1001 Nights: Sports in Afghanistan

(Vacation Spirit 3rd and Final; Please see previous two posts for Vacation spirit 1 & 2)

Biomechanical analysis provides a breakdown of the race among the fastest men on earth. Click on the top photo for a closer look at the details. All related media coverage and commentary combine to make this a very lucrative 9.58 seconds, the time required by Usain Bolt to cover 100 meters at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. Unfathomable grace and power are demonstrated by some runners. Bolt leads that particular pack at this time.

I should know. I watch as many qualifying heats as I can. Train-crouch-starter gun-speed, over and over again; useful for triggering and focussing my thoughts, especially while ironing clothes. Ironing is very satisfying as well, and I have a special bond with the activity, but that’s a different story.

The slowest men and women on earth are not competing in Berlin, but very slow racers do enter the heats. They hail from small places like Palau and Vanuatu, and from big places like Afghanistan. One male Afghan has competed at the Championships, and there is a young Afghan woman on the track. Her name is Robina Muqimyar.

Afghan women are on my mind. A few days ago, the Afghan government we (we know who we are) support voted in favour of a law which states that Shia women who refuse any sexual demands by their husbands can be deprived of food by their spouse. Fathers and grandfathers have exclusive guardianship of children, and a woman may not work outside of the home without her husband’s permission. A slightly different draft version of this law, basically approving rape within marriage, was taken back to the drawing boards under international pressure. Now, in the interests of stability (appeasing conservatives who are willing to participate in the political process), the new and improved version has been voted in. In areas of Afghanistan under Taliban control, girls’ schools have been shut down again and music stores bombed, but this new law promoting starvation applies to Shia women nationwide.

So when Robina appeared in the qualifying heats for the women’s 100m at the World Championships, I watched. She was off-screen for most of the 14+ seconds of her race, but I did catch a glimpse of her full-length pants and t-shirt with (short) sleeves. We know that she is 23 years old, an Afghan Olympian (already in 2004, but sort of by chance in 2008, when another runner sought political asylum in Norway weeks before the competition began). Run, Robina, run.

It’s true, look!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/14/afghanistan-womens-rights-rape

Salt Lake City Again

I made some notes while watching the unbelievably fast, balanced and cool-headed speed skaters from around the world who are competing in Salt Lake City, USA this weekend. Luckily for me, they're on TV in the Netherlands.

Please click to enlarge the photograph and read.

For previous reference to Salt Lake City, please see June 16, 2007.

The Secrets of Thialf

The Medicine Wheel is central to the culture of the Plains Indians in North America. It is a sacred symbol for all knowledge. The eye-shaped Medicine Wheel shown here was printed in the TIPI Newsletter.

The Thialf Hall in the Netherlands is a state-of-the-art skating rink where major international competitions are held.

[Please see also post March 3, 2008, 'A Win-Win Situation', where I hinted at the imminent demise of a certain right-wing politician in the Netherlands, only now, a year later, to be proven quite inaccurate in my forecast, as a new poll suggests that his right-wing party would WIN elections in the Kingdom of the Netherlands if they were held today; this same personality has just enjoyed publicity on right-wing talk shows and with conservative groups in the United States, after being refused entrance to the United Kingdom, where he had been invited to screen his anti-Islam movie in the House of Lords - so let's keep an eye, so to speak, on these new alliances!]

The Thialf covered oval arena was named after Thialfi, servant to the Nordic God Thor ("the chief defender of the gods and of humans against the evil forces of the giants and chaos" Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 5 p.215). Thor is more commonly known today as the God of Thunder. The climate control system applied in the Thialf Hall is depicted below.

The smaller photo showing the Medicine Wheel again also carries a computer view of one of my eyes (an image I recalled while studying the technical information about the ice-skating arena) the results of an examination carried out to assess the potential benefits of 'night lenses': contact lenses to be worn while sleeping. These relatively large inserts alter the surface of your eye during the night, allowing something close to normal vision during the day. I did try them for a spell, but abandoned the night lenses after I discovered that, after dark, the lights of oncoming cars were refracted into blinding displays, like lightning.

Banned Substances Pt.1

The car stopped just short of the main drag in the old Cuban district of Tampa, Florida. I wanted to visit and walk along in search of José Martí, the Cuban poet and revolutionary who lived in a number of foreign locations in the final years of Spanish colonial rule in his homeland in the late 19th-century. Tampa was one of the most fervently revolutionary sites on Martí’s itinerary, and it was here that he participated in organizing the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The movement was financed in Tampa by cigar revenues, and, however briefly, by proceeds from baseball game ticket sales in Cuba. Appropriately, when the decision was made in Florida in 1895 to launch the revolution, the orders were smuggled into Cuba inside a cigar.

The USA was backing these liberation efforts with significant enthusiasm, and the Cuban Liberation struggle evolved into the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders set sail from Tampa before thundering ashore in Cuba and helping to win the war against Spain, so a main street in this Tampa neighbourhood today bears their name.

My elderly Florida cousin was happier showing me the new Malls, and who could blame him in the heat. He stayed in the car while I strolled down this road of historic importance. I seemed to be the only person on foot. In fact there were hardly any other people at all, and many of the storefronts were boarded up. A Cuban sandwich shop attracted some business, and there was one other brightly lit up establishment: the Santería store.

Several wooden steps led up to the screen door entrance. I entered, all smiles, and asked the woman behind the counter if they sold any José Martí souvenirs. She found one article: a paper cocktail napkin. While I studied the merchandise, a car pulled up outside and jerked to a halt as the hand brake was applied. The driver was a young man who bounded up the stairs and then closed the door carefully and quietly as he came in, evidently completely familiar with local etiquette.

Greetings were exchanged, and he proceeded to ask the woman what he could buy to definitely score on his date that evening. The girl was really worth it, he explained, and he didn’t want her to get away. The shop-keeper listened and nodded, recommending various jars and containers which were in stock. He paid for one of the love potions, ran out to his throbbing car and laid some tracks as he drove off. When the sound of the music blasting out of his car faded entirely, there was not a sound in the Santería store.

Inspired by his absolute faith in the shop-keepers advice, I walked back and forth examining everything on the shelves, and finally came up with two items which were light, unbreakable and easy to pack: Get-Rich-Quick household cleaning solution, and Powerful-Indian-Household Blessing Domination Powder, with a bilingual label, good illustrations and a handy prayer for happiness and victory-over-enemies on the back.

Things being how they are between the United States and Cuba, I was not surprised to see that the powder was from Chicago, but still a tad disappointed. Tampa and Cuba share a great heritage when it comes to contraband. After liberation from Spain, Cuba became one of the main transit points for illegal immigrants from Europe and China. Business was controlled by figures referred to as “Kings.” Small craft delivered people and goods to many Florida inlets, but Tampa was at the hub. The smuggling of whisky and narcotics was a profitable activity in the 1920’s, and Spirits Submerged There is the stuff of newspaper stories about deliveries hidden temporarily in the waters between Cuba and the USA.

New Words in Dutch used in English

A credit card company offered me thirty free minutes on (in?) a golf simulator (I looked it up: a golf simulator [the Dutch word is formed by joining the two English words, and the Dutch word was used in spite of the fact that the advertisement was distributed in English], not surprisingly, creates a sort of virtual golf), thus engaging my brain in one of a myriad of wasted moments of alarm and desolation triggered by marketing campaigns.

Even though I have acknowledged feelings of being harassed by golf and its marketing campaigns since the final decade of the 20th-century, the point at which I created computer and paper files to accommodate my habit of holding on to all golf-related information which came my way, and in spite of the fact that the feelings of harassment have been toned down by my having recently embarked on a quest to find peace with golf, the truth is that it’s one of the few sports that really bothers me. I have chosen not to speak up until now, largely because a good number of individuals I like and even love are or have been committed to golf to some extent. For the time being I find it unnecessary to embellish upon the specific issues which might bring sadness to others.

It may seem that I have done everything possible to avoid talking about golf with that vulnerable group of devotees, but this is not the case. I have in fact actively pursued the subject of golf, in a manner that would allow me to learn more about the science of the sport, and explanations of certain golf-specific subjects, such as the handicap system, have invariably been complex and truly interesting. I have even gone out to play on a real golf course, dressed in golf clothes. It rained that afternoon, so the game was cancelled.

Some of the subjects in my golf files (which exist under the general heading of ‘The Rise and Fall of the Global anti-Golf Movement’ ) include: golf simulators, golf and globalization, fair pay for caddies, regional land disputes, farmland sold to golf course developers, farmers forced off their land to make way for golf courses, farmers who take up golf in their spare time, burial grounds excavated to create golf courses, environmentally-friendly golf courses, climate change and the future of golf, golf colors/fashions and accessories, the golf course as sanctuary, my Father’s private golf course in our back yard, growth and loss sectors in the golf industry, the history of golf, golf in China, golf etiquette, gender and race on the golf course, etc. Contributions to the archive are always appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Security Measures in Spain

The Future: The bicycle path in Seville extended into a traffic circle. I was impressed by the exclamation mark serving, I assumed, as a warning to cyclists along this route which I walked several times a day. Another point which caught my attention was that, in fact, I never saw any cyclists. Several times a day for less than a week – that is not enough to argue that there were no cyclists, so I imagine that there were, or will be in the future. I asked locals who frequented the shops and cafés whether the punctuation was meant to assist a multi-ethnic and or illiterate population of cyclists, but I did not manage to find anyone who felt qualified to respond.

The Recent Past: seguretat in the sign is meant to reassure rabbits and inform hunters that they are not allowed to shoot anyone or -thing beyond this tree. I entered this ‘no hunting’ zone in Catalan country feeling only mildly reassured. The old hunting rifle as depicted on the sign is evidently still in use here and there. The sign itself has become redundant, however, left over from an era when hunters stealthily slipped past this tree on the edge of a small but famous settlement to track down animals in the fields beyond. The fields have since given way to a highway and railroad line, so that the tree is now wedged between a car park and the modern traffic circuit, uniting metropolitan Barcelona on the East with suburbia on the West. The sign has so far survived all transitions.

Timeless Legend, Present Practice: April 27th is the Feast Day of the Black Madonna of Monserrat, not far from Barcelona in Catalonia. While still said to work miracles, the Black Madonna has a disputed history. Described sometimes as a 12th-century sculpture and in other contexts as a work carved with Joseph’s very tools in Jerusalem two-thousand years ago, the statue was said to have been transferred across the Mediterranean to Monserrat by Saint Peter in 50 A.D., amazingly hidden away from the invading Saracens and miraculously found first by shepherds and later by monks, to be fully reinstated at the time of the reconquista, when power was recovered from the Muslims by the Catholic monarchy. Those who believe that the Madonna is a 12th-century sculpture suggest that its inertness led monks to build a sanctuary around it and eventually a church. The Black Madonna is of interest to others because she is black (African), while other sources claim that x-rays prove that her skin color was originally white, turning gradually darker because of lead in the paint. Clicking on the picture will enlarge text offering still another explanation. Whatever the origins, the Black Madonna and Baby Jesus attract Catholic Pilgrims from all over the world. They believe that it is beneficial to file past the Madonna and touch or kiss the glass separating her from the crowds. Distance is not a problem; she will heal and protect.

A Win-Win Situation

He is losing his edge, the articulate right-winger in The Hague who has provided one-liners and sound-bites for what seems like a very long time already. In one of his recent anti-Muslim rants, in this case connected with burkhas (or was it the burkhini?), he stood in front of camera’s - wearing a dark suit and light-colored shirt, as do most of his many dozens of male colleagues darting back and forth across the glimmering hallways of government buildings - and referred to women wearing burkha’s as ‘penguins.’

This Dutch parliamentarian with startling bleached blonde hair, from the PVV “Freedom Party” is (possibly) celebrating his breakthrough onto the international scene, as the person responsible for an anti-Islam anti-Koran film, not yet released, which has now triggered anti-Dutch demonstrations on the streets of northern Afghanistan. The Dutch government has officially distanced itself from the blonde’s inflammatory message, which could lead to loss of life; NATO officials have warned of further disturbances. For months the focus has been on the polarizing Parliamentarian and what to do about him. He doesn’t need official bodyguards - he has had them for years.

The film might just suddenly be there on the internet, but even if it never actually appears, the PVV-penguin will have enjoyed enormous attention because of his ability to aggravate and offend, one word at a time. I was recently reminded that it is quite easy to do this by drawing people’s attention to something that they don’t understand. That can be unpleasant. I wore a sign with core-Dutch content and non-Dutch form, so designed, I thought at the time, to draw attention to the message. This was not entirely the case.

The sign with white letters on an orange background reads in Dutch as ‘Hup Nederland!’ which translates as ‘Let’s go Netherlands!’ A more authentic rendition of the original cheer would have been spelled out as the alliterative ‘Hup Holland Hup!’ in Dutch as displayed in blue letters on the orange t-shirt manufactured for soccer/football fans from Holland.* This sign was designed by a Dutch citizen of partial Dutch descent, raised outside of the Netherlands, now a dual national here and in his country of origin, where his parents had settled as immigrants.

His choice of wording was, as far as I know, an unintentional step away from the norm. His choice of font, on the other hand, was deliberate, inspired mainly by the fact that said choice, once the exclusive province of typesetters, is now open to anyone at all. “Freedom of font,” you could say. The sign was assembled as a lark. He had not expected me to either print it or wear it, and his ambitions were totally divorced from social concerns. It became apparent while displaying the sign that this sign, which tricks the reader into thinking that the text is in Arabic, was unsettling to a small group of natives seated nearby.

On this occasion, an international skating championship in a Dutch (skating) town, the number of non-Dutch spectators would have been restricted to an infinitesimally small group, meaning that nearly all onlookers would focus warily on the sign because of its apparent foreignness. Initially skeptical of the non-Dutch English-speakers in their midst, those nearest by gradually became elbow-nudging allies, pleased that we were armed with lists of the draws for races and quick to comment on the athletes as they stepped up to face the start pistol. At this level, the Dutch skating fans cheer for everyone, and even losers are heartily applauded for achieving a personal best.

*The remarkable ambivalence of the Dutch national anthem, printed on the back of this t-shirt, will be focused on in future posts.

It Had to Happen Sometime Pt.1

Onward, Mississippi is not a rallying cry for this state in the southern USA, but rather the name of a location, a town at a crossroads. Not the crossroads of Robert Johnson and the Devil and the birth of the Blues fame, that's farther north in the Delta. Onward marks the spot where drivers of cars heading North anticipate entering the 'real' Delta, and where south-bound travellers leave the flat Delta fields behind. Either way, people stop for gas or food at the Onward market, becoming aware, if they didn't already know, of the site's true claim to fame: the mythology around the origin of the term 'Teddy Bear.'

At the heart of the legend is President Theodore Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear cub while on a hunting trip. A remarkable tale, as Teddy Roosevelt was so assertive at other moments: he championed the triumph over Natives in the American West as well as in other continents, where the ‘dominant races’ had pushed on bravely and avoided the shame of leaving these vast terrains as ‘nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages;’ he led key campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and he was the overseer of Panama’s ‘liberation’ from Colombia and the subsequent construction of the Panama Canal.

I remember staring in confusion (for quite a long time) at the signs in Onward. The only feeling I could identify was ambivalence: inspired by Teddy's legacy (other hunters have spared cubs, but few to none have been Presidents), the Delta's past and present and the unifying role of the sweet stuffed creature. At the time, nobody could have imagined that this, too, would change.

Halloween seems like only Yesterday

A Love Poem for Celebrating Halloween in China

We could just as well have been there,
celebrating Halloween in China.
It is large-scale. Entire highways of witches united in the tonal ‘boo’.
All the single-child families dress the babe
for the encounter with the spirits.
They are horribly proud of their offspring.
Toothless elders screech with delight.

Clusters in masquerade let people do
that clever Chinese thing of fulfilling yourself

without standing alone,
of not having to be
separate in the way we non-Chinese
are stuck with ourselves, because
we’re in our own disguise that we made,
which makes a double you.
There’s too much to recall in costume.

We always honour death itself, with ceremonies
and shrines, great tombs or the ash-paved path.
Why not equal awe for the great beyond?
No more posters on walls, fat photo albums
passed from lap to lap,
but images in motion on the streets,
cult characters set free
in the vague network of timeless feasts.

Dragon boat races set the tone: ancestral vessels
flushed downstream by brawn.
Then somebody’s beauty interrupts, stronger
and bigger than the race.
It could make you wander around the edge of the crowd
pretending to buy a mooncake or two
to get a better view.
The boat flashes by. You’re certain the eyes caught yours.
Take the coloured banners as a good sign.
Waving on the horizon, they greet you.

But here we go again, meeting on clouds.
They can be anywhere, hiding half a moon above,
hanging low, above altars, taking on incense and
ghost money fumes, absorbing flakes
rising from Phoenix-brand cigarettes.
The charcoal fires would look great inside
hollowed-out pumpkins. That’s how we lure people to our doors,

by the way, on Halloween.

Candles behind smiles, that inner glow.

The mysterious exterior
that Oriental evenness of feature.
It’s like a mask already -
I’m sure it would work:
An entire continent afoot with paper bags
held open for treats.
After unleashing tricks:
Hungry ghosts no longer in hiding,
chocolate-crunching hordes,
a potential 100-million impostors
in one province alone.

Maybe we should just search,
together, plainclothed,
for the unspoken thrill,
for the tiny gifts,
or the big reward, love when the truth is out,
without martial posturing,
without that ritual fear of nights
with the unknown.

This Presents So Many Possibilities

The Rugby World Cup 2007 is over now, and South Africa won. I was reminded that it was on when I walked by a French fast food establishment and saw that one of France's star rugby players had agreed to the placement of his signature on top of their seasonal cheeseburger variants. The man who signed the cheeseburgers is France's fly half Frederic Michalak.

I bought the cheeseburger so that I could create photographs for this series on ambient text. After taking the picture I took a bite of the burger only, being careful to avoid the rest. The beef product was not really any better or worse than other fast food combinations on the market, but the apparent poor quality of the bread and cheese was a disappointment.

The most heartening aspect of this innovative take-out idea is that it could trigger countless printed matter campaigns in the sector. There's no need to repeat the platitudes passed around in fortune cookies (although - shortly after learning about the Michalak burger - when I received an encouraging text about imminent uplifting encounters, I wondered whether I was being too harsh in my judgement), and texts resembling cookie copies would not be fun to eat.

I suggest: sports trivia, haiku, short fiction, library addresses. "No reading at the table" might become a rule relegated to the past.

Typed Like He Talked

He was the most professional newsreader on the night shift at the radio. His colleagues preparing to read the news (to other listeners, in other languages) routinely entered the soundproof booth way in advance to shuffle papers, sift through the news items to locate pronunciation hurdles and to fumble with the soundboard knobs in the minutes leading up to a broadcast. Throats were cleared, tissues and water set near the mute button by the microphone, the double doors firmly secured to increase the intensity of the concentration. But he always strolled in at the very last minute, never late, slipped into the chair and found the bulletin on the table. A swift flip through the sheets of paper as if separating a deck of cards, and he read the stories on air, sight unseen, without hesitation.

A veteran sports announcer back at home in the Southern Cone, he survived for a time as a dissident and eventually fled to Europe where he was granted political asylum in Holland. Presiding over broadcasts to his continent of origin provided steady work, but it was too easy and what he really wanted to do was to return to live football commentary. When the opportunity to apply for this work arose in Spain, he was nervous for the first time in years. To prepare for the interview and announcing test, he sat in front of his TV during a live football game, turned off the sound, and recorded his own roared commentary on the players, their moves, the scores, prospects for the season and club histories, all of which he understood profoundly. There was no hesitation here either, and the only word which received extra time and, astoundingly, even more volume, was ‘GOOOOOOOOAL!’ The neighbors in his Dutch apartment building were concerned, and they called the police, who were relieved to discover that the man who had been shouting non-stop was unaccompanied. They silenced him that day, so there really was only one practice session, but he got the job in Spain, and sent a few letters, which rang true.

No Vocabulary This Time Around

Finding myself illiterate in Poland, I followed a color scheme. Racially, Warsaw appeared to be almost completely white, like me. The parks added a strong element of green.

In the late 20th-century, multinationals had moved into office buildings around public spaces, and the adjacent hotels for business travellers were marketing those recreational zones. The welcome folder in my room included the message that jogging was possible next door in the park. One day, after returning from a meeting, I changed and trotted on out, only to discover that the circuit was very short, and that nobody else was on it. Instead, locals strolled or sat on benches. Others moved briskly along the paths, carrying briefcases, books, shopping bags.

Also green was the luminescent soaking fluid poured into the footbath at a mid-town beauty salon, which I visited during a lunch break in an effort to mesh with daily routine. The manicurist was wearing bright green open sandals. Features on her face, chest and toes seemed to be pushed into points. Her lips were also pursed into a cone. The apron she wore was absolute white, and her hair was bleached to match. She spoke to me in Polish, trying to determine the color of nail polish to be used. I wanted clear polish, but I had trouble convincing her on that point, and finally, after giving me a slow once-over, she made a final offer: "Blue-ski?"

I remembered my friend, the manicurist, while strolling through Warsaw Airport on the day of departure. Turning back for a final look at a gleaming shop, I saw vacuum-packed sausage being sold by women in uniform. Their platinum hair glistened; their long nails were flawless and blue.