Stopping to Smell the Flowers

One of the great pleasures of literature is the unexpected: Those “insignificant” passages that, while you are engrossed in the narrative, make you pause. It is as if you are running along a path when suddenly a flower or some other unexpected small distraction causes you to halt your run, perhaps even leaving you wondering why you stopped. This is a novelist’s craft and unique talent, to create such a passage that may seem insignificant yet which speaks to us profoundly in some way. Oh, and to somehow make it appear effortless. 

This passage from Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea struck me this way:

But let’s suppose another way of considering her, which was that she had a special conviction of imagination. Few of us do, to be honest. We wish and wish and often with fury but never very deeply. For if we did, we’d see how the world can sometimes split open, in just the way we hope. That it and we are, in fact, unbounded. Free.

Earworms: Real Thing

Tune-Yards (stylized as tUnE-yArDs, but that just doesn’t roll too easily off the typing fingers), the project of artist Merrill Garbus, is one of the most interesting bands going. Her percussive rhythms are interesting and challenging, with tinges of African influences throughout. But most importantly, Garbus is one of the bravest songwriters out there, unafraid of controversial material – her lyrics tackle racism, violence, climate change and more. Yet the heavy content is lifted by the melodic, sing-song nature of her music. She also brings a visual artist’s style to her videos and, just as her songs blend serious lyricism with lilting melodies and toe-tapping rhythm, her videos are thoughtful and whimsical visual experiences.

Here’s the latest earworm burrowed in my brain, Real Thing from the album Nikki-Nack:

The Chronicles of FC Arrogance, Part I

I have followed sports all of my life, which is getting on toward a half-century now. As someone born around the time when Major League Baseball and NFL franchises landed in Atlanta, my favored teams were naturally those of my home city.  As a result, I grew to dislike the many teams that routinely beat my hometown heroes within their respective divisions: In the 1970s and 1980s, those would be the Cincinnati Reds, the Dodgers, the 49ers, the Los Angeles Rams, etc.

Yet my healthy dislike of these organizations was always tinged with an envy and admiration for the way they operated: The Big Red Machine of the Cincinnati Reds remain among the best teams I ever watched; the Tommy Lasorda Dodgers oozed class; and the San Francisco Dodgers of the DeBartolo/Walsh-Seifert eras just kept amassing – and retaining – incredible talent.

(There was also the provincial rivalry of the New Orleans Saints, which involved dislike without the respect.)

Unusually for a boy growing up in the Deep South, I always had a curiosity with The Other Football, soccer. I think it had something to do with the insatiable appetite for sports I had as a kid. What was this other sport and why were so many people outside the US so interested in it? Why couldn’t I know about it and absorb everything about it the way I did with other sports?

So one day in the late 1970s I picked up my local, small-town newspaper and saw that the recreation department would be holding tryouts for a new soccer league. Here was my chance for empiricism! On the noted date I excitedly hopped on my bike and headed to the tryouts. Sadly, but in retrospect certainly unsurprisingly, there weren’t even enough local youths interested enough to form a starting XI, much less an entire league.

Yet my curiosity remained, and in 1982 I watched my first World Cup Finals on a grainy UHF channel – and then I knew what it was all about, and I knew I wanted to know more. Information on the sport was still hard to come by. I bought a short-wave radio in the mid-80s and spent many late nights scouring the dial and country-hopping to glean any information I could.

Finally, in the Age of the Internet, I could at last read about the pro leagues overseas. I picked a team – I don’t know how or why, but I found myself hooked on Arsenal FC. I was a fan with a passing interest in the club, but it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to live in the UK that the team became a passionate pursuit.

As with my favored Atlanta teams, I gave myself over to the passion disliking Arsenal’s rivals. And these too were often comprised of dislike tempered with a grudging admiration, particularly the Manchester United teams under Sir Alex Ferguson.

But there is now one club – in fact, More Than A Club – I have grown to detest with no admiration whatsoever. No, I do not speak of Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal’s local rival and bitter foe. Rather, the club that operates with an arrogance I have not seen matched in any sport, ever. Not even the Steinbrenner Yankees.

I speak of FC Barcelona. FC Arrogance.

So whenever they like, FC Barcelona feels they can swoop in and buy an Arsenal player. Which is their right – it is a free market. Naturally, we Arsenal fans have come to resent this policy of treating our proud club as their own AAA affiliate (but that’s a subject for another post).

In the last season, it became apparent that what the Catalan club lacked was defense, specifically central defenders.  Coincidentally it seems, Arsenal had one who, after numerous calamitous mistakes and injuries, had been relegated to the bench for virtually the entirety of last season.

Thus Thomas Vermaelan had become surplus to Arsenal requirements. Barcelona had lots of cash. Everybody wins, right? 

Wrong.

It's also felt in Catalonia that Arsenal have overcharged Barcelona for transfers including that of Alex Song, Alexander Hleb and the return of Cesc Fabregas. That Thomas Vermaelen still hasn't played a competitive match since joining from Arsenal this summer is also starting to cause irritation, with it felt that Arsenal knew they were selling a dud.

Why, that's a lovely Catalan Whine, Vintage ’14: “You made us buy a bad player, even though he was the player we wanted to buy!”

The sad part is, they will have their revenge. With FIFA in their pockets, there is no rule that applies to FC Arrogance. Count on it.