Who knew when I began my post-secondary schooling six years ago, that I would at some point figure out how to mesh my education with my love life? My love life, in almost every situation, as my girlfriend will disapprovingly tell you, consists of soccer, soccer, and more soccer. I'm a bit of a pig; monogamy isn't for me. La Liga, The Premiership, Serie A, B, C, D1, Primavera, MLS, Bundesliga, UEFA Champion's League, FIFA World Cup, Copa America.... Brampton Adult Soccer: I don't discriminate, I love them all. And this obsession with my favourite sport has naturally led me to want to learn more about its history and about the people that have interacted with it in the ways that I have.
So, after having read book after book about soccer, nationalism, identity, war, gender, race, etc., I wrote an 80-page Undergraduate Honours thesis last year on the development of the global game in England and the way it embodied modernity. Furthermore, I completed an essay about how Mussolini's Fascist regime utilized soccer to socialize Italians and consolidate his form of government. I later had the amazing opportunity to present this paper at an international academic conference on soccer, where I met some of the authors and journalists that I had cited in the same work I was presenting.
Now, time for the big project. I am a Graduate student at McMaster University and I am doing some of my own primary research. I want to write a thesis about Italian-Canadians throughout the 1970s and 80s, with particular focus on that famous, spontaneous celebration in 1982 when Italy won the World Cup. To do this, I'm going to need to speak to many people who were in and around Toronto at the time and can tell me about their memories. Even people who have relatives that fit into this category could be useful to my study. I would like the opportunity to speak with people over a coffee and have a very casual conversation with them about what they remember and how they felt. There are no expectations and no restrictions.
Can anyone out there help me out?
Please contact me at:
lomonara@mcmaster.ca if you think you or someone you know could help out with this study. I will send you a more formal letter and more detailed information as a reply and then we can proceed with the study.
Thanks!
Riccardo Lo Monaco, B.A., B.Ed.,
Masters Candidate in History
Department of History
McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario
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Over the summer of 2010, my girlfriend and I began an interesting new project. We bought a book and read it together. I would read a chapter out loud to her, and she would return the favour for the following chapter. We would read outside on the back patio of her grandmother's house over a glass of wine; we would read curled up in bed with a cup of hot cocoa (one of us half asleep and the listener dozing); we would read at the kitchen table in the morning over breakfast... Back and forth we would continue until, saddeningly, in a couple of weeks the book was finished.
The book was Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.
I know what you're thinking: How much did my girlfriend pay me to read that chick-flick of a book with her? Well... you'll be surprised to hear (if you don't already know this) that this book is actually quite well-written and much less "chick-flicky" than it is popularized to be. Within its pages, we found instances of intertextuality and references to important works of literature which even the most cultured of people would be impressed to find. More than that, the book explores the questions of existence that we've all had to some capacity and haven't known what to do with. The answers the author comes up with were both satisfying and challenging at the same time.
I'm not here to sell you the book. What I would like to take from this initial anecdote, however, is the way Gilbert envisions us to all have a unique 'word' that describes each individual comprehensively. It seems foolish to think we can reduce ourselves to a single word, yet the same could be said about this novel--that it is foolish to reduce the wonderful and glorious city of Rome to one small section of a novel about a single person's experience there. Yet Gilbert does this with precision, and teaches us that sometimes there is merit in simplicity. Although she is able to find her word instantly, as per the narrative of the book, I find it hard to believe that it was truly this easy. This is a practice that takes time and careful consideration.
A friend of mine was watching the film adaptation of this story recently (which I would never recommend to anyone until AFTER they have read the book - simply because it does not compare to the depth of the author's dialogue in text, which essentially makes the book for me) and she came upon this scene where the protagonist discusses her 'word'. Newly inspired by this, my friend asked me, 'What's your word?" I thought I would be really good at this and was ready to blurt out the first thing that came to my mind; something clever and potentially funny that we would be forgetting about within hours. But then I stopped and replied, "I'm not sure... I'll find one and let you know soon." This was a few weeks ago, and only today have I come upon what I think I would like to use as my 'word'.
After agreeing that my friend's word should be 'conundrum' and refusing to explain to her exactly why this should be, I still had not found mine. I circulated between a few different ones: ambition, concentration, thought, etc. None of them seemed to satisfy me because they always described a single part of me, a segment of my emotion or personality, but never my entire essence. O needed a word that concisely sums up who I am as a product of all my emotions. So today I was thinking about how I always tend to 'go with the flow', so-to-speak. I am an opinionated individual, and I don't allow things to slide if they will prove to be offensive to my well-being or that of others, but I do tend to be quite accomodating and I have an annoying desire to make sure that those around me are happy and agreeable whenever I can. I like to think alot. My stream of consciousness is probably well-compared to a river. I had to sign up for Twitter to help me cope with this. I am also ambitious, but I will never stress about my goals. I just make sure that I always have goals, and that I am continuously doing things that contribute to their eventual completion. I am constantly moving forward but leave a strong trace of my past in my path. Essentially, my life has flowed like a river in many different respects.
Flow.
What's your word?
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I have something to say about many things that happen to me on a daily basis. Unfortunately whatever it is that I want to say gets lost or squandered by the negating comments people make when they don't know what to make of a really big thing and are too lazy to carry the burden of the thought any longer than they need to. For example: "Wow, technology has really come a long way in the last few years. It really is amazing huh?" - "Yeah it's crazy!"
...
Conversation is concluded. What is the sense in this? So then I think to myself, I'm just going to go home and blog about this. And then I don't. And I have no good reason for slacking in this way, it's just the way of things. Have brilliantly inspirational thoughts and allow them to slip through your fingers as though they are just as insignificant as the blades of grass you tear out of your front lawn when you are anxious about absolutely nothing as you lie there on a typical summer day.
In the future I need to try a bit harder to hold on to these moments of inspiration. To explore them, to expand them, to create. This is what will allow me to excel. The people who are insipired and DO something with it are those who become great. The others just waste away, telling stories of how they could have, or should have been great BUT.
No buts.
No excuses.
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I hate to revisit my blog for such a terrible tragedy, but I found this in the news today and couldn't help remember a poem I wrote a few months ago. I've pasted the link to the news story and my poem below.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/948777--high-school-star-dies-after-hitting-game-winning-basket
What Good Was the Win?
Monday, March 1, 2010 by Riccardo Lo Monaco
He dribbled feverishly, intensely;
looked niether left, nor right;
heard calling up ahead...
with a swift motion he released.
His teammate received it and returned it;
a perfect give-and-go.
Four adversaries left in his tracks
to wonder where he had gone;
he was much too quick,
much too swift,
much too smart.
More opponents came to stop him,
but he was too much, much too much.
He avoided them too;
dropped his left shoulder, moved to the right.
The goalie showed fear
for less than a second.
But he didn't even need to look up
to know what he had to do.
He took a shot,
he hit it well,
much too well,
the mesh filled with the joy of a million cheering fans;
a nation celebrates.
His heart explodes.
His teammates pile up on top of him;
the goalie falls face first into the ground,
his tears become the playing field,
encourage life with his pain.
The coach clenches his fists; his face.
The fans erupt...
the players scream - they won, they lost.
But when they get up
there he lies.
motionless.
lifeless.
What good was the win?
- Riccardo Lo Monaco
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I was sitting on the bus today thinking about the past week and I jotted down a quick poem on the notes app of my iphone:
Sand Scratching my Toes
Between sand and saltwater
the breeze of the winter sea
betrays the cold that I've come to expect;
it does nothing to soothe my scalding shoulders.
I run towards the sun
dodging beer bellies and thongs;
my toes scratch the grainy divide
between liquid and land;
my ankles strain against the angled plane.
waves of relaxation crash to my left
while a child builds a mound of imagination to my right;
I look at a parachute on the water with a smirk and mutter quietly
"today is all mine":
just as soon as I finish these ten push-ups.
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The texture of the fruit was surprising. It was soft; delicate to the touch. It weighed more heavily than I expected as I shifted it from one finger to the next, examining its contours. The summer sunlight had made the fig soothingly warm. It had also tanned the exposed side of the already deep purple encasing. Now one side was a more vibrant shade of violet than the other. I felt the urge to raise it up closer to my face, to take a better look, to smell it, to taste it. The fig was not a showpiece; it had too many imperfections. I could relate to it in this way. I remember hardly noticing a trickle of its juice flowing down my middle finger. The heat of the Italian summer dried the liquid quickly and left a sticky, sweet residue on my hand which I refused to rub away. I quite appreciated it there. It made me feel more connected to the fruit which I so proudly cradled.
I was so mezmerized by the beauty of the fig that I had forgotten to look up for more than a few heartbeats as I walked along the cobblestone pathway . Venice is more beautiful at night, but the daytime reveals its character. Aside from the odd paddle rippling through the fluid streets and the buzzing of anxious and excited tourists, only an abnoxious boat motor threatened my paradise intermittently. More often than not, however, it was peaceful, calm, and comfortable. I felt like I was taking a walk through my state of mind when I am just waking up in the morning after the most satisfying sleep.
The colour. The colour was what captivated me most. Set on a backdrop of golden rays of sun, which played happily with the dancing currents of salty Venetian streetwater, the blueness of the sky was inpenetrable until I ripped open the simple skin of the fig in front of it. A red.. no... a deep and powerful golden-speckled magenta exploded out of the fruit. My eyes had a private disagreement with my tastebuds over which sensation was more pleasing: the appearance or the taste of this fantastic fig. I calculated how many bites I had left before the fig would fully become a part of me.
My attention was now split between the fig and the serenity of my surroundings. I had not fully considered the effect of the fruit on my feelings until after I had so carelessly taken the first bite. More sweet, warm, juice splattered down the back of my hand; down my chin. I felt a slight bit of regret, having torn open the helpless fruit... but it passed when I reaped the rewards of my conquest. The fragrant smell intensified; the taste was so sublime that I now consciously avoid describing it, for fear of failing.
As I walked and I marvelled at the magnificence of this fig and the beauty of my surroundings, I listened for the first time in a long time. I listened to the silence of my thoughts, which could just as easily have been described as euphoric or ecstatic noise. Perhaps this very same fruit would not have tasted quite as good if I had not been walking through the peaceful streets of an engineless city. The pigeons around me pecked about indifferently.
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How is that in all my time blogging I have never mentioned my beautiful girlfriend?
She had to point it out one night in order for me to even notice. At first I felt terrible. How could I defend myself? I've come here and I've written about my dying dog, about Canadian nationalism, about airports, about incompetent bees... but never have I spent an ounce of my time to write about the one thing that I love the most in my life (even more than soccer, believe it or not).
I've been thinking about this dilemma for some time and I'm still not sure that I have come to an answer. I'm not sure that I ever will. It's inexcusable, really. Alot of writers have based their entire careers on writing about love, as if there were nothing else. I, however, have prioritized talking about Cee-Lo Green and natural disasters before love. How could this be?
Well, let's pretend to understand this phenomenon in one way--the only way that I know how. When I wake up in the morning, it is often to the sound of my phone ringing; it's my girlfriend on the other side. She speaks with a smile, I can hear it in her voice. She makes it sunny outside, no matter what the weather is. That wasn't a cliche metaphor, this girl actually has the power to do that. She's like some sort of super-hero or something with cool superpowers. I usually tell her to go away.
I get my day started and go about my business. Before long, my super-hero girlfriend calls me again and says in a cute voice, "Wha doooooin?" Now I'm the one that's smiling. We talk, then I tell her to go away. And she says, "One more minute?"
A bit later she calls me again. This time she's upset. She tells me I don't love her. She asks me why I don't call her. And I only have one answer for her, "Because I knew that YOU were gonna call me..." I know, I'm weak. Who says that? But I admit, I find myself taking her for granted much more than I realize: She's there, she'll call me, she knows I love her, why go out of my way when I can just... oh I dunno, watch some soccer or something? So I apologize and tell her I love her.
A bit later she calls me again and she says, "come ovvvver?"
I know, I seem childish, equating love to making my girlfriend happy. The point is that my day comes and goes and I don't ever have to dwell on the stresses of my love life. She makes me smile, she makes me laugh, she makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (after 7 years, this is quite a feat), she pisses me off and aggravates me, but then she smiles like royalty and asks me to cuddle. There's nothing better than this feeling of being wanted, of being needed. I don't ever need to worry that she will wake up one day and not love me, and she knows she will never need to consider the opposite. Our bond is invincible. This is called comfortable love. And that's what I have. I have a sense of completeness in that department that only she can satisfy, and only in her way. The fact that I don't have to think about her in stressful terms all the time allows me the comfort to think about life from the perspective of someone who is emotionally complete. This affords me one of the greatest advantages a person can aspire to. It allows me to put all of my energies to greater benefit in everything that I do. My life is interwoven with love, and not a day goes by that I don't think about this and recognize how lucky I am.
Stephanie, I didn't write this note because you told me to. I wrote it because I want you to know that I take you for granted the same way I take myself for granted. We are so close, so in love, so much a part of one another that we are essentially one. All of my best memories are with you--the time I made you leave work and I met you in Gage park with 11 real roses and a 1 fake one; the time I stole a stuffed turtle; the time I bought a Moroccan drum in Berlin; the time I rode my first ski lift and spent the duration of the descent on my ass; the time I went to the gym and noticed that my glove was ripped...and it goes on forever like this. Please forgive me for not always calling you and giving you the attention that you deserve; it's not because I don't care, but rather because it would be impossible to care any more than I do. I wasn't lying when I told you that we are perfect.
And for the record, I've had this note open, in progress but unpublished, for more than a month. No matter how I write it, it seriously never seems good enough. I want to work on it for longer, to make sure I get it right. This is important to me. But I realised that if I did that, I would never publish it because I would never find the right words. So I've come to the conclusion that I will write a book about you one day... and that the book will not have any words in it at all. You will be the only one who could ever read it and understand it completely. The only thing the book will have is a title:
"How do I love thee?/ Let me count the ways..."
