Sifting.

In a college town, the end of classes vivisects the community. Connections are broken and entire social structures collapse upon themselves, only to be spontaneously rebuilt in the fall. In the meantime, those students left behind often feel themselves crushed under the weight of connections that snap instantly and fly back in their faces.

I am one of them this summer, at least for the month of June. Nearly everyone I know in Eugene is gone and the town seems dead because of it. I am disconnected--I try to reach out and touch someone, but feel myself grasping only warm, muggy air. It's easy to forget I am even part of the human race at all, to feel that even if a tree fell in the woods and I heard it, it still would go down as silent.

But reassurance appears in the strangest of places and yesterday, that was in a pair of heavy cardboard boxes stored behind my cousin's house. They contained the personal affects left by her grandmother and her parents decided to sift through them with my help.

Virginia O'Connell, who left the boxes behind when she died, is not a blood relative of mine. Her son, Ken, married my mother's first cousin, Gwyn, and their daughter lived in the house where the boxes were stored. Looking through them now was strange since she died long ago--I didn't, despite my journalistic instincts, ask Ken how long ago she had died or why we were only looking now.

But I was glad they had waited because it gave me a chance to see what was inside the boxes. Virginia was a hoarder, like nearly everyone on my mother's side of the family. She kept not just fine silver spoons and crystal bowls, but detritus as well.

At one point, we unearthed a stack of coupons for five cent discounts on laundry detergent. The profoundest thing about history is that its grandeur is not what strikes you. Its mundanity is what strikes you. I felt the dust of history staining my fingertips as I held this coupon in my hand.

I could see so clearly, despite not knowing what she looked like, Virginia O'Connell clipping it, saving it, and forgetting about it. It was so mundane, so commonplace, so unremarkable. I was struck by how different from my life hers wasn't.

And yet, I couldn't imagine a five-cent discount on anything being worth the effort these days, and I was struck by what a fundamental, but still unremarkable difference that was.

As we sifted further, I we turned up more oddities. There was a post card from 1911 with a black-and-white photo of a parade float labeled "The Coming of the White Man." There were old oatmeal boxes full of check duplicates. There were unsent pieces of business reply mail from before the advent of the ZIP Code.

There were also objects of profound value. The first thing Ken found was a box of his childhood marbles, which he displayed to me, pouring them out one-by-one into a teacup and giving me the battle history of each grizzled bead.

"This was my steely." he said, dropping an incongruously lusterless metal ball into the cup. "I won a lot of matches with this guy."

Suddenly, I didn't feel so disconnected from everything. I had started the day feeling as though I had no connection to the entire human race, as if it did not even exist for me. Now, I was looking into Ken's face and seeing him reliving so many games played and won on sidewalks and wood floors across the West of the United States, fifty-some years ago.

I suddenly felt as though the entire history of the human race, across time and distance, was something I could hold, was holding, in my bare hands a that very moment. And I dove into Virginia O'Connell's suitcase of letters with relish.

Midway through the searching, I uncovered a folded piece of card stock with a simple poem typewritten on it. I handed it to Ken, asking who wrote it.

He took it from me, began to read aloud--"How do we know he was our father?"--before stopping, realizing what it was.

He said he had written it in 1963, the year his father died.

"He was the one who carved the turkey on Thanksgiving" was one of the answers, which I have quoted inexactly. For some reason, that was the one that got me. I imagined the emptiness the O'Connells must have felt that Thanksgiving when someone else had to carve the bird.

Ken and I stood in his daughter's driveway, staring at the poem, for a good minute. I'm not a fan of homespun, or even industrially fabricated, sentimentality, but it got to me. Tears welled up inside of me.

"Ken, put that down and let's get on with sorting," said Gwyn, sitting impatiently by a pile of letters. That was nice of her. It probably saved both of us from the embarrassment of tears.

And when I went home, despite Eugene's emptiness, I didn't feel so alone anymore.

Arda Turan--it WAS a great goal.

Today, the Guardian newspaper ran an article asking why there haven't been any great goals at this year's European Championships yet. To that I would respond thus:



That's Arda Turan's matchwinner against Swtizerland. At first it seems like a speculative shot that took a lucky deflection, not a memorable goal at all, but closer inspection reveals just how great it is. Here are ten reasons why:

1. It didn't take a deflection. Deflections lead to goals. The keeper thinks a shot is easy meat and then a clumsy teammate's shin strikes the minutest of glancing blows to send it past him in the opposite direction, or his center half dives in to stop it and only succeeds in turning a benign daisy-cutter into an unstoppable pearler.

But this wasn't one of those goals. It looks like it was, but it wasn't. Not at all. Look at the replay again, find more to look at if you're still not convinced. It didn't touch any Swiss player. But it looked like it did. How does that happen?

2. He hit it across his body while moving away from the goal. You're just not supposed to do that. When they teach you how to shoot, they tell you to put your head over the ball and lean into it. They also tell you you can get a much better strike off if you move into your shot, and not away from it. Arda thumbed his nose at that advice with this goal and put himself at a considerable disadvantage--his feet had to compensate for so much more because of it. From his perspective, he was shooting more behind himself than in front.

3. There were at least two Swiss defenders, plus the goalkeeper in front of him.
To aim it past those obstacles amidst all of the other calculations he also had to make required a speed of thought mere mortals just don't posess.

4. This is the big one: the shot itself. How did he do that? If there were cannons capable of doing what Arda's shot did, then war would be an even more dangerous affair than it is. Let me explain:

5. Its power. From that angle, going in that direction, with that shot, he hit it so hard that the Swiss goalkeeper, Diego Benaglio, didn't even have time to see it, let alone react.

6. The dip it took. Any professional player can hit it that hard, but I haven't seen one do that with what looked like a lob. It was like an eagle taking off, spotting a rat inside the goal net, and then diving sharply to capture it. The ball was alive once Arda's foot hit it. I wouldn't have even known it was possible to strike a shot like that, let alone been able to execute it.

7. It dipped just as it got over Benaglio's head. This is more of an artistic point. Goals just need to end up in the net. Anything else is, as they say, gravy. And the scorer is by no means obligated to add an aesthetic touch--or even capable of doing so. But they are all the more pleasing when they have that extra bonus which this one happened to. It was almost surrealistic.

8. He ran half the field to shoot. All of that and it came at the end of a fifty-yard sprint, followed by a ten-yard cutback. I would have been too exhausted to swing my foot, let alone in such an insouciant fashion.

9. It was set against a truly farcical game. The rain that day in Basel fell in sheets and added an extra element of unpredictability to the game. Every pass along the ground was suddenly a massive risk because there were huge puddles to trap the ball and trip up players. Jerseys were soaked, muddy and torn. The Swiss took the lead in the first place because they were the first to realize they simply had to keep the ball airborne, and even then they were helped by a puddle that captured the ball just in front of the goal for Hakan Yakin to tap in. I could have scored it. Hog-tied and paraplegic.

There was no room for sublime technique. Arda had no right to be trying something that crafty and tricky. He was defying not only the Swiss team and the Swiss crowd, but nature itself.

10. Timing. It was a winning goal in the last minute. If the Turks hadn't scored it, they would have been almost out of the tournament, but Arda stepped up to try something audacious in the last minute. So add to technical ability massive, massive courage.

The Islands--don't see them live.

The worst performance I have ever seen by a live band was given by Commando. They were a Ramones cover band playing in a barely occupied coffee shop in Kaimuki, Hawaii.

That was in spite of the fact that their lead singer had stripped down to his underwear and was trying as hard as he could to start playful fights with audience members. Gargling lyrics about Chinese rocks and blitzkreig bops, he almost quizzically prodded the kids in the audience, who responded as if he were a Catholic priest asking them on a date--mightily confused, offended, terrified.

But what was most notable about Commando was that they were memorably out-of-tune. Few live bands, especially kids' punk bands, play with instruments perfectly in tune, but Commando seemed not only unaware that tuning their guitars was possible, but oblivious to the entire concept of harmony.

The vocalist droned whinily like a Ben Stein impression by Tom Delonge. Each of the guitar's strings seemed uniquely, unpleasantly surprised by the existence of the others, and together they argued with the bass like warring tomcats. The drummer didn't touch his toms, but even they sounded off-key.

There were probably twelve of us in the audience and we looked at one another with piteous glances--we wanted to tell them how horrible they sounded, not to be rude or get them off stage but just because we thought they deserved to know. I tried, but I couldn't even laugh. And I couldn't leave because that's how kids' punk rock venues work in Hawaii. So I just endured.

People say John McCain is an American hero for withstanding the Viet Cong's torture without breaking, but I consider my suffering on behalf of my friend's band, which was playing next, a comparable experience.

Many of the bands in Hawaii's local punk scene are like that.

I bring Commando up because you have to know about them to understand why I say that Islands' performance at yesterday's Eugene Bloc Party wasn't the worst I've ever seen by a band.

I don't really listen to Islands in my spare time, but I did know them beforehand as the performers of "Rough Gem," a tune with a synth line so sugary that dentists specifically warn against it. I dug it, mostly for the macho factor--any newborn kitten can look tough swigging corn-whiskey, but it takes a real man, or possibly a silverback gorilla, to lick an oversized lolly.

So I was looking forward to Islands, probably more than the band they were opening for, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Even I make mistakes.

I had been warned. My roommate hates Islands. He saw them live in 2006 and tried to start a mosh pit. He said they told him to leave. But what did I care? Moshing? What am I, 16?

I was wrong. I knew it the second I saw lead singer Nick Thorburn live. Behind his white-rimmed stunner shades and bedecked in form-fitting white tank top, he was immobile, save his mouth parsing syllables and his hands grudgingly tugging phrases from his black Gibson.

Behind him, the rest of the band was similarly unenthusiastic. The guitarist occasionally looked up to pointedly mouth the lines, but otherwise gave very little indication he was even there. The bassist leaned against the amplifiers and plucked out his lines as if he was flipping a hamburger.

On the other side of the stage, the Chow brothers, violin- and synth-player for Islands, went about their work as if they were burying a grandfather they had never particularly liked. Behind them, only drummer Aaron Harris showed any hint of animation.

They didn't sound bad. The violins were precise and sweet, the bass was more muscular than their records would lead you to expect, the drums prompt and exuberant. The only time they stumbled was when the guitars were relied upon to carry the tune. Then the music got sloppy, abbreviated and tentative--each solo sounded as if it was just glad to be over.

The attitude of the band very much drowned out the sound. In their defense, it was the middle of the first real summer's day Eugene has had this year, so the sun was beating down on only a few very sweaty bodies, most slow-roasted the color of live lobsters. I might not have been too pleased or mobile in that environment.

But I didn't pay $25 to feel sorry for them. I began feeling accursed buyer's remorse.

Eventually, I got thirsty, so I left the stage to get a bottle of water and took a deep breath. As I walked back, I stared into the clear blue sky and started feeling better. And then I caught a few strains of some song or another Islands was playing and it sounded good. Maybe they weren't so bad after all?

But no, as soon as I got to the stage, the blase looks on the guitarists' faces drained the energy right out of me. And so I decided to stop looking at them. I turned and faced away from the stage.

It was better. Divorced from the posturing of the band, the music sounded pretty good. I had a decent time, although not decent enough to dance--that's a bit awkward when you're facing away from the sage.

In the end, I had to call my roommate and tell him he was right about them. And now it's difficult for me to listen to "Rough Gem" without picturing the prima donnas who performed it.

But at least Nick Thorburn kept his clothes on.

Just doesn't work out live


-Eleanor

Soccer--it's a sport, goddammit!

Major soccer tournaments, they say, are a majestic glue that binds, if only for a month, the palms of bitter enemies as they watch a grand and edifying dissertation in the one true universal language. This European Championships, they say, will be no different.

Bullshit, I say.

It's possible that my essential curmudgeonliness is getting the better of me. After all, I was ripped away from other enthusiasms and into the vortex of soccer by the cyclonic winds whipped up by the 2002 World Cup as a fourteen-year-old.

And I'll admit: the whole geopolitical harmony angle was what did it to me in the first place. It was all in the first result: Senegal 1, France 0. Who could help but revel in the revenge fantasies indulged by this result?

I was hooked--all the sport had to do was reel me in by proving itself watchable. And that it did not with the lyrical displays of that tournament's most accomplished teams--Brazil, Spain, Turkey--that I would later come to appreciate.

The match that opened like a gallows trapdoor the world of soccer was as far as possible from the fluency and harmony soccer tries to cultivate. It was Mexico's violent victory against Croatia in the group stage. It was hideously dramatic and, the impact of Boris Zivkovic's foot on Cuauhtemoc Blanco's testicles also broke ground on a whole new chamber in my heart.

So my love for soccer was born of the same youthful schadenfreude and bloodlust that fueled my childhood obsessions with a succession of violent cartoons, combined with my growing teenage sense that the world was a cruel and unjust place, particularly to the people of the world's Senegals.

But really, few underdogs get their day in soccer--at the World Cup, teams playing their former or current imperial overlords have won only seven games and lost 25. And the record is even less impressive when you remove from the reckoning European countries occupied during World War II and its aftermath by Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States. Then there are only three victories--Argentina over Spain in 1966 and the United States over England in 195o in addition to the Senegal result.

Instead, often, soccer inflames and re-enforces old resentments. The most extreme example is the 1969 Soccer War that broke out between El Salvador and Honduras, essentially, over the result of a World Cup qualifier between the two. But even the most recent European Championships have proven themselves not immune to violence, as the recent arrest of 157 German and Polish hooligans in Klagenfurt, Austria, proves.

And anyway, the heightened emotions associated with soccer lead to resentment. Five years ago, if you had asked an Englishman what he thought of people from Portugal, I have no idea what he would have said. But in the intervening period, Portugal have knocked England out of both the 2004 European Championships and the 2006 World Cup, both in controversial circumstances.

If you asked the same Englishman about Portugal today, he would probably spit out something bitter about playacting and cheating and question the masculinity of Portuguese players like Ronaldo Aveiro and Deco Souza.

Even the seemingly positive and uplifting in soccer often comes to ill purpose. Brazil's 1970 World Cup team is rightly considered the greatest ever to take the field. Its players' names are almost always accompanied by unavoidable saliva as they roll off any soccer fan's tongue--Pele, Rivellino, Tostao, Gerson, Jairzinho, Carlos Alberto. They were charismatic and beautiful to watch, and they played fair.

But their tremendous legacy was tragically politicized, co-opted by the brutal Medici regime in a desperate and successful bid for legitimacy.

So I don't want to hear anymore of this psuedo-profound nonsense about soccer as a unifier or some sort of mystical karmic force.

When an exuberant twinkle of Ronaldinho Moreira's toes leaves a criss-crossed opponent flattened, when a casual swing of Michael Ballack's right foot inexplicably causes the ball to materialize on the chest of a teammate seventy yards away, when a cunning yet imperceptible step to the right by Ruud van Nistelrooy somehow sets him gloriously free of a marker to flick the receive the ball businesslike and flick it into a corner of the goal, that is where you'll find the true worth of soccer.

The rest, I'm afraid, is just the bamboozling of the World Cup's advertisers.

A Glimpse

Sorry, I know its been far too long since we have last chatted. In my defense, I have been very busy writing my dissertation. I am not allowed to tell you exactly what my dissertation "dissertates," but i will give you a passage from it. In the brief passage below, I am discussing the film Crash. Enjoy!

"Indeed police forces are a unique example of the above. For instance, there are many credible resources that depict police officers in a negative light. In 2005 a curious thing happened. Over the history of cinema, never has a documentary won an Oscar for best picture. However, 2005 stands out among all the other years at the Academy Awards, because Crash, a documentary about race relations, won best picture of the year. In this documentary, the camera follows police officer Matt Dillon while he is on duty in the L.A.P.D. What ensues is shocking footage of brutal racism and molestation of a young woman with African American heritage. Later on, when Dillon seems to figure out that he is being filmed, he stages a fierce auto accident, and pulls the very same young woman from the burning wreckage...Sometime later, we also see the D.B. motif, when, this time caught by a different camera crew, Dillon appears to try to fight Owen Wilson. Thankfully, Wilson later said, 'I feel bad for this person. I mean, after that documentary he had to move away from L.A. or someone would have shot him,' and didn't press charges...Matt Dillon somehow manages to make Pol Pot look like MLK..."

Hope you enjoyed! I will be releasing more passages from my dissertation in weeks to come. Up next, a passage from chapter 16.
"Diego Rivera is known for his murals, paintings, and frescos. But recently uncovered primary documents found by me uncover a darker form of art practiced by the great painter: Abortion."



J.A.