Not I: What? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time the buzzing . . . dull roar . . . in the skull . . . and the beam . . . ferreting around . . . painless . . . so far . . . ha! . . so far . . . then thinking . . . oh long after . . . sudden flash 
Footfalls: Not enough, what can you possibly mean, May, not enough? May: I mean, Mother, that I must hear the feet, however faint they fall. 
Rockaby: So in the end/close of a long day/in the end went and sat/went back in and sat.
Tag Archives: Toronto Maple Leafs
Chronicle of Wearing a Maple Leafs Hat in Boston
I admit that I went to Boston with an attitude. As a fan of Toronto Maple Leafs, I do not think kind thoughts of anything Bruin, and so donned my Leafs cap to represent the true blue and white. 
I didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. “You guys have been losers since 1967.” The guy stared at me deadpan at the bus station.
My comeback wasn’t a classic. “At least I don’t live in Boston.”
It was going to be a long weekend, but I was up to it, and went straight into a bar called The Tam to watch the Bruins-Canadiens game, now in overtime. 
I received a few glares and just one muttered comment – “I think this guy is messing up my karma” – but that was it. I almost felt bad when the Bruins lost the game.
The startling silence continued over the next day – perhaps because I was at a writer’s conference? 
It wasn’t until I arrived in Cambridge that things picked up again. 
A square-jawed, almost pleasant-looking man leaned out from an alley. “Leafs are the only Original Six team that didn’t make the playoffs. Did you know that?”
I wasn’t sure if he was right. It took me a couple of blocks to think it through and another few to think of my comeback. “Now I know I’m in fucking Harvard.”
I continued on to The Sinclair, preparing for the next attack.
“Love the hat, man.”
I wanted to detect a tone but couldn’t find one.
“Got to wear your colors,” said another. “I respect that.” 
It wasn’t until I ran into an old friend at the show that the antagonism returned. “I looked up, saw the Leafs hat, and thought what an asshole. I knew it must be you.”
My Stupid Freewill
I am dumb, looking at the screen.
Only just able to raise my finger, I click again. 
I am non-thinking, the opposite of my brain working, and believe there to be a link, somehow secret, that will inspire, move me in a direction, anywhere.
But I stay thick and slow, stuck. There is nothing. I go around again, the same pages, the same things, the same morbid reflections, the same sentimental desires, and I know that I will not click on anything new, that I will keep circling in, trapping myself in this concentric hell. An email arrives and I have to respond to that. I have to get up. I have work, things I must do, and already am thinking back to just now, having this time to do whatever I wanted and doing nothing, absolutely nothing.
I should have done something real and certain. I promise myself that I will do that, the next chance I have.
My Whirling Brain
I don’t drink coffee. And for good reason. My brain is on constant whirl. It starts from the moment my eyes are half open. 
My dream? What was that? What did I do? I was a lawyer? I was that. And a murderer? No, that was him. And he got off. 
I was all right. My health was good, even if I always had the pain deep in my back and ribs. What was the point of any of this? I was alive. Yes. I had to get to work. I had to get back to the book. How were the Leafs? Oh right. Shit.
Sometimes I want to hide from my head, get into the corner of it and let it spin on itself. It never stops, whirling from the banal to the introspective back to the banal. Lots of doubt. Lots of darkness. Lots of sex. 
Sports too. That helps tone everything else down – the nothingness and all that. 
And then I do what I have to do. I eat and walk, teach and talk, email and grade, write and plan, blog and argue, reason and mount the elliptical, try to make some sense of what’s to come. 
And then I have a drink and think and have another and try to ride the round slow arc, going up, my arms almost out, warm and clear, and chase that well, and slump, giving in to my urge to play Texas Hold ‘Em. 
Watch something and something else, sleep and do it all again.
The Existential Play of the Toronto Maple Leafs
The heathen fanbase of teams across the continent – be they in Montreal, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles or Chicago – simply do not understand. 
They think it is about winning, hugging and celebrating in a crass display, that this is the point of the game. And I feel sorry for them.
They don’t understand that it isn’t this at all, but, as Camus wrote in The Plague, instead is a reminder of our “never-ending defeat.”
The Toronto Maple Leafs are only for those who can take it, not the world as we dream, but as it truly is: empty and unrelenting.
Leaf goaltender Drew McIntyre
Yes, the Leafs are only for pure existentialists. Their recent travails – an eight-game losing streak – has even brought The New York Times on the Being and Nothingness train, citing the “disturbing situation”, “devastating slump”, and Leaf coach Carlyle’s catch phrase, “Just breathe. Take it easy. Breathe.” 
But they don’t understand. They use these words devastating and disturbing like they’re a bad thing, like they aren’t needed, like they can be avoided. 
They don’t see the wall behind us, the epidemic that’s surrounds. No. All they see is putting the puck in the net. 
And it’s just so sad.
Quiet No More
There was a day, many years ago, when arenas allowed for silence.
A moment to consider existence, our utter meaninglessness in the vastness of this universe, interrupted occasionally by a polka played on the organ or a lone plastic horn.
There were no big screens, no video replays, no music, just you and your thoughts.
Those intermittent moments are no longer. 
Trivia games are played at every turn, music blared, T-shirts shot into the crowd.
And I no longer have the time to think about which might be better.
NHL Winter Classic – Cold and Colder
I was at the NHL’s Winter Classic with 105,000 others. It was a thrill to be there and see Toronto defeat Detroit in a shootout. 
But I must admit to struggling with my focus, especially as the game approached four hours. The seven layers of clothes were no longer working. Neither was the Bloody Mary. I needed warmth. I needed to get out of there. And once I did, it was all about getting as warm as I could. 
We drove the six hours back to Toronto, through the snow and traffic, the car getting warmer until I was finally over-heated.
I refused to take off any of my seven layers. I only took off my hat. That was it. I was happy to be warm again. And then I slept and dreamed and it was all about being cold again.
24/7 of Cliche and Profanity
The idea of HBO’s sports documentary 24/7 is enticing to hockey fans – especially those of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. 
Advertised as an inside look at each team’s personnel as they prepare for the Winter Classic, the show promises to offer insights into the people who will play in the big game.
The payoff is disappointing, offering little more than vacuous reflections on what it is to play for “a storied franchise” and boys pretending to be grownups, driving fancy cars and wearing fine clothes. And there’s a whole fucking bunch of swearing. 
They have that vocabulary in common with the coaches. Instead of details on strategy, style or even on their personalities, it’s a lot of “Let’s (fucking) go, boys!” 
It’s not that much should be expected of these characters in this format – they are hockey player after all – but HBO could certainly do less of the epic music and close-ups of skates and actually make an effort to tell a (fucking) story.
BAM gone blah?
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has established a deserved reputation for excellence in the arts – in music, dance and theater. I have blogged on many of these, including Grupo Corpo, Trish Brown Dance and Roman Tragedies.
Brutus absorbs the impact of Antony’s speech at BAM in 2012.
Thoughtful, sometimes even entertaining, the productions have been well worth the time and expense.
This, however was not the case in this fall’s highly-touted New Wave Series, offering instead half-baked exercises in esoteric nonsense. While my sampling is limited, having attended only four evenings, of those four, three were hardly passable – We Have an Anchor, An Enemy of the People & Hans Was Heiri and one – Bodycast – was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen in New York. 
BAM has taken a turn for the worse, indulging in this directionless, tedious stuff and, to add the insult, changed their ticket policies, almost blackmailing attendees into subscriptions. Bad, BAM. No.
And so we’re thinking of doing something different, perhaps subscribing to another theater or maybe even being more drastic than that.
Doubters Beware: Toronto Maple Leafs on the Rise
The Toronto Maple Leafs do not have a stellar record over the last number of years. They qualified for the playoffs for only the first time in eight years this past season and have not been to the Stanley Cup Finals since 1967. 
(Yes, the picture is in black and white.) That said, they are a young and intense team on the rise. They have a proven offensive leader in Phil Kessel – just signed to an eight-year contract – and a solid supporting group of forwards, including Lupul, van Riemsdyk and Kadri, as well as surprising – and youthful – depth at defense and goal. 
They should be a playoff team for some years to come. The funny thing is that few, if any, of the pundits see any of this. NBC declared that GM Dave Nonis (has) likely weakened the franchise that was on the cusp of a deep playoff run last year. CBS stated that the only way the Leafs are back in the postseason is if Reimer and Bernier can provide better than average play. And TSN offered this lukewarm analysis: They’re not a lock for the playoffs. They’re still a bubble team. 
My prediction is quite different. They will go to the playoffs. They will win in the playoffs. They just might get into the finals and win. We’ll see who’s right.