lumps of meat

In the last 2 weeks I've taken 2 separate spills on my skateboard. Each time, my whole body weight landed square on my left elbow and knee, which are both still swollen up like a grapefruit. It's been a bit less than a week since the most recent spill, and the arm is starting to feel a bit better.

The pain in my upper arm isn't a throbbing bruise pain. It's a deep, dull bone pain. Most of the time, just walking around and at work, it's easy to forget about. At the gym and playing hockey, making certain torquing motions with my fingers or wrists sets flashbulbs firing behind my eyes. I try to duplicate these special movement to make sure I avoid it next time, but something about the way I'm doing it doesn't register the same pain response.

It's strange the way the pieces of our bodies are connected together, and when the system gets disturbed how it responds to a trauma. The tendons and fibers that make us up, and how they play with one another. You forget how much has to be going right for all of these things to work in concert. The only time you remember how delicate you are is when you lose abilities you take for granted.

As a coda, I was just at the supermarket (where I couldn't believe I heard Wilco being played over the loudspeaker, how this place has changed in 6 years). At the meat counter a lady in a pink velour tracksuit was buying what had to be half of an adult cow's ribcage. Still all attached together like something you would see in the meat locker of a Rocky movie, she hoists up the ribs to the meat chopper across the counter. "Throw it to me," the chopper says. With a second of hesitation, the lady launches the ribs across the counter for a direct hit onto the cutting board. She had a smile on her face from ear to ear.

Devils and Everyone Else

In watching the the New York Rangers play the Winnipeg Jets right now, I'm entertained by the end to end action and by the momentary feats of individual achievement. Hockey isn't a sport that lends itself to stand-outs: things happen too quickly, it's too team-based to have superstars like in basketball or baseball, where fans have time to realize who has the ball and how good they're doing with it. Ryan Callahan just had a fantastic period, blocking 3 or 4 shots face-first, 2 on one shift, and scoring a nice garbage goal. The action is very end-to-end, odd-man rushes going back and forth, lots of posts.

It makes me think of the amazingly boring hockey that the New Jersey Devils play, and how that boringness is the result of a team of mediocre players that simply don't screw up as often as players on other teams. Each of Callahan's momentary heroics was the result of some kind of breakdown: the offside wing is out of position and he has to jump out, twice in one shift, to cover. Odd-man rushes are usually the result of an ill-timed pinch or missed hit; you just don't see Andy Greene or Marek Zidlicky do that as often. New Jersey goals are pretty evenly dispersed up and down the roster, because if you're moving that thing around the right way you don't need Gaboriks and Nashs to manufacture goals with one-man efforts. What amazes me, more than anything, is the consistency of Devils coaching that routinely produces a team-wide discipline and dedication to success as an organization, as opposed to an individual. I can see the bright lights of MSG making life difficult for even a personality like Tortorella to draw guys together around a collective goal. Give me the slightly-dimmer lights of the Rock across the swamp in Newark any day.

CONTRADICTION: "Police state" and "lawlessness"

The grand bargain made between China's leaders and the guy on the street goes something like: "The big guys assure steady economic growth, and in return you agree not to rock the boat." Sounds surprisingly similar to the Emperor's rule by the Mandate of Heaven back in the day, no? Another key component of the bargain involves assurance of stability in the form of an expansive security presence, from police to plainclothes cops to the People's Liberation Army officers to the young guy in the guardhouse at our front gate. To live in China is to be surveyed, watched, kept tabs on. If you cross a certain line, particularly the line of trying actively to involve Chinese citizens in some kind of mobbish political behavior, or group people together for an event of any purpose, you run a risk of activating this surveillance force. This is how folks "get disappeared" (Chinese folks mostly, as the international outcry if this was to happen to a foreigner would add to the massive PR problem China has already).

There is, on the other hand, kinds of lawlessness here that are startling to Westerners. To drive in Beijing, or even to be driven in a cab or bus here, is to feel a fear possible only in the midst of total chaos. Recent government transition has led to recent enforcement of several traffic laws, but in general, lane lines and street lights are interpretive, backing up on a busy highway to get to the exit ramp you missed is a frequent occurrence, accidents happen all the time.

More recently, at a pond hockey tournament on Houhai Lake this weekend, the organizers overlooked the need for a good, accessible bathroom for use by the players slamming copious amounts of Heineken over the course of the day. Eventually, the guys started pissing through a chain-linked fence bordering the hockey rink area, directly onto the ice being overseen from shore by hundreds of tourists. In a place where infant children routinely crap on the sidewalk, unable or unwilling to wait until the nearest public bathroom, and with parents who are remiss to throw money away on diapers, this must not have seemed like too much of a big deal to onlookers--at least the Chinese ones.

Costner: Pond skating in China

The people in the more ancient parts of this city are hospitable and accepting. I am yet to fully comprehend their manners, but they regard my incredible foreignness with smiles and well-wishes. At no other time has this been more apparent than in putting on my pair of metal-heeled boots to move around on the frozen pond in the area I hear them refer to as the Ho-Hi. As I glide around, grinning and occasionally falling, the smiles sometimes turn to outright guffaws. I cannot begrudge them that; me in the steel boots on the frozen water is sight I wish I could capture with one of the new image capture machines from France. How I wish them to be here for purchase or barter in the Orient! After a long morning of perspiration and achievement with friends, we moved into the thin alleyways of the surrounding courtyard terraces for Italian bread and cheese as well as some lager beers. The afternoon will no doubt prove to be a slow and pleasant one.