... from Latinoamérica

the Agony and the X

“The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place.” — Claudia Rankine

DECEMBER

The day before, packing, fugue day, with uncertain Colombian extension intangibly appended. An emptier mind with sun and drums and women’s boisterous joyful voices carrying down the block. Bag packed, for once. Tomorrow, D10S takes the field… last time… some of the best… As steps descend above me in the ivy and fallen leaves. Fawn glass full — empty it. Light rays warm— 

Dearly beloved,

I’m doing my Damnedest to not say it. A completely unbelievable story. and the strangest thing is that he wins, after all the longing and disappointment, and the whole thing feels a bit silly - like how could we, hundreds of millions if not billions (all lacking), have wanted so badly for someone who basically has it all to have that one last extra itty-bitty symbolic thing? When it was over, it was a bit like remembering Wow, it was all more than enough ten years ago in that one game, that one particular nutmeg, Getafe, the shift of the hips, the skip of the feet, eyes slicing goalward… countless moments, magic moments guaranteed by the wee-man multiple times every ninety minutes on a weekly basis for fifteen plus years — in these it lay, not in some deviance at the end of a line of chance. And but still, so good. here it comes: we told you so.

Giving ^

In an act of utter faith, i missed the final. I really only saw half the final. 1st world problems, on a plane to costa rica, and made worse by seeing the problem a mile away, so to speak, realizing flight was on the day at the very time, And Messi?, because I knew. What was with this feeling of foreknowledge? Like the whole world knew it was coming, him included, that it was right, that it would happen, argentines everywhere in qatar. bolstering, of course, the “rigged” conversation, but different. the attic door opening upon diego’s death, ushering messi into the jersey room where a newell’s or such was laid out black and red striped on a chair…

2-0 up and one fubo tv frantic in-flight wifi purchase later, we’re the only ones cheering and everyone else bandwidth-sucking drain-brains so game’s cutting in and out. 2-1 mbappe scores a pen and then it cuts out — comes back on and mbappe’s wheeling away in celebration. must be the same goal replay, but check the score: 2-2. live stream cuts out. extra time glitching and then leo scores and it’s out and then it’s 3-3. Whistle for penalties, silence for the first kick. Stream cuts out. Muttered curses, spent bladders, prayer.

Thirty minutes later we touch down and someone’s phone news notifications pops up and she leans over to share: Argentina are world champions. Touched down and someone leans to share: Argentina champions. touched down and for costa rica it’s one great celebration, blue and white stripes under open-air awnings and on green park benches.

rip PELE - r u kidding w the timing re oedipal

And but how does it feel like white pride to wear the albiceleste colors in America? Made overt as the Mundial progressed the fact, after all, that the Argentine players all presented as white or hispanic, no one Black, a relative rarity for teams from Europe and the Americas. And the first time hearing of Argentina’s bloody racist history, Wiki and Afropunk diverging in scholarship and ideology, the difference manifesting itself in the form of whitewash. Here, non-washed:

It is widely reported that president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, undertook a ‘covert genocide’ that wiped out the Afro-Argentinean population to the point that by 1875, there were so little Black people left in Argentina that the government didn’t even bother registering African-descendants in the national census.

During his term, Sarmiento instituted highly oppressive and deadly policies to eradicate Black people. He segregated the Black community from European descendants, placing them in squalor with no descent infrastructure and healthcare. This became a death sentence when cholera and yellow-fever outbreaks ravaged this community with no adequate measures to prevent or treat the illnesses. Sarmiento’s genocide also constituted, “the forced recruitment of Afro-Argentines into the military, mass imprisonment for minor or fabricated crimes, and mass executions.” Sarmiento also enlisted Afro-Argentinean men in the army to fight the Paraguayan War of 1864. Allegedly, Sarmiento knew that Argentina wouldn’t fare well in the war, sending thousands of Afro-Argentine men to their deaths. The war impacted the gender balance so severely that Afro-Argentine women were “forced” to have children with white or mixed Argentinean men. Afropunk (2018)

Speaking of, white “Turismo” vans are everywhere in costa rica, and out here in the hot sand locals bump Eminem next tree over, dead branches framing sparkling seas and a change of wind as per Bob the self-appointed hanging furthest out and reading old large-text nonfiction books on Africa—

Huevos revueltos y mate elaborada con palo, los Argentinos son muertos con felicidad y la Francia no lo puede hacer. An insect took out the banana trees and now the palm oil sucks and leeches the soil dry—

Mate on the two parallel slabs and aragorn asleep snoring and ma awake looking and pa off on a walk to investigate river break and i’m in the kitchen w the what if blues— 

The hollowed-out echo in the translucent wave face, hand brushing cresting, busting out the back when it all comes collapsing down— 

Haunted by visions of clean white rails sticking out of swells at angles, dust-covered large-leafed bushes and banana plantations on road side, The Idiot sticking out of ex’s green Japanese satchel—

Bushcraft across the cloud forest watershed cleaving the narrow country down the spine, north to south, a unique place on the Pan-American Highway, apparently, where you can see both Caribbean and Pacific, East and West— 

Coming in for landing with a different noise making you think of plummeting to the banana groves below, straight to the starburst water troughs in the grass, cattle paths extending away in all directions, some emergent outward sign—

The immanence of the dreadful plunging cataract, galloping and hurling itself frothing over the ledge, wisps along the sides gathering and hurtling down, to0— 

A brother rests his head on the shoulder of another and starts up smiling to the sunny applause of a landing—

Hydration: a most Western invention. Turning drinking into a task, a chore, something to be planned for and, by all accounts, accomplished—

like turner via rankine

Last, a parable:

We painted the masks and, taken together, they were a family portrait. The Italian translated the indigenous man’s Spanish into English and the Americans painted a family portrait in light of the shadow of the unspoken. The masks came out differently, and in the differential was the common ground on which we stood as the shutter went click in the vastness of the alive and unsaid. The Masks: a vibrant sun-green spirit jaguar, a flowing floral-enwreathed goddess of spring, a Basquiat, punctilious and obscured, reddish brown black with pinpricked splotches of sol. The Artists: the Masks.

Love, the jack of hearts