an overdose of euphoria

wednesday was a good day, a really good day. i got some reassuring news from my boss, successfully coached my first ever soccer practice, crashed out a lively version of ben folds's "fired," performed secondo piano on our jolly rendition of sufjan stevens' "chicago," watched two episodes of lost, and discovered my 6th favorite flavor of ice cream (slow-churned american idol).

but when i awoke this morning, my head was in a vice. i had an insufferable headache, perhaps an ego hangover.

you see, until yesterday, i was rather suspicious that my soccer experiment would explode in my face. thus, i half-expected to be sitting cross-legged and alone at our first scheduled practice. instead, i had five enthusiastic soccer pupils chasing each other through cones and, surprise, surprise, thanking me for my patience. and then the ben folds cover was punctuated with the unfamiliar sounds of shouts and applause; from my bench at the piano, the green-bean-twenty sounded more like one hundred. and so now i wonder somewhat abstractly if perhaps it's more than possible for one to get too much of a good thing.

of course, i doubt that my happy night really caused the headache, but the hand-in-hand nature of good and bad, black and white, falling and faith seems an intangible truth.

i encountered this strange blending of absolutes as i worked on the ADRC newsletter at work this week. in an email to the s.o. i explained that "for the first time ever, i have a sense of what to write and how to write it, but it's interesting that this sense of 'this could work' is also accompanied by an odd feeling of 'now don't screw this up--this could be your one opportunity of writing clarity.'" it's as if the universe commands that a burst of productive creativity (or any goodness) is necessarily followed by a lull of frustrating ineptitude (or badness).

i started this post with some references to soccer, so i suppose it's only fitting to return to sports. i tend to spend my morning commutes listening to talk radio or kjr 950 hosts mitch levy and steve sandmeyer. on wednesday morning, the pair were discussing the mariners 11-3 victory over the division-leading angels. sandmeyer was defending the levy theory, which purports that by scoring 7 unnecessary runs, the m's may have tipped baseball karma in anaheim's favor for the remainder of the series. again, there's no statistical support for this theory, but perhaps the universe demands moderation. perhaps ichiro--he of two strange statements and a future pitching career--should have saved some of those 5 hits for the next night. perhaps in the interest of future good days, i should politely ask people to refrain from compliments or applause, perhaps a disapproving grunt might be good now and again
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andrew david. "the jaguar temple. rarrrrrrr!" tikal, guatemala.

PS the music links are to youtube. i realized that it was silly to link to amazon, because amazon only allows you to play a little sample of songs whereas youtube has the entire song. i'll continue with this strategy for all future music links. however, these links also have their disadvantages--you must suffer through some dancing girls and a little speech by sufjan.