A few words on the World Cup and a couple of other things...
It’s muggy. It’s been muggy for so long.
I had the door of my room closed, and I got up just a few seconds ago to open it for some fresher air, but then I remembered why I had shut it in the first place: The World Cup.
Yes, it’s taking place as I write this! And the televisions downstairs – all of them – are turned on for it!! They are all broadcasting in unison, but in different camera angles, and in different foreign languages. I can only think in a single language at a time. And I can’t get past all this noise from the stadium… this constant roar from the crowd, this insane buzz. It fills the room – the whole house.
In one room, the Spanish commentators on the Univision channel are screaming, “goal,” in an exaggeratingly prolonged way… over and over and over again. The older generation is seated here. Them and that other guy everyone calls family, but you’re not sure exactly how you’re related to him, if at all. In this room, the referee always blows (no pun intended).
In another room, a cast of sophisticated ESPN analysts ruin all the fun by enlightening their audience about methods of proper approach, team cohesion, and precision goal-scoring. Yes, they speak a foreign language, indeed.
See, from this room, I’ve learned that – if you’re a soccer player – you want to stand tangent to the perimeter of the mid-circle, and then make a run to your center-forward, so he can link up with the dude on the left-side of defense – hopefully – and who the hell knows where this right-winger just came from, but, hey, if we’re lucky he’s gonna head that little sucker in the net… hey-yeah! GOOA--oh, no. Didn’t count. Offside.
In this room, there are no further dramatic triumphs. For all the other eighty-eight minutes, there is Guinness.
Let’s not forget the loveseat in the corner of every room, occupied by the poor wives who must contend with this crazy soccer event. And while you are waiting for sexy #7 to take his next free-kick, for you, there are margaritas, and the mute button on the remote control (top right corner). If the mute button meets some resistance from your significant other – and it will – just have some more margaritas.
…
Buzz. Oh, what a buzz. It’s all I hear: the crowd and the commentators, the cheers and the jeers. It’s the people watching the crowd on TV, the screaming, the static, the horns, the parties, the crashers, the gasps, the sighs, the close calls – the high-frequency sound the TV itself makes when it’s turned on – I can hear it. Buzz.
If you remember – and I will, for a moment, act as if I have dedicated people who look at these photos, and read whatever it is that I attach to them (breathe, breathe) – my mother often disregarded the question I asked her about the buzz at night from the crickets. She thought I was afraid of it, and she tried to comfort me. She used to say that I wasn’t hearing anything at all. The buzz from the crickets was “nothing, dear, don’t worry about it.”
Well, this is still happening! Today, I heard a tone in the kitchen. It sounded like a cell-phone, or a timer that had gone off. Perhaps, even more alarmingly, it sounded like a smoke detector with a low-battery. So, I inquired. Since I had just arrived from work when I heard the tone, maybe she would know where it came from.
I asked her, “what was that?”
“Oh, I didn’t hear anything. It’s just the birds, outside. It was probably just a bird,” she says.
Indeed, the kitchen window was wide open, and yes, there were birds out there, and yes, I was hearing them. But, oh, this aforementioned tone or beep was most definitely not a bird. No, this tone was not from nature. Not bird. No, no. No. Perhaps it came from a phone, yes… coffee machine, maybe, but not a bird.
She’s funny. And she’s still the only person who can make me crack a smile when I feel miserable or if I’m in the middle of a tragedy… but no, it was not a bird.
All week, I had planned to buy nine volt batteries, originally, for the remote garage door-opener, but now for the smoke detector too… apparently. I’m beginning to understand why these batteries are sold in packs of two.
Traditionally, I hate buying more batteries than I need. The problem is that since I keep all the old batteries, I inevitably mix them up with new ones.
I don’t like to throw away dead batteries. I read somewhere, sometime ago, that you should never throw them away without duct-taping their terminals. They could react with other metals in your trash and cause the battery to short-circuit.
Since covering the battery’s terminals, however, minimizes any interaction they may have with metals, duct tape is once again the answer.
So yeah, on my desk, sits a roll of duct-tape, lying down flat, and inside the roll are a bunch of dead batteries that which I have yet to obsessively, and compulsively tape.
My phone just went off. If this was a diary (which it is not), I could just write, “Anyway, my phone went off, so…” The end.
I could get away with an excuse like that… if this were a diary. But since it is most definitely not a diary, I must develop a conclusion.
I don’t know why I began writing this. Nostalgia, I suppose: to discuss the memories of what the World Cup actually sounds like. I am an acute listener. I am also under the influence of a double-shot espresso and a medium iced coffee. That could be it. The coffee must be the major contributor behind this scrambled script of thoughts.
See, everything really is explainable. Yes, with coffee, my stream of consciousness can easily weave from the World Cup to crickets, to déjà-vu and my toil with batteries.
And I am so intrigued by human consciousness. I wish I had a better brain to understand it. I’m amazed by the way our thoughts just skip from one thing to another. It is incredible the way the outside world interacts with the inside mind – the way a sound can trigger a memory.
It’s just like the drowning sound of the current World Cup, and the way it brought back memories of me watching the past World Cups: there I was, all hyped up, with a flag scarf, snacking on pub mix, chatting around, feeling like a fan-girl vagabond and moving from one room in the house to another. Everyone would watch… it was a giant social event for the spectators, as much as it was a sports event for the players. And everybody would always join in the same room when it came to penalty kicks – that’s where the real excitement lay!
Memories and how we access them: it feels like magic, and I don’t think I should ever take it for granted. Losing your memories means losing yourself… can you tell I’ve been reading a bit about Alzheimer’s lately?!
I think I once read somewhere that dreams are a way for your brain to catalogue parts of your memory. So, on any given day, if you went to a fast food joint, and then on your drive to class, you picked up a flat tire… you might then have a dream that you picked up your Math text book, found a cheese burger in it, but instead of a patty between the buns, you found a tire! Everybody has had those weird kinds of dreams. (I hope.)
If you consider the sheer amount of stimuli that confronts us every minute of our lives, it is hard not to wonder why we create memories for some things, but of others, we do not.
For every single thing we become conscious of and create a memory for – the buzz of the World Cup crowd on TV – there is something that goes unnoticed, things that we all remain unconscious of. It’s part of our nature.
We’ll just never know what we missed.
© 2010. All Rights Reserved.
A few words on the World Cup and a couple of other things...
It’s muggy. It’s been muggy for so long.
I had the door of my room closed, and I got up just a few seconds ago to open it for some fresher air, but then I remembered why I had shut it in the first place: The World Cup.
Yes, it’s taking place as I write this! And the televisions downstairs – all of them – are turned on for it!! They are all broadcasting in unison, but in different camera angles, and in different foreign languages. I can only think in a single language at a time. And I can’t get past all this noise from the stadium… this constant roar from the crowd, this insane buzz. It fills the room – the whole house.
In one room, the Spanish commentators on the Univision channel are screaming, “goal,” in an exaggeratingly prolonged way… over and over and over again. The older generation is seated here. Them and that other guy everyone calls family, but you’re not sure exactly how you’re related to him, if at all. In this room, the referee always blows (no pun intended).
In another room, a cast of sophisticated ESPN analysts ruin all the fun by enlightening their audience about methods of proper approach, team cohesion, and precision goal-scoring. Yes, they speak a foreign language, indeed.
See, from this room, I’ve learned that – if you’re a soccer player – you want to stand tangent to the perimeter of the mid-circle, and then make a run to your center-forward, so he can link up with the dude on the left-side of defense – hopefully – and who the hell knows where this right-winger just came from, but, hey, if we’re lucky he’s gonna head that little sucker in the net… hey-yeah! GOOA--oh, no. Didn’t count. Offside.
In this room, there are no further dramatic triumphs. For all the other eighty-eight minutes, there is Guinness.
Let’s not forget the loveseat in the corner of every room, occupied by the poor wives who must contend with this crazy soccer event. And while you are waiting for sexy #7 to take his next free-kick, for you, there are margaritas, and the mute button on the remote control (top right corner). If the mute button meets some resistance from your significant other – and it will – just have some more margaritas.
…
Buzz. Oh, what a buzz. It’s all I hear: the crowd and the commentators, the cheers and the jeers. It’s the people watching the crowd on TV, the screaming, the static, the horns, the parties, the crashers, the gasps, the sighs, the close calls – the high-frequency sound the TV itself makes when it’s turned on – I can hear it. Buzz.
If you remember – and I will, for a moment, act as if I have dedicated people who look at these photos, and read whatever it is that I attach to them (breathe, breathe) – my mother often disregarded the question I asked her about the buzz at night from the crickets. She thought I was afraid of it, and she tried to comfort me. She used to say that I wasn’t hearing anything at all. The buzz from the crickets was “nothing, dear, don’t worry about it.”
Well, this is still happening! Today, I heard a tone in the kitchen. It sounded like a cell-phone, or a timer that had gone off. Perhaps, even more alarmingly, it sounded like a smoke detector with a low-battery. So, I inquired. Since I had just arrived from work when I heard the tone, maybe she would know where it came from.
I asked her, “what was that?”
“Oh, I didn’t hear anything. It’s just the birds, outside. It was probably just a bird,” she says.
Indeed, the kitchen window was wide open, and yes, there were birds out there, and yes, I was hearing them. But, oh, this aforementioned tone or beep was most definitely not a bird. No, this tone was not from nature. Not bird. No, no. No. Perhaps it came from a phone, yes… coffee machine, maybe, but not a bird.
She’s funny. And she’s still the only person who can make me crack a smile when I feel miserable or if I’m in the middle of a tragedy… but no, it was not a bird.
All week, I had planned to buy nine volt batteries, originally, for the remote garage door-opener, but now for the smoke detector too… apparently. I’m beginning to understand why these batteries are sold in packs of two.
Traditionally, I hate buying more batteries than I need. The problem is that since I keep all the old batteries, I inevitably mix them up with new ones.
I don’t like to throw away dead batteries. I read somewhere, sometime ago, that you should never throw them away without duct-taping their terminals. They could react with other metals in your trash and cause the battery to short-circuit.
Since covering the battery’s terminals, however, minimizes any interaction they may have with metals, duct tape is once again the answer.
So yeah, on my desk, sits a roll of duct-tape, lying down flat, and inside the roll are a bunch of dead batteries that which I have yet to obsessively, and compulsively tape.
My phone just went off. If this was a diary (which it is not), I could just write, “Anyway, my phone went off, so…” The end.
I could get away with an excuse like that… if this were a diary. But since it is most definitely not a diary, I must develop a conclusion.
I don’t know why I began writing this. Nostalgia, I suppose: to discuss the memories of what the World Cup actually sounds like. I am an acute listener. I am also under the influence of a double-shot espresso and a medium iced coffee. That could be it. The coffee must be the major contributor behind this scrambled script of thoughts.
See, everything really is explainable. Yes, with coffee, my stream of consciousness can easily weave from the World Cup to crickets, to déjà-vu and my toil with batteries.
And I am so intrigued by human consciousness. I wish I had a better brain to understand it. I’m amazed by the way our thoughts just skip from one thing to another. It is incredible the way the outside world interacts with the inside mind – the way a sound can trigger a memory.
It’s just like the drowning sound of the current World Cup, and the way it brought back memories of me watching the past World Cups: there I was, all hyped up, with a flag scarf, snacking on pub mix, chatting around, feeling like a fan-girl vagabond and moving from one room in the house to another. Everyone would watch… it was a giant social event for the spectators, as much as it was a sports event for the players. And everybody would always join in the same room when it came to penalty kicks – that’s where the real excitement lay!
Memories and how we access them: it feels like magic, and I don’t think I should ever take it for granted. Losing your memories means losing yourself… can you tell I’ve been reading a bit about Alzheimer’s lately?!
I think I once read somewhere that dreams are a way for your brain to catalogue parts of your memory. So, on any given day, if you went to a fast food joint, and then on your drive to class, you picked up a flat tire… you might then have a dream that you picked up your Math text book, found a cheese burger in it, but instead of a patty between the buns, you found a tire! Everybody has had those weird kinds of dreams. (I hope.)
If you consider the sheer amount of stimuli that confronts us every minute of our lives, it is hard not to wonder why we create memories for some things, but of others, we do not.
For every single thing we become conscious of and create a memory for – the buzz of the World Cup crowd on TV – there is something that goes unnoticed, things that we all remain unconscious of. It’s part of our nature.
We’ll just never know what we missed.
© 2010. All Rights Reserved.