Here and Gone

[mrissa]

My father was here and is gone. With him, ice cream was here and is gone. My problems with "Carter Hall Sweeps a Path" were also here, and are more or less gone: I just have to deal with the snow yagas, and I've got the rest written, up to Tam and Janet's wedding, which is the end of this story.

I'm having way too much fun with these characters. Probably if they thought about it they'd pass a law.

blzblack made casual reference to the choreography of a football game awhile back, that some example or another was a good thing if you wanted to learn how to watch the choreography of a football game. I think most team sports have choreography and attendant myths. Not every style of choreography is to my taste: football, for example, bores me out of my proverbial gourd. Basketball (sorry, buymeaclue) is even more stultifying for me. (If they are constantly scoring points, how am I to care about any points they score?) But I don't think that's because either football or basketball is lacking in choreography or mythology. I just think it's not a resonant set of moves and myths for me.

I was raised a baseballterian, and while it didn't entirely stick for me (I am a convert to hockeyism, as most of you know), the myths are very comfortable, and at times very comforting. I am the baseball equivalent of the Christian who wanders in every month or two and would never dream of teaching Sunday School or staffing the soup kitchen, but who also would not miss Christmas or Easter for all the world. And like many casual Christians with the relevant stories, I find that baseball stories work much better for me than they do for people who have no baseball background. I know these guys, the wise old catcher and the hotshot pitcher, the fast-talking fast-running outfielder or the guy next to him who's in the outfield so they have somewhere to put him when he's not dingin' 'em out of the park. It's all got stories in. It's just that sometimes you can see that they're not your stories.

In "Carter Hall Sweeps a Path," Carter has to deal with curling, which has very, very, very different choreography and mythology than hockey. The story starts out with the basic problem:
Curling is a game for drunk old men. Wandering around in shoes on perfectly good ice: it just makes no sense. You have ice time, you put on your skates and play a little pickup game, you don't waste it throwing rocks around.
And Carter does learn a little respect for a game that isn't his, but mostly he's interested in saving his bacon, and that's okay, not every game has to become his own, and Carter, for all his growth as a person and his moments of insight, is never going to be a pillar of understanding. Especially where Things Not Hockey are concerned.

I think too many geeks have been alienated from anything athletic, and they use words like "dumb" and "stupid" to describe any sporting event that crosses their paths. I used to think the same, more or less. (I also bitterly resented being forced to play pep band for football and basketball games if I wanted to play the flute at all. I still think that was stupid.) But now I think sometimes I just don't know where to look for the stories. And sometimes I never will, and that's all right, but it doesn't mean they're not there.

Back on the title theme: markgritter has been gone but soon will be here. So that's good.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

snow yagas

I read that first as snow yogas.

I'm not sure what a snow yoga would be, but I rather like the idea.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not as relaxing to the muscles, is my suspicion.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

My father was here and is gone.

Does that mean Miss Ista is back?! Yay!!!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, Dad was here on a business trip and could not transport the bop without Mom coming with him to walk her etc. while he was businessing. So either early next week or early the week after, depending on whether we're still feeling really nasty.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

"(If they are constantly scoring points, how am I to care about any points they score?)"

Style. And the last two or three minutes, in close games.

I was never interested in watching baseball when growing up, because I felt it was overhyped as "America's game." (I had no interest in jazz, for the same reason). I've mellowed. (Same with jazz).

I can't take football unless I have a personal attachment to one of the teams.

I've never gotten into hockey, which feels to me like lacrosse hopped up on speed. I enjoy it in the Olympics, but I enjoy many things in the Olympics I normally wouldn't watch, like, say, speed skating.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am able to care about games where the last two or three minutes are tense and important. I am not able to care about games where the last two or three minutes are the only thing that's tense and important.

Also, basketball style is not my style. That's what I meant with the choreography thing. The pacing is just not for me.

I try not to get personally attached to football teams. And since the Whizzinator and the boat thing since we moved here, that's looking like a good choice.

I love speed skating. I could watch speed skating more often than once every four years. Twice every four years, say. But you know how I feel about the winter Olympics. I even watch biathlon.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of important (and occasionally tense) things in the rest of basketball games; they just aren't necessarily specific points scored. But, as you say: style, not yours.

I don't normally get attached to football teams, either, but if I already have an attachment to the entity they belong to...

Winter Olympics: Icy death of terrifying doom!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Woo-hoo for people writing "Tam Lin"-related stories!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Finished it yesterday afternoon, too!

Now there's only the related novel (The True Tale of Carter Hall) and the entire rest of the related short story collection/episodic novel (The Continuing Adventures of Carter Hall) left to write. Yay! (I've already sold the previous short story, "Carter Hall Recovers the Puck," so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.)