Sisyphus hill

There is a hill I regularly see where doomed souls come in the Winter. What are they doing? Why do they come? Up they toil over the packed and slippery snow. Trudging and panting they struggle in a kind of agonized slow motion to the hard won crest. They linger at the top as long as they can until some wind or dizziness pitches them onto their bellies, usually on a sheet of hard plastic, and they slide quickly down the hill, bouncing roughly as they go.

They are at the bottom again.

Do they flee?

No, they climb again. Again they toil. Again they attain the peak. Again they are jouncingly, futilely flung to the bottom. 

They get up, brush themselves off, and climb again.

Are they mad? Are they doomed? Does the sheet of plastic protect them from worse or does it seal their fate?

Rejected by the hill they are bodily hurled to the bottom once more. There is a group of them, all cast down there now. Surely some sin is being paid for, or perhaps now it has been paid for. Some ungodly hubris has perhaps reached an atonement.  For they get up this last time, pulling their sheet plastic behind them, some with what may be the corpses of the littlest among the group, lying inert, it seems, upon the planks, and they depart.

Clearly they are defeated. Maybe forever then they are finished. And hopefully, by this suffering, they are finally freed once again.

How much fun I'm having right now

Once again time is mercurial at work. For an hour I am scheduled on "Project time" which is a pretty good gig wherein I can freely work on my "projects". So naturally the hour moves along at a blinding pace. You know you're in trouble when you can see the minute hand moving. Put me somewhere I don't like and the second hand will move more slowly than that minute hand.

Not that there's anywhere I don't like.

Nevertheless I got through what I needed to do with my more functional project, that is, the ordering of supplies for the library, in just under half an hour, and I was able to move onto my more amorphous, albeit more essential project, which is my role as the Clown Prince of the library.

I had just put out a fresh handful of the small USB drives we sell to the public for a couple of dollars so that they can scan documents on our copy machine (No charge!). Sometimes we go through these USB drives at a terrifying (for me, who is responsible for keeping them stocked) pace, but other times, like these slow, pre-holiday weeks, I don't need to fill the USB drive bin very often. So naturally I turned to one of my colleagues working the front desk.

"Luke" I said. "I don't want to be critical, but you're not moving the USB drives at the rate we were hoping. Perhaps with each patron you could say something like 'Thank you for using the Library. Can we interest you before you go in one of our USB drives at the special year-end price of two dollars?'"

Luke feigned concern quite well, with just the right touch of looking alarmed that he had let us all down. "How many units should I be moving, say, in an hour, do you think?"

I love when my co-workers play along so well!

"Just three or four." I said. "We're not asking for the world, but every USB drive we don't sell is a dime profit we miss out on."

He looked relieved. "Only three or four? I think I could do three or four." He said, with a touch of up-for-the-challenge moxie in his voice.

I sidestepped over to his desk partner, Dan, and I gestured at him. "I don't expect you to do the nine or ten Dan does, of course. Dan has worked professionally in sales."

Luke nodded his head understandingly.

That taken care of I headed to the back room. There was a librarian there. I considered going over and saying some variation on "Hi, I'm spreading cheer!" But I happened to glance at the clock. My hour was up! Project time was over and I needed to go to the automated check in machine.

Now you tell me, you have been reading along, do you see anyway that the exchange I illustrated above with Luke could have taken 30 minutes?

And yet, somehow it did. Hell, writing this whole, detailed account of the thing only took...

Oh crap, its 3:30?

It took 17 hours!

Debbie Macomber over and over again

A library colleague and I were on our way up to shelve at the exact same time. We also unavoidably had the same subsection of fiction books to shelve. I agreed to work backwards alphabetically to deal with the problems inherent in that. Naturally enough, spoken or unspoken, it was going to be a race.

I'd like to think I was winning by the time I'd worked my way down the author names to the aisle of the M-N-O's. After all, wasn't I there first? But in the middle of that very row was a regular patron. And he wasn't just any regular, he was one who regularly visited at the front desk for a chat. 

Uh oh. 

I said "Hi." and hoped it would suffice. 

"Hey, can you help me?" He asked. 

Uh oh. I like helping people. It's one of my favorite things. But I was in a race! 

"Of course." I said because I am a professional. 

"My wife has an author she likes, really good book. I read it too. Not bad. And she sent me to get some more books, but I don't quite remember the author's name. Something like Macawber." 

I've worked here a long time and when one does that one's intuition and experience gets tuned to a fine pitch. Answers scream out at one in an almost psychic manner. This one seemed pretty clear. "It sounds like maybe it's Debbie Macomber." I said. She's a popular author who fit this scenario like a glove. 

His "No" was emphatic, somewhat impatient. "That's not it." He said. "Something else, started with an "Ma" or an "Mi".

"So, like "Macomber", but, okay. It's not "Macomber". I was hampered by my lack of computer. "Wait here." I instructed. "I'll go check a computer." I checked a computer. Nothing fit his scenario even remotely. Well, except for Macomber. I went back to him as he scanned the shelves. 

"Do you see all these books by Debbie Macomber?" I asked. "None of this looks familiar?" I gestured dramatically at the voluminous shelf of Debbie Macomber books. I displayed one of her tell-tale covers.

He barely looked. Crankily he said "It's definitely not that. That's not the author."

I thought to myself "I guess I better chill out about this 'Macomber' thing. I'm going to feel kind of bad when it's really not Macomber."

"Maybe I should call my wife and find out."

I told him it was a brilliant idea and he pulled out his phone and called.

"Ask her if it's Debbie Macomber." I stage whispered. I just couldn't help myself.

He shook me off like a pitcher getting the sign for his least favorite pitch from his catcher.

"What was that book you told me about?" He asked on the phone.

I heard her response leak out. "Where Angels Go".

"I'm pretty sure that's a Debbie Macomber book!" I exclaimed joyfully, but it wasn't on our shelf. I dashed to a catalog computer. Yes, it was by Debbie Macomber! I raced back to the patron.

I said "It's Debbie Macomber!" Simultaneous to him saying "It's by Debbie Macomber." Only he said it like hers was an unfamiliar name he'd never heard before. Then he added proudly "I looked it up on my phone."

I demonstrated all the Debbie Macomber books for him just as I had earlier.

"Thanks." He said, without warmth. After all, I hadn't really done anything for him. Then, in the closest I would come to acknowledgement from him he added "My wife had spelled her name wrong."

Leaving him behind I raced off to finish my cart shelving. I ran to the elevator with my empty cart just as the doors closed with my opponent, I mean co-worker, safely inside. They had beaten me by 20 seconds!

Then I went downstairs and told everyone my story while my co-worker probably shelved a whole other cart of books.

More instructions from nature

I was walking along the Mississippi River, which I learned to spell as a youth in Southern California and has really come in handy on this blog!

A waterfall was in the way of my walk, and a creek in a ravine. So even though there was snow packed icily on the skinny half-trails perched over the gorge's abyss, I left the civilized city trails and went down to pick my way past the waterfall.

It was a shortcut.

The Lord of the Rings has a line I frequently consider:

Shortcuts make long delays.

Pippin said that.

I like to consider it before I ignore it, while I'm ignoring it, and after I've ignored it. I have found it's not entirely accurate. It's more like shortcuts make for bad bets. Half the time they go wrong, which is particularly painful because one wouldn't be going for it if one wasn't especially eager to save a little time or distance or usually both, and then there one is going farther and longer than one ever dreamed. Maybe forty percent of the time shortcuts don't go wrong exactly, but they come out pretty much even with what would have happened without the shortcut. But that last ten percent, oh that beautiful ten percent, that's what keeps the shortcut gambling addict like me going. When a shortcut goes right it's like outsmarting the Universe, but in a joyful way that makes the Universe laugh and shake its head and say "Good one." 

Plus, once found a shortcut is yours forever.

So that's why I was clinging to the side of the cliff. It wasn't bad as long as I thought carefully about it and didn't think about it at the same time. In the Autumn it's a totally acceptable trail. Now it was a tad slippery. But I made it alive to the ravine bed. Crossing over the top of the waterfall was easy, but pretty soon after that I needed to get back up to the river road to complete my dazzling circumvention. Unfortunately the only way up was 50 feet of very steep hillside covered in just enough snow to make everything uncertain.

I looked for footprints to show a place where someone had demonstrated proof of concept. I couldn't find any people prints, but finally I found some prints by a deer. A deer on their little hooves had made it up the hill no problem.

Good enough for me.

Now I am a student of the woods and the winds. I study at the feet of Eagles and in the covens of the Flocks of Turkeys. I am informed by the snow and the trees. The clouds tell me my name.

And here is what I learned:

Deer are very agile!

Three state solution redux

In an unfortunate choice of titles the other day I presented to the world my "Three State Solution". This referred to three states of transportation: walking, biking, and cars and how they should all be stringently separated. Unfortunately, because of the alternate associations of its title, it led certain people that I was going to solve the problems of Israel and the Palestinians.

First of all: That is a lot of faith in me!

Second of all: I did not realize I had a following among World Leaders!

Third of all: If the United Nations is going to post my blog daily, as it has for three years, on its homepage, it should probably have let me know.

But no worries.

So you were all wanting me to solve The Troubles in the Middle East, as they used to call it and probably don't so much anymore. Easy peasey!


The Three State Solution


The Old City of Jerusalem with the main religious historical sights and anything kind of neat nearby, along with a bit of useful territory to manage from, will be a United Nations Wonderland, an International State under the auspices of the U.N. and governed by a panel of five people; an Israeli, a Palestinian, a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian. All of them must live there in the U.N. State under a lifetime vow of poverty, and though they can be religious they cannot affiliate with or belong to any Church, Mosque, or Temple. Also they cannot associate with any state except in formal panel settings.

The Palestinians get a state with more territory than Israel would dream of giving because Israel has been such assholes for so long. No military, but borders entirely guaranteed by the U.N.

Israel gets the remainder and are free to keep electing terrible leaders, but they get no military. However, as a sop, they get to keep Nuclear Weapons to kill everyone on the planet with out of respect for past history and because the Jew Haters are never going to dry up.

Three states: U.N. International Heritage, Palestinian, Israeli.

Legislators and diplomats call me for more details, I'm glad to help.

I just want World Peace.

Writing in books

There are greater sins against books than writing in them, but not many. And the few that there are, like banning, or burning, are so rare in my library life as to be barely noticed. And, when it comes down to it, if someone has gone through and written in a book I just assume they go ahead and burn that book when they're finished with it anyway. In fact, as far as I'm concerned everyone can go ahead and ridiculously write in any book they want to their hearts content, all with one unbreakable and absolute proviso: They must burn that book the moment they're finished with it and before any normal reader comes in even the most incidental contact with it.

Of course this presents special problems with library books, but burning and paying for would still be the preferred solution.

All the writing and underlining I've ever seen suggests the perpetrator would like to be seen as a student and scholar of the work. I have never seen a written-in book of any erudition, insight, or commitment. Pointless and random sentences are underlined. Wildly obvious comments are scrawled self-consciously in the margin. Simple words are ostentatiously defined with a couple of vague, distracting synonyms. It there are observations they will miss the point entirely. Working so much with books I have seen a lot of writing in them,and I can attest that after a dozen or so pages it all starts to fade away. The writer realizes they are not a scholar at all. They realize they have never read a book before and don't know how to do it, they have nothing to add, and that their thrill at being a student of knowledge burns away when they find they understand nothing and are bored out of their minds.

The last 150 pages of written-in books are invariably pristine.

But by then it's too late.

Three state solution

You have probably heard of the one state solution and the two state solution, but I am a firm believer in the three state solution.

It's the only thing that I believe in any more, given the circumstances.

And my new stance came about just this morning! Let me tell you how it happened.

I was walking to work along the Mississippi River. The combined bike/walk path was packed down with an icy snow that had fallen over the weekend and been unattended to by the City. It wasn't the most pleasant footing, and it took some care to walk on. It seemed like horrible conditions for bicyclists, but for some reason they were out in force. November was nearly entirely free of snow and ice conditions, but it seemed like the bikers had packed it in by then and I had the walks to myself. But bikers are a contrary lot, and as soon as the conditions go bad they come out once again just to prove they can.

This meant that as I was walking along the icy paths bikes were coming up behind me to pass. I didn't mind this, and at first it was going pretty well. These are wide paths. I could hear them coming. I left them room. And they passed without fuss.

But then I heard a bike coming and I got a bad feeling. I looked directly at them to try and establish that I had seen them. I moved off the wide path to walk in a snowy ditch to the side. I slowed and eyed them as they approached to pass...

don't do it...

don't do it...

don't do it!

"ON YOUR RIGHT" The bicyclist called out.

It was there that the die was cast for all time. The three state solution was born in me:

There should be walking paths, and they should be wonderful, ubiquitous, and full of the right of way.

There should be bike paths, and they should be pretty, separate, and have direct routes for commuting.

And there should be roads, for cars, but only when there have to be because they are killing the planet and everything.

And none of these paths should ever combine. Never should they be shared, ever. Walking, biking, and driving, all separate, distinct, and alone in their own state of purity; the three state solution.

The cars are too piggy and dangerous and fast to work with others.

The bikes are too righteous, clueless, and obnoxious.

And the walkers are too fragile and full of soft parts.

Plus they can get a little irritable.

Birding for the notoriety

As a dedicated amateur birder (life list: 27 birds) I know that when one steps out the door into the wide world one should keep a vigilant eye out for birds. They could happen anywhere! You don't want to miss it! A new bird could be just around the corner, or an old one. But you've got to be alert.

Nevertheless, making my icy way along the river, I wasn't heeding this essential tenant. My eyes were cast down and I was picking my way on the poorly plowed river path with no eyes for anything. I was writing angry letters in my mind to the Mayor about the public works department when I heard a...

I don't know what to call it.

It was like a chirp, or a squawk, or a song, but at the level of a screech. It was like as if a songbird had been given massive doses of steroids. And it was coming from very nearby.

I stopped and looked into the trees. It sure didn't take much. There, quite nearby, looking right back at me, was the culprit, a fluffy, looming bald eagle.

Naturally all the birders among you will want to know if I could add this exciting bird sighting to my life list. No, I have already seen thousands of bald eagles, so that's kind of off the table, but I'm not so sure I ever heard a bald eagle so unmistakably before. It did not sound like I would have guessed. Loud, yes, but not exactly predatory. It sounded almost personal. We regarded each other for awhile, me and this bald eagle. In my experience eagles tend to be rather imperious, so it was also a rarity to have an eagle take any interest in me whatsoever. Nevertheless this one had.

Naturally, I was flattered.  

Foshay

There, I look out everyday on the tallest building in the world, Foshay, the mighty giant Foshay Tower of Minneapolis. Only, I must say, it's a bit hard to see, hidden as it mostly is behind another skyscraper. Wait, there's its edge. I see its dirty tan edge!

The Foshay Tower is made of concrete, the brownish kind, like The Empire State Building, a lesser known skyscraper somewhere to the east of here.

Walking along the Mississippi River, keeping an eye as I can on that otherworldly Minneapolis skyline, the Foshay Tower seems to duck in and out of view. I catch a glimpse here and there of the tallest building in the world. Only a careful eye can pick it out. It seems so small.

"How can this be?" You ask. "Surely the tallest building in the world would be easier to spot."

Right.

Good point.

It does seem rather shorter than all the other Minneapolis skyscrapers, and apartment buildings, and tallish statues, and maybe some of the bigger SUV's.

I heard The Foshay Tower was modeled on The Washington Monument, and one can see it. It angles in as it rises. It has the same sort of shape and feel, in a more squat, usable sort of way. I heard this Foshay fellow went bankrupt and was ruined just a couple months after the tower was finished. He paid a huge commission to John Philip Sousa to write a song for its opening back in 1929, but the check to Sousa bounced higher than the Foshay Tower, which maybe isn't so terribly high after all.

Do you want to hear Sousa's Foshay song?

No, I know. I don't either.

Taboo

I have been writing about library work life for well over five years now, and though I have covered the vast array of standard library subjects ranging all the way from animals in the library to the various substances that cover returned materials, I suddenly realized that there is still one issue I have never addressed.

It is possible I have never talked about this issue because it is so mundane. But I believe its mundanity is merely the bland face it uses to hide the real reason it is not discussed. It is taboo. It is unmentionable.

No one in library land discusses it. No one admits to it. No one acknowledges how it makes them squirm.

Yes, I am going to talk about the single thing library circulation staff hate more than anything else.

Well, as they will tell you, they don't hate it, they're fine with it, if only...

Ha! They hate it.

They will do anything to get out of it.

They know it's not that bad of a job, or even that hard. The good ones even know that their willingness to embrace it, do it well, and even invite it is a testament to their professionalism.

But they hate it.

Are you ready?

Are you sure?

It's going to be disappointing.

Okay then.

It's...

Library card registration.

What? You cry. Library card registration? Seriously?

Yes. Seriously.

Although even I'll admit it's all a little mysterious.

There's something about the way that a card registration always takes a fair chunk of time, no matter how fast one is about it. There's something about its sheer lack of variety. There's also something about all the canned speeches that have to go with the process. But there's something intangible about it as well. I have seen library clerks all over the country try to squirm out of registering a card, but act like they're not squirming. I have seen them try to invoke rules to dissuade people from getting cards. I have seen them make up rules to stop people from getting cards. I have seen clerks make every argument in the book as to why it's not in someone's interest to get a card just then. I have seen library staff go into hiding at the prospect of a library card registration. All of it while being as pleasantly passive aggressive about it as possible.

But no, ask one of my colleagues about registrations and -insert series of minor complaints here- they're fine with it.

If I haven't made it clear, I don't believe them.

Over the many years my co-workers have ranged from excellent to execrable, but one thing even the least capable of them has been able to do is smell a library card registration coming from a mile off. And in all my deep studies of library front desk dynamics I have noticed one thing: no one likes a registration. Some people are complete assholes about it, blithely ducking out of the way, as if by accident, or lingering with a patron to try and evade a likely upcoming registration, and some try to overcompensate for their evil inclinations by cheerfully inviting a registration. But I recognize the tell tale signs of wilt, of quailing in everyone, even if it be dauntlessly covered over in the blink of an eye. Even if some of those people refuse to acknowledge it fully to themselves.

I cannot be convinced otherwise. Because after 24 years I have glimpsed the very heart of the God of Library Circulation Staff.

And it's not pretty.

Though it's not all that ugly either.

Not guilty

It is a feature, or a bug, of our library culture that occasional extracurricular work activities are seen, managerially at least, as a problem. Internet usage, personal phone calls, too much chatting, both among staff and with patrons, have all had their moments under the bright, revealing library police lights. Also culturally speaking, the response to this problem has not been the most efficient. Instead of a quiet, low key request, gently put, with the one or two main offenders of certain basic standards, we more commonly get blanket bans: No Internet. No chatting. No calls. Most of these blanket bans erode over time depending on the will of the staff to persist in natural, albeit slightly dangerous, behavior, and on the managerial gusto to enforce a rule being minisculy violated nearly everywhere.

Which brings me to a new blanket ban that greeted me in my email this morning. Someone has been constantly poking at their smartphone while on the job. Consistently enough, instead of said person being talked to, the response has instead been that no one is to use their cell phone while on the job. In fact, everyone should, ideally, leave their phone in their locker.

This is not a particularly significant event except for, and perhaps because of, this:

I don't have or use a smart phone.

And so in 24 years of working at the library, through dozens and dozens of wide condemnations of aberrant, slacker, and unprofessional employee behavior, this, this just now, is the first time I've ever been innocent.

True confessions of a birder

I have only recently embraced the longstanding fact that I am a birder. Indeed, as I type on my computer right now I can look barely left and slightly up out my window and see a big hawk sitting in a tree. It's great.

Eh, what kind of hawk you ask?

I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF HAWK!

Which brings me to the question of why, after 40 years of birding, I am only now willing to admit what has all along been true. I am only now willing to name BIRDING on my list of hobbies, placing it just below 

4. Messi and the Barcelona Football Club, and just above 

6. Children's Literature.

Why have I waited so long?

Shame. 

It is shame.

My birding life list has been stalled for eighteen years at 27. That's right. A life list total in which I can boast of having seen 27 birds. One can probably see 27 birds in a day! Sure I have seen vastly more than 27 varieties of birds in my life, but my understanding of the rules is that you have to know what kind of birds they are to count them. So the list stands at 27. Yes, I have occasionally dabbled in the books and with the wretched Internet to try and identify the birds I've seen, but, frankly, it's always ambiguous and I come to no conclusions. 

I see individuals.

For instance, at the library I work at the heavyset man with a kind of swollen neck goiter, warm, slurred speech, and a penchant for anything related to flags, is surely identifiable as a member of Homo Sapiens. I mean I guess he is. I don't know. To me he is just "Roy". And so it is that when I try to look up a bird with what looks like a flake of rust stuck to its leg, and who seems to have misplaced something, I meet with no official success in the bird identification manuals, or, for that matter, with Dan, who has done some official birding and knows his birds pretty well, but always comes up blank when I need help.

Like with that Dodo I saw down on the river one Summer.

So 27 it is.

Also I don't have any binoculars. I'm extremely fond of them in theory, but in practice I find them irritating; the way they have to be just so over one's eyes, the way they never quite seem focused quite how I need, the way no matter how powerful they are I always need them to be slightly stronger. 

So instead what happens is this:

I am walking out on the golf course, newly covered in snow. I see a big hawk in a tree (no, not the same hawk out the window. Just wait.). I carefully approach. Holy crap! That is not a hawk, it is an anaconda! What I took to be feathers are precise scales glinting in the morning light. Having no fear of snakes, and intrigued I venture nearer. Oh, it is not an anaconda. It is the upward pointing stump of a broken branch. What I took first of be feathers, then scales, is the pattern of snow as it combines with the bark of the oak.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing in that to add to my life list.

And so I say again: 27 it is. And that's okay. One of the hardest things to remember is that we don't have to be good at our hobbies.

When I was about halfway through writing these confessions I had a great plan for how I was going to end them. I was going to say:

And that hawk is still there.

But I'm not the fastest writer in the world, and that hawk had things to do, so it left. It flew away northwest, over a little creek and, without binoculars, I lost sight of it.

I have decided that is just as well. Now we will never know what kind of hawk it was. We can suffer our joy and ignorance together.

Grass is greener

Next year my wife and I will go to Florence, Italy, for the first time. We have, as you would know from reading this blog (wait, you do read this blog, don't you? You're not a... gasp... Internet Wanderer?) 

LOCK UP THE SILVERWARE!

Anyway, we have been many times to Rome. And every time we went to Rome I would spend hundreds of hours pouring over the Internet looking for the best gelaterias. You could easily click on my "gelato" tag below to read dozens of my gelato posts concerning this, but I wouldn't recommend it, especially to the Internet Wanderers, who will be much more gainfully employed picking the cheap locks that are all I have to protect our silverware.

It's super valuable silverware.

As for the rest of my readers I don't recommend going back to read dozens of my old gelato posts because you will need all your energy for today's post. It is an advanced post, and really hard to keep track of, with complex sentence structures and dozens of complicated digressions. I'm just saying

SAVE YOUR STRENGTH.

Anyway, all those many times I poured over the Internet, looking for the best Gelato in Rome, you know what happened? The Internet would tell me that there is some really good gelato in Rome, but boy, you should go to Florence. THAT is the ultimate place for gelato.

Well, we are going to Florence. So I look up where the best gelato is and the Internet says it's in Rome. Rome has all these great gelaterias. The Internet also suggests Paris (we were there a year ago, and, trust me, there was absolutely no mention of this then), and Copenhagen, where we were less than two months ago and where we sure didn't see any of these amazing places and none of them turned up in my research during my preparations.

From which we can conclude

Boy, we sure do get to go to a lot of swell places!

or

The Internet is broken.

or

The Internet is messing with me.

or

There is no way to discuss gelato intelligibly. 

Yes, definitely that at least. There is probably no way to discuss gelato intelligibly.


But I'm fully committed to trying. 

So leave me with a few of my silver spoons.

Hundred year Messi

I quite fancy how they talk about floods. There are 20-year floods, or 100-year floods or just... floods. It all comes down to just how often these things happen historically. Of course the massive climate change we are affecting on The Planet is messing up those sorts of standards, but I'm still keen on the idea.

Sometimes I like to apply it to athletes.

Yes, I am going to talk about Messi.

No, you won't be able to stop me, but you can always go away and look at something else interesting on the Internet...

If you can find anything!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Good luck with that.




Hello?





Hello? 





Well, I'm surprisingly happy just talking to myself about Messi. Perfectly happy all alone. Messi is so entertaining after all, isn't he?






Oh, I knew you were here all along.

Last week Messi was playing soccer. At one point in a not particularly great game a much too high and fast pass came to Messi. He headed the ball at a very difficult angle to send it far up in the air. Then he positioned himself for it by backing into the defending player so it would land in front of him. Catching it delicately on the top of his foot he literally pulled the ball in that single move behind him, through the legs of a defender he cannot, obviously, see, then he pivoted physically around this defender to collect his own pass and race down the sideline.

When one sees this move in real time it doesn't look like much because it's so quick and it so defies what seems possible that one is inclined to ascribe it at least partly to accident. Only slowed down does a person say, oh, he meant to do that. Even still there is something hard to process about it.

I don't post links on my blog.

But what's a rule if one can't make an exception.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeaOIaA9KJs&feature=youtu.be

The world of soccer sort of knows how good Messi is, but I think they also struggle with it. His main competition, comparatively, is a player, still alive, whose heyday was the eighties, Diego Maradona. This would make Messi into, sort of, the thirty-year Messi. I don't see it though. There's plenty of footage, but it's sport, so there's a great deal of emotion and fandom. I may be guilty of such things myself. I have seen these brilliant, dazzling feats of Maradona, but, just, it's not as good. He's not as good. It's just that...

...what do you do in sports if there isn't a contest? What if there isn't really a viable argument? What if you get a hundred year player, the hundred-year Messi?

What if it's a thousand?











  

Seat buddy

I was off with my wife on a Saturday night to see some chamber music at the Ordway in St. Paul, Minnesota. We entered the hall early enough that the seats were still sparsely populated, but as we approached our two assigned spots I got a sinking feeling. Right about next to where it seemed like we'd be sitting was a big man. A Big Man. He had a beard. And he was 300 pounds if he was an ounce.

Yes, it turned out I was sitting next to him.

Oh reader, shed not a tear for me. 

Let us both scale back our prejudice, or, possibly, our informed experience, but probably the first because HE was a brilliant seat buddy.

Brilliant. A gentleman. A mensch.

Arms self-consciously tucked in, huddled into his seat, moving as little as possible, he observed not just the minimal, paltry boundaries of the dividing line down the center of our arm rest and the floor line between our chairs, but he also observed the highly advanced concept of The Buffer Zone. He did not touch our arm rest at all. He, and I for that matter, allowed a couple inches either side of the dividing line between us as a no man's land, a de-militarized zone that none entered. There was not merely a line between us, but a bubble, a cushy force field of human distance.

It was great.

I don't know how he did it. He was very big. But he managed. We did not talk. We never even came close to jostling or even a single accidental touch. I would not recognize him now, a mere two days later, in a small line up of 322 pound bearded men. But he was my buddy. My buddy.

And though there was a modest passage of time in which he breathed very loudly, I wouldn't have traded him for the world.






 

Shopping rebellion

On Black Friday my wife and I were out at The Mall of America.

"Why?" You may ask.

I answer a lot of questions here on this blog. Many of them are very advanced answers that maybe should have been shared with your Senators, Bob Dylan, your local Library Director, or your loved ones. Though they probably weren't.

But this isn't that kind of answer.

We were at Black Friday Mall of America because we had some random shopping business to take care of, and sometimes the timing works and sometimes it doesn't, and we don't quail from a difficult situation. 

I mean cumulatively we don't. I always quail some.

They had plenty of Christmas trees at the mall, Santa was there, hidden by an elf. Oh, and there were millions of people, just gobs of them, all over The Mall and in great big, occasionally mysterious, lines. The rest of the city was a ghost town. And all these people at The Mall were buying things so amazing and fantastic that it boggled the imagination. Extraordinary things, one-of-a-kind magical things, all towering enchantingly in their arms.

For myself I got two pairs of socks. 

But then I'm an iconoclast.

Our Universes

You have to order the Universe or it will be ordered for you.

There I was with my wife at a concert of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra listening to contemporary, avant garde classical music, led by Pekka Kuusisto. Avant garde music is like going for a long, solitary walk; one occasionally notices an interesting thing or two while mostly writing blog posts in ones head.

Oh, yes, you do write blog posts in your head, whatever you actually call it. It is an ordering of the Universe. If you don't order the Universe someone else will do it for you. 

You're safe with me though. The only thing I do here is just put the Universe back where you left it.

The shift of ice

It's not even December yet. It's not even, technically, Winter. And while we haven't gotten any of those extreme cold temperatures, native here mainly to January and February, to my surprise the river froze, all at once, in the night.

The river freezes strangely here. There are deep currents to make it slow to freeze. The strange warm effluvia of a major megalopolis flow into it. Toasty little songbirds cool their hot feet in it. So sometimes, even in the deepest parts of the Winter, when a week goes by without the temperature ever breaking into the positives, the Mississippi is still capable of holding open leads of water, usually steaming slightly, with flocks of geese huddled on its icy edges curled desperately into themselves.

But today, after merely a moderately cold, single-digit night, the river had strangely frozen solid, and it looked like it was all at once. Waves and winding currents were written into the fluid, undulating ice. The whole frozen river looked as if it was full of white lily pads. I imagined that if I had awaken at three in the morning and went out to look at the river I could have seen it go from liquid to solid in a single second. I could have heard the great condensing sound of water flash freezing, like in a magic spell, like a Disney movie. Elsa touched the river, and it turned to ice.

I walked upstream, keeping an eye on the mysterious river, but I am easily distracted by my thoughts, birds, bikers, the anticipation of street crossings, the vagueries of time. And so some short while after walking under the railroad bridge around the old Meeker Dam site, just past the Shriners' Hospital, I looked down at the river again.

It was hardly frozen at all.

I was starting to feel pretty cold though.