Hot Rock to You

16 December 2006

Arsenal 2 - 2 Portsmouth

My dad and I discussed over email the recent skirmishes between Manchester United fans and those of AS Roma. The worst part about the whole thing, to me, is that there could easily be some kind of ban on drinking alcohol at the match, or worse yet, a ban on away fans for international matches, as a direct result of the fights. No one died, but there were a number of injuries, and Italy has already suffered from a fatal clash earlier this year. During the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s, England had some of the wildest football supporters. They would get trashed, pile onto busses and trains, and basically roam the streets of other towns looking for a fight at 11 in the morning, four hours before the game. After some tragic accidents (re: Heysel and Hillsborough), politicians were able to push through legislation that forced the Premiere League to clean up its act. Before this, most soccer stadiums had both seating and a general standing area. These general standing areas were hotbeds of hooligan activity, and fights would break out regularly. These fights would create crushes of people, where huge crowds surge in one direction, and if the stadium is old enough, you end up with a lot of people dead, as in Hillsborough. After the legislation was passed, these standing areas were banned. They still exist elsewhere in Europe, but they probably don't have much of a lifespan anymore. So how do you avoid these kinds of tragedies? Ban alcohol? Wipe out the terraces? You can't prevent everything though; on 2 February 2007, a police officer was killed outside a Catania-Palermo match. Do you tell these fans not to come? Your attendance probably wouldn't suffer, as it would become a more family-oriented sport (which is what has largely happened in England). There is, however, something you would lose. Something intangible. An essence would be lost. The essence of football as rough and tumble, ungilded, honest, in your face, blue-collar heart-on-your-sleeve, would begin to evaporate. If you stop serving alcohol, people are more likely to go to a local pub and watch the game there (and, more likely than not, find some fights in or around that pub). Would this be an improvement? The gang violence in Italy isn't as rampant, I don't think, as it was in England during the 1980s. Then, if you were a British guy under the age of 25, you were, more likely than not, a hooligan. That culture has dimished in part, but still exists, as it does in Italy, and France, Spain, Germany. The culture is severely stunted. My dad mused with unfortunate clarity during our conversation that "an awful lot of people don't really deserve the freedom they have, so we all get 'crowd controlled'." In simpler times, when I was in high school, I thought myself a socialist utopian. As college wound its tendrils into me, I slowly decided that socialism was not the answer. In the sharp question of "controlled but safe" against "free and dangerous," I began to like the sound of free and dangerous. I was of course turning a bit into a hooligan myself at this time: perhaps that explains the ideological shift. Yet I don't tear it up like I did junior year of college; I haven't broken any windows or terrorized my friends for a couple of years. Still, the idea of control disgusts me. Then I remember that people have died, and probably will die. I don't know where that bright line lies, between necessary safety and true freedom. The importance of the issue seems implied because humans are social creatures; we must live with each other and avoid killing each other. So we regulate our lifestyle in that things will not get out of hand. Contrast that with: our governments wage unpopular wars overseas, letting poor, faceless foreigners die so that we may feel "safer." The moral high ground always seems taller from the other side. Now the crux of the matter: Seung-hui Cho. Gun control. If one of the teachers had had a gun, they could have stopped him. If he hadn't been able to buy a gun, he couldn't have killed 32 people. We don't know which of those scenarios is more likely. What if he only killed himself because he was running out of ammo? If a teacher had another gun, and he took out that teacher, he'd have more bullets. Now we're looking at maybe 35 people dead. If he hadn't had access to guns, maybe he would have turned to knives: stalking college girls and killing them in dark alleys, a la Jack the Ripper (although ethically juxtaposed). Should we ban knives too? Do we jail people we think are crazy? Who write shitty plays? How can we determine any of this? Oh right. We can't. You could take every tool capable of hurting people away from Seung-hui, and he might still find away to injure or kill. Guns don't kill people; American society represses and shunts many people, some of whom are mentally unbalanced enough that it sets the stage for an explosion of this caliber. I'll tell you right now: Seung-hui is the worst shooter in American history, but he won't stay on top of that list for long. In ten years there will be a worse one. You can make the background checks more rigorous, and thus avoid such rampant violence, but serial killers and psychos are bred here about as much as popular movie stars. I can't break down the elements for you, why it happens here with such alarming rapidity, but look at it this way: we don't really have sports riots. The girl who was killed in Boston a couple years ago is very much the outlier. But twenty years ago, that'd have been another grain of sand on the beach that was British football. 39 people died in the Heysel in 1985. It was a tragedy, sure, and Britain was internationally humiliated for generating the conditions which led to all the deaths, but it wasn't until Hillsborough four years later, when 96 people died, that reforms throughout English football began. Club memberships were instituted, closed-circuit televisions installed; essentially you had to sign your name down to get in, and you still get watched by "them." My fear is that it will take a worse school-shooting for anything to change, and that when those changes come, they will begin to pave the way for more centralized power in the federal government. Think about it: some deranged kid shoots upwards of 60 people in a school. Metal detectors and cameras are going to be installed; there will be a social rejection of nerds and goths (who are already the socially persecuted); mentally-challenged or damaged people will receive less sympathy. Is the freedom to bear arms worth the loss of privacy? I don't think so. But in this day and age, with easy access to weapons that can wipe out a considerable number of lives, that's the trade we're making. Britain already made its decision; UEFA is slowly being confronted with the problem. In time, America will endure a worse tragedy than Virginia Tech, and it too will come to a crossroads. I have very little doubt that freedom will come at the sacrifice of privacy, for that has been our track record thus far. We have even sacrificed other countries for our freedom. At some point, we have to stop ourselves: we're like a drunken sailor on the third day of a bender. We've lost any sight of reason and respond with reactionary vigor. I halted my crazy ways before anything got out of hand, before I got arrested or fined or injured. There is a breaking point between fighting for freedom (re: American Revolution) and fighting for control (re: the Iraq War). We have become the British Empire: we must realize it before we're torn asunder. Europe reformed its colonial ways only in the scarred aftermath of two world wars. The trick is to see the disasters before they crash upon us (the trick is to notice a violently-repressed, socially disturbed man) and destroy this once-great nation (the trick is to notice that the walls of Heysel Stadium are in poor shape: they would collapse eventually, regardless of reckless Liverpool fans). The walls of Heysel were kin to Seung-hui Cho; let us hope that America is not.

Salvation Holdout Central

13 December 2006

Wigan Athletic 0 - 1 Arsenal
Adebayor 88'

I laughed when I saw how we won this game. A wink and a nod kind of way to win, with a goal in the 88th minute. I would normally treat Wigan like any other lesser team of the EPL (like, say, Sheffield United) but my friend Jay decided to follow them, after he had heard enough of my Gunners talk. I've been surprised how diligent he has been to check scores and keep abreast of their news. Sure he isn't going out of his way to find copies of their games to watch, but not everyone is as obsessive as I am. It is just nice to watch him make the effort. Of course, he picked the team Wigan because it reminds him of Jermaine Wiggins, but I won't (can't?) be picky. This project has arrived at a dead-end, in terms of my extemporaneous discussions (Arsenal dead-ended back in February); I shall henceforth be returning to the topic of sports and the world. I originally wanted to help Americans gain an appreciation for a sport none of them seem too inclined to care about, and initially the prism was other sports. A smart, obvious tactic: look, soccer has things that remind me of baseball. Eventually however, the prism became me. Actually that's wrong. The prism became soccer, and I was the object in need of understanding. That is not what we are here for, and I apologize for the digression. Since my fascination with soccer has increased considerably in the last year, I've picked up a couple of books regarding the culture surrounding it. I don't live in Britain, so I have to try and understand it this way, through personal accounts, and so on. The first book I read was the book that inspired this project, as I've mentioned before, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. His book is a stunning look into the history of Arsenal, and it certainly increased my love of the team a thousand-fold. The most fascinating parts of it were how he would always find something in his life comparable to how Arsenal was doing. When they won the double in 1971, it’s as if he was on top of the world. He was 14 or so at the time, perhaps at the peak of childhood, before the truth of adolescence really sets in. I’ve moved on to some newer books, that my dad gave me for Christmas; one about the depths of hooliganism, the other much more focused on the culture of the hooligan, or casual, as they are often called. The casual is a football hooligan who is wearing a form of camouflage: nice clothes. They wear casual clothing, that is often designer, and is always expensive. They started to do this in order to avoid being singled out by the police. The culture of the casual began in the late 1970s, although its roots of course stretch into the history of football. Eventually the police caught on that kids who dressed like punks were often punks themselves, and would preemptively kick them out of soccer games. So, the punks adapted. They started to wear nice clothes; the police would have no idea. They’d get kicked out eventually for fighting, but they would get the chance to fight in the stadium. The book is fascinating though, because the trends in clothing change absurdly quickly, much like the trends in high fashion. Whereas punk-chic was around for probably two years, no one designer would stay in for more than 8 months. I started looking up the designers the author mentioned, and found some clothes I wanted to buy. Note to self: … get on that. The hooligan is on my mind, however, for another reason. AS Roma played Manchester United yesterday, and there were some clashes between fans, with police as the third wheel. Both of those clubs have pretty ardent supporters, who will punch and kick you if you talk any shit. There have been calls of unnecessary brutality on both sides, which makes me think, well maybe it was necessary. The problem with all this is, I can understand where the hooligans are coming from. When a team really gets in your blood, you get fired up to defend them. This is a poor example, and I may have mentioned this earlier, but last fall, one of my friends (jokingly, even!) talked some shit about Arsenal, and then went on about Chelsea, and well I just fucking tackled him. Given I was pretty drunk sure, but I’ve never even been to an Arsenal match and I just went at him. In my mind, the soccer hooligan is the modern day pirate. The analogy isn’t perfect I know, but I think the image works well enough. They are romanticized in that they are always pictured fighting police and other fans in ‘honor’ of their team. Then of course, the sensible people say, oh that’s not romantic, they’re beating other people up and getting beat up themselves. That’s stupid. People said the same about pirates back in the day: oh you’re robbing other people, and shooting good people, this is bad. What have we done with them now? Johnny Depp drunkenly swaggers his way through one-liners and bullets. I’m telling you, there could easily, so very easily, be a movie saga made exactly like that about some British ruffians trekking down to Germany and raiding hotels. It’d be fucking hilarious, it’d be like European Vacation meets Pirates of the Caribbean, and everyone would see it. It would rake in the dough. I should shut up and start working on this movie. I do, in a sense, wish I was a football hooligan. I wish I lived in England, rather I wish I had grown up there, so I could have paraded around with other 13 year olds in clothing we can’t afford (we got it, of course, by thieving). But is it all love of the romantic imagery? Do I want to be a football hooligan simply because it’s foreign and exotic? It’s not like being a bored American kid, who would roll tires down hills, hang out in parking lots, and get drunk while watching Beauty and the Geek. It just… it seems cool, right? Grass is greener, I get it, &c. I think part of it comes from my desire to express my love for Arsenal, and to be understood. I don’t mean that I want to be surrounded by Gunners fans, but if I walk around wearing a jersey for Cesc Fabregas or something in England, people will know who he is. People might engage with me: “Oh, he signed that big contract, right, eh? Eight years, wot.” It’s my desire to be understood, yes, but it’s also as if I am participating in a dialogue that does not exist over here, or is very muted. It is special to find someone who even follows the EPL or the Champion’s League (though thank God they’ve started showing that on ESPN, that’s pretty fucking cool), let alone someone who follows Arsenal. But my steps to engage in this dialogue are hopeless because it does not occur here, it occurs there, over the vast ocean. It is like listening to old, 1970s punk rock: most people here just don’t. But I feel like they should. Am I hoping for something that just won’t, just can’t happen? Is this entire project, to get Americans to like soccer, is it hopeless? Should I just move to England? I should begin an experiment: I should start talking about soccer with more people. So far I’ve stuck to the three or four people I know who enjoy it. My friends don’t count: they don’t really care about sports, at all, except baseball a little bit, and that only because we finally got the Nationals. I’ll work on this; we’ll see what happens.

I Think Everything Counts a Little More than We Think

10 December 2006

Chelsea 1 - 1 Arsenal
Flamini 78' (F)
Essien 85' (A)

This is the kind of game that only Chelsea can hand out; you think victory is yours, you're 12 minutes away from taking down one of the top dogs, but they scramble back and equalise. The immense depression that sets in after these 7 minutes is indescribable: it is like seeing fate, a very bad fate, crush itself upon you, grinning, bile dripping from its mouth onto your face. It's like watching the Patriots decimate the Jets; you knew it would happen, but goddammit, you kind of hoped it wouldn't, maybe this time, things would be different, maybe this time your fate would be different. Matches like these wear your spirit down; like so many things in life, you can only take so much. When you think about it, there are so many teams competing, just in the English Premiere League, twenty to be exact, that the odds are pretty low of being able to wipe enough of them out to win anything. I say this towards the end of the season, as Arsenal quietly settles into fourth place, the same as last season: we're better than 16 other teams, sure, but three others have spat in our faces. We wipe it off though, indignantly. We continue to fight. We can't push any further forward, but stranded on our island of humiliation, the worst of the best teams, we shout into the night that we won't cow to you. I've spent so much time in the last month struggling to accept being dumped. Michelle gave me the old "it's not you, it's me" routine--not in so many words, but that was the jist. No one believes that when it happens to them. It's probably ego, the belief that everything which happens around you is because of you, not someone else. Of course, it's hard to avoid that. I read an interview today of Carl Newman, the conductor of The New Pornographers, and he talks about how he deals with criticism. "If it's a bad review, it makes you sad, so, well, that doesn't help. And if it's a good review, well, what does that do? Does it make your ego bigger? That's not so productive either." Getting dumped is like failing a class or getting fired. You might fail the class because you didn't had disagreements with the teacher, and you might get fired due to layoffs, but it doesn't change the fact that you were cut. It catches you off guard and suddenly you're stuck with overwhelming feelings of being insufficient. To combat my feelings of worthlessness, I've been wandering the same corridors where I met Michelle: online dating. I have a fair amount of free time at work, so I spend a good portion of it strolling the halls, looking at pictures of women, breaking down any flaws I notice off the bat, noting anything I like especially. I contact a few, a smaller few contact me back. My compulsive checking becomes an addiction, as I seek any confirmation of value: please, someone tell me I'm still good, sure Michelle left me, but she's only one girl, I have likeable qualities, please, tell me it's true. It wears me out: like watching Arsenal give up an equalising goal to Chelsea, as these girls rotate in and out of my interest in a revolving door of insecurity, I slowly hollow out. The attractive ones become empty, the unattractive ones fade into the internet. I grab my hair and check the websites again: there is nothing here for me, but like a sick person who can't stop throwing up, I check, and I check, I check again, maybe this time I will be vindicated. The internet has turned us all into representations of ourselves, and I scoff at these two-dimensional digital portrayals, but I need them to tell me I am something. It's a natural reaction I think, it's like the rebound girlfriend of the 21st century. Instead of dating whomever I can snag at a bar, I spread my wings out through the internet. It's poetic in a way. I am seeking confirmation of my self in the same venue that I first found it via Michelle. It as if I am trying to figure out which of us was the outlier: was it me, with my high standards and shy attitude, or her with her personal struggles to find herself? Maybe neither of us was unique. Maybe our relationship was the outlier, the estranged part of this reality. Like most things in my life, I've CSIed this corpse of a relationship into oblivion. I've examined more angles than exist, I've pushed my moods up and down, granted myself freedom and shackled myself with depression. I've tried moving on and I've tried accepting it, but I still think about her as I go to sleep, I still have one of the hair pins she left over here. We don't talk (aside from one quick indiscretion on my part), which has been a great decision: I'd be in much worse shape now if we did. However, we do still read each other's blogs, which is almost just as bad. I want to stop reading it, but I can't, God help me, I can't. I decided today that, in order to try and stop reading her blog, and to stop looking at online dating sites, to cleanse my palate of girls, if you will, I decided that I would immerse myself in sports. I would spend as much free time as I have at work looking up stats, checking scores, reading histories: I don't care if I have to start following the Chilean Premiera Division (which I have: Colo Colo for the win!), I will drown myself in sports. Magnificently, mercifully, it worked today. Only as I left work did it dawn on me that I had not once, not once, even wanted to look at Michelle's blog. Of course, with that notion hounding me, I became possessed more than ever to check her blog. As soon as I got home from work, I looked: I was rewarded for my failure with the most confusing, most hurtful thing she has ever written. It wasn't, on the surface, about me, but I got vertigo as I juxtaposed her thoughts with our relationship. I felt as if I had been sucker punched. For the first time, I feel a little mad at her. A little angry. So many things she could never, or would never, tell me. The results of this sucker punch are that I begin to feel like I never really knew her, the true her. Maybe these are aspects of her personality that are only now coming to light, but I feel sad that she didn't feel comfortable enough exploring them with me. Maybe she didn't want to. Insecurity rears its ugly head again. I feel more confident however in my plan to focus on sports, to continue running, to wrap myself up in my music, to keep writing, to strengthen my vision of myself. Everyone thinks “the break-up” is their fault because, to a greater or lesser extent, it is: there is a design of perfection that they don’t meet. But there might not be anything they can do, because if the design of perfection is loneliness, well. Like everything in life, like failing a class or getting fired, being dumped forces you not to accept the event, but to accept yourself. A sliver of your true self. I am this person, who was not right for this class, who was not right for this job, who was not right for this person. The ego is damaged: oh, right, I am human, I am imperfect. I don’t like that Michelle broke up with me, and I don’t like that Michelle is different from what I thought she was, but that just shows you I was not right for her or vice versa. I move forward: shaken, but standing. I will not look back, I will not feel sad any longer. I will throw out this extemporaneous hair clip. No longer will I pine over her writings. I am done with this. I am done.

The Usual Struggle Between Fear and Love

6 December 2006

FC Porto 0 – 0 Arsenal (Champion’s League)

Aw, our first nil-nil of the season. How not exciting. But what can you do. Obviously, avoid scoring goals. Who wants those. They smell funny. The problem with the panic attacks is that they often come in waves, that is, once I have one, the topic is on my mind, and thus easier to steer towards when I’m trying to fall asleep or whatever. That is to say, I’ve probably had one a day for the last four days. Sometimes mild, sometimes a little more extreme. Maybe this is why I have had trouble sleeping recently, I don’t really know. The sleeping thing is just adding to my mental fatigue: between the persistent panic attacks and lack of sleep, I’m beginning to feel battered, like those old piers that you see rising up out of the beach sand, trailing into the waters, the planks jutting in awkward directions, the wood soaked to a permanent black, barnacles rising up them like smoke from a fire. I’ve started running again; I haven’t been running in over a year. The truth of the matter is that I hate it, I hate running with all my soul, but it is the best way to get exercise, and I am woefully out of shape. But that’s not even why I have started running again; I started in order to get better sleep. I thought, if I go running, and burn more excess energy, then I’ll sleep better. Boy was I wrong. I went running yesterday, had a pretty good run, and then last night, I had probably the worst sleep of my life. I woke up around five times from 3 to 9am, and didn’t sleep at all from 6 to 7:30am. I called into work at that point, and left a message with my boss, informing her I would not be showing up. I think I slept then, I think I did but God at this point I’m not even sure anymore. Sometimes I lie in bed, for what feels like 15 minutes, and I look at the clock to find out that 40 minutes have passed; I would swear to you that I haven’t slept, but I have no idea anymore. Sleep has become this depressing sphere of uncertainty, a realm that perpetuates my ceaseless exhaustion. I don’t think I’ve been really awake for a very long time. I’ve taken a lot of steps to try and rectify this. I cleaned up my diet, I stopped drinking any forms of caffeine, I’ve changed my sleeping positions at night, I’m taking a melatonin supplement (a natural drug that your body produces when it’s nighttime), and now I’m running, and none of it has cured my insomnia. I’m worried I need a new bed, but I’m really worried that won’t solve the problem. I just want to sleep, for eight hours every night, uninterrupted. I can’t express how much this is starting to drive me crazy. And the panic attacks. Saturday morning, I’m hungover-like, taking a shower to wash away the cigarettes and chicken wings from the night before, and I have a powerful panic attack. I grabbed the unused towel rack in the shower and shouted, slammed my hands against the tiles, and collapsed under the shower water, shaking, crying. This panic attack was different though: I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t in a public place where I had to stifle the fear. The panic washed over me with the water, and hugged me like a caring parent. It wouldn’t leave. I sat there in the shower for some minutes, confronting my neurotic fear of the unknown. Slowly I stood up, as I began to realize something. I am afraid of death. But I’m afraid of death for everyone else, too. I don’t want you to have to experience the unending spiral of nothingness that occurs upon death. I worry for you. I want to vomit when I think about my grandfathers, my great aunt, and how they will never feel or think again: but then my worry extrapolates. I feel scared for the average citizens in Iraq who will die from a car-bomb, I mourn the banished emotions of the dead in World War 2, I imagine Mikhail Lermontov, that beautiful Russian rebel, I imagine him painting rivers and mountains and then being cut down during his prime in a duel, the dead emperors of Rome and the lost futures of the Children’s Crusade, the wrongly executed of the French Revolution and the Holocaust, the annihilated in Hiroshima, and those exterminated by the Black Plague. All the death in the world, past and present, weighs upon my conscience. Then I think of the people I know, who are alive. I think of my dad, and his unending desire to watch sports. My mom, and her love of using branches found on hiking paths as Christmas trees. My grandmother, and her strong dislike of appearing in photographs. My coworker Jay, and his good-natured laugh. My old teacher Mr. Uveges, and his fascination with computer coding. My first crush Tova, and her impish grin. My old best friend Gene, and his disarming friendliness with everyone. My cousin Monica, and how she insists on telling me every detail in whatever book she’s reading at the time. The list of people I think about proliferates out of control, until I am imagining all of humanity, everybody working and living together, smiling, crying, loving, hating, punching, kissing, swimming through beautiful blue water and walking over faded brown dirt, I see them all, and suddenly the fear of death is gone, and is replaced by unending love. This society that we live in is all kinds of fucked up, a society where we try and make ourselves happy but end up fucking other people up, but we’re all so beautiful because we’re here and we’re trying. We’re trying to make it good, we’re trying to make everyone happy. Maybe you’re not happy, and maybe I’m not, but we’re figuring out what makes us happy, because that’s all we can do, anything else is giving up, surrendering to the neuroses that our society has instilled within us. Becoming happy while living in this world is the challenge that is presented to us as we grow up, and we’re all out here, wrestling with these worries and inadequacies just to make it right. If you’re alive, I love you, I love you because you’re here with me and that helps me, I’m not alone in my fear, and our happiness together will push us past our worries. I’m still scared of death, but I’ll be okay with dying if I have made other people’s experiences here a little bit happier. These feelings, this huge cataclysm of fear and love, struck me during that shower on Saturday. As lame as it all sounds, it was an amazing feeling; I suddenly felt comfortable with everything, and I just wanted to live. I just wanted to be. And I was, and it was amazing. Happiness is learning acceptance; of yourself and your fears, of humanity and its mistakes, of this world and its mortality. I’m tired, forever tired, and I’m still terrified of dying, but I’m slowly accepting it all, and it’s making me happier. You have to accept it, really. The only other choice is leading an unfulfilling life, and dying scared and alone at the end. Come on, let’s stop talking about this. Let’s get outside. The sun is shining, the temperature is up, and I would like nothing more than to hang out with you.