Buddhism and Anticipation Games

Not everything Siddhartha says I groove with, but his second tenet, that the root of all suffering is desire, I am a fan of, especially feeling like an outlier in this consumerist system that comprises the United States. Another problem, maybe, that is rife in the US is the need for instant gratification. Maybe this is another reason soccer is less appreciated here than elsewhere.

While watching the World Cup that just finished up in South Africa, I realized that soccer is an intense anticipation game, and with anything that intense, the successes--the goals--become a visceral celebratory moment. Part of my recent workout routine is to chase after a bouncy ball that I can only touch with my feet. We tried some crossing maneuvers and "shots" at a baseball backstop at a park nearby and I gained a whole new appreciation for what an excellent pass coupled with a beautiful strike is like in real life--the practice, the focus, and beautiful timing. It's hard enough in soccer to get more than a dozen chances to get that cross and strike opportunity, let alone to make it work. My point is that even on the damn field, soccer's a game of anticipation.

In an earlier post I wrote of a team and a player that I was intently following, Uruguay and Diego Forlan. He eventually wont the Golden Ball award, awarded to the tourny MVP. At some point I decided that I would like to sport his Uruguay jersey. The jerseys were powder blue, so I felt that they would go well with my eyes if anything else. I shopped around and found pretty much the same price, between sixty and eighty bucks. This makes sense, since all jerseys for all sports are remarkably overpriced. Maybe it really costs that much to produce them. I figured I'd wait until it was all over, and snatch one up on the cheap. Who'd want a jersey from a blond surfer looking guy from a small South American country?

Well, after he won the Golden Ball, pretty much everyone in Uruguay. Forlan has played on Manchester United and currently plays on Atletico Madrid (the other Madrid team (not Real Madrid, a more world renown brand)), and is considered an elite player. He carried a team from a country smaller than Washington State all the way to the semi-finals. His Puma Uruguay jersey was sold out everywhere except the UK, and they wanted 140 pounds for the damn thing.

This is where my Buddhist suffering comes in. I felt like I missed an opportunity to purchase something I didn't need--but wanted--and this made me melancholic. Why? I may be an outlier, but I'm still American to some degree, and the majority of my wardrobe comes from purchases from my wife and my mother, and on the rare occasions I want something clothing related, I usually just make it happen.

Then Corrie found a Chinese clothing wholesaler that was offering the "Puma" Uruguay Diego Forlan #10 jersey for something like ten bucks, with twenty-five for shipping, and I ordered it immediately. Not quite sure what I would get, I felt slightly confident since Puma uses Chinese sweatshop labor, and hey, maybe some stuff fell off a truck, or an angry worker wants some extra income, or something.

I got an email from the company running the website that included a tracking number. It was for tracking the package with the shipping company EMS.

EMS? Neither Corrie nor I were familiar with such a company. DHL, UPS, mein bruder's FedEx, sure, heard of them. The email said that after three business days I'd be able to track the package. Here's a picture of what it said when I was finally able to track it:



Passing through customs on a Saturday at 10 in the AM at the University of Southern Alabama? What? By then I was just curious to see what I would get. A towel? A plastic pair of novelty binoculars? I was almost giddy with anticipation to see just what I would get. What if it was actually the Forlan jersey? By now I was past wanting to support my fellow blond surfer-looking guys from the western hemisphere. I couldn't wait. From Buddhist suffering to anticipation, just like that.

It arrived the very next day, this past Monday. I'm almost positive it's some kind of fraud, but the Uruguay national team patch is sewn on and legit. Maybe Puma just makes shitty merchandise. What surprised me was that they sent the matching black shorts. Now I have a whole kit! What the hell...the world works in mysterious ways...

Here I am modeling the gear:

They didn't tell me it would be pink!

If you're mind's in the gutter after a title like that, then I've succeeded.

This, actually, is what I'm talking about:



Texas' capital building is larger than the federal dome in Washington DC, and is the only state capital to even be allowed bigger. The limestone that was used to build it is pink, and while the camera doesn't show off enough of the pink splendor, you'll have to trust me, dear readers, that when the sun is lighting it up at that golden time of the day, as an observer from another state, you almost smirk.

Pink.

So, I made it another goal of my second ride to make it over to the capital and snap some pictures, try to get a sense of the grounds and all, try to educate my few readers who don't live in the area what Austin's capital is like. The sloping symmetrically planned out lawns and walkways all give off relaxing aura, the "carriage ways" up to the massive doorway have all since been paved, the grass is shorn smartly and the oaks deliver keen shade. I rode the bicycle to the southern entrance and snapped a shot looking south down Congress Ave, one of downtown's hoppin' streets. Right outside the gate were a half-dozen protesters. They held signs saying "Rick Perry is a serial killer" and "So-and-so is Texas' 15th execution of 2010". On my way back up the Grand Walkway, a monument caught my attention. This monument wasn't on the monument legend I read before I started to make my way down towards them. I wasn't surprised, really, once I got to it.

Here's the classic look.



Here's Congress , looking south. The bridge that crosses Town Lake/the River at Congress has hundreds of thousands of bats that emerge during the springtime dusk hour and blacken the sky as they flit out looking for bugs. Haven't been to see it yet (you'd've known). A protester is slightly visible in the lower right corner, tying their shoe or something.



Here's that monument.



Not sure how I feel about it. Obviously I'd enjoy the week it would take to smash it to bits using a small sledge hammer, but probably because my history isn't connected with the roots that had this monument commissioned. I try not to begrudge folks their histories (because it's impossible), but convictions, if ignorant, are worthless to me. A monument glorifying the heroics of the Confederate States seemed out of place to me when I saw it...we're not in Jackson or Montgomery, we're in Austin, the liberal oasis in Texas...but you can't begrudge people their histories. As a descendant of northerners--wait, am I a descendant of northerners? During the Civil War I had ancestors in California, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. Does that count? In any case, to someone not associated with an upbringing in the South or Texas, the Confederacy = Slavery, even though that's much too naive and narrow scoped (that disregards plenty of economic, social, and cultural factors). The topic is still touchy, even in Texas, and a "rebel" is still a romantic figure and mascot.

When I read the following close-up on the monument, I gained some perspective by remembering a scene from the Cold War era Patrick Swayze shoot-em-up film, Red Dawn, where Soviets invade America and occupy the western section. The scene has a pair of soldiers, or a pair of officers, looking out at a nice vista with an plaque in front of them, and only one can read English. He's translating the sign for the other gentleman, and the subtitle gives away what someone with a different history would make of ours, "This meadow was the scene of a slaughter by the capitalist pigs of the indigenous people, on their march towards genocide," or something similar. For closer inspection:



One person's history is another person's punchline. Since I've been here, I've been informed that I'm a pretty cool guy, despite being from the "land of fruits and nuts."

Castle Hill

In the mid 1850s in Bastrop, Texas, about an hour east of Austin (in the vicinity of the Guyton Ranchette), the Texas Military Institute was founded. The TMI was suspended during the Civil War, and during Reconstruction, Bastrop didn't have the cash to repair damage that was caused by a fire. The Northern occupiers/overseers weren't too keen on letting a military-type institute get rekindled, but the capital city--Austin--provided a large sum of money in gold, and the TMI was reopened on the outskirts of town in a brand new structure in the late 1870s.

That's one story. Here's a second story:

On a Saturday I would be working later, I was telephoned by a friend inviting me out for quick round of disc golf--a quick nine holes, and back in time for lunch and a shower. I accepted, and was escorted to Pease Park, home to a beautiful, if tree covered, disc-golf course. Much to our surprise, the corse was overrun, and not simply by weekend warriors, it was in fact a professional tournament, and the vast number of golfers waiting to throw was discouraging. Not this day, we decided, and my friend offered to buy me a beer as consolation. I accepted, and was escorted on a quick turnaround maneuver; a quick right turn up a hill, another right, and then a third, back down the hill and into a parking lot. On the middle plateau on that quick turnaround I looked up and saw this:



Most Austinites I've asked about this castle don't know what I'm talking about and don't understand where the neighborhood gets its name. The ones that have seen it were as perplexed about it as I, and even Wikipedia is at a loss on this one.

This neighborhood of Austin, around 12th and Lamar, is called Castle Hill, with good reason, if you're constantly in the shadows of that. On my second Shoal Creek Trail ride I made one goal to get over to it and take pictures, climb up as far as I could, find out what I could...What I didn't do beforehand was proper research; I did that after.

The Castle was the original structure that was used for the TMI once it moved to Austin, built on a hill overlooking Shoal Creek. It is accessible from 11th, farther up the hill. The TMI was absorbed into the ROTC sometime after WWII, and the castle lost a tower to fire after generally being abandoned. It was purchased recently and has had a few tenants, usually real estate brokers or architects, between times of emptiness.

In the following pictures the strange concrete and weed moat that seems to surround it is the abandoned foundations of a failed condo project. It took me twenty minutes to pick the burrs out of my leg hairs, and another forty when I got home to pluck them off my socks.

I guess I just try to find out cities' strange sights and histories...that information seeks me out, using me to convey it to the greater world I suppose...

Here are some more cool pictures:

Biking the Shoal Creek Trail

One evening I had some time to myself, and decided I was going to watch the Austin Aztex, the local minor league professional soccer team, have their game, but was going to watch through the fence, kinda circumventing the purchasing of a ticket. That's not fair to them, of course, and after a few minutes I felt lame, and moved on.

And by moved on, I mean, I got back on the Shoal Creek Trail and kept riding a bicycle found at my house. Austin's Shoal Creek runs on a meandering path through the city on the north-south axis, and some years back a hiking/biking trail was built along it. Many spots are beautifully concealed areas of pure nature, and a visitor would never guess that one of Austin's main thoroughfares, Lamar, is right on the other side of the thicket of vegetation.

Technically the Shoal Creek Trail starts at 38th Street and runs all the way to Town Lake, as the dam-induced bulging of our version of the Colorado River is called, right south of 1st Street. At 32nd Street, the trail gets away from off-the-beaten-path streets and into the nature area, right up along the curving creek. From there it goes through Pease Park (the sight of Eeyore's Birthday Party and a nice disc golf course), past House Field (home of the Aztex), where it takes on a more urban feel, almost a mix of secret New Orleans tunnels and locals-only saloons. After a few switch-backs and road crossings, you get to the water.

When I made it I dropped the bike, wiped the prodigious sweat, drank some water, and quietly congratulated my amazed self...actually made it. It wasn't that bad, really, those six and a half to seven miles there. The bad part was the last mile and a half home, the long stretch of Woodrow from where it branches off of Burnet all the way to Dwyce. I had stopped at Bailey's Park somewhere in the upper thirties (our house is probably the equivalent of upper fifties to low sixties) to rest--bad idea. From then on I was done, with a few miles to go, mostly up hill also. That was a lesson I learned for my second ride: no stopping to simply rest.

I have some pictures from that first ride, not too many of which came out because of the lighting conditions and my Old Reliable camera has some issues in shady, overgrown areas. This first shot is of 32nd street, before the entrance to the nature-section of the trail. This property has some weird crap out front, and it looks very cool. I love the ceramic heads sneaking a look out the bottom of the window frame. They remind me of Rico and Mary Jane, the heads that Ryan and I, er, salvaged from somewhere on campus.



The next is a picture of one of the many tunnels one goes through along the Trail, the overgrown brush, and a snazzy Austin condo in the background.



This last picture is of Town Lake, at the end of my journey, just to prove to myself that I made it.

#300 and a New Look

Besides being the post at which I applied a series of visual changes to this blog site, the number three-hundred has some interesting facts attached to it.

Besides being King Leonidas' entourage at Thermopylae, "300" is:

On the high end, a perfect score in bowling;
On the low end, the lowest credit score possible; and
The maximum legal velocity, in terms of feet per second, of a shot paintball.

In the world of mathematics "300" is"

A triangular number;
A sum of twin primes (149 + 151)
The sum of ten consecutive primes (13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47); and
A Harshad number (it is divisible by the sum of it's digits).

Now, are those facts really "fun"?

299 And Counting...

I'm fairly sure this is my two-hundredth-and-ninety-ninth blog post, which is pretty cool. Back in February I thought I'd be getting to three-hundred pretty quickly, but after just two in March...I hit it again in April and May, and sometime soon, I'll be at that elusive #300.

One thing in store for my three-hundredth post is a redesign of this sight, mostly cosmetic of course...I don't want to startle any of my loyal readers, and if one of you lovable folks gets to the blog after the update, this entry will be outdated and slightly ridiculous. Later today I am planning another long bike ride, mostly the same trip I took before, but instead of to the river, there are some photos I want to take of the city.

In our feeble attempts to work-out, Corrie picked us up a soccer ball, and we've taken to playing with it at the end of our regimen. The other day I displayed my hard earned "grace" by running at nearly full speed while dribbling the soccer ball and having my left foot come down directly on the ball. Oh yeah. Once it happened and I was going down, everything seemed to turn into slow motion; I remember thinking, 'Ah shit. Brace for it...' If the idea or image of a sweaty man with a pink beer-belly flying through the air and crashing into a patch of prickly grass doesn't crack you up, then you've probably been ditching that class in American humor titled "Pain is Funny When it's Someone Else".

The bruise on my hip has been overshadowed by the sunburn on my thighs as a result of sitting in an inter-tube for four hours this past Sunday. It was awesome, riding the gently meandering Guadalupe River just south of San Marcos. Quit an afternoon activity. Some sunburns aren't that big of a deal.

Keep an eye out for the redesign!

Colton Harris-Moore Caught!

I put a post up a while back about the Barefoot Bandit from the Pacific Northwest, a teenager who escaped from juvie without his shoes and kept eluding officials by stealing airplanes, having learned to fly from the Internet. That method of self-instruction is not recommended.

Well, after gaining a widespread following on the Internet in general and Facebook specifically, Colton was apprehended in the Bahamas, after a mysterious plane crash landed on a small island, and then, in an unrelated event, a boat went missing, and then that same boat, once found, happened to be on the same island where Colton Harris-Moore was found. Small world? Seriously, that first report said "unrelated boat theft", and I cracked up. That was before the Bandit was caught, so hindsight and all, but if you were familiar with the modus operandi...

How he made it all the way to the Bahamas? Awesome.

Finally Back

Finally done housesitting with an internet connection out of 1994. I've been really lagging with this blog, but with no internet connection, two jobs, a new work-out regimen, a trip to California being planned, a new bizarre story getting written, ridding the sitting house of fleas (along with two cats), and finding a new apartment (waiting until Thursday to hear), that's how things work our sometimes.

I've got some stuff coming soon. Thanks for whatever patience my few readers have.

World Cup Notes

I've been watching as many games as I can, rooting for countries I like on grounds other than soccer and rooting against countries I don't like primarily for soccer. Maybe that sounds confusing...France: the country I really love, the national football team I don't care for. I have nothing against the country Spain, but I almost despise their #2 ranked national team. Besides, when it came down to it, I found myself rooting, in general, for South American teams over European teams.

I rooted for the Yanks, certainly, until they were booted. I rooted for Mexico, until they suffered the same fate. The third team I was seriously rooting for was/is Uruguay. I had a class in college that opened my eyes to the exploitation they suffered, and when I saw they pulled an undermanned draw with France in the first game, I was hooked. They demoralized South Africa at home with a big win, then they beat Mexico for the Group A #1 seed.

Suarez and Forlan have been crazy good, with Suarez beating So. Korea in the Round of 16 game with two goals in the rain, then Suarez using his hands--and getting ejected on a red-card--to save a sure goal against Ghana as a billion people on the African continent grumbled angrily. Uruguay broke the African hearts again on penalty kicks. Not bad for a country smaller than Washington State with three million people.

The European team I root for is Germany, and watching those kids walk all over England was fun; doing that against Maradona and Argentina was surprising. I'm rooting for a Uruguay/Germany final. The Netherlands don't bother me like France or Spain, so I wouldn't be so upset.

I went on a long bicycle ride last week; (I'll post about it) from my house to the lake, about 12-14 miles round trip, down the lovely Shoal Creek Bike Trail, but at first all I was going to do was to ride down and watch the Austin Aztex Div-2 soccer match through the fence, without a ticket. I got some dirty looks, so I went the rest of the way to the lake. Here a picture of local soccer:



On the television, watching the tournament, the pitch (field) looks so big, but in that picture you get the sense that the field is smaller than it's represented on TV. What I can see watching games is the goalie jawing and yelling, and the announcers saying things like, "And the goal keepah is keeping a constant barrage of orders for his mates." Standing on the other side of that fence I finally understood that the goalie can be heard yelling by his teammates while they attack the other goal. It's that small and loud.

Blogger Breaks Silence!

On this day, the fourth day of Caesar's month, when a parchment was signed by rich colonials telling a king they weren't going to be paying taxes anymore (a day we currently celebrate by blowing shit up in colorful ways) I turned on ESPN (I'm housesitting currently, and they have cable, and I'm happy I can watch soccer not on a lappy) and saw a shocking sight.

ESPN, not ESPN2 or ESPNews or any other affiliation, was broadcasting live from Brooklyn's Coney Island the Nathan's Hot-dog Eating Contest. (Shudder) I'm not...I don't...

I'm very competitive. I hate losing. I like participating in and spectating on most sporting events. Competitive eating bothers me. Probably because of my fine dining experience I now respect nice food, and food in general, and such a disrespectful thing like cramming hot-dogs into one's craw--against a timer--gets under my skin. Those hot-dogs give me the belches...I won't lie, I've definitely had Nathan's before (we did live in Brooklyn for three-and-a-half years), and they're famous, and supposedly the "best."

So there I was, trying to figure out my day, the Cubbies/Reds game not on yet, and on ESPN there were ten people (guys and one girl) shoveling bare wieners and soggy buns into their mouth. Chewing, shaking their heads, cramming soggy messes into their gob's, grabbing more buns&wieners and dipping them into a liquid of their choice, their sweaty faces covered in bun fragments, mugging to the crowd, which was sizable...quite disgusting by my measure.

Just one of those things...

This is the house for which we're sitting...love the trees...