Summer Day

Today was a perfect 80 degree day in Berlin, rare for this rather dreary summer in northern Germany, and I did not get out and enjoy it. I slept too late and then had to move down the hall to another room because of renovation at the hotel. In fifteen minutes I must leave for our evening practice. I went to a nice lake yesterday, and enjoyed myself, but the weather was overcast. Rain, light rain, and thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next ten days. You never know when the next sunny day will spring forth from the morning dawn. When you are lucky enough to receive a warm summer day, remember how cold it is in January, slap on some spf and go outside.

"My Precious... or plain Sacrifice?"

I find myself frequently counting the money I have saved thus far in my time over here in Deutschland.
Yes, I do sometimes feel like Golem, or Bilbo, or even Frodo, peering upon ‘my precious’: counting the strange Euro Notes, the larger than reality, monopoly currency of The European Union.
I do not; indeed I hope not that I count it in some ‘Middle Earthen’ transparent manner of pure greed. Or comfort for that matter. No, I hope that my desire to count my ‘geld’ (German for money) is to gratify for my sacrifice of frugal living, and for enabling the possibility of ‘Possibility’ after the season has concluded.
I hail from California: beautiful yes, but a mere 22 hour excursion with driving time, flights, and lay-over’s to this wonderful Germany and the gateway known as Europe: thankfully and necessarily on the dime of the Berlin Adler.
My country, the U.S. of A. is vast; and while it contains different dialects and subtle cultural discrepancies, it is still ‘One Nation Under God, Indivisible…’
I have no 9-5, (many pluses and minuses) and would not necessarily have the means to experience the vast cultural wonder of Europe without a job playing football 20 hours a week over here. (Yes, three practices and a game. And the number quoted is a wee bit higher than necessary because I have always tried to be earliest to any athletic appointment. It takes me a while to attempt to enter ‘the Zone.’ For an explanation, ask ‘Coach Rob’ of my youth soccer team.)
And after I have earned my dues of the German Football League, and its surprisingly delightful difficulty level, I will take my lived hardship of no sit down dinners, walks instead of cabs, tap water rather than bottled, indeed the ‘cheap Rum over Bacardi’ lifestyle to the bank and have enough money to rough it for at least a month in Europe.
And while I love the cities of Europe with their ornate bridges, museums galore, and discotheques-a-plenty, I will veer towards the natural splendor and the quaint villages of the ‘Ancient Ruralville’, Europa.

I contemplated coming home with some money saved so I could live in comfort in my old bedroom for a couple weeks, but really, what is a couple weeks of comfort versus a lifetime of self discovery in a foreign land? (Thanks for the insight Mom.)
And comfort just makes you weak anyway. (By the way my TV, a fairly large Panasonic, serves as nothing more than a stand for a makeshift table that I made out of an unnecessary partition from our car. Fuck Modernity!)
So yes, while I do count my money probably too much for a guy who supposedly does not care about money, I believe I do it for the acknowledgement of sacrifices lived for a good reason. And while I live in an austere manner, I do still live in a hotel in Berlin and have two meals delivered to my room every day. My job, at its most basic, is to throw a football.
I can live without caviar and three-piece-suits.
Viva la revolucion, Jonathan Richard Grant!

Rippling Thoughts

Life is the uncountable billions of ripples of All playing off each other: the endless cause and effect of One.

I take a slug of wadka and chase it back with a sip of Becks. My eyes can’t take the reading anymore, so I have turned to the journal.
Birds chirp in some inane and archaic tongue, some wave-frequency my antennae can pick up but not decipher.
I feel Here, in the moment.
A family of ducks swims by; stupid ducks just swimming on autopilot, but is perfect autopilot that has allowed them Survival. And they make ripples in the water.
And I notice the whole pond ripples. And it has always rippled. From here and gone paddleboats, from a twig dropped from an overhanging willow, a landing bird, or a leaping fish. Perpetual ripples.
And it all makes sense, the timeline; the life timeline is all ripples - from Dawn to Now. Events, actions, creations, evolutions, thoughts.

Never isolated, but at once summation and expression of future summations, in the endless Circle.

I feel like throwing my old shoe, which sits beside my crossed legs and sock-clad feet, into the pond to make my own ripples; to make my own piece of Life Art to ‘effectively cause’ a bird to flap. And to cause the rower of the boat to turn his head toward the movement only to have his gaze snagged by the young family picnicking by the water’s edge, wherein his mind shifts to his own woman back home, his woman with whom he fought last night, indeed the reason for his excursion to ‘get away from it all at the park today’. And he will go home now, and with his look and his everything embrace he will apologize for his harsh words of yesterday. And they will go upstairs and make love, conceive their child, make a big make ripple…

(Alas, I did not throw my shoe, or incite any conception that I know of. But I really enjoyed my thoughtful moments on ripples.
About fifteen minutes after this journal entry I was beckoned by the rippling sounds of a large crowd gathering nearby, and I joined a significant German student protest of some sort. There were signs and backtalk to polizei, and then a big march through a major Strasse. I did not know the exact plight of the students, but I liked their ripples, so I decided to add my own.)

Get Lost

(This was written in early April, shortly after I arrived.)
After a pretty busy first few days, we got a couple days off and the ‘Three Americans’ went out in search of downtown Berlin, backpacks, street maps, and cameras in tow. Alexanderplatz was our end goal, a central market area within walking distance to the historic areas and museums, and it seemed an easy enough destination.
But, like a kid who gets the cool Christmas present and wants to play with it sans direction reading, we left our place of residence, Hotel Kolumbus without really doing any homework on the metro routes.
And, of course when we got to the bus station the lines, symbols, and words on the metro line map were like Hieroglyphs to us Yanks. We tried a couple different buses and zigzagged around our East Berlin berg for a while, but for fear of getting lost in the sprawling unknown, we admitted defeat and walked back to our hotel to watch YouTube clips.
The next day we set out with a different mindset. Pick a bus or tram, and ride it out. The previous day’s end goal had completely tunneled our vision; we need not get to Brandennberger Gate today; the whole city is just as new to us, if not more. So we hopped on the M-6 with eyes, ears, and mind open.
On the third stop we gave up our seats to a new mother and her stroller, and exchanged a few sentences, but mostly smiles and nods of appreciation. A fifty-something American woman heard our accents and introduced herself, telling us her story, the last seventeen years of which taking place in Berlin. And my favorite: three small schoolchildren who were riding public transportation home from their day. It turned out there English was about on par with my German; I am’s, you are’s, he is’, and a handful of adjectives and verbs. They corrected my pronunciations a bit, and then enacted a scene right out of Kindergarten Cop as the three boys accurately and jokingly described each other in anatomical terms. I looked around to see if anyone else was offended by the talk, but no one seemed to be paying attention, and we all laughed together in human.
After a meandering ride through different parts of town we even found ourselves at Alexanderplatz Station and got out to walk around and see some of the sites of Berlin, which are as good as advertised.
But while Brandennberger Gate was pretty cool, my favorite part of the day was the adventure of the unknown, of happening upon the treasures of this ancient city like archaeologists after wading our way through urban jungle maze. Sometimes not knowing where you’re going is just a little bit more fun.

Twenty Four Hours and Four Minutes

I left the hotel at 4:00 am Saturday morning and drove cross city to our practice facility to make the 4:45 meeting time for the 5 o'clock departure.
The bus was late, and a long sleeve t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops were not enough to drive away the surprising June morning cold.
The bus arrived at 5:15 and we embarked on an eight hour ride nearly the length of Germany down to Munich.
I had an empty seat beside until the bus began to move. Then a linemen penetrated my unconcious vibe of 'seat's taken' and plopped down next to me, effectively cutting my sleeping space by two-thirds.
It seemed like just when I had fallen asleep we stopped at a gas station and I was awakened.
For our pregame meal we dined at McDonalds.
The game was played in a constant rain on a sloppy field and it was a defensive oriented 16-7 slugfest.
In the fourth quarter, Tony, our running back, my roommate, and best mate over here got horse collared to the ground. By the ancient yelp that spewed from his insides, I knew it was serious.
After the game, the offense got chewed out a bit for lack of production.
The busride home was marked by soreness, cramp space, and naked drunk Adler rookies undertaking another segment of their year-long initiation.
When we arrived back at the practice facility in Berlin at 3:30 am, my coach told me that Tony had fractured his Tibia, the weight supporting bone in the lower leg and would miss the rest of the season.
I arrived back at my hotel at 4:04 on Sunday morning and went to sleep, exhausted.
Twenty four hours and four minutes does not come close to measuring the true length of my Saturday, June 6, 2009.
At least it was not 1944.