In praise of geography...

In response to American Idol Kellie Pickler’s gaffe on national television—although, maybe most Americans didn’t see it that way—I have decided to include a map of South America, with Uruguay highlighted in red, so that you might get your bearings.

Changing, we rest

I used to dread coming home. Whether from across town or across the world, coming home meant packing bags, saying goodbye, and returning to the doldrums of everyday life. Ultimate happiness, then, for most of my youth, meant someday transforming myself into a kind of dysfunctional boomerang that, when hurled out, would leave but never return.

In literary terms, I suppose I wanted to view life more as a thread of run-on sentences—punctuated by the occasional ellipsis—than a series of declarations forced to end in a period.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve come to appreciate the end of my journeys as much as I do their beginning. For me, coming home represents making connections more than it does severing ties, since I now see in my own culture traces of the warmth and generosity I have found in others. I now see reflected in those who are close to me the faces of those who are far away. In other words, the places I have been in the past and wherever I am in the present, and maybe even the places I will go in the future, are already connected.

I suppose that with age I am beginning to discover, not unlike the Beat poets, that happiness can be found along the contours of the globe as well as the ground beneath my feet, and that ultimate happiness has less to do with a beginning without an end than realizing that “beginning” and “end” are actually the same phenomenon.

Maybe this is more than just a Bildungsromane, though, and my change of heart represents some kind of deeper, philosophical message. Since the time of Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, Western thought has understood change to be the central, organizing force of the universe. Simply, there is no other constant in life than change itself, no other guiding principle than reason.

At the same time, Zen Buddhism instructs us to find peace amid this chaos by accepting the inevitability of change and seeking enlightenment not through external prompts, but rather mindful introspection.

As I reflect on all of the journeys that have given my life meaning—all the jumps I have made in this game of hopscotch—it becomes clear that without an end to each beginning and a beginning to each end change would never be possible. And, no matter how significant or insignificant the changes in our lives may be, it is only in giving ourselves over to this force that we will ever come to find happiness, confirming that only by changing can we ever really rest.

While you were sleeping...

While you were sleeping, Spain, like the rest of the world, was waking up to find out how you voted yesterday. Like many US citizens, Super Tuesday, pronounced something like sooperrtoosdai in Spanish, has been on the minds of the public (or at least the editors of Spain´s major newspapers) since the primaries began earlier this year.

(Today´s headline from Spain´s leading newspaper, El Pais, reads: "The US Ushers in a New Era in Politics." Similar to his treatment in the American press, Obama´s image has become synonymous with the end of politics as usual.) *All photographs in this post are from El Pais.

It would be incorrect, however, to mistake this zeal for some kind of unrequited love of Spain for American politics. The current Zapatero administration gained popular approval by challenging the Bush administration and pulling all support from the Iraq War. Likewise, if you were to ask the majority of Spaniards what they thought about the US election four years ago, you´d likely hear echoed the same complaints made at home about politics as usual.

(An equally bold headline accompanies this photograph, which occupies more than a quarter of this two-page spread: "The Duel between Democrats Polarizes the United States").

Foreign coverage of the primaries is just one example that the 2008 presidential election will be anything but politics as usual. Based on print media alone, it seems that Spain, like the United States, is also casting a ballot in this election for an entirely new brand of politics. Suddenly, a country as famous for its cynicism as it is for its tapas now appears equally enchanted as the US by the rhetoric of change and the possibilty of a new beginning.

(Despite their concern about a divided American public, for many European newspapers, the era of Republican politics is already over. Coverage of McCain´s campaign received scant attention on last pages of the entire six-page spread).

Although, maybe Spain's treatment isn't so surprising. In fact, maybe while we in the US were all still asleep, Spain, like the rest of the world, was already dreaming about a new day in American politics.

Futbol and football

It hit me suddenly, at 4:30 this morning, as I made my way home from the Shamrock Pub, that this has been the week of fútbol: the Spanish word for soccer and false cognate for American football.

Last Sunday, Salman and I attended our first Real Madrid game. It was his first professional soccer game and my second. As an exchange student in 1999, I went to a Rayo Vallecano game in the Vallecas neighborhood—Madrid’s equivalent of the Bronx. Although the Real Madrid crowd was tame compared to my first experience with soccer in Spain (i.e. no one was smoking hash in our section of the stadium or serving up whisky out of a leather bota), a certain electricity charged the air. Whether played in its working-class neighborhoods or in the heart of its capital, soccer is Spain’s modern catharsis.


We sat just two rows away from the playing field, bringing the players and ball into focus, and making every bad call even more egregious. In fact, in the spirit of the game and cultural integration, more than once, Salman and I unquestioningly joined the multi-generational crowd in its condemnation of the referee’s mother.

The game ended with a 3-2 Madrid win over their opponents from Valencia.

Then, just last night, bringing our week to an appropriate end, Salman and I put on our game face again, this time for Super Bowl XLII. We joined our friends and nearly 50 other Yanks for the game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

While most Americans watched the game comfortably from home during the late afternoon or early evening, we (the few, the proud, the die-hard, ex-pat football fans) made our way to the pubs of Madrid on a rainy, windy night just before midnight, only to leave just before dawn. We substituted Bud Light for Guinness, nachos supremos for a tiny bowl of potato chips, great American advertising for British public service announcements (thank you, satellite TV); but it was all worth it to see the Patriot's fall from grace in the last minutes of the game and to know that, at least for a few hours, fútbol could coincide with football.