Saturday, November 29, 2008

History of Soccer in America


Self-Ethnography

Where am I now? What do I mean by that? Physically I am in my apartment in Belgrade, Serbia, in my 28th year, of the year 2008 in the western calender. I'm putting Bob Dylan CD's into my Itunes and revisiting them, with a bit of Ani thrown in for good measure.

Philosophically I am in a place of great decisions, biding my time to observe how the landscape arranges itself. What do I mean with landscape? The variety of options and possibilities, in terms of career and academic opportunities, that are being juggled by yours truly. What do I mean by career? The activity that will take most of my time over the course of the next 30 years of my life, and through which I will gain most of my income.

In this moment I am also feeling somewhat nostalgic, a product of Bob Dylan and that Nashville Skyline, but also because I have spent a good portion of the morning dismantling my old blog, and transcribing the old entries I valued. What do I mean by value? The entries that presented a coherent opinion on global event and trends, personal development and introspection, and entries that captured a specific moment in time and froze it in words.

I will spend a few years editing the 50 pages of entries I salvaged, and then think of doing something with it. It presents a glimps of my self-evolution (on multiple fronts) over the period of October 2005 - November 2007. But the reification of David A. Brown in not complete,  and continues in this forum instead. Now somewhat more cautious with how the ink is spilt.

What do I mean more cautious? Careful and pragmatic with what is posted for public consumption, often with career possibilities in mind.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Fruska Gora

Traveling with a couple friends last weekend, we stopped off at an Orthodox Monastery in Fruska Gora, not far from Novi Sad. The place was beautifully maintained with nice mosaics in the outer walls of the place. The church itself resembled an Austrian Catholic design in the yellow color and shape of its steeple. Subsequent conversations with a few of the other guests revealed that it was indeed of Austrian design, built during the Austro-Hungarian control of Vojvodina.

Behind the Monastery was a small path leading into the hills. We climbed for about 45 minuets, passing through fruit orchards, clusters of various types of trees, herds of sheep, and moments of total silence. It was thoroughly relaxing and pleasant.

Returning from the hills, we entered the Monastery, which was, as expected, calm and well kept. I find the Orthodox churches interesting for their lack of space to sit. It strikes me every time I enter one, and recently I asked a friend about it. She said that people just stand during the sermons. Men on the right, women on the left, the sermons don't last too long (up to about 45 minuets) making it manageable. Also, there is not the attendance ritual in the Orthodox tradition that you find in Catholicism. By that I mean people don't go every Sunday at a certain time. They can go any day of the week. Furthermore, the sermons consist of the monks gathering in the church to read, though it's much more like singing, from their sacred texts. Attending church is simply going during these times, standing and listening, crossing yourself at the (many) appropriate time(s) and at the end, going to the front to kiss the pictures of the saints.

As we left the church, one of my friends stopped to buy a small token from an old nun. She was selling various, religious type goods (candles, crosses, pictures...). My friend is American, the Nun is Serbian, so they struggled to communicate. She asked if he spoke German. He didn't, but I did, and we conducted business in German. Then she asked where we were from. I told her we were American. She threw her hands up in disgust: "ohh!" she said. "Ich spreche Deutsche aber kein English. English nicht wollen. NATO bomben!" In her eyes, we were the responsible party for what happened in 1999. For that reason, she didn't like our language, though she still sold her goods to my friend. Apparently out language wasn't welcome, but our money was ok.

None of us wanted to get drawn into a debate on this issue, nor would it have been appropriate. We thanked her and left, followed by her unflinching stare, and a look on her face that suggested she was bursting to tell us something; she remained quiet. She even followed us to the door and asked if we had questions about the church. We declined the offer.

As we left the church my friend asked me what she had said. I told him. "I thought so" he said. "Excuse me" said a man behind us. "Can I tell you something about the church?" he was a Serbian man with very good English. As we were pressed for time, we declined, but we all walked together to where our cars were parked. He and his wife were clearly interested in us, how we found this place, and why we were in Serbia. The fact that we were American had no negative impact on his interest in us. We left with an invitation to his Bakery in Zemun, following him as he guided us back to the Highway.

We drove back to BG to pick someone up from the Airport, which is right next to the airplane museum. The only museum in the world to host a shot down American Stealth Bomber. Shot down by the Serbians during the 1999 NATO bombing.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

A footballing experience

I played soccer on Thursday night with a group of lads from work, Serbs and Italians, and me. It was such a bad experience, and I won't be playing with them again. But it was also fascinating to be part of the experience. I was rotating every 10 minuets with Marco, so I was able to play and watch these middle aged guys get progressively more angry and aggressive as the hour bore on. I knew before the match ended that this would be my only appearance with this group.

You see, for me football is like a hobby. I take it seriously, I try to play well, I work hard, but it has to be relaxing and fun. If it is not, there is no point to it. I am 28, I will never be a pro, nor will I ever get much better than I am now (without serious training), so all I can hope for is to maintain my level, and have fun playing this beautiful game. This philosophy is not shared by the Thursday evening crew.

Granted, they play at a slightly higher level than me, but their attitude is so hyper aggressive, that no-one has any pleasure in playing. They spend most of the game yelling at each other every time a pass is miss hit, or every time a shot goes wide. I took a lot of abuse for my weak passing. If I was in training with Cvezda or Partizan, then I could understand the shouting. But guys, we are playing a 5-a-side match, we are all of us never going to be pro-players, so relax and enjoy it!

The yelling continued after the game. As all the men returned to the changing room they were arguing over the bad passes and missed opportunities. I never felt like it was going to get violent, but they were practically screaming at each other. What I found hilarious about all this was, that as these men were arguing vigorously, they were also getting naked in front of each other. They then all went into the shower, to wash down in front of each other, where the shouting continued. A great juxtaposition I must say.

What I take away from this, because if I take nothing away from this then the evening really was a waste, is that these men exposed the mechanism with-in team sports which can encourage domination, aggression and eventually violence. The desire for victory is so strong with these men that they are willing, even on such an insignificant occasion, to let themselves get angry at their friends for not finding the back of the net. It is the engagement in the activity of football that brings out this attitude and mental state.

Of course, I can only speculate why they get this way, but if I had to guess, I would say they feel a level of frustration in other parts of their lives. Football is the only moment they have to release physical energy, and as soon as the lid is off on this tension, it quickly boils over into aggression.

I have the exact opposite experience every Sunday with my team. We are relaxed before, during and after the game. We take shots from the most improbable angles, we miss hit passes all the time, yet no-one yells at us. In short, we have fun while we play because we have no pretensions about what we are on the pitch. We are a group of young guys who enjoy kicking a ball around. Period.

*******

I was meditating today and became aware of how all my thoughts were directed towards what I saw a missing from my life. Every thought started with 'I need' or 'I should' or 'I want'. I wasn't spending anytime thinking about what I have, what is now.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

An amalgamation of mental capital...

Now that the dust has settled, and I clearly need to move on and stop suggesting that a certain person might not have the effect everyone hopes he/she will have, I'll get back to business. I have a bunch of odds and ends to throw up here, stuff I jotted down in my notebook over the last month.

~Date: Unknown

There is always a lot of time to think and reflect when you are in a car full of Serbs, you can't understand what they are saying, and your not the one driving.

In this moment, as I am silent, life appears to me like a flock of birds in flight. I don't mean those migrating birds, flying in some organized pattern, with leaders and followers (though this presents another metaphor we could explore...), I mean those simply flying above a field or around a town. There is some basic reason for their flight, some objective governing and guiding their actions, but that is not how it appears to me.

Between the point of departure and the moment they attain their objective seems to be a series of acts of chaos, spontaneous choices and irrational movements. There appears to be no leader, no solid direction, and what little direction there is, shifts without rhyme or reason. I think our lives are somewhat like this no? Or at least, they can be.

Everything is constantly changing even as it appears to remain the same. We exert little to no control over life's course, and we are always, as Hunter S. Thompson once said, subject to the whims of the great magnet. For my context, I might say, subject to the way.

~Date: 30/10/2008

I should be more thankful for the rain. It is a blessed thing for all those who don't get enough. Yet when it fall here, we run away from it, cursing, as though it were some great evil.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Night Part II

Right, something about the election. I have something of a cynical view of the Obama rally cry 'Hope' and 'Change', partly because I am not convinced that Obama wants what he tells us he wants, but also because I think as President, he won't be able to bring the change he promised. The system just won't take it.

I'm afraid that this will have a devastating effect on the American public, making them hopelessly cynical, angry and afraid. This reaction, if it happens, will open the door to an even more fierce brand of conservatism than the Bush years have given us. Obama has been brilliant at tapping social power, but he is treading on dangerous waters: the mob in ever susceptible to changes. If he succeed, or at least maintain the appearance of success, the mobilized mob will quickly become his nightmare.

My cynicism also makes me question whether a man who was put in the most powerful seat in the world, would really want to make changes that would limit and reduce that power.

Obama presents the US with a paradox: a victory for McCain will confirm the racist character of the American voter, yet a victory for Obama will, and I believe can, only result in huge disappointment for Americans who seem so caught up in Obamainia. A disappointment, which, in this collapsing economy, and polarizing world, will fast turn in to extremism. E, scolding me for my cynicism, said that the US doesn't need immediate results, but rather the ideas, and a break from the old order.

I don't understand why people think the president has so much power to make change? The office doesn't, it requires a lot of other people to go along and implement the initiative. Sure, Obama will have a lot of popular support going in, and I expect he will find a double majority in congress, but he is also going to e subject to the people who funded his 605 million dollar campaign. Ok, many of whom were lower and middle class, but he also took money from large companies, and they are not the kind that like to much change, and only a bit of hope.

But I do have hope: hope that I am wrong about Obama; hope that he will make the changes he talks about; hope he governs without self interest and with profound respect for the people who voted him in; I hope E is right, that the idea will be enough. Only time will tell.

Time for a cat nap.

Election Night

Calm before the storm. It's almost 11 pm here, one more hour until NH and VA close their polls and we start to see results trickle in. I've been watching Champions League and hanging out with Aleks and Nico, determining that all we had in common was that our reason for being was to be there at that moment. I'm stocked up on junk food and waiting for the slaughter to start. So, to pass the time, I'll put down some thoughts, and stop hoping, quietly, that Ralph Nader wins the election.

I was re-reading some notes before sending off 5 pages of writings/confessions/reflections and thinking about my future here in the Balkans, thinking about how my ideas of this corner have changed through experience. I have to admit, that I held some real prejudice against Balkans people since my youth. These feelings were impressed upon me through friends and the relative poverty these Eastern Europeans lived in when they were in Germany.

They were the marginal elements of our town, living in the worst houses, wearing the cheapest clothes and riding the oldest bikes, and to us young kids, that seemed to put them below us in someway. They also never participated in our football games, and never attended our school. We were, for all intents and purposes, living segregated. The aggressive, at times violent behaviour of the immigrants, I understand now, was more related to their living conditions than any inherent character flaw.

At the time, this behaviour was just irrational to me. Of course, I felt that way because I didn't understand anything about them. My opinion is now different, and has been changing over the last years as a result of exposure and experience with this community/culture/people. Now I live in this part of the world, and I doubt it's a coincidence. I have of course met people who seemed to confirm my racism, but I did meet these types in the US also. For every one who has confirmed this feeling, I have meet two or three who have proved me wrong. As a result of opening myself to this, I now feel quiet comfortable here, in this culture, in this part of the world.

It's no worse than any other part of the World I have seen, and in some ways more interesting and open.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

...and now for November!

It's a big month if your name is Obama or McCain {or Langevin ;-) } I'll be up watching the returns as long as it seems relevant, but I think it might be a short night, unless of course the immigration issue explodes, but so far it seems like its too little to late for McCain. As Alex said, two days until we avoid a war with Iran...

I have a computer at home again. Its' nice, but for the last few weeks, I have been reading more, and today, I was online most of the day... yes, yes, it's a question of discipline, blah, blah. I was also writing by hand, and on real paper too! How novel.

Well, I had be constructive today, so this entry is my effort. I have a host of reading to do, and over the next month I'll post about Stara Planina, Halloween, and all the other things that occurred during this media blackout. Till then... peace