Highlights from the weekend

This past Sunday I volunteered at the Mexican Independence Day Fiesta at Penn's Landing. It was a great day: the weather and the girls were beautiful. I helped out Juntos, a South Philly cultural organization, to get a ton of people to sign postcards that will be sent to our congresspeople, asking them to take the initiative to reform the immigration laws. The process by which I did this was simply walking around through the crowd with a clipboard and a bunch of postcards, and asking people to sign. It was a great opportunity to use my Spanish for an entire afternoon. And the feeling I got by approaching people was the same feeling (though perhaps not quite as nerveracking) as I get by approaching girls at a bar: the pressure of capturing someone's attention within just a couple of seconds and trying to hold their attention long enough for them to give you something (here, a signature, at the bar, a phone number). Overall I had a really good day. When I first met with Valeska, the executive director of Juntos, about a month ago, this was the sort of experience I was looking for: something where I felt useful and something that was for a good cause. Hopefully the more I help out, the better chance there may be for greater opportunities to arise, maybe even an opportunity to direct my career in a more fulfilling direction. I leave that in God's hands; but in the meantime I'll do what I can to get more involved.

So I finally have television again. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I went and visited my dad this past Saturday. Our mission for that afternoon was to hook me up with a television antenna, a digital converter box, and a television stand. Check, check, and check. After a long and harrowing afternoon trying to assemble the tv stand and negotiate all the wires, I was finally able to put on the tv by the evening. After Pito had left, I was able to watch, of all things, the women's U.S. Open semifinal between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters; as fate would have it, it was the match where Serena blew her lid and thus blew the match by threatening to shove a tennis ball down a line-judge's throat. Great drama. Proof that sports has always been and always will be the best form of reality tv.

Finally tonight, I'd like to mention that I finished the book "My Antonia", by Willa Cather, this past Sunday night. It is one of the most beautiful novels that I have ever read. It's about the love between a boy and a girl, who eventually become man and woman, but whose love is never fulfilled, much less consummated, with anything more than a kiss. It showed that true love, as it is really felt and expressed, has very little if anything to do with sex. It showed that true love is truly beautiful. And so, although the main characters' love was never fulfilled with each other in any traditional, logical, or preordained sense, thus giving the novel a tragic feel and the reader a certain feeling of discouragement, it was ultimately a romance of the highest order. Even more than the dynamic between Antonia and Jim Burden, the book really romanticizes, in a non-proselytizing manner, the plains of the American midwest. The imagery and lyrical descriptiveness with which Cather describes the land of Nebraska was incredibly moving and simply beautiful. I'll finish this post with two beautiful quotes from "My Antonia", one of scenic imagery and the other of pure love:

"If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made."

"The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me."

Injuries -- new and old

I hurt my back playing tennis with Priscilla about a month ago. It still hasn't healed completely. When I went in for my yearly physical exam with the doctor a couple weeks ago, I mentioned it to the doctor. He told me it was probably a pulled ligament or muscle in my lower back. He gave me a worksheet with some lumbar stretching exercises, which I have still yet to do. A side effect of the back injury is that I haven't gone to the gym more than a couple times in the past month. So I've lost a few pounds of muscle that I would normally have maintained. I've resolved to start going to the gym on a regular basis again, in spite of the back. If I have to do a lighter work-out, it's still better than nothing.

Another side effect of the back injury is that I haven't played tennis since the evening that I hurt it. I had started getting pretty good, finally learning how to serve and developing a pretty good back-hand stroke with a little bit of back-spin on it. Not playing has also, I believe, affected the dynamic of spending time with Priscilla; before hurting my back, we were playing about once a week. It was a nice way to spend time together and have fun, especially doing something that's an important part of her life. There are deeper issues affecting our dynamic, but I'm aware of the fact that not playing tennis has been a loss. Oh well, I do believe that things happen for a reason. In the end I just pray to God that my back eventually heals completely, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Finally, since I've now resurrected this blog, I've felt a strange compulsion to express this final thought -- apparently picking-up where I had left off several months ago -- I'm really pleased that my short relationship with Diana came to an end. The reaction of her friend, Yadira, even more than Diana's own reaction, exposed to me the truth that I would not want to be part of that circle. It simply wasn't meant to be, and I accept that unequivocally. I expect that they would say the same thing about me, and that's just fine with me. I wish Diana the best, but I'm content to leave that experience behind as a lesson learned: be slow, cautious, and methodical when starting a relationship with a girl, even if it means being conservative about expressing my feelings, until time passes and the relationship solidifies over the course of shared experiences.

Enough said for today . . . I hope you enjoy the video below for "Panic Switch." I heard the song on Radio 104.5 not too long ago, and I pumped up the volume and bass to enjoy it.