Match Day; 2666 pt.1; Wolves Act II
It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. The first regular season match day of 2017. The home opener. The season opener, even, because we have once again been given the honor of hosting the opening match of the whole damn MLS season. Suffice to say, there’s a party in Portland. No one’s sleeping tonight.
We’re playing Minnesota United in their first ever MLS game. It’s a momentous occasion (even though we’ve seen them at our preseason invitational the last couple years) and the TA has made a (from previews) neat looking special edition scarf that I’m planning on purchasing. More importantly though, it’s the start of a new season, which means new hope for us. There’s not a Timbers fan in the world that won’t tell you 2016 was extremely disappointing, and it’s been a long offseason. But this preseason has brought Renewed hope to the Rose City.
Our new signings look great, our fullbacks are getting forward and making significant contributions to the attack (3 assists in a row), Valeri is winning balls in the midfield like he’s a #6, and Nagbe looks hungry. I’ll say that last one again, Nagbe looks hungry. In truth, the whole squad looks hungry, both in the aggressive press they’ve implemented on the field, and in interviews. We’re hearing from a lot of our guys , “We’ve got something to prove” and really we do. We have to prove that our 2015 cup wasn’t a fluke. We have to prove that we’re a major player in this league that can be expected to perform at a high level consistently. We have to prove that last year wasn’t an acceptable season for this club. I’ve got a lot of faith in this squad, and in Caleb Porter (who, by the way, looks calmer and more comfortable with our play than he has in a long while). #RCTID.
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Each installment of The Familiar comes with a readers guide and nine volumes of Suggested Reading. I’ve been wanting to read through them for a while (because as you all know, I’m obsessed with this book series and anything that will help me understand it is required reading as far as I’m concerned), and after finishing Spin (handed to me by a friend; not TF suggested reading) on Tuesday, I wasted no time in swinging by Powell’s and picking up a copy of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (TF Volume 1 Suggested Reading).
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I knew I loved it almost immediately. There’s something about his writing that felt so familiar to me (it’s a bit reminiscent of Eco (unsurprisingly, they’re both essayists)), that tangential, almost ploddingly academic style that still manages to be intimately personal. It helped that the subject matter (for part one) is four literature scholars/academics (one each from France, Spain, Italy, and England) who become experts on a German author named Benno von Archimboldi (the centrepoint and connecting factor of the five parts of the novel (or so I hear (I’m currently midway through part two (The Part About Amalfitano)))). They meet at conferences, and form relationships, and discuss books and Archimboldi (who(m?) no one can seem to find), and in all of it not much happens, but it’s deeply moving just the same.
That said, when I really fell in love was Wednesday night, sitting at C Bar. I read this passage (pages 121–123) that was just so incredible. It begins:
“Literature in Mexico is like a nursery school, a kindergarten, a playground, a kiddie club, if you follow me. The weather is good, it’s sunny, you can go out and sit in the park and open a book by Valéry, possibly the writer most read by Mexican writers, and then you go over to a friend’s house and talk. And your your shadow isn’t following you anymore. At some point your shadow has quietly slipped away. You pretend you don’t notice, but you have, you’re missing your fucking shadow, though there are plenty of ways to explain it, the angle of the sun, the degree of oblivion induced by the sun beating down on hatless heads, the quantity of alcohol ingested, the movement of something like subterranean tanks of pain, the fear of more contingent things, a disease that begins to become apparent, wounded vanity, the desire just for once in your life to be on time. But the point is, your shadow is lost and you, momentarily, forget it.”
I read this passage (the full thing, not just the bit I’ve included above) three times back to back. As usual, no one around me seemed aware of the world-altering literary experience I was currently having. I wrote “wow” in the book with my trusty .07mm Jetstream pen.
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I woke up today with Bon Iver’s ‘The Wolves (Act I and II)’ stuck in my head. It hasn’t gone away, and I can’t say I’m surprised.
What might have been lost / Don’t bother me.
