Anticipation
With Copa del Rey ending yesterday and La Liga coming to an end, now it's time to wait until next year to watch Barcelona play again, to start all over. Gaps like these upset my life. Barcelona is a routine: Saturday and Sunday mornings with a mate and Julia. Each game becomes the next small island that serves to get me across the stretches of ocean between. It helps to continue, knowing that soon, over the horizon of endless blue, there is a break, a moment to refill and rest, regain the energy to embark the upcoming journeys between.
I think my brain has been doing that for me since young, providing my mind an event to look forward to, making the rougher terrain of life easier to navigate. In my youth, it would have been punk shows and skateboarding on the weekends. Now, at my current age, there are games that I look forward to the way my Argentinian mother looks forward to Game of Thrones—a longer story arc compiled of single standing ones, and we sail from one to the next forever forward.
Future events we are excited for, serve as an internal impetus. Like in roller derby, when one skater slingshoots another, the fuel that gets you farther faster when you're lacking steam. Now, with Barcelona's tournaments wrapping up, the next time I will see them seems too far to venture through, no slingshooting on skates can launch me far enough.
So I will have to find other stepping stones across time. Find random clumps of driftwood to take breaks on: the women's world cup, Copa America, MLS, my own soccer games, whatever other scraps come through this summer until I can get to Barcelona again.
Today, I am watching Juventus and Sampdoria in lieu of the usual, but it's different. Yes, it's all still soccer, but it isn't Barcelona. The aesthetics are different, the pace is different, the attitude is different, the philosophy is different, the intention is different, the fans are different, the uniforms are different, the culture is different, the players are different, the stadium is different, the city is different, and my interest, care, and love for them is different.
Till I get to watch Barcelona again (who by then will be a different team, in the smallest ways, but still never the same), I will invent islands to propel me forward. I will imagine worlds behind the distant, unknown horizon to help build wind in my sails.
¡Vamos, Argentina!
I think my brain has been doing that for me since young, providing my mind an event to look forward to, making the rougher terrain of life easier to navigate. In my youth, it would have been punk shows and skateboarding on the weekends. Now, at my current age, there are games that I look forward to the way my Argentinian mother looks forward to Game of Thrones—a longer story arc compiled of single standing ones, and we sail from one to the next forever forward.
Future events we are excited for, serve as an internal impetus. Like in roller derby, when one skater slingshoots another, the fuel that gets you farther faster when you're lacking steam. Now, with Barcelona's tournaments wrapping up, the next time I will see them seems too far to venture through, no slingshooting on skates can launch me far enough.
So I will have to find other stepping stones across time. Find random clumps of driftwood to take breaks on: the women's world cup, Copa America, MLS, my own soccer games, whatever other scraps come through this summer until I can get to Barcelona again.
Today, I am watching Juventus and Sampdoria in lieu of the usual, but it's different. Yes, it's all still soccer, but it isn't Barcelona. The aesthetics are different, the pace is different, the attitude is different, the philosophy is different, the intention is different, the fans are different, the uniforms are different, the culture is different, the players are different, the stadium is different, the city is different, and my interest, care, and love for them is different.
Till I get to watch Barcelona again (who by then will be a different team, in the smallest ways, but still never the same), I will invent islands to propel me forward. I will imagine worlds behind the distant, unknown horizon to help build wind in my sails.
¡Vamos, Argentina!
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