Reply to "The Jersy Game" in the Jan 2 New Yorker · 9 days ago by Julie
Danglin’ Don, a junior at Our Lady of Painful Salvation and Number 8 on his team, trotted onto the field, pumping his right fist as he came. Even before the game started, under his helmet he was sweating and, due to practice scrimmage injuries to his acromioclavicular (shoulder) joint, his left arm hung just a tad unnaturally.
The cheers didn’t die as his teammates joined him. If anything, they rose in volume. “Go-nads! Which team is baddest? We’re the go-naddest!” Danglin’s parents and eight siblings, dressed rather cornily to look like the team mascot, waved giant foam gonads and shouted themselves hoarse. “We’ve been pumpin’ for Danglin’ since he was four,” says his father Bob Finchley, a torts lawyer who practices in Manhattan. “Reading aloud from Procopius, Adelard of Bath, all of the Italian theologians.”
“By the time he was seven,” says his mother Eileen, also a torts lawyer, “he’d memorized the Song of Roland in the original Old French, and we knew we had somebody special.”
The road to stardom was not an easy one. Plagued by a series of injuries that would have felled a lesser competitor (Danglin’s pinkies have been broken a total of seven times apiece, he’s pulled his right hip flexors countless times, and, according to Dr. Adamantine, the team physician, “he will never again be able to use his patellas as God intended them to be used”), Danglin’ has rebounded with amazing speed and determination every time. “He just don’t know what the word “quit” means,” says Coach Toedle. “He’s a phenomenon!”
But it’s not just Danglin’s natural abilities that make the Gonads the top-ranked team in the MHL. “Total” Toedle begins training scrimmages in late August, despite the risk of heat prostration and concussion. “If they want to be champions,” he says, “they got to act like champions.”
With full-face reciting sessions, Gregorian marathons, and even the controversial lute strumming scrimmages (banned in every other state except Texas), Toedle has built team spirit as well as endurance and versatility. “We’re unstoppable!” he has said, more than once.
Today was no exception. The Erections, a team out of Kansas City from Upper St. Dick Preparatory School, and the top-seeded in the Midwestern Division, was already off their feed due to the exceptionally hostile reception they had been given at the airport. Looking a little droopy, the Erections walked on-field to boos and catcalls.
After the usual cheerleader-led yells (this time in an obscure version of Welch Gaelic), the first quarter began with a rapid-fire exchange of Dominican prayers, a series of ontological arguments for the existence of God, and all the usual high-energy in-your-face early-game events. Suddenly, in a prepared move that drew gasps from the crowd, Danglin’ Don surged into the lead with a ringing rendition of a piyyut from one of the early Italian paytanim, Shephatiah. As the Hebrew prayer rang out, it was already clear that the Erections were completely unprepared. “They don’t warm up right, they don’t score,” said Toedle, shrugging his shoulders as two of the away team’s members were carried off in stretchers. Cries of “Foul!” were booed down, and, after that early drubbing, the Erections finished the game with a limp 3 – 88, and a very expensive medical bill indeed.
After the game, we were finally able to interview Danglin’ Dan himself. Flushed with success, he snapped his fingers and bounced on his toes as he threw mock punches at us. “Yup, yup, yup,” he said. “I’m going to get a free ride in college. I’ve totally been offered a bunch of scholarships to a bunch of places. Places that I can’t tell you about yet.”
“Don’t you think it’s unethical to go to college not intending to study at all?” we asked, somewhat timidly.
“Hey,” said Danglin’, “Get real. College is about making your way in the world. I continue my ace performance in college, I get recruited by the major Medieval History League teams, and boom! I’m set for life.”
One only hopes that injuries don’t nip this ambitious young man’s plans in the bud, so to speak.
Tip of the Iceberg · 56 days ago by Julie
It was a cold blustery Sunday. In the afternoon, I took Java to the beach on the North side, hoping for some wave drama. It was indeed dramatic, with brilliantly lit whitecaps, the taste of spray in my nose, a wind that burrowed through the knit in my jacket, and the roar of water and thump of driftwood hitting the pebbles.
After a bit of romping around together, Java and I went our separate ways, she to rush madly about, and me to sit on a damp hummock that was somewhat sheltered from the direct wind and write a fiddle tune.
Some days, composing is easy, other days, well, it’s fun even if it isn’t effective. So, after having fun, I noticed that the sun was orange and setting at the northernmost tip of an island off to the west. Time to go home. I gave a violent shudder, zipped my jacket up to my chin, put my gloves back on, and called the dog.
I spent a half-hour wandering around in the mossy dunes behind the berm, looking for the damn dog, calling and calling (no point in whistling in a wind like that).
I was struck by how foreign my own voice sounded. Earlier, in the solitary zone of musicianship, how I looked and how I sounded was of no interest at all. My consciousness was of my interior life, and of the exterior life around me, and they were one. The shell of my body, which divides one from the other, vanished from importance.
Walking home (BTW, I did find the dog, quite close by to where I had been musicking, but with her head in a bush and understandably unable to hear my call), I thought about the memorial for my mother-in-law which is coming up.
She had a strong personality, impacting each of us in different but very distinctive and compelling ways. Perhaps if we compared notes, we might come up with a convincing description of her personality, a way that she “was.”
I wonder, though, how she experienced herself? Did she have many moments like the one I just experienced, where subject and object merged and she did not think of herself as self? Does what we will remember at the memorial service represent only the tip of the iceberg (rhetorical question – the answer is “yes”)? And how did the bulk of the iceberg feel to her? Who was she?
Who are you?
Mischief · 73 days ago by Julie
We were at the old age home. “Hey,” said Petunia. “What about if we move all the name plaques and the wreaths and stuff one door down? We could really confuse the oldsters that way, couldn’t we?”
“But what would we do with the person whose room is on the very end?” I asked.
“No problem. Put that set of nametags and wreaths and stuff on the next floor down. We could re-paint the numbers in the elevator, too. Move all the floors one floor up.”
“It might work,” I said, considering it carefully. “But, we’d have to move all the paintings on the walls one room over as well.”
“Just stop,” said Bob, his face red. “You have no right to mess with these people. They are old. They have had a hard life, some of them. Leave them in peace.”
All right, then.
Windy · 81 days ago by Julie
“Man, it was so windy out,” said Yvette, coming in from outside and slamming the door behind her, “it was so windy that I almost didn’t need toilet paper.”
Take a Deep Breath · 84 days ago by Julie
I asked Bob if he would consider wearing long pants when he goes out on the boat. “Maybe you’re getting so staggering-around cold because you’re not wearing enough clothing.”
“I’m sympathetic to the idea of keeping warm,” he said. “I agree with that part. But wearing pants is just mythology. Look at the Tierra del Fuegans.”
“You mean you think you would be warmer if you took your shorts off, instead of switching them out to long pants?”
“When they get wet, long pants wick your body heat away.”
I started laughing.
“Think about it. Take a deep breath,” he said.
So, I’m thinking about it.
Enjoy, Or Else · 86 days ago by Julie
Bob came over to make sure I’d noticed how absolutely lovely the morning was. Dark clouds, luminescent yellow maple leaves, black tree trunks, brilliant green grass.
Yes, I’d noticed.
“You know,” he said, “one time I was running my boat up to Alaska. Had a new deckhand, a lesbian woman who later became a dentist, but that’s another story. Anyway, she was on deck reading a book, and we’d just come into Lisianski Inlet. Dark clouds overhead, a glacier and snow capped peaks on one side, orcas skyhopping on the other, a flight of puffins somewhere else. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t get her to look up from her book. ‘Look over there!’ I’d say, and she’d keep reading. Never once looked up.
“So, when we got to dock, I fired her.”
Ow · 101 days ago by Julie
In my oldish age, I have noticed that my ears hurt when I listen to high frequency sound. This is a problem, because I love music like this.
Not to mention that I play piercingly dramatic music such as this or this.
Malleable Realities · 102 days ago by Julie
A lady on the ferry gave me her website but I can’t access it. She gave it to me again and I still can’t.
In related news, Bob said he’d put four tubs of lemon ice cream in the freezer. Wow! Lemon ice cream! But, when I scuttled over to look, all there was was the usual mackerel, stir-fry veggies, and red gas cans with frozen water in them (really, it makes sense – they’re for the cooler).
Bob had vanished. Fine, he does that a lot. As he later explained it, he was sorry I got confused. He had left the ice cream, and a fillet of fish (not mackerel) on the boat.
I am sorry I get confused, too.
Powerful Goats · 105 days ago by Julie
Last week, I visited Bob to see his goats, and he said, “They went into heat late this year.”
I nodded. Goats wait for the first cold weather, which wasn’t until September. Their gestation period is five months.
Bob pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned on the fence. “Yep,” he said. “It means they’ll kid in mid-February. So, there’s going to be an Arctic storm in mid-February.”
I raised my eyebrows. Really? But okay, no need to argue.
This week I went back. “You seen the paper?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said.
“Well, they confirm what my goats already predicted. Bad weather in February.”
Letter to Mom · 108 days ago by Julie
Yesterday I met a guy named Bubba and bought some radish seeds from him. Bubba turned to Bob, who was standing next to me, and said, “You know, all German crossword puzzles have a clue in there somewhere that asks for the name of a German town that begins with an X. Even though German does not have the letter X, there’s a town named Xanten.” We nodded and smiled, knowing that of course German has an X – Xanthippe, Xenie, Xereswein, Xylograph, Xylophon.
After we left the store, Bob said, “Bubba also claims that salmon drink tea.”
“What does he mean, salmon drink tea?” I asked.
“He says they gather where leaves have fallen into the seawater because they want to drink the tea. He has a small steamboat.”
“What do you mean, he has a small steamboat?”
“He was married to a gal who repaired clocks and compasses. They had a flour mill, and when I was little, I used to sneak flour from the bags of it my mom bought because it was so delicious. They raised Clydesdales for years, but then Bubba found his wife in bed with a massage therapist and broke his arm when he punched the bed. He had to have surgery anyway because he had been milking goats for too many years. The massage therapist cooks the best Thai food. He learned how from his nanny.”
I started laughing. “What?” said Bob, but suddenly he started laughing too.
We went back to his place and ate vanilla ice cream with Persian Carrot Jam – Morabbâ-Ye Haveej on it. Here is a recipe:
5 C carrots, pureed
4 C sugar
2 C water
2 Tbsp slivered orange peel (to remove bitterness add cool water, boil for 3- 4 minutes, discard water, repeat 2-3 times)
Juice of 2 lemons/limes
5-6 cardamom
1 tsp rose water
Bring sugar and water to a boil, boil 5 minutes. Add carrots, continue boiling, stirring frequently. Skim foam, cook until it’s syrupy instead of watery, at least 45 minutes. In the last ten minutes of cooking add remaining ingredients. Pour into sterile jars, cap, and keep refrigerated.