Los regalos, pt. 2

I’m writing this with the help of my new best friend — my smartphone, given to me for Christmas by Martin & Mary.

Other booty:

• The English Constitution (Walter Bagehot);
• The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes);
• Essays in Quasi-Realism (Simon Blackburn);
• Hard Rain Falling (Don Carpenter);
• Hons and Rebels (Jessica Mitford);
• contact lens solution;
• socks;
• candy;
• money;
• probably, something I’ve forgotten.

So it was a good Christmas.

(I stopped typing with the smartphone long ago. I switched over to my computer.)

Ana & David have been visiting from Houston — and I hope this isn’t insulting or condescending or whatever, but they both seem calmer and more contented, having been married for several months.

Winners & losers

Well, we tried, but the contest was settled when we lost two important players. El Chivo Suárez collapsed a few seconds after the kickoff. He received treatment and hobbled up and down the field but had to be subbed out before halftime. Worse, between the minutes 5 and 10, two yellow cards accrued to Álex Bolaños. … Emelec pressed hard; got a first-half goal; waited for us to tire out; and, near the end, put in two more goals. So it was easy for them, but anyway they were the better team.

The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, celebrated with Emelec at the Parrilla del Ñato.

Antonio Noboa, our team president, tweeted out some venom against Bolaños.

I viewed the match at Sabby’s house. The male Sabby loyally sat next to me and played a bridge-building game on his new smartphone. Sadly, his bridges kept on collapsing, and his ponies kept on falling into the gorge.

It’s dire

— not because of last night’s result (1 to 1) but because we were outplayed. During the first half we barely could string three or four passes together. Emelec were ballet-dancing around us. Here is some apt analysis. This link is for a video of the entire game. Emelec’s goal arrives around this time, easy-peasy, and this is our gritty equalizer.

As I said, Leg Two will be played on Sunday. The order of the tiebreakers: (1) total goals; (2) away goals; (3) penales.

I’m old enough now, I don’t feel anxious so much as resigned.

I’ll miss Stephen. We won’t see the second game together: today he went to Nicaragua with his girlfriend.

December fragments

My little cousin posted this:

“Just to give an idea of how many books can fit
in my small bedroom. This is all thanks to my
dad who basically gives me a new book every day.”
‪#‎itsanerdelthing‬ ‪#‎youshouldseehisbookcollection‬

I feel so proud.

Announcement !!!

What: Leg One of the Ecuadorian soccer championship.

Where: Estadio Monumental Banco Pichincha, Guayaquil.

When: Wednesday (tomorrow) at 8:00pm, U.S. Eastern Time.

The cheapest tickets cost $25. This is the priciest B.S.C. game I’ve heard of. On behalf of the chusma, I’m indignant.

I don’t have a TV link to offer you. Please google “Barcelona Emelec en vivo,” and then cheer for the yellow team.

Leg Two will be played on Sunday.

Today after work I walked home in a pleasant, light rain. The park that I walked through could’ve been muddier; the alley could’ve had more puddles — I wouldn’t have minded. On the street, two different motorists flipped me off, which I enjoyed. (This is how it feels to recover from depression.) When I got home, I asked Mary to light a fire for me, and I dried my socks; she told me it would’ve been easier if I’d put them in the drying machine. Here is a nice video of some people making out.

Los regalos

December is just beginning, and already we’ve erected our Charlie Brown Christmas tree and put gifts under it. Why are we so “Christmassy” this year?

Because of David. Some weeks ago, he sent us his wishlist. (Life in Houston must be very dull.) Since then, we’ve all been posting wishlists. I’m not sure how effective those lists will turn out to be. For example, I can’t buy what Mary asked for; I mean, not without withholding the Gift of Rent from her.

She, on the other hand, has been buying quite a lot of gifts. Useful gifts. Salutary gifts.

She bought a storybook for her little niece.

She’s going to buy gum surgery for her husband. (These holidays, poor Martin will subsist on liquids.)

To me, she said: “I won’t tell you what I bought you — it isn’t what you asked for, but it’s for your benefit.”

Edoarda & Stephen bought a bookcase for me, which is nice, because now I’ll be able to bring more of my books up from the basement. Stephen gave some old shoelaces to Bianca.

November fragments

So many November birthdays:

Five days ago, Scarlett Johansson turned thirty, and so did my brother, David. …

Yesterday at 6:00am Edoarda called Stephen to wish him a happy birthday. …

A few minutes later, Edoarda’s parents called from Nicaragua. “Muchas gracias, muchas gracias,” Stephen kept on saying.

Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving.

Our house is vermin-free. For longer than a week, the traps have remained unoccupied.

People have been asking about my new job at the high school.

How long have you been doing it?

About a month and a half, but it seems like forever.

What’s the craaaazzzziest thing you’ve seen?

Nothing too crazy. I saw a kid get arrested. The school’s cop pulled him into a room and yelled at him for a long time. Then they went into the principal’s office. When they came out, the cop said something else to the kid, and the kid tried to run, and the cop pancaked him and put cuffs on him. The cop was built like an NFL lineman. The kid was scrawny.

A couple of nights ago, I saw the cop on TV, telling how he cultivates relationships with the kids.

How well do YOU get along with the kids?

A few times each week, I buy donuts from them, which they’re grateful for. Otherwise, I barely talk to them. I hardly even notice when they make out with one another in the halls. I work more closely with the teachers, ordering supplies and making photocopies. I could tell you a lot about the copy machines. Whenever there’s a paper jam, a teacher emails me and I scurry off to see if the copier is broken enough for me to fill out a repair request form. Our building is big; some of the copiers are, like, two blocks away from one another. There are teachers who’ve been around for forty years who don’t know where the backup copiers are.

I could go on and on about the copiers.

Do you enjoy this job?

Very much. The teachers have vivid personalities: every day is like watching a sitcom. Also, I get free coffee, courtesy of the Social Studies dept chair.

More fauna

MORE VERMIN IN OUR HOUSE !!!

• two Sundays ago, a squirrel;
• Friday night, another mouse;
• then a mouse at 3:00 the next morning (lying in bed, I heard Martin & Mary hunting it);
• then, at dawn, another mouse.

Without much difficulty, we shooed or carried all those vermin out of the house. So far, we haven’t committed any violence against them. It was suggested that we drown one of those mice, but I protested; then Martin was going to squash it, but before he could, it ran away.

UPDATE, TUESDAY: We’ve found more mice. They’ve been getting into the house through a hole in the cellar. Martin has killed three of them, with traps.

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: This afternoon, Martin took me down to the cellar to look at the day’s catch. He’d been experimenting with different kinds of traps. Today only one mouse was caught, but now Martin knows better which traps to use and how to use them.

And what has Bianca been doing about the vermin? Nothing much.

(Photo by Edoarda)

Tonight we’re going to eat at Hacienda, for Martin’s sake. None of us, except for Martin, really likes Hacienda.

I just turned thirty-three. I feel very wise … and humble.

And calm.

These days, what do I blog about? Domestic bliss.

Gone girl

I wore my red rain poncho to school. The highschoolers thought I was disguised for Halloween, but no, I was just prepared for rain.

This afternoon, for the first time in the season, it snowed.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Mary is on quite the Gillian Flynn kick. She watched Gone Girl in the theater. When she got home, she wanted to read my copy of the novel, but I was like, No way, I’m reading it. And so she bought a copy of her own and sped through it. Then she sneaked into my bedroom and climbed over my laundry and stole my copies of Sharp Objects and Dark Places. It took her just a couple of days to speed through Sharp Objects. Dark Places is taking her a little longer to read because she keeps on having to go to her job.

I too finished reading Gone Girl. I told Mary I thought it ended (sort of) happily, but Mary said it didn’t.

(Mary likes to oscillate between extremes of darkness, e.g. Gillian Flynn, and light, e.g. our lovely cat Bianca.)

(One night, Mary was singing “Meow Mix” to Bianca. Then she put on some *real* music for us to listen to, but soon she was combining it with “Meow Mix”:

Are you going
To Scarborough Fair?
Meow, meow, meow,
Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow?)

I digress. What an ending Gone Girl (the novel) has! (I’ll try not to spoil it, but be wary.) When the Bible says that the sheep shall lie down with the lion, it doesn’t say how the sheep and the lion shall each decide to lie together. Gone Girl describes one way that that could happen. An imperfect way. Still, for imperfect creatures, what else would be appropriate? (Or possible?)

The book has three parts:

• “Boy Loses Girl”;
• “Boy Meets Girl”; and
• “Boy Gets Girl Back (Or Vice Versa).”

Part Three’s title is ambiguous. Is it about reconciliation? Or revenge? Or both?

Authors aren’t infallible. But Flynn insists that she likes both of her characters, the husband and the wife; and as awful as we may think those characters are, if someone likes them – even if it’s someone who happens to have created them – there just might be something about them to like.

A grand day off

Office-aide job A-OK.

Tutoring job old hat; still A-OK.

Dissertation not A-OK. (Old hat, though.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Along with the highschoolers, I have the day off, and so I want to use this empty moment to tell you to watch the first half of A.S. Roma vs. F.C. Bayern Munich, which was played last Tuesday for the UEFA Champions League. It was a fascinating first half. Not the prettiest first half I’d seen, but perhaps the awesomest one (and you know I never exaggerate). Bayern outscored Roma 5−0, and Roma weren’t even playing badly; Bayern were just that good. Their movements on the field were so intricate, so quick, I had trouble tracking them.

It wasn’t my favorite kind of soccer. It wasn’t effortless enough, and it wasn’t politically significant. It was astounding nonetheless.

The game should be available for a while on espn3.com.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today, out of love for Martin, I’m going to do some serious cleaning up. I’m going to clean up my bedroom, and I’m going to clean up the books that I’ve left stacked in the dining room. Also, I’ve lost my phone and I need to clean up the house to find it. Mary has the day off, too. Last night, she and I and Martin celebrated by going to the food court in the mall. We got into separate lines; I was counting out my quarters when Mary sneaked up behind me, put a five-dollar bill in my hand, and sneaked away. This melted the heart of the cashier, who tried to flirt with me. … Later, M&M and I went to Barnes & Noble, and though I didn’t have money to buy anything, I was able to look at the fonts.

The office aide

My new part-time job: secretary in the English and Social Studies depts at a local high school. (Afternoons, I continue tutoring at IUSB.) On my first workday, my new bosses didn’t have time to show me what to do, so they were like, “Just roam the halls and get acquainted with the school.” So I did that for four hours. (A security guard took pity on me and gave me a tour; later, a teacher gave me pretty much the same tour.)

Since then, I’ve been kept busier. They’ve trained me to use the photocopier, and they’ve told me which books to shelve and which books to put into boxes. I’ve spent many hours doing those things. We had a “lockdown” drill on Wednesday: it was my favorite part of the week. I had to sit for thirty minutes alone with the English dept chair, in her classroom; she kept trying to get rid of me, but whenever she’d open the door to let me out she’d see the principal or the police dogs and get nervous and close the door. After a while she let me just sit on her couch and read her Harold Bloom Shakespeare book.

Though I’m happy at my new workplace, I can’t help but dwell on its absurdities …

like, how mice scurry across the classroom floors;

like, how the guards are always having to round up the stray student-zombies who wander through the halls;

like, how already I’ve been asked to guest-lecture on philosophy (there’s an International Baccalaureate philosophy class, “Theory of Knowledge”);

like, how I have power over all the teachers because I control the photocopier staples (some aspects of this job are going to my head).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Melanie Griffith, Tippi Hedren, and a lion: they remind me of a different family and their cat.

Bad TV

So exhausting was our encounter with the mouse, I needed a two-week rest from blogging.

My parents have returned to Ecuador.

Ana & David have returned to Texas.

My old flatmate, Kenny, and his wife, Lara, have moved to California.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This will be my second year living in Mary’s & Martin’s house. I resolve (a) to do more cleaning up out of love for Martin, and (b) to uncomplainingly watch more bad TV out of love for Mary, who needs to have bad TV playing as background noise while she grades her students’ homework. (Good TV distracts her too much.) She watches such dreck as Dawson’s Creek; Kitchen Nightmares; 16 and Pregnant; and Call the Midwife, which has a birth scene in each episode. Her best show by far is Downton Abbey; alas, I’ve viewed most of that show six or seven times, and I’m not sure I could endure much more of it. (All right, I could.) … To my surprise, I’m not minding slogging through Beverly Hills 90210. I forgive its characters for being so self-important, because they’re so naïve.

The mouse (cont.)

Friday night, as I lay in bed, Stephen knocked on my door to tell me he’d seen the mouse scurrying through the vent between our rooms. Bianca still hadn’t killed the poor thing (but now we knew why she’d been waiting so long in Stephen’s armchair). … I went to sleep.

The next day, as I was napping on the couch, I again heard the mouse’s squeaking. Mary also heard it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

That night we watched Arachnophobia (which is about spiders, not mice). When the movie ended, the mouse reappeared in Stephen’s room. We hurried to our stations. Edoarda, Stephen, and Bianca cornered the mouse. Martin & Mary hid. I tried to coax the mouse into a trash can.

Fleeing, the mouse jumped into a different trash can. Its little heart was thumping.

We felt such pity for it. What to do?

We couldn’t adopt it as a pet — clearly, it’d never get along with Bianca. Nor could we humanely offer it to Bianca to eat; nor could we bring ourselves to squash it. To put it outside would be to subject it to famine, to the cold, to other predators. Yet that was what we did. I left the mouse out on the lawn, and it began to crawl away.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The next morning, a hummingbird hovered outside our kitchen window; Martin called us to watch it, but we quickly lost interest (there are plenty of hummingbirds in Ecuador). I decided to go out to look for our sorry little mouse. It had moved away from the lawn; perhaps it was beginning a new life. Then I saw it on the sidewalk. It was dead.

One by one, we went out to pay it our respects. Mary built a grave for it, with yellow flowers.

(Photo by Edoarda)

Our little predator, pt. 2

Infrequent posting. You’ve probably grown tired of looking at the same entries again and again. … The temperature has cooled, and it’s a new semester at IUSB. Due to a clerical error, I’m working fewer hours than I used to; I’ll have to get a second job. … Martin & Mary already have been teaching for several weeks. … Edoarda & Stephen are in full-time office jobs downtown. After work, they come home and watch — can you guess? — The Office. … Bianca sleeps a great deal. … I also sleep for several hours each day. … This morning, Bianca was staring hard at the dark space behind the fridge. Later, I heard a terrified “Squeak, squeak,” and sure enough, Bianca was toying with a mouse, chasing it up and down the stairs. Sometimes she’d pause and simply look at it. The tiny thing would tremble. I wished that Bianca would just end its misery.

Remix/redemption

This has been giving me the warm fuzzies.

Adoptionday

Tonight we’ll feed a piece of chicken to Bianca, the best-loved member of our household. It was exactly one year ago when Martin & Mary adopted her from the Humane Society. (Most of these pictures are from Mary’s Facebook page.)

Bianca’s first day in the house. How small she was!

Another photo with Martin, her favorite human.

A sad sight: Mary dries Bianca after her first (and only) bath.

Beast and mistress: a tender moment.

Bianca in her box, watching the World Cup.

Bianca with John-Paul (and a mouse). See how JP’s calves reflect the light.

A portrait by Edoarda.

The “best man” speech

More or less what I said last weekend:

My brother David is a remarkable young man. … He and I are very close — he’s the first child and I’m the second child — no, wait, I’m first and he’s second. … Well, we constantly compete against one another. We compulsively compete. But since this is David’s wedding-day, I’ve decided to treat him nicely. I’m going to mention a few things that he does better than I do.

First of all, David plays soccer better than I do. Some days ago, we had his bachelor party, and of course we played soccer; and even though no one showed David any favoritism, he still managed to score the most goals. David is a very aggressive soccer player. Actually, he’s aggressive at many things. He’s aggressive at driving … he’s aggressive in conversation … he’s aggressive at eating. Once, when he was very little — five or six years old — he ate fifteen pancakes in one breakfast. And not so long ago, he and a couple of the groomsmen each ate four Big Macs. (I wasn’t one of those groomsmen.) But even though he’s so aggressive, David has a gentle, patient side. He’s very good with animals (many of you know how much he loves Toby, the dog he’s going to live with). And he’s very good with small children … even better than I am. 

Another thing that David and I compete over, though we don’t say so, is reading books. Perhaps we tacitly agree that when it comes to reading books, neither of us is the winner. But in one respect David certainly comes out ahead, which is that he reads more books than I do. He’s read all of Harry Potter; I haven’t done that. And he’s read all of Twilight; I haven’t done that. Already this year he’s read twenty-five books. Just in the month of July, he read seven different books from beginning to end. And they were difficult books — philosophy books. And this was while David was busy watching the World Cup and preparing for his wedding.

OK, I should say something about the wedding (I’ve finished talking about competition). In his sermon, my dad said that when you choose whom you marry, you can’t really predict what’s going to happen. And I think that that’s right. But it still seems that some ways of choosing a husband or a wife are better, or wiser, than others. For example, it’s good to choose someone whom you can consistently put up with. Now, Ana and David are very unlike one another. But they’ve known each other for many years and in many different situations. They have as good an idea of what they’re getting into as anyone could have. What I’m saying is, I think they’ve made the best sort of choice; I think they’ve chosen wisely.

That’s all.

The fatties

Last night we watched the final game of the Copa Libertadores. Pope Francis’s team, San Lorenzo de Almagro, defeated Club Nacional of Asunción. It was the first Copa Libertadores title for San Lorenzo.

The winning goal was by one of my favorite players in the world, Néstor “The Fatty” Ortigoza, of whom I wrote in 2012.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

David’s bachelor party will occur this evening. We’ll have sushi at a restaurant; but first, for two hours, we’ll play soccer at our church, on cement. It’s been four years since I last played on cement.

Saturday will be David’s wedding-day.

The groomsmen have been asked to wear the same suits that were worn last year for Kenny’s wedding. I’m too fat to wear the same pants, so I’ll wear those that David wore last year. He’ll wear an even larger pair of pants.

Our little predator

Bianca has been snatching flies out of the air … and last night she strutted into the living room, a mouse between her teeth. She let it go. It darted under the furniture and then into the kitchen. In vain she hunted it. … All night she tensely waited for it to come out from behind the fridge. … Today she seems exhausted.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

An awful period of sniffling and coughing and taking Mucinex and walking around with a spittoon, all from having deprived myself of sleep.

Soccer, pt. 2,855

Ever since FIFA created the Puskas Award for the year’s most beautiful goal in 2009, it has been my dream that an own goal would one day win it. And with goals like this, we’re definitely getting closer to that day.
[Brooks Peck]

After the World Cup, life goes on. Stephen and I have been watching the semifinals of the Copa Libertadores. In the South American leagues, the players dribble a lot — unlike the World Cup players, e.g., the Germans, who averaged 1.1 seconds in possession.

Still, it’s fun to watch these unremarkable South Americans: their play is more expressive, more spontaneous. Less scripted. Less like synchronized swimming.

Trouble is, in soccer, spontaneity and improvisation take too long to do; they require too much thinking. It’s a losing strategy. As the sport develops, play will become more clinical, more robotic. There’ll be fewer moments of inspiration.

Like vultures, we’ll have to get our kicks relishing misfortune.

Argentina 0 (4), Holland 0 (2); Germany 1, Argentina 0

The Dutch and the Argentinians were very tidy — so tidy, the ball hardly went near to either goal. But see how bright their colors were.

The final was spectacular: I don’t recall a better one. (I’m too young to remember the final of 1986.) The Argentinians were much less tentative than against the Dutch. Their goal chances were dangerous and well-crafted — better than the Germans’ — though the Germans held the ball better.

In the end, attrition made the difference.

Mario Götze, a late substitute, drifted into empty space, unmarked by Martín Demichelis and the weary Ezequiel Garay (cf. Mourinho’s comments). A pass was floated in to Götze: he chest-trapped, volleyed, scored.

Mediocre earlier in the tournament, he finished as the hero.

Germany 7, Brazil 1, pt. 2

The video:

Germany 7, Brazil 1

It was a curious feeling, knowing that what I was watching was so significant, it’d be remembered for decades by the whole world.

Some people will accuse Germany of ruthlessness. But four of the early goals came during a six-minute period, and that couldn’t have been malicious. The Germans simply were going through their paces. If the Brazilians were too flustered to play basic defense, what ought the Germans to have done? Refrained from shooting?

Since 2011, the Brazilians have looked downright incompetent. They’ve offered nothing to the sport. This year, with home-field clout, they’ve gotten away with it. Until last night.

The world can be grateful to Germany for all those goals.

Because of the goals, there was no chance of another refereeing scandal. There were no bogus penalties, as against Croatia; there was no egregious, overlooked violence, as against Colombia.

Even the announcers, usually so fond of pedigree, turned against Brazil. With this scoreline, there was no sugarcoating this team’s insipidity.

The thing from IKEA

Four underwhelming semifinalists.

This article is correct: this has not been the most interesting World Cup.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Yesterday, Mary and Mother went to an IKEA near Chicago. They ate the meatballs and came home with this thing:

(Photo by Edoarda)

(It has the same color as our curtains. Mary says this is our “accent” color.)

Mary and I assembled the thing in our living room, and then we wheeled it into the kitchen. We stood and looked at the thing. We wondered what to use it for:

• for holding books (specifically, cookbooks);
• for holding whatever other books I might happen to be carrying around the house;
• for holding Mary’s diabetes supplies (one shelf for her insulin bottles, another for her syringes, etc.);
• for holding Bianca (“We could wheel her around the house,” we said. Bianca grimaced and tried to escape down the stairs, but Mary picked her up and put her on top of the thing. Bianca immediately jumped off and ran away).

Unsure what to do with the thing, we went into the living room and lay on the couches. Bianca played with the packing debris. She was quite contented.

Presently Stephen came into the house and looked at the thing. “You could use it for holding books or medical supplies,” he said. “Or for this.” He picked up Bianca and put her on top of the thing. The cat jumped off and ran away.

Revenge

The group stage has ended, and so has the Round of 16. Last Friday was the first gameless day. I lay on the couch, quivering: an addict going through withdrawal.

Today I’ll cheer for Colombia.

On Sunday I played pickup soccer. As usual, Stephen was there, and so was David, who’s visiting from Texas. We all played on the same team. Our opponents protested — the teams were “unfair,” they said — but we vehemently denied this (David has gotten very fat, and I’m no spring chicken, either). And so, in inhuman heat, we trudged and panted up and down the field. We won nearly all of our seven or eight games (we twice tied and never lost). Our opponents scored just one goal all afternoon. The brothers all scored golazos.

Our parents have arrived from Ecuador. For the next few months they (and David) will live a couple of blocks away from us in a tiny, one-bedroom house.

Costa Rica 0, England 0; Uruguay 1, Italy 0; Colombia 4, Japan 1; Greece 2, Ivory Coast 1

They fight
They bite
They bite and fight and bite
Bite, bite, bite
Fight, fight, fight

The Uruguayans scored late against the Italians, who spent most of the game running out the clock. What everyone is talking about, though, is how Luis Suárez bit yet another opponent. (It’s the third time in his career he’s done this.) And so the tournament probably is over for one of the world’s most exciting players.

Now Uruguay will likely lose against Colombia, the team with the most flair. Last night the Colombian bench players overwhelmed the Japanese. Their fourth goal was one of the tournament’s prettiest.

Touchingly, the Colombians gave some minutes to Faryd Mondragón — their 1998 goalie, now a substitute — making him, at 43, the oldest player in World Cup history.

The Greeks, who’d previously done nothing, knocked out the Ivorians with a stoppage-time penalty. Was it well-called? You decide. The referee was Ecuadorian. Today Ecuador will play its last group game; the referee is from the Ivory Coast.

Holland 2, Chile 0; Spain 3, Australia 0; Brazil 4, Cameroon 1; Mexico 3, Croatia 1

Yesterday I failed to write about these games.

For me the most notable game was Mexico’s. Rafa Márquez scored a vital goal in a third consecutive World Cup.

Belgium 1, Russia 0; Algeria 4, South Korea 2; Portugal 2, USA 2

Belgium boringly qualified for Round 2. …

Hats off to the Algerians. Their fourth goal was especially well-crafted. And hats off to the Koreans for trying all game long. …

The U.S. came within a minute of qualifying against the mediocre Portuguese. I roared with pleasure when Silvestre Varela scored the tying goal.

Now Ghana and Germany, the better teams, are poised to qualify instead of the U.S.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This morning, before I walked to work, I checked the forecast: 0% chance of rain … and then a downpour caught me as I was waiting for a train to pass. I called Martin, and he kindly brought dry clothes.

Argentina 1, Iran 0; Germany 2, Ghana 2; Nigeria 1, Bosnia and Herzegovina 0

Tragedy for the Bosnians and Herzegovinians. A goal by Edin Džeko was wrongly disallowed. The Nigerians scored, killed time, and won. The Europeans were eliminated. …

Against Argentina, the Iranians had the better chances — and then Messi made a wondergoal. …

In the most thrilling match so far, the Ghanaians led late. My heart sank when the Germans brought on Miroslav Klose. I knew that he would score.

Costa Rica 1, Italy 0; France 5, Switzerland 2; Ecuador 2, Honduras 1

The Costa Ricans are for real.

The Swiss’s collapse was sorrier than Spain’s. Some of the French goals were as soft as cotton.

Victory for Ecuador. … We looked awful. We looked like we were in the 2002 World Cup: tentative, nervy. Without Castillo, we couldn’t dominate the midfield. It wasn’t pleasing to behold.

A few other notes:

(1) The Hondurans have such dirty players. They tackle viciously; they handle deliberately. Playing beautifully against them is impossible. A cynical, cynical team.

(2) Our second goal against Honduras was a carbon copy of our goal against the Swiss — and of several earlier goals (here and here). A foul against Jefferson Montero on the left side of the box; a bullet cross by Walter Ayoví; a close-range header. This trick may be unstoppable.

Colombia 2, Ivory Coast 1; Uruguay 2, England 1; Greece 0, Japan 0

Tonight we’ll play against Honduras. Do-or-die.

Uruguayan Luis Suárez, inactive previously, scored twice against the English. What a difference one player makes. … Against the Ivorians, Colombia’s star was Old Man Yepes, playing his one-hundredth game (this tournament, I’ve not seen a neater tackler). His team qualified for Round 2 due to Japan’s dour draw with Greece.

Holland 3, Australia 2; Chile 2, Spain 0; Croatia 4, Cameroon 0

Yesterday, three interesting games. … The Australians played valiantly against the Dutch, and briefly led, but eventually succumbed. … The Spanish were slow and imprecise; the Chileans, without difficulty, eliminated them. … Alex Song of Cameroon was red-carded for a vicious elbow-foul. His teammates were then humiliated by Croatia; toward the end, they headbutted one another.

We hosted Community Dinner for the church. The humans all enjoyed themselves, but Bianca was frightened by the children; she hid all night with Mary & Martin, in their bedroom. Even now, she twitches at the slightest noise. All of us are heart-wrenched.

Belgium 2, Algeria 1; Brazil 0, Mexico 0; Russia 1, South Korea 1

Good grief, who played yesterday? I barely remember.

People will be praising the Mexicans’ effort against Brazil. Not that it was bad; but as I said before, this Brazilian team is nothing special.

I’m glad the Algerians got a goal. Last World Cup, they didn’t.

Fabio Capello, do you demoralize your goalies? Last World Cup, in the first game, your English goalie allowed a weak shot to trickle in; and this time, your Russian goalie did the same.

Germany 4, Portugal 0; Iran 0, Nigeria 0; USA 2, Ghana 1

Self-destruction by the Portuguese. …

Iran/Nigeria. … “Dreadful stuff,” the British commentator said. Afterward, Alexi Lalas, the U.S. commentator, apologized for the game.

The day got worse. …

The Ghanaians steamrolled over the U.S. players — I mean, made them look pathetic — only to fail, again and again, just outside the box. Bad cross after bad cross. Bad shot after bad shot. No self-belief. “Just bring the ball inside the box, on the ground,” I thought. “They can’t defend against that.” And that was how, at last, the Ghanaians scored their tying goal. Then they switched off their brains and allowed the U.S. to steal the victory.

Switzerland 2, Ecuador 1; France 3, Honduras 0; Argentina 2, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1

Crushing sadness after yesterday’s defeat. …

I think that Bianca knows when we’re sad. She sits closer to us.

I’ve read that cats aren’t susceptible to “contagious” yawning; but I could swear I’ve seen Bianca do it.

Colombia 3, Greece 0; Costa Rica 3, Uruguay 1; Italy 2, England 1; Ivory Coast 2, Japan 1

Pray for Ecuador to beat Switzerland today. …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The frontrunners for the Tiniest Passing award are the Colombians. Putt, putt, putt. At times they used a four-player phalanx (Stephen’s phrase) to advance the ball against the Greeks.

The Costa Ricans were surprisingly good.

Italy/England. … Meh. Who cares.

The Japanese were tidy and cunning, but in the end the Ivorians were too skilful. Didier Drogba, who started on the bench, wreaked havoc after entering the game.

Four games in one day … grueling.

Mexico 1, Cameroon 0; Holland 5, Spain 1; Chile 3, Australia 1

Lots of rain; lots of goals. Against Cameroon, Mexico scored three. The first two were wrongly disallowed. … The big news is how heavy Spain’s defeat was against the Netherlands. Afterward, I listened to the analyses of Roberto Martínez (a Spaniard) and Ruud van Nistelrooy (a Dutchman): van Nistelrooy praised the distinctive “Dutch” style of play; Martínez’s veins looked set to burst. It’s the Spanish, of course, whose play resembles the classic “Dutch” style. The Dutch now simply kick long passes to Robben and to van Persie. This time, with those strikers so “in form” — and with Spain’s defense so flustered and its attack so uninspired — the Netherlands’ bet paid off. But I’m not sure what broader lesson can be gained from this. … In the third game, the Chileans were wasteful in front of the Australians’ goal: they shot too little and passed too much. Thus the score was closer than it needed to be, and at the end the Chileans looked exhausted.

Brazil 3, Croatia 1

If that’s a penalty, then we can just stop playing football right now. … It’s ridiculous. If we continue in this way, we will have a circus. … If that’s how we start the World Cup, then we may as well give up and go home now.
[Niko Kovač, Croatian manager]

The Croatians played well, I thought, but the referee gifted the host country the longer straw. I hope this doesn’t keep on happening. This is the most inept Brazilian team I’ve seen; I don’t much fear it, but I do fear the referees.

In our house we had eleven spectators: ten humans and Bianca. We all thought the same about the penalty; and, in Ecuador, so did my mother.

It begins

And now Castillo isn’t going to the World Cup; his injury won’t heal quickly enough. Oswaldo Minda is going in his place.

Today the tournament begins. I’ll try to comment regularly.

Gatsby

The nation rejoices: Castillo’s ligament isn’t torn. Though he won’t play for a couple of weeks, he’ll be included in our World Cup roster.

The score of our last warm-up, against England: 2 to 2.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Martin and I watch the new Gatsby movie. (He might show it to his highschoolers.) We take turns cringing. … Though I’ve read the book twice, and seen an opera of it, I hardly remember the story. What I notice this time is how Gatsby keeps on repeating the phrase “old sport.” (I recall a similar faux pas by a character in From Russia with Love, the Bond novel. Is Fleming spoofing Fitzgerald?) … Downtown, Sabby (the male) says of a pedestrian: “There goes the Gatsby of South Bend.” What a sad description to be known by! And how ridiculous that I, so removed from the local “scene,” should know exactly who that person is. … Reputation is a horrid thing. When I’m introduced to new people, they look startled — and then they say they know my reputation. Those are the words they use. Nothing makes me queasier.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Come, meet Bianca,” I say to Cristian. The little beast is resting on a chair. She raises her chin, and Cristian strokes it. “You are beautiful,” he tells her. “At last I meet this cat — the Internet sensation.”

(This photo is nothing special; but with a laptop camera it’s the best I can do to show Bianca sleeping in her box.)

Injuries

World Cup warm-ups. … We played one a few weeks ago, against the Netherlands in Amsterdam (1 to 1); and this afternoon, in Arlington, TX, Mexico defeated us, 3 to 1. … It was among the most unsettling games I’ve watched. Segundo Castillo and Mexico’s Luis Montes badly collided; Montes’s leg was broken, and Castillo may have hurt his ACL. … Later, Mexico’s Rafael Márquez also was taken to the hospital. …

A few tactical notes. … We didn’t use our regular forwards, and we didn’t try to pressure our opponents on their side of the field, as we usually do. A very odd experiment. … All that carnage, to no clear purpose.

I lose a race

You play like an old man, Brandon tells me as I limp off the field (not that he’s very limber). I am an old man, I answer. But the truth is, I’ve let myself go; I could refurbish my motor if I wanted to.

This morning, by the river, I run five miles (I can do that any day, irrespective of my rustiness). Half a mile ahead jogs a slim young woman. Slim but slow. Ten minutes later, I’ve passed her. Another slim young woman appears in the distance; five more minutes, and I’ve passed her, too. On a bridge I pass another woman. This one is walking her dog. The bridge is narrow, but the dog is leashed, and the woman pulls it close to her. Comfortably ahead, I slow my pace. This is the life.

Just as I relax, though, I’m passed by a crafty old man: one of these “health fiends.” This won’t do. (A year ago I was on the trail constantly, and no one ever passed me.)

I speed up: for a while I keep pace behind this presumptuous old man. But eventually he pulls well ahead. His legs are toned, but not more than mine. Last year, I would have lapped him.

At home, worn out, I sleep for several hours.

May fragments

Mary had her birthday. Stephen and I bought her an artichoke sandwich and a pie, and Martin bought her some cheese puffs. … The upstairs has been rather hot; Bianca, our dear furball, has been lingering in the cool basement. Missing her, we’ve begun conditioning the air. … This week is my week off, between school terms. I wish I could travel. “You could explore the ruins of Detroit,” say Sabby. “You could clean the basement,” says Martin (everyone’s so archaeological).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I bought The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. I agree with this reviewer:

While reading [Alexander Pruss’s] very intricate essay [on the Eucharist], it occurred to me that many medieval scholastic philosophers, if brought into the present age and given a copy of this book, would be overjoyed — while the traditional enemies of scholasticism would see most of this book as logical nitpicking.

Pruss is the leading theorist of the Real Presence (and of other Romish oddities). His Handbook essay focuses on how Christ could, at one and the same time, be in different places, e.g. in different communion wafers across the world. This problem has some pedigree; Leibniz and Aquinas offer solutions. But what non-nerd ever gave it as the main reason for doubting transubstantiation? Pruss’s own solution refers to time travel. Here is theorizing which is both inelegant and useless.

The ladies of the house

Book titles

Alliteration is pleasing:

Nicholas Nickleby

Pride and Prejudice

The Woman in White

And so is repetition:

Man and Superman

Beasts and Super-Beasts

(Though it’s a parody, Saki’s is perhaps the most delightful book title of all.)

Surely one of the greatest titlers is Robert Louis Stevenson. How simple his titles are — and yet how evocative, how iconic:

Kidnapped

Treasure Island

A Child’s Garden of Verses

Other titles benefit from garish incomprehensibility:

The Catcher in the Rye

A Clockwork Orange

Dame Iris’s books are so well-titled, I compulsively begin reading them (and then I don’t finish):

Under the Net

A Severed Head

A Fairly Honourable Defeat
The Flight from the Enchanter
The Unicorn

The Sandcastle

The Sea, the Sea

Nuns and Soldiers

The Nice and the Good

Long, repetitive titles are suitable for short-story collections:

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Chesterton’s best titles, like his sentences, are paradoxical or alliterative (or both):

The Man Who Was Thursday
The Everlasting Man
The Innocence/The Incredulity of Father Brown
Four Faultless Felons

Chandler’s are shot through with tragic romance:

The Big Sleep

The Long Goodbye

The Lady in the Lake (alliterative, grisly — and allusive)

Crime titles tend to be good so long as they aren’t cookie-cutter. The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear are good titles; Holmes’s Adventures, Memoirs, and Return are not. No title is more urgent than this one.

And no publisher seduces better than Harlequin.

The WAG

Saturday night. We’re in our back yard, using our new patio furniture. We’ve bought Bianca a leash and a harness; even so, she refuses to join us outside. …

Aaaannnddd now we’re inside. We missed Bianca too much to stay apart from her. Also, it’s warmer in here.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

You should come to watch your bf play soccer, I tell Edoarda. You probably don’t realize how good he is. Stephen is very, very good.

Absentmindedly she replies: I think somebody told me that.

I’m not that good, says Stephen.

Don’t listen to him, I tell Edoarda. Stephen is truly excellent.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Easter Sunday. Extravagant breakfast at the church; then, pickup soccer from 2:00 to 4:30. Edoarda goes with us. The sole WAG, she watches from the bench, the sun beating down on her. Stephen and I play quite well, but this doesn’t alleviate Edoarda’s misery. Did you see my golazos?, I ask. Uh huh, she murmurs. With my toe I arch a lovely assist to the male Sabby (I’ve gone back to wearing Venus shoes instead of cleats, and, once again, my touch is beautifully precise). I turn toward the bench: Did you see that pass? Uh huh, says Edoarda.

There’s nothing to do but sit, she says.

Well, that’s how it is, watching soccer.

Afterward, driving home, Stephen turns to Edoarda: Did you like how we played? Yes, Edoarda smiles. I did.

A journey to Big Lots

So pleasant was her spring break (the Everglades; Key West), Mary itched to spend more time outside; and so today she dragged me out with her to Big Lots. These patio chairs — one for her, one for Martin — were what she came away with. Not to be outdone, I bought this chair (the blue one) and a giant bag of popcorn.

When we got home, we arranged our chairs next to the hot tub and sat wordlessly. But soon Mary missed Bianca, who never leaves the house. Mary went inside; she returned, the cat clutched to her breast; Bianca, terrified of the hot tub (that great expanse of water) — or perhaps of nature — squirmed out of Mary’s arms and fled indoors.

How, then, would Mary manage? (For how could she enjoy her patio furniture without her precious cat?)

“Bianca!” she coaxed. “Come out here, Bianca!” She held the screen door open. Tentatively, fearfully, the little nose emerged. The beast surveyed the landscape.

“It’s all right, Kitty. Come out, explore the porch.”

The cat extended her paw onto the step. Quickly, she withdrew it.

She sniffed the air, put out her paw again, remained in place.

Fraktur

I thought I’d return to the theme of Nazism. This is from Alexander Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface:

The classifiers of type place all informal gothics under the French heading lettre bâtarde. … A. F. Johnson, the English expert on early types, prefers simply to use the term bastard, although the Latinized bastarda is more generally employed by historians. … 

By 1490 bâtardes were in wide use in Germany, where the name applied to them, apparently arbitrarily, was Schwabacher (there is no evident reason why the Bavarian town Schwabach was thus memorialized, as there was no typefounding or even printing at that location). 

Until the middle of the sixteenth century the Schwabacher style was what was most used for German-language printing; it was saliently used at Basel in Switzerland, then a center of scholarly printing. The next important bâtarde to be developed in Germany was the Fraktur design, which for the following four centuries served as the German national type. 

Fraktur is a more condensed letter than the Schwabacher, and varies from the earlier type in being more pointed, with sharply tapered ascenders; printers naturally had a fondness for this narrower form, which made the type more economical in book work. The design of Fraktur is credited to the Nuremberg calligrapher Johann Neudörferr, and at the request of Emperor Maximilian it was cut in metal for type in 1513. Within the next decade a number of other Frakturs were produced, and by the 1540s it was beginning to replace Schwabacher as the preferred letter for German printing. … 

In the long run it was the classical influence of the Renaissance that spelled the end of the prevalence that the gothic hands had maintained in northern Europe since the twelfth century. Only in Germany did it remain a convention, where it survived as a text type even into the twentieth century. Elsewhere, by the close of the eighteenth century black letter was being used primarily for headings and for specialized liturgical printing. In every other instance the roman letter forms had taken over the world of printing. 

Even in Germany, where Fraktur was the national type, the black letter has had a curious history. During the middle years of the nineteenth century, a great period of European nationalism, the use of Fraktur was inevitably strengthened — sufficiently, in fact, to offset the modernizing influence of the Industrial Revolution, particularly through the dominance of German technical and scientific literature. With the growth of international advertising in the early years of the present century, the use of roman type in Germany increased, but even as late as 1930 almost sixty percent of the new books being published were still composed in the German black letter (also called Deutsche Schriften), and almost every newspaper stayed with the Fraktur. 

When Adolf Hitler came to power, his National Socialist Party decreed that the Fraktur be considered the only appropriate form for the German language. This resulted in a wider use of Fraktur in the twentieth century than in earlier times. In 1940, however, it was officially determined that Fraktur interfered with the German plan of world domination, since outside Germany the roman forms prevailed. Thus, the Nazis then issued a proclamation that roman would henceforth be the German standard type, the explanation given being that Fraktur was a ‘Schwabacher-Jewish type.’ 

In postwar Germany roman has become the standard type, although with some difficulty, as the schoolbooks through which all adults had learned their alphabet were composed in black letter. But there is little likelihood that Fraktur will ever again be the national type; now less than one percent of German books appear in that hand. As a display letter, however, the face has been revived.

Anglophilia

By now you should be tired of reading, every fall and spring, how the misty weather makes me anglophilic — how, suddenly, I want to think about punting on rivers, eating suet, having séances in gloomy houses. (I want to think about these things, not do them.) … Dystopias even seem agreeable. Right now I’m reading The Children of Men and envying the protagonists. Yes: hoodlums roam the countryside; but it’s jolly to be reminded of A Clockwork Orange. Yes: the government is ruthless; and so conspirators must plot in beautiful old churches, or in gardens, or museums. … What the survivalists hoard is wine. Where they live is Oxford. … Had C.S. Lewis remained in Ulster, would we have liked him just as well? Would we have been as interested in his life and writings? … What accounts for the forcefulness of anglophilia? … Even the Nazis, deep down, harbored affection for the English. Which was why they lost.

Mythopoeia

From The Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter:

On this Saturday night in 1931, after they had dined, Lewis took his guests on a walk through the Magdalen grounds. They strolled along Addison’s Walk (the path which runs beside several streams of the River Cherwell) and here they began to discuss metaphor and myth. 

Lewis had never underestimated the power of myth. Far from it, for one of his earliest loves had been the Norse myth of the dying god Balder. … But he still did not believe in the myths that delighted him. Beautiful and moving though such stories might be, they were (he said) ultimately untrue. As he expressed it to Tolkien, myths are ‘lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver’. 

No, said Tolkien. They are not lies. 

Just then (Lewis afterwards recalled) there was ‘a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We held our breath’. 

When Tolkien resumed, he took his argument from the very thing that they were watching. 

You look at trees, he said, and call them ‘trees’, and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star’, and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree’, ‘star’, were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of ‘trees’ and ‘stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jewelled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was ‘myth-woven and elf-patterned’. 

This was not a new notion to Lewis. … Nor, said Lewis, did it effectively answer his point that myths are lies. 

But, replied Tolkien, man is not ultimately a liar. He may pervert his thoughts into lies, but he comes from God, and it is from God that he draws his ultimate ideals. Lewis agreed: he had, indeed, accepted something like this notion for many years. Therefore, Tolkien continued, not merely the abstract thoughts of man but also his imaginative inventions must originate with God, and must in consequence reflect something of eternal truth. In making a myth, in practising ‘mythopoeia’ and peopling the world with elves and dragons and goblins, a storyteller, or ‘sub-creator’ as Tolkien liked to call such a person, is actually fulfilling God’s purpose, and reflecting a splintered fragment of the true light. Pagan myths are therefore never just ‘lies’: there is always something of the truth in them. 

They talked on, until Lewis was convinced by the force of Tolkien’s argument. But he had another question to put to his friends, and as it was late they decided to go indoors to Lewis’s rooms on Staircase III of New Buildings. There, he recorded, ‘we continued on Christianity’. 

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Lewis had a particular reason for holding back from Christianity. He did not think it was necessarily untrue: indeed he had examined the historicity of the Gospels, and had come to the conclusion that he was ‘nearly certain that it really happened’. What was still preventing him from becoming a Christian was the fact that he found it irrelevant. 

As he himself put it, he could not see ‘how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now — except in so far as his example could help us’. And he knew that Christ’s example as a man and a teacher was not the centre of the Christian story. ‘Right in the centre,’ he said, ‘in the Gospels and in St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious, expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed — “propitiation” — “sacrifice” — “the blood of the Lamb”.’ He had ridiculed them because they seemed not only silly and shocking but meaningless. What was the point of it all? How could the death and resurrection of Christ have ‘saved the world’? 

Tolkien answered him immediately. Indeed, he said, the solution was actually a development of what he had been saying earlier. Had he not shown how pagan myths were, in fact, God expressing himself through the minds of poets, and using the images of their ‘mythopoeia’ to express fragments of his eternal truth? Well then, Christianity (he said) is exactly the same thing — with the enormous difference that the poet who invented it was God Himself, and the images He used were real men and actual history.

Do you mean, asked Lewis, that the death and resurrection of Christ is the old ‘dying god’ story all over again? 

Yes, Tolkien answered, except that here is a real Dying God, with a precise location in history and definite historical consequences. The old myth has become a fact. But it still retains the character of a myth. So that in asking what it ‘meant’, Lewis was really being rather absurd. Did he ask what the story of Balder or Adonis or any of the other dying gods in pagan myth ‘meant’? No, of course not. He enjoyed these stories, ‘tasted’ them, and got something from them that he could not get from abstract argument. Could he not transfer that attitude, that appreciation of story, to the life and death of Christ? Could he not treat it as a story, be fully aware that he could draw nourishment from it which he could never find in a list of abstract truths? Could he not realise that it is a myth, and make himself receptive to it? For, Tolkien said, if God is mythopoetic, man must become mypthopathic. …