Baseball and Iranian Cinema

Since moving back to town, there are a few things I've been thinking about.

Last night, after seeing this picture:

I explained the film Close Up by Abbas Kiarostami, which focuses on an incident concerning Mohsen Makhmalbaf (gentleman on the right). So now its on my dad and Dairne's queue, which is great 'cause I'll get to watch it again. Then they asked me about the ending of Taste of Cherry. Which I tried to explain (first of all, I wrote a paper about Kiarostami for Kaveh's Iranian Cinema class and I sent it to my dad to read...he didn't get what I was talking about...so I explained Kiarostami's desperate need to insert himself into his art. He's constantly putting his presence into the film--think about The Taste of Cherry. In every single shot (expect to epilogue) he is on the other side of the camera, feeding the actor lines. He is the great manipulator--Godard did this too, that French bastard--and his films are great because of his presence. The viewer is sucked into the world of the film, but they are also constantly aware that they are viewing artifce--this is a film. Anyway, I thought about my paper, and I think I might revise it and send it out again. I looked at in in Cruces and thought it was one of my best papers. I'm doing that with my Almodovar paper too. Good times.

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OK baseball. I couldn't find a cooler picture to throw up--my perfect picture would be a short shop diving for a ground ball in the hole between third and second. But this'll do, even though I wasn't a big fan of hitting, and though I was OK at it, I wasn't that great.

Being back in town, talking about old times, is bringing back memories of baseball, and reminding me that if I would've stuck it out in high school, I probably still wouldn't've even played college ball. Pretty awesome. I didn't grow till after high school and our sophomore year, when the JV coach though Caleb and I would be the middle infield, he was pretty appalled to see that we were barely pushing 5'4. We were small, but polished. But enough of that, I don't to write about how we could've made it if given the chance. We could've played and played well, but we were too small to really go anywhere. The games I did play on JV before I quit, were frustrating, as I wasn't the player the coach wanted me to be, and honestly, my heart wasn't in it. I wanted to wrestle and stay in shape--sure I wanted to play ball, but I wanted to have fun, and by the half-way point, I was tired of the bullshit. So, I just stopped playing.

I miss it. I miss taking infield and batting practice. I miss the games. I miss that feeling of diving for a ground ball and getting up to throw the batter out. I miss slamming a double into the right center gap. I miss throwing a dime across the infield. I miss turning a double play. It doesn't help that I'm (Still) reading the Brothers K and that book is focused on baseball.

Sometimes, I have dreams about playing ball. But I always forget my cup and that terrifies me. I forgot my cup once at a game and borrowed one of the guys on the benches cup. It barely stayed put, but it got the job done. I took a grounder off a rock, into my junk. I was lucky I borrowed that cup.

Though, I knew I was a dime a dozen, though I knew I wasn't good enough, I tricked myself to believe that if i just kept pushing myself and getting more polished, and finessing the shit out of the game I could make it...at least up to the minors. That was way off, and though, our mentor was a scout, a college coach, and a degenerate gambler, he didn't have the heart to tell us this. He liked the way we played and believed, and though he was mean to everyone else about their chances, he seemed to believe that we could make it--maybe he thought we were gonna be that dime that the dozen gets to see make it. The twin middle-infield that people talked about. Hell, I doubt he realized that our growing wouldn't happen till after graduation.

I need to track down my glove--I let someone borrow it before I left and now I can't remember how--and play some catch. Dave would you like to play catch soon? I would. And maybe when I get back to my graduate studies, if the fellow MFAers are starting a softball league, I may join. maybe not, but maybe I'll grab my glove and play some catch.

Later dudes and dude-girls

Joshua