The three World Cup games for Tuesday, June 15th are over and there were some surprises.
New Zealand vs. Slovakia ended in a tie with a thrilling last minute goal by a Kiwi.
Japan vs. Cameroon ended in a 1-0 victory for Japan.
Brazil played as expected with a 2-1 victory but again in the last minutes North Korea made a thrilling goal.
Soccer as it is known in the U.S., Calcio as it is known in Italy and Football as it is known everywhere else in the world is the beautiful game. Like living, it combines balance, choreography, excitement, defense, attacks, and sometimes, boredom. Whether it will ever be acknowledged here as the world's greatest sport is not for me to decide but once every four years, and I don't mean the Olympics, it is a great feeling to belong to the entire world.
ESPN is doing a fabulous job and intertwining their comments with some of South Africa's history. One of their reports showed a return to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and the freedom fighters of modern day South Africa were interred for demanding equality.
It took three years for the Apartheid government to give permission for the prisoners to have their own soccer league and a Soccer Constitution was written. Years later, the same prisoners would write the new South African Constitution with this preamble:
"We, the people of South Africa, recognize the injustices of our past; honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity."
Actually, we could add that statement to our Constitution as more words of hate seem to be creeping into the American vocabulary, especially on some of the so called cable news channels and the rantings, I mean, real rantings of "the infotainers" as Frank Rich so rightly called them and defined them.
It is a strange sensation to be living in small town America and pass the post office and see people waving petitions to sign against the President (whether you agree with him or not) and see him depicted as Hitler. I mean for eight years we had a vice president who was really a co-president and we never saw him because he was formulating all of his machinations from his sealed bunker. Where were these petition seekers then? Why were they not demanding an open government eight years ago?
It is a strange sensation to be unemployed and watching all these World Cup Games. On one side, I need a job and a paycheck. On the other side, I left a position which had become heinous to me with no balance or choreography, stress (not excitement), lots of attacks and playing defense and in the end acceptance (not boredom) that I could not change anything or even have my thoughts appreciated.
It is a strange sensation to be aware of the passing of time. It is happening more to me now with the deaths of friends and people whom I have admired since I was a teen.
One of them, Andrei Vozneshensky passed just recently. He was one on the great rebel poets of Russia during the period of Krushchev, et.al and before Gorbachev.
He could fill arenas with recitations of his poetry. He was a rock star of literature and we followed him like groupies. One night, at Carnegie Hall, I wedged my way backstage and got his autograph which is now, sadly, fading.
Poetry is revered in Russia and hundreds of thousands of people can recite verse.
Actually, this is a real tradition in Russia. During the horror years of Stalin, the verses of banned poets, such as Mayakovsky and Essenin and Mandelstam and Tsetayava and my favorite, Anna Akhmatova, were set to music or memorized by ordinary people, like us, to pass down to their children.
I have always wondered if Ray Bradbury got his inspiration for Fahrenheit 451 from them.
Of the rock star poets, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is still my favorite but Andrei Vozneshensky wrote my favorite poem.
It's called Divagation About Me
I am a family, a spectrum.
There are seven of me inside of me: unbearable.
And the bluest of these keeps whistling through his pipe.
But when spring comes, dreams come, that I'm the eighth.
May I wish you all for this evening dreams that you, too, are the eighth.
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