The secret to being really, really (comparatively) good at soccer
Is to compete against those (less than) half your size and (way) below your own
(fairly low) skill level
(which is to say, ideally, children).
Category: poems
I slept — I was awake,
I was aware — and I dreamt
I was shackled — my limb,
My ankle — my
Left leg lay, motionless.
And in waking — I was asleep,
I was dreaming — I found
no chain — not invisible;
non-existent — and then
I felt my leg, and then
I felt: Elation.
i. pest control
a blue-orange bic flame trailing along the wall in hot pursuit of a long line of ants,
the ants pop clean and simple
ii. spiderman
a child in a spiderman t-shirt climbing a tree in search of ripe lamutt,
but none are ripe
iii. like an edward hopper painting
a full moon through the limbs of a jackfruit tree in the soft light of dusk and the glow of a hallogen bulb,
i can’t look away without feeling selfish
“It’s all good until about 25. Then it’s all just another bill.”
– Middle aged man to me, about 5 years ago
“The United Nations, for statistical purposes, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years [...].”
– United Nations FAQ on youth
“The flood of instant information in the world today — at least, in the Western, industrialized world — sometimes seems not to further, but to retard, education; not to excite, but to dampen, curiosity; not to enlighten, but merely to dismay. Archibald MacLeish once noted, “We are deluged with facts but have lost or are losing our human ability to feel them.”
– From the prologue to The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience by William Shawcross, published in 1984
These are the facts:
Two years ago I baked my first turkey.
I paid for the turkey with food stamps.
There shouldn’t be so much shame concerning food stamps.
That was back in my youth.
This year is my first Adult Thanksgiving.
Now, only bills are on my horizon.
The real questions is, if I’m not on American soil, do Thanksgivings still count?
The real question is, in Thanksgiving years, am I still 23?
The real question is, am I still seated … at … The Kids’ Table?
So, how do you feel about the facts?
The facts are hard to feel.
I am 25.
On your first birthday I wrote a poem for
Your second birthday which, vis-a-vis deduction etc. etc., anno Domini etc. etc., avuncular etc. etc., ipso facto
Marks today as your second second birthday, which makes you very lucky as
Most only ever experience a single second birthday. Though, speaking
Technically, only a single birthday can ever really be had by anyone, that being the
Actual day of the person’s birth, the following birthdays being mere anniversaries. In the
Conventional sense, however, a person generally does accrue one birthday per year, one
Accrued for each year spent alive, each birthday
Being celebrated one year after the one previous, though I am the first to point out that
The average person suffers from spending nearly 6 months of every year closer to his future age than his current one.
What’s important to gather from all this, dear nephew, is it seems that today you are actually turning
Three, a full year in advance of your peers. This is certainly cause for
Celebration.
I say to myself, Hey man, I know your feelings about church, okay, I know your thoughts on the paranormal, on ghosts and spirits, the afterlife, God and coincidences and religion-in-general, and I know you don’t actually believe you are feeding small-mouthed spirits who annually escape from Hell and demand appeasement, okay?
So what are you doing, then, sitting at a pagoda in a place I can’t pronounce, in a way that makes most of your lower body fall asleep, lighting incense and candles and praying beneath an altar of Golden Idols, trying to meditate to a chant you can’t decipher in a country where Buddhism is not hip because it’s traditional and just what everybody does, and by the way your understanding of the practices are at best fundamentally different from what the people sitting next to you probably believe, and by the looks of those in attendance it’s especially not the “thing-to-do” for those in your age group, anyway?
And I say to myself, Hey man, I know it’s not about any of that, really, so much as it’s about the Spirit of the Ritual, and
Communion, and
You can think what you want, man, but it’s really not between me and you anyway, and besides we’re just getting to know each other, and there is no God who wouldn’t live here.
Person 1: Is that food tasty?
Person 2: Oh, yeah, it’s really far away.
Person 1: Hm?
Person 2: I said, “Rice pot.”
