Freedom

I'll actually write fiction on Friday this week since I remembered.

I made it through the tunnel into the light on the other side. I noticed that it seemed much brighter than I remembered it. I climbed over the debris that had been left as the fissure had expanded. The world was a lot larger than I ever had imagined from within the wall of Status Quo. Apparently, our city was situated on some sort of a hill that overlooked a vast plain. I was so distracted by the view that I forgot why I had ever left the city. I began to hunt for the unkempt grass for the ball. However, as I looked through one particularly tall patch of grass, something sharp pricked my finger. I lifted my hand out and noticed some tiny black creature latched on to the edge of my finger and apparently biting it. Sure, I hurt a little bit, but I was more intrigued by this little creature with wings. I had never seen one within our city before. Apparently, he finished with his job and flew away. I returned to my hunt for the ball as I knew that Tom would be waiting for me, probably very impatiently.

I eventually found the ball and hustled back to the wall. However, as I looked at that hole in the wall, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go back through it. Returning through that wall meant returning to confinement. Out here, there was freedom; there were no walls to contain my thoughts about what the world could be. If I returned through that crack, I knew that I would be surrendering some part of myself. Once you have found the true freedom, you realize that it has become a part of you.

I wasn't really sure; would I return to the familiar world I knew and loved, or would I take my chances in a world where I did not know the rules if the rules even existed?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walla2chick/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sadness

I wonder what it is like to be a member of the University of Virginia lacrosse program right now. I can't help but feel bad for both programs. Obviously the girls' program lost a teammate, but the guys' team, while they didn't lose their teammate to death, effectively lost whatever he might have contributed as a teammate. I wonder what this guy was thinking. Obviously, killing someone takes a level of lapsing judgment. I don't think you can be logically thinking and kill somebody in cold blood. The military is a different context because that is their professional duty, but cold-blooded murder is a different problem. Also, I realize that University of Virginia is a very large college, but I would assume that many of the players from the girls' team could have become friends with this guy because they all shared a similar fashion. Therefore, it would be very difficult for some of these girls who were friends with this guy or some of the guys who were friends with the girl. I don't know how I would react in this situation, but I hope that everything works out well, and everybody can find some sense of reconciliation with this terrible crime.

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Keeping Cool

Sometimes, you're almost good enough, but you're not quite there yet. Last night during the Phillies game, when the game was tied 1 to 1 in the bottom of the 10th, Carlos Ruiz drove a foul ball down the left-field line that went just 5 feet left of the pole. If I was out there batting, I would have probably been pretty frustrated. You know it is when you're so close yet so far. However, there is a reason that he is a professional and I'm not. No sooner had I thought about this then he launches one clearly fair into left-center field that ended the game and gave the Phillies a 2 to 1 win over the always good Cardinals. There's something to be said for keeping your composure; you need to be able to isolate the failure in order to focus on the future success. However, this is often times easier said than done. How many pitchers have you seen who throw one bad pitch that gets hammered and then proceed to throw 10 more bad pitches simply out of frustration that hammered even harder? If indeed this pitcher could have kept his composure, he could have prevented all of the damage that ensued and kept his team in the game. However, how do we keep our composure? I'm not going to pretend to be a psychiatrist here and be able to understand other human minds. However, to keep my composure I tend to step back and look at the bigger picture. By realizing that a foul ball that is 10 feet and a foul ball that goes 500 feet is still a foul ball leads to the logical conclusion that a 500 foot foul ball should be no more frustrating than a 10 foot foul ball because they both have the same result; one strike down. This is not easy to do especially in the spur of the moment, but I have found that compartmentalizing failure helps you deal with it in a much more efficient manner than dwelling on it will.

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Future Plan

How many of you know what you're going to do in 2018? Well, Japan knows what they won't be doing. According to the BBC, Japan has dropped its bid to host the World Cup in 2018 leaving six nations in the running for the honor of spending millions of dollars to improve their facilities. I understand why it's done, but it is kind of funny that you need to pay to have someone invade your country. If I go to a friend's house, presumably they do not they pay me to be there (unless of course they want to get rid of me). Right now, the United States remains in the running to host an event that I bet we will be expected to do well in and then all of a sudden fall apart and disappoint like they always do. Of course, I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think I need to see it to believe it. Just in case you're wondering, the six nations/groups still in the running are the USA, the UK, Russia, Australia, Belgium/Netherlands, and Spain/Portugal. Personally, as much as I would like to see the World Cup in America, but I feel like it would do better in a place where soccer is the culturally dominant sport. If I had to make my prediction, I would bet that the UK wins the bid simply because there are so many great venues as well as the culture to back it up. However, I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow, so I might be being a bit bold in predicting 2018.

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Pitching Matters, Hitting Matters

My fantasy baseball team was flying. We were beyond hot, but now after one bad week we are back in second. Isn't that the way life is? You might be flying along doing great, but then something comes and trips you up. For my team, it was pitching that halted us. I got -9 points overall from Ben Sheets and only 7.5 from Wandy Rodriguez. When you get negative points from half of your pitching staff, it is awfully hard to win. It seems as if pitching is what can win or lose the week. At least in my league, a good game from a pitcher can offset an entire week by one hitter who happens to be amazingly hot. When Ubaldo Jiménez threw that no-hitter, I got over 40 points. I don't think I've gotten that many points from any hitter in one week even though I have potential stars Prince Fielder and Evan Longoria. Think about the way that pitchers only pitch once or twice per week. Their points need to be adjusted to make up for the lack of playing time. However, I feel like pitchers account for much more than half of my fantasy team's success. In a real baseball game, I feel like pitchers account for half of the game since they cannot win without help from the offense. They could pitch a no-hitter but due to lack of offense from their team and some key errors could lose the game. Without offensive and defensive support, the pitcher has no chance of winning. That being said, without a solid performance from the pitcher the team has no chance of winning. Therefore, I think that we need to balance the role of pitcher and hitter in order to have an accurate representation of a real game of baseball.

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Developing

I am just returned home from another triumphant day of power soccer. Today was Strategy Day in the Miller Recreation Center as we prepared for our game in two weeks. It is an entirely different concept to play with the team as opposed to playing individually. For one, there is the anticipation of teammates' motions and shots. I think that what I need to remember is that there needs to be 10 feet between teammates. I have a tendency to charge in at the ball to shoot it at the goal. However, in doing so I often come within the 10 foot limit of my teammates. I am going to remember this rule hopefully. Also, I'm not sure why this is, but rear-wheel drive chairs hit the ball so much harder than my mid-wheel. I spin just as quickly, but for some reason I cannot hit the ball with the same force. Any ultra-intelligent physicists out there, please let me know if you know why this is (is it something to do with angular momentum?) Anyway, whatever the reason, I now realize that I need to rely on stealth as opposed to power to score. Well, I'll add these to my check list of ways to improve as I prepare for our match.

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Utopia

Welcome to the allegorical version of Fiction Friday!

It was an average day in the city. It was not too hot or too cold. I had gotten another mediocre C on my math test. My family was not rich or poor, but we lived a happy life in the city of Middletown. We were happy because nothing ever rattled us or our city. All that terrible stuff that happened outside the city physically could not come through one of the five gates. The town elders had voted before I was even born to erect a 20 foot wall to keep us from the radical fringes of society. They loved the wall so much that they even named it. How many walls do you know that have names? (I read about one in an underground antique book store that helped defend China or someplace like that). They had a large ceremony, and the wall of Status Quo was established. Nobody went outside it, and everything outside stayed outside despite the efforts they made to enter.

This wall defined the limits of my world both physically and mentally. The world outside of it did not matter because it did not affect my daily routine. The world inside of it consisted of a bureaucracy that was legislated by people disconnected from the population in favor of legislating.

One day, my friend Tom and I were playing by the wall on Circle 74. He lobbed the ball up high; in fact, he lobbed it over Status Quo. Being a somewhat impulsive preteen, I immediately looked for a way to get outside to retrieve our ball regardless of the implications. It took me all day, but finally I found the crack in the wall across from Idea Avenue. I grabbed a hold of this crack and crawled through despite the earnest warnings of Tom. This fissure by Idea seemed to take me through black space. I had no idea where I was going. It seemed like once I entered this world, I wanted to know where I was and to have somewhere to anchor my existence. Finally, as I pondered and puzzled out where I was, I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I crawled toward the light not knowing what surprises awaited me beyond the wall of Status Quo.

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