Up and a Che'

Over the past two weekends, I've seen two very different masterpieces of sorts.

The first was Evita, performed live at the Arvada Center. It was a perfect setting--comfortable theater, exquisite scenery--and we had the perfect seats, front and center. The acting and singing were superb, bolstered by the excellent source material. Forget Madonna and Antonio Banderas: Evita is a gripping tour de force of the human condition. It's really so many things: a classic rags-to-riches story, a fable about the perils of ambition, a geopolitical epic, a haunting love affair, a poignant tragedy.

But I think the true genius of the story is in the character known only as Che'. Che' floats in and around Evita throughout her mercurial young life, sardonic at times, sympathetic at others. He is sort of a conscience, sort of a narrator, sort of a pest. He is not Che' Guevera, though his name is clearly meant to evoke the revolutionary ghosts of South America. In the opening scene, which inauspiciously is at Eva Peron's funeral, Che' emerges indinstictly out of a crowd of mourners, and the meaning is clear: he is the embodiment of the People, the common masses from whence Evita herself came. He sings, voice dripping with sarcasm:

"Oh what a circus, oh what a show
Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an actress called Eva Peron
We've all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right

Oh what an exit, that's how to go
When they're ringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like Eva Peron
It's quite a sunset
And good for the country in a roundabout way
We've made the front page of all the world's papers today

You let down your people Evita
You were supposed to have been immortal
That's all they wanted, not much to ask for
But in the end you could not deliver."

The second masterpiece was Up, Pixar's new film. It's a crazy tale about a bitter old man and a chubby boy scout who float their house to South America for one last chance at adventure. It's a risk--really, an animated movie starring an old curmudgeon?-- as most Pixar movies are, but it's one that works on every level. It's hilarious and slap-sticky for kids; it's rich and adventurous for escapists; it's poignant (but not overly sentimental) for the dreamers and lovers in all of us. It was deeply symbolic and metaphorical without being heavy-handed. I left with the feeling of exhilaration you have when you've allowed yourself to be swept away in the powers of a master story-teller.

"Adventure is out there," the movie says. Regardless of age or personal history, you can chase your dreams and yet find joy and meaning in whatever your current circumstances. And you might meet up with some mad scientists, goofy dogs, and prehistoric birds along the way. Or maybe you'll realize the true adventure was in giving all of your heart and soul to the woman you love.

I'll tell you what: nothing is more certain in this life then a Pixar movie being nearly perfect in every way. They are visual feasts, computer animation that is both crisp and lush, expressive and human. The voicing and characters are always spot on. But their true magic is in their storytelling. The Pixar guys get it. Their multi-layered stories are able to delve into the heart of the human condition in ways that few other movies can. They maintain their child-like wonder at the world around them, and yet give voice to some of our deepest adult fears and hopes.

Every single Pixar movie, at some point, hits you right in the heart. I have trouble even narrowing the list of my favorite five. I guess I'd have to go with Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Wall-e, Toy Story 2, in that order. And now I might have to vault Up to the top of that list. That's pretty good company to be in.

Going for the Goal

I'm going to be a terrible soccer parent. I already am. Not in the "beat up the other players' dads" sort of way, but more in the "living vicariously through my children" way. It's pathetic, I know. But I'll be honest with you: few things get me more excited than watching my children excel at sports.

This Saturday was a watershed moment. After a series of early season snow-outs, both Joy and Grant have had good spring soccer seasons. I am Grant's assistant coach, and he's made his Daddy proud, scoring numerous goals in his three-on-three, no-goalie league. He is naturally aggressive and competitive, and his success has given him bragging rights at home. Joy is also competetive, but she tends to subvert that quality in deference to her underlying niceness. That's not a bad thing, but it results in her struggling to be aggressive, and as I've learned, aggressiveness is the whole enchilada when it comes to kids' soccer.

This is Grant's first year playing, and Joy's third. When she was four, she dominated her little soccer league, once scoring ten goals in a single game. But her last experience in Worland was very poor when, as a five year old girl, she was competing against eight-year old boys twice her size. She hardly ever touched the ball, and became quite timid as a result. For most of this season during games, that timidity persisted. When all the girls would bunch up around the ball, she would back away rather than rush in, and though she has a strong leg, she would pull the string on her kicks and never get much power into them.

This was very frustrating for her Daddy to watch, and it has led to numerous backyard soccer sessions. After struggling to find a way to motivate her to release her inner beast, I conjured up this little motivational gem: the Thunder Crack. "Rush to the ball," I enthused. "Plant your left foot, swing your right foot like a hammer, and then crack the ball with thunder." For whatever reason, she seemed to get this, and her kicks took on a lot more power.

But it wasn't translating into shots-on-goal in her games. Ironically, part of the problem was that she was doing a particular soccer skill too well: playing her position. She would linger in her lane on her side of the field rather than pursue the ball, which is good, but her teammates would be unable to pass her the ball.

So much of soccer is about timing, and taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Joy and I started a little mental imagery game: Imagine that you're playing your position, when the ball pops out of the crowd and rolls in front of the goal. You rush to the ball faster than anyone else, and without stopping, you plant your foot, crack it with thunder, and it rockets past the goalie and curls into the back of the net. I'd have her close her eyes, breathe deep, and try and make this scene come to life. We did this last Thursday morning on the short ride to school. She giggled and rolled her eyes, but played along.

Skip to her make-up game that night. She played well as the right striker, though her team was losing. Mid-way through the second half, the ball was on the other side of the field trapped in a gaggle of girls. Joy stayed true to her position, when suddenly one of her teammates broke away with the ball and made a nice (and unexpected) crossing pass. Joy broke free. I could sense in her body language the rush of realization: this was her image come to life. She burst towards the ball as it crossed forty feet in front of the goal. Without slowing, she planted her foot and cracked the ball. It shot underneath the goalie. Joy watched the ball curl in the back of the net and stared in disbelief for a split second, then leaped off the ground in pure exuberance. It wasn't just a good goal. It was a great goal, an actual pass and a thunderous strike. Her teammates were rushing in a bouncing herd to hug her when she looked up to catch her parents on the sideline, where her Daddy was trying to keep his tears hidden.

But that wasn't the watershed event . That came two days later in her final game of the season, when she came crashing out of the gate like a little woman possessed. Having tasted goal-scoring glory, it was clear she wanted more. She smelled blood in the water. In the first half, she had four solid shots on goal that narrowly missed. But early in the second half, she upped the ante in aggressiveness. The ball bounced in front of the goal, and the goalie came out to grab it. It was a play that, nearly 100% of the time, the other girls back off the ball, nobody pursues it, and the goalie just scoops it up. But not this time. Joy rushed in, got to the ball a split second before the goalie and cracked it again. It careened off the goalie's legs and bounced into the net.

She still wasn't done. For the rest of the second half, she relentlessly pursued the ball and got a few more good shots on goal. She looked like a one-girl wrecking crew out on the field. With just a couple minutes left in the game, she stole the ball from deep on her side of the field. She juked, dribbled left and right and wove through the entire defense, and when she got to the right side of the goalie box, she angled a shot in stride that ripped into the near side of the net. It was, to me at least, a spectacular play: speed, dexterity, athleticism, aggressiveness, tenacity, timing, and power all rolled into one long, glorious run down the field. She celebrated, but this time seemed to be a tad subdued, the calmness of a girl who's already done that, and who plans on doing it again and again.

Four nights later, I took her to see the super-talented Chatfield girls soccer team win the state championship, (with the winning goal scored by none other than the speedy Callie Hancock, daughter of our former next door neighbors, Ralph and Robin.) As we watched the girls dance on the field with the championship trophy, Joy looked at me and said, "I'm going to do that someday."

A father can only dream. But a little tiger lilly might make actually make it happen.

You go, girl.

"The Good Flesh Continuing"

Here's an all-time favorite poem: post post-modern, plaintive, aching, nostalgic, evocative, insightful . . . what more could you want in a poem? Every time I read it, it makes me want to run off to the woods, eat blackberries, and write poetry.

Meditation at Lagunitas

by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light. Or the other notion that,

because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

We talked about it late last night and in the voice

of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone

almost querulous. After a while I understood that,

talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,

pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman

I made love to and I remembered how, holding

her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,

I felt a violent wonder at her presence

like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river

with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,

muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish

called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.

Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.

But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,

the thing her father said that hurt her, what

she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.