Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

While watching a part of Algeria v Germany from a eatery/bar in Oregon:

Nadia notes the “normal” haircuts on the German players. No faux hawks or ponytails or Beckham’s (which might be a fax hawk or ponytail). Not a single lock spiked or a single tip frosted. Unusual look for a soccer team. I say you can set your watch to those guys. She responds with they just have conservative do’s. The German passing looks more precise and reliable than the Algerians’.

A German player looks to have legitimately injured a hamstring. Since no one was near him at the time, you’d think he’s not faking it. But who knows. He also didn’t instantly grab his face or the injured area; instead, he just goes down in a heap, suggesting the genuine stress of authentic injury. He eventually gets taken away on a hand-carried bright orange stretcher. He could kind of walk and certainly stand but I suppose the stretcher is standard practice. This is something I haven’t seen in American sports. Injure a leg in America (and Canada by extension) and you walk or hop off with help from a trainer or two or get carted off on a modified golf cart. Stretchers are reserved for suspicions of spine related injuries. This all feels about right in the soccer v North America context. Watching an athlete get carried away by a gaggle of people on a medical contraption can give that athlete an air of neediness to the American eye. That wouldn’t fly in America when the athlete could conceivably leave the field at least partially under his own determination. If taken away on a motorized vehicle, it only amplifies the danger and ruggedness of the sport. This fits neatly within American and un-American preconceptions and stereotypes and might play a small subconscious role in soccer’s inability to break through in The States.

A hand carried stretcher for a single leg injury makes sense to me. But I don’t know if I would take one if I could still hop on one leg.

At one point the Algerian goalie was physically standing on his head. That expression, then, might come from an actual observation, as opposed to “found another gear” and “110%,” which come from a place of misunderstanding physiology and mathematics, respectively.

We are on the sand dunes of Oregon doing a little West Coast swing. I have my idea of what a coast looks like. But you look out from the coast here, you see as far as humanly possible until the planet curves over, and the horizon line created has water on one side and sky on the other. No mountains. The coast I’m used to feels like a facsimile. And the scale of the waves and the horizon’s distance is so much larger than at home that it looks like everything is moving in slow motion. It’s so slow that the bright strip of ocean right under the sun looks like a swift glacier. Or a slow wave.

Nadia bought some porcupine quill earrings from a guy in a shack. His wife makes the jewelry from the materials he gathers. As a part time carpenter, he says he can make anything he’s told to make. But she creates. She can drill a hole into a beach pebble quicker than he could imagine. He considers this a feat of creativity. I think I get that. He’s new to Oregon. Bought a house after looking at a picture of it. His old life was that of a ranch hand in the eastern Sierras. Freeze in the winter and scorch in the summer. Then for reasons he couldn’t fully articulate, he went from ranching 6000 feet up a mountain to sea level selling jewelry out of a wooden shack. The ocean has been nothing but good for his body and brain and heart and he often repeats that idea quietly. Maybe this quiet repetition is his version of “who knew?”

A chunk of conversation while looking over some teas:

Nadia – … Oregon Marionberry tea. Is Marionberry from Oregon?
Jae-Ho – I think it’s from Washington DC.

Turns out Marion Barry is not a household name. At a restaurant in Washington state a few years ago, the waiter recommended the Marionberry pie. I giggled. Turns out he had never heard of Marion Barry and when I informed him of the Marion Barry story, he and other staff Wikipedia-ed him. Sounded made up, I guess.

This reminded me of another exchange we recently had when Nadia asked me about some purple Silly Putty I have:

Nadia – Where is the purple one from?
Jae-Ho – Minneapolis.

On vestigial parts: The finger is fully functional now. A little stiff, less so weak, and vaguely soar if articulated or pressed the wrong way. But typing feels the same as ever. Eating also. Buttoning pants and doing up zippers are back to normal. Most activities except, and there’s a theme developing…

Buttoning shirts and tying shoelaces. For these two actions, The finger and some part of my brain autonomously but tenderly lift the finger back to keep it out of harm’s way, as if it’s still wrapped up and half-severed. Why?

I think one interesting detail sets these two things apart from the before mentioned tasks: I do these two things somewhat often but not regularly, as opposed to pants that go on everyday. I also operate eating utensils and a keyboard everyday and several times each day. But buttoned shirts are uncommon (once a week?) and, these summer days, I usually wear shoes without laces. In contrast, these two tasks were performed more often in the cooler climate during the height of the injury*. It seems to me that, post-wrap removal, through necessity and repetition, the finger was fully integrated on some tasks ASAP, but, through a lack of need and infrequency of task, the finger is yet to be re-conditioned for other activities.

In everything I do, I hope to exercise thought and intention. But it’s not hard to find microcosms of how a good chunk of my day is performed via conditioning. These are small tasks for sure. But what about larger ones? What of my treatment of and reactions to people? See, you got me thinking about kindness, Thomas.


*If not buttoning a shirt, then buttoning a jacket.