Cup Final

Meant to get back earlier, but Cedar and I were utterly waxed by the high drama of the World Cup Final...

Not my doggo, BTW; she's a friends', and a very sweet girl.

Anyway, yeah, the Final. 

I have a weird relationship with Argentine soccer. The Albiceleste are, have been, and can be, a magnificent squad that plays gorgeous, engaging football. 

I'm not exactly a Lionel Messi stan, but I respect the guy's skills and was vaguely happy that he finally got to the top step after all those hard years and disappointments.

At the same time, it's hard for me to get around the ugly things also associated with that blue-and-white kit. The Dirty War Cup of 1978 and the brutal chicanery that the junta put into ensuring that their team took the gold, including the shiking of another truly great side, the Clockwork Orange of Seventies Holland.

Then the second star in 1986, which is indelibly linked with one of the great and appalling characters of the game, Diego Maradona. 

His quarterfinal against England sums up my feelings about the Albiceleste; a moment of utter shame followed by a moment of unutterable brilliance. 

We're all a bit like that, I suppose; we can be thugs moments before or moments after being kind and gentle. The hard part is getting beyond the way we tend to save the kindness for our "own" and the brutality for "them". 

I'd like to pretend I don't share that failing. I do.

So it was with mixed emotions I watched the Argentine fans and their team celebrate, because I couldn't entirely forget the past to revel in the present. They had no such constraints, and that's what makes this game so compelling. It's the long, slow, grinding oppression of anxiety and fear as you watch your hopes teeter on the brink...

...and the sudden, wild, manic explosion of joy when they win...

...but with the lurking understanding that that joy is never completely free of the shadow of grief and loss.

Which is what gives the game whatever weight it has. It's a bit like life; sun and shadow, joy and pain, hope and fear.

Which, in turn, leads me back to what I meant to talk about this past weekend. But sufficient unto the day is this rumination on the import of a kids' game. I'll be back later to day to talk about what is bugging me about the goings on out in the unpaved parts of my crib.