuadorian goalscorer — is using his time off to play soccer in his homeland, for charity. (1) A week ago he played in a fundraiser in Esmeraldas. (2) More recently he’s been visiting prisoners in Guayaquil, bringing them food (5000 kg of rice, 280 chickens) and playing in their soccer tournament.

He explains how God called him to do this:

Mira, estaba en mi cama y recordé la Peni Champions, lo leí en el EXTRA y era como si Dios me decía lo que tenía que hacer, y me puse como meta venir hasta acá.

When Stephen read this to me, I laughed for five minutes.

Translation:

I was in bed and remembered [the prison soccer tournament]; I read about it in the EXTRA and it was as if God were telling me what to do. …

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EL DIARIO EXTRA is a tabloid, a purveyor of sex and graphic violence, infamous for its lurid photos and shocking headlines:

¡Pum! contra un camión

Con un arma mató a siete

¡Mató al entenado a “cuchillo limpio”!

Una piedra en el camino … ¡lo mató!

This is Ecuador all over: horror viewed with a certain innocence. It isn’t strange for a Christian to admit to reading this. EXTRA is our most popular newspaper.

Caicedo explains why he serves the prisoners:

Son personas que por cosas de la vida están acá y qué mejor de venir y poder estar unas horas y hacer que se olviden de sus problemas, y si eso sirve de algo gracias a Dios.

(“They’re people who, because of life’s circumstances, are here [in prison]. What could be better than to come and stay a few hours and distract them from their troubles? If this is useful, then thanks be to God.”)

“Life’s circumstances.” Ordinary disasters. Violent porn culled from daily life. One reads it for amusement, then hears the call of God and visits the local prison to comfort the broken.

Christmas 2012

Christmastime: family, family, and more family. It’s been kind of nice.

I hadn’t expected that Mary & Martin would be here in South Bend — they’d intended to go to Illinois — but on Christmas Eve, Mary got an infection and had to be admitted to Memorial Hospital. I visited her for several hours. It was kind of nice.

She’s out of the hospital now. She’s better.

I spent three consecutive days with my Uncle John, my Aunt Lorena, and their daughters, Annie & Vickie. Today I went to their house for Christmas dinner. At first they were surprised, but then they remembered they’d invited me. We ate spaghetti. It was good. … I convinced my aunt and cousins to read Wuthering Heights with me, one chapter each day. I’ve never read it. My aunt has, several times.

Annie was given a tree for Christmas — a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Here it is:

:) :) :)

Tomorrow is Carlos Muñoz Day.

Romaniacs, pt. 862: The twins (and their father)

This was how they looked in 2006:

And in 2012 the twins are in middle school, more bashful, more aware of boys. Their openness is gone. Now they stare downward, hair veiling their eyes.

As usual, I give them unsolicited advice:

“When a boy likes you, be nice to him.”

They look up shyly and smile.

(The advice is from the heart, but upon reflection seems incomplete. Perhaps I should have said: “Be nice to the boy — provided he’s not deluded, or narcissistic, or a non-Christian …”)

(Or maybe such provisos are too complicated, or beside the point. Maybe the most effective principle really is, simply, Be Nice.)

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I’ve known these friends since they were infants. They used to be wild but submissive; now they’re quiet but rebellious. Their father suffers constant rejection from them. He bears it cheerfully enough. What could he still teach to such full-minded creatures? They will no longer listen to him: in writing they inform him, “Your pounts are erelivent, your judgmints are too.” What a handicap for a philosopher, to be disarmed of his points and judgments! It would appear that his only recourse is to love.

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We go into a green-carpeted warehouse. This is where the Hispanic girls have their soccer league; the twins (Romaniacs) play for one of the teams. The style of play is pinball. The league’s purpose is to teach girls not to fear the ball, not to shirk from getting blasted in the face. (This happens again and again.)

I am unimpressed. As the twins’ father and I recline in our chairs and watch the bloodbath, I mention girls’ concussion rates. I mention the superior youth training at F.C. Barcelona. He shrugs it all off. Are my points irrelevant? And are my judgments, too?

Better to discuss my friend’s research on forgiveness. Forgiveness is what he thinks about now. This, finally, is worth prioritizing: what forgiveness is, what a forgiving person is. Not what dating is, or debating: those pursuits may have some value, but the fact is, people are alienated from each other more than they realize. Forgiveness must be cultivated first.

More Yeats

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Before the World Was Made

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity’s displayed:
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I’d have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

A First Confession

I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.

I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man’s attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.

Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

Her Triumph

I did the dragon’s will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you answered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

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A literary gathering

Kenny had invited over some Koreans and Japanese. When I walked in, the party was winding down. The revelers were sitting on the floor with their dregs of Asian booze; Lost in Translation was on TV, but nobody was paying attention.

I was an instant hit. “You are very handsome,” said the Asians. (Males, all of them.)

I decided these guys were all right.

“All Americans are very handsome,” said the Asians.

This irked me, for I knew that by “Americans” they meant gringos, not South Americans. But I quietly forgave them.

Soon I had them debating which was better – Korea or Japan. Or rather, I had the Koreans debating against each other. The Japanese wouldn’t debate that issue; to them, the answer was clear enough.

Then I showed them which novel I’d been reading that day: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. There were grunts of approval all around. “He’s a good writer,” said one of the Koreans. “He describes everything.” “What do you mean, everything?” said his compatriot. “I mean, he describes all the clothes everyone wears,” explained the first Korean.

I hadn’t noticed that, but I’d noticed how Murakami would describe everyone’s food: spaghetti, stir-fry, cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. I really like it when a novelist will do that; it’s a trick I associate with Hemingway. That prosaic sensualist. That glutton.

The first Korean had earned a degree in English literature, but his favorite writer was Yeats. And so tonight I looked at some of Yeats’s poems.

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A Crazed Girl

That crazed girl improvising her music,
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, ‘O sea-starved hungry sea.’

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