| The fact that an American scored the opening goal does not escape me. McBride couldn’t pull it through in the World Cup to get us out of the group stage, but when it’s Arsenal, oh well then, consider that can of whoop-ass officially opened, and not like a can of soda, no, he ground his car key into the side of it, because he was shotgunning it at a house party. Asshole. But what can you do? Such is the irony of professional soccer. Rather, it exposes the obvious loyalty issues that arise in the juxtaposition of club soccer versus international soccer. Let me break this down for you; I feel like a lot of Americans don’t bother to understand this distinction (and why should they, when they don’t bother to understand soccer in general?). Here’s what we got: most (good) players are on two teams. They have their club team, like Arsenal, or Fulham, or Manchester United. That’s comparable to, say, the Yankees, or the Baltimore Orioles, or the Texas Rangers. Then they have their national team. Like, say England or France, which is obviously comparable to America or Japan. The baseball analogy working so far? Good. The only thing is, baseball isn’t nearly as multi-national as soccer. So when you have Japan versus America, there might be like, one player it’s awkward for. But in international soccer, there are usually at least three or something players on opposing teams that you at least like, if not actively support because they’re on your club team. It’s such an awkward feeling. For example: I fell in love with Kaka during the 2006 World Cup. Then I found out he plays for AC Milan, and suddenly I felt kind of dirty. When it comes to Italian soccer, I am foolishly a Parma supporter; so I found myself torn. Here’s this vibrant, exciting player, who reminds me a lot of Cesc Fabregas, but he plays for a team who routinely beats Parma. I still haven’t resolved this issue. I kind of pushed it to the back of my head, I put my man-love for Kaka to the side. So, you ask, why do I root for Parma? Let’s check one thing; ah yes, Parma is still in the relegation zone. They’ve won four games this season, out of 28. They are rather pathetic. My dad consistently makes fun of their shabby record, and the fact that I root for some losers. His mockery seals my faith in them, however. Like a rebellious child, I shout, “I don’t care, they’re Parma, and they’re bad ass!” Which of course is a flagrant lie. They have 10 games to get 3 points higher than another team, which is a considerable task for them. But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with them, much like I did with Arsenal. I picked them, and I’ve really had no reason to look back. Why’d I pick them, you ask now. Well here’s the thing. I realized that I needed an Italian team to follow, and I had no loyalty to any of them (the Kaka-love had not yet taken hold). I quickly picked Parma for the simple reason that Stendhal had written a book titled The Charterhouse of Parma. I read this book around the same time I read Anna Karenina, and both affected my writing on a deep scale. I like a lot of books, and the styles in which they are written (Coup de Grace by Marguerite Yourcenar and The Stranger by Albert Camus spring readily to mind), but those two books showed me that things I had been doing were not wrong, and in fact could be very, very right. Tolstoy demonstrated that large casts in a novel were entirely plausible, and could still be emotionally affecting. I had been wrestling for some time with my desire to write about a lot of characters, but felt that maybe I was losing something in the process (for example, The Age of Lost Innocence, that novel I never work on, has somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 primary and secondary characters). Of course, by having excessive characters, the novel would be quite long, but it can still work. But Stendhal, they way he wrote, was like discovering Jesus or something. He eschewed the standard approach to detail, instead opting for dialogue, action, and emotional exploration. He also did it with a rather large cast, at least by Romantic standards (four main characters, with a number of supporting roles). You see, early in the nineteenth century, there was a large focus on the individual, on personal exploration, within nature and society. Tolstoy and Stendhal presented some of the first Realist views however. They removed solitary exploration and expanded the scope to study how internal emotions affected outward actions, and how those actions impacted others both within and without. There is an obvious chain of events that they review critically: they thus merged Romanticism with social realities to achieve early Realism. I write quite a bit like Stendhal: I always found physical details to be boring. I was instead interested in what people were doing and thinking, and the interplay between those two facets. Reading Stendhal was like reading what I wished I could write, and as a result, it was a watershed. I read an article in the New Yorker recently about how Picasso was thoroughly inspired by Rembrandt, how he riffed extensively on paintings by Rembrandt and updated them with his Modernist sensibility. I can see a similar thing happening in my relationship with Stendhal (and to a lesser extent, Tolstoy). I have taken Stendhal’s love of the real and laid a post-modernist map down on top. That is to say, I am positioning myself as the next branch in the tree of novel-writing: from Stendhal to Tolstoy to Mann to Kafka to Böll to Kundera to … me? I fucking hope so. Of course, if wishes were horses… I’d be eating steak. At some point, I need to stop writing here, and start writing The Age of Lost Innocence. That project has been treading water for about a year now. Maybe it’s no longer relevant to where I am in life? Something about it fails to grab a-hold of me. Alcova still appears mildly interesting, but since my sleeping pattern has gone to hell in a hand-basket I haven’t had the energy to really work on that, either. The only project I can muster any kind of energy towards is this, but I frequently worry about the quality I present here. This project is approaching 30,000 words, but what have I really said? What have I really done? I feel like I’m building sandcastles during a hurricane. I think part of it is due to the scattered nature of my desires, presently. I’ve grown confidence in my personal identity, so maybe the quarter-life crisis is actually coming to a close, but my wants, they are still in shambles. I am, of course, referring specifically to girls. I want a girlfriend, but none really attract me. I wish I was still with Michelle, but we all know where that stands. I can’t sleep for more than four hours at a time at night, and I’m drinking more coffee as a result. I was driving to work today, and suddenly the sensation that work was eroding my spirit leapt up. What a tacky thing to think, I immediately reacted, but that did not change how true the emotion was. My head felt stuffed, my body felt automatic; I was driving through lights to get to work, so I can drive through more lights to get home, so I can watch basketball and go to sleep. I feel wiped out, but I am also beginning to sense that I don’t care. That worries me to no end. The more wiped out I am, the less I can write. The only reason this project is as alive as it is, is because my ego drives me to throw some shit on the wall that three people will see. I need to talk about myself, I need to explore how utterly useless my life is but how utterly happy I should be with it, how ungrateful I am that I’m leading so immediately successful a life. It all comes down to this sleeplessness that I am experiencing, I think. The more tired I am, the more willing I am to throw open my arms and welcome in the depressing thoughts. I am letting myself beat myself, and my writing is the collateral damage. The one thing that makes me happier than music (and yes, both precede sex; I am well aware of how not sexualized I am) is slowly bleeding to death. One of three things will happen: I will find the energy somewhere to write, despite this fatigue; I will get better sleep and my writing will return to me like a lover lost ten years ago in Italy; or my writing will die, and so to with it will go my hopes, my dreams, the only reasons I don’t despair entirely. I can't let that happen. I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen.
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