Sporty Spice

To the untrained eye, my summer has been an exercise given to me on how to get past shit. The assortment of conflicts that stuck onto me is still dizzying, and I'm still trying to keep my head on straight, but in so many ways, it's been a blessing. I feel really strong without feeling powerful, which is good for me, and I want to let whoever reads this know that my life is solid and I'm trying to open up channels for resolution and acceptance. I still need other peoples' willingness to work with me, but otherwise the table is set.

In a cruel twist, the summer's wounds and scabs have been the most visible signs of my season. However, right through the endless trail of fights with my friends and my girlfriend and my brother and my mom and my dad and everyone who was important to me, there was a non-sarcastically important revelation in my life-- sports, and my faith in sports, can carry me through... anything...?

The results are clear: I teared up while watching sports that my eyes never dreamed of tearing up about- golf, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, exhibition football games, sports commercials, even fucking ceremonies that just were about sports. I actually participated in fantasy soccer for a few weeks. Reading offseason football rumors filled up vast portions of my day. I started again to peek into bars from the street to check the score of the game. And I liked the Celtics for a few minutes.

Those are tangible moments of my ridiculous sports secret life. To follow sports like this was never expected of me, not even from me. I knew I liked them, I just never knew I needed them. And so friends came and left. Between work and sleep, I fought off my sadness, and willed things to get better. And I watched Wimbledon. And when Nadal won, I cried. Not for anyone else but me, for being witness to spontaneous greatness. And when I found myself pulling for Rocco Mediate to upset Tiger in the U.S. Open, I stared in awe. I cared about golf. Tiger won, and I felt it inside again. He won the 18 hole playoff on one knee and it felt like I could do it. Accomplishment was everything. And so between Garnett's euphoria, Crosby vs Zetterberg, Turkey's Euro miracles, Manny Pacquiao winning his fight, Tiger's arthroscopic knee surgery, the best tennis player ever being dethroned in the best tennis match ever, Brett Favre, China making everything insane, and the rising prospect of the 08-09 college football season, along with the always present blanket of the Mets kind of winning, I realized the overwhelming presence of accomplishment in the world, and in a way, sports and its stunning victories and failures were my fuel to ignite my transformation from weak to strong Paolo all in one season. And sports gave me love and faith in people, which is why this summer was the best summer of my life.

Stay strong.

I'll call you in a few.

this

As far as Phelps, I'm more of a Gold Medal #2 kind of guy.

There are six things that completely amazed me so far...



1. How this made anything possible














2. How Jason Lezak realized he was swimming for so much more than this













3. How beauty overcame strength just this once for Nastia Liukin











4. How Liu Xiang knew that he had to at least try this














5. How Usian Bolt was able to look around before this was over











6. How this answered everything












If you haven't seen all of these, you should. Then again, you probably did.

Butterfly

I came back home just now after a few days in Pennsylvania without TV or the Internet. I'm taking my first few steps getting back in the rhythm of knowing about the rest of the world, outside of my dad and my brother. So for now, I'm freezing up on reading your full-length latest facebook message, because all I can really inhale is Michael Phelps and Nastia Liukin. Brett Favre also debuts tomorrow so I might have to wait for that to happen until I can muster up enough energy to get a response for your message. I truly am putting a lot of energy into this. So you know. I have written dozens of entries into my journal already since I started feeling strange-- all of them aimed at figuring out exactly how I felt about you and what I should do about it. So my mind has been as clear as it can be, and pretty open, and very active. So you know that I don't just watch sports and work all day without you crossing my mind. You cross my mind sometimes more than I can take. And there's a way that I want to relate everything about you to Michael Phelps, but I just can't figure out exactly how to. It exists though. Maybe somehow in that you/he's so good at the fly but not as good in the freestyle. I don't even know if that's true anymore though.