Surgam - Spring 2010

8/8/2019 Surgam - Spring 2010

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Cover, back cover and illustrations by Hannah Christ, CC 13. Editor-in-Chief:Stephen Blair, CC 11. Editorial Board: Beezly Kiernan, CC 11 and KazimPanjwani, CC 11. Moderator of the Philolexian Society: Samantha Kuperberg,Barnard 10. Surgam is sponsored by the Arts Initiative of Columbia University and published with the help of a gift from the Gatsby Foundation.

Review Mabou Mines A D o l l s H o u s e 2Rashad Khan, GS 13

Petition Hymn of Asking 3Gavin McGown, CC 13

Memoir Save Our Groundwater 4Megan Shannon, Barnard 11

Wedding notice Expectations 7 Nathaniel Ratapu, CC 13

Travelogue Alexandrines on India 8 William Jacobs, CC 13

Health & Fitness Shower 10 Julia Tejeda, CC 13

Elegy Void Coefficient Frederic Jennings, Fordham Law 12

Joke Fever Dream 15Brooke Rosen, Barnard 11

Translation Catullus V 16Stephen Blair, CC 11

Sports page Football, the Highest Form of Art 16 Andrew Hamilton, GS 13


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Review: Mabou Mines Dol lhouse

by Rashad Khan

Mabou Mines production of Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House was recently on tour at the MalyBranch Theatre, Moscow and St. Anns Warehouse, Brooklyn. A DVD of the performance isavailable at www.maboumines.org.

O FTEN I encounter the pronouncement, Youve Never Seen [ Film/Play/Ice Capade ]Like This! Before Mabou Mines Dollhouse, I dismissed such hyperbole. After witnessing theavant-garde theater troupes off-putting reworking of Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House,however, I know better.

If you read A Dolls House in high school, then you know what should be the story. NoraHelmer (Maude Mitchell, in this American-French coproduction) is the childish,submissive wife of Torvald (Mark Povinelli), who has been promoted to manager at thebank. Torvald, the quintessential Victorian patriarch, values his need for ego flattering

from his little pet over every need of her own.Nora, however, has a secret, which she confides to her friend, job-seeking Kristine (Janet

Girardeau). She borrowed money from Torvalds employee and nemesis Krogstad(Kristopher Medina) to pay for her and Torvalds vacation. Repaying the loan via self-employment has helped Nora feel deliciously like a man, she tells Kristine. However, shefears that if Torvald ever uncovered her betrayal, both her marriage and security as ahuman being will be finished.

Even if you have never read the play, though, you know Torvald must uncover Noras

machinations. Otherwise, is there really a play?So here is a more pressing question: Why did director Lee Breuer cast little people (asin Darby OGill and the) for all male roles here? Is it to illustrate that men, not women,

were the weaker gender back then, as much at womens mercy for validation of theirmanhood as the women at theirs for fiscal security? Well, you seem intelligent, so I willtake your word for it. Just as I will take your word that tossing aside Ibsens classically constructed ending, in which Nora quietly closes the door on her and Torvalds union,literally and figurativelyto replace it with a gratuitous freak show that reduces Nora to anude, pale, bald (!), mascara-streaked leviathanis not only in keeping with Ibsens finalmessage of feminism unleashed, but is just hella good on its own.

Permit me, therefore, to say a few words about the performances. (Fret not. We are inmixed company, so I will choose my words carefully.) On the whole, I accept that avant-garde theater dictates actors performances beexaggerated. However, I cannotaccept any cast that laces the text with lewd double entendres and physical humor that

wasnt there to begin with. The entire team is guilty of turning House into a nudge-nudge, wink-wink farce that makes La Cage aux Folles look like American Buffalo.

Medina, in particular, should be smitten for his interpretation of Krogstad. At the risk of incurring the wrath of some anti-Little-Folks-defamation league somewhere, an Iago-likecatalyst of astonishing complexity becomes, in his hands, a green-spectacled supervillainbest dealt with by the likes of Batman and Robin.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, there is a pianist downstage, tinkling the old ivoriesthroughout the production. On the one hand, nowhere in the original play do characterslay across the piano, requesting songs. On the other hand, at least someonestruck the rightnotes in this cursed thing.


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Hymn of Askingby Gavin McGown

Y OU are my library of dreams, in whomThe silence, sole and sunk-cheeked hostile,Distends against the maladies of tongues

And lipsfast, mad with alto words, cascades And finding paltry home escapes towardsThe modern, monument that lacks a voice,Before the noise and flood.

You are my library of sacramentsMy lowing heifers led, my statues piledIn you. In you my pleonasms chant,

While over you I kneel, altar of A story sacrificial. I confess.In the resounding chambers, in your hallsI hear a goddess speak.

My library of need, who earthy words And humble secrets keep, you, flesh of my

Exigencies: how long before you chooseIn dust to render us to urgency,Corrected, and forgetful of the cold?

And youmy library that bears the name of love,Of loving, low-bent headand under that

You live and make your name, whose vanity Comes summoned from the flicking of a page,

And at the censured turning of a pageIt strains against the bond to say its nameTo tongue itself from balconies, and tongueItself in libraries, in waves, in rolling waterTo speak its real name.

You are my library of light, and deathCements you. Cover me: I lie beneathIn patience hung with lingual pride, awaitThe maladies, the sword and storm. From youI draw this soundand let it press itself

Against the titan motion of the worldOf every word in every word resounding loud,

Aloud, aloud.


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Save Our Groundwater

by Megan Shannon

O UR neighbors were twins named Nick and Eric. I used to get mad when otherneighborhood kids said Eric and Nick. I would tell the other children that they werentallowed to say it that way. At ten years old, I had said the two names in reverse alphabeticalorder enough times that I knew there was a right and a wrong way. Nick and Eric are three

years older than me and they verified that I am correct in this over a decade ago.Back then our neighborhood was less crowded. The distance between our house and the

house on the property adjacent to ours was about a quarter of a mile. Through all thetreesprimarily evergreens and bircheswe couldnt see the McKennys house from ours.Evergreens are coniferous, which means they have cones and they dont lose their leaves inthe winter. The white birch is our state tree. I used to like to peel small pieces of the thin

white bark off the one tree I could reach from the porch, until my dad said, If trees could

make noise, that tree would be screaming. It didnt make very good paper, anyway.Since we couldnt see Nick and Erics house from our front porch, my brother and I

came up with the most brilliant method of determining whether they were home, and whether they were allowed to come play. At the top of our winding gravel driveway, there was a perfect rock. I want to say that it was a huge chunk of diorite, but I am not even anamateur geologist. The important thing is that it was about four feet tallthe perfect heightfor climbing onto and jumping off of. Tim and I would climb up onto the rock afterbreakfast on Saturdays and take turns shouting Oh Nick and Eric! across the street. I

now realize that it is possible that our mother was calling Nick and Erics mom from ourkitchen while we did this. We had some excellent adventures. If we could spend a day mapping a new trail through

the woods from our house to the lake, or play our rustic version of cops and robbers in andaround my treehouse, Id call it a perfect day. In the summer of 1996 our town was finally able to send a road crew to pave our street. The four of us sat on the rock at the top of my familys driveway all day watching the crew work. We played football and baseball every day in the summers. Baseball is difficult with only four players. We usually ended after three orfour innings because Nick and Eric would get into a fistfight.

The trouble didnt start until Barrington became decidedly popularthe fastest growingtown east of the Mississippi, by some accounts. Real-estate developers started pestering usand the McKennys to sell off a few acres at the edge of our property.

My dad was the most upset. Donna, I dont care how much theyre offering us. I dont want to be anyones goddamn friendly neighbor.

To build a house in our town, one is required to have two acres of land, which is a lot.The McKennys felt the same way as we did, but the Lenzi family down west of us didnt. Inthe fall 1997, they sold off eight acres of land bordering ours to the Greenhill Company,and the cement for four foundations was quickly laid.

The construction crew worked until four P.M. each day. Tim and Nick and Eric were inmiddle school, so they arrived home before I did. They would complete their homework and start lurking around the construction sites periphery right as the crew departed. I gotout of school later, and I was allowed to ride my bicycle home when there was noprecipitation, so I always missed out on half an hour of the adventure. It drove me insane.Unable to bear being left out, Id often cut through the woods, ditching my bike rather


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than slowing to wheel it across the stream on the board my dad had cut and laid out forthat very purpose. Before dinner, Id have to trudge back through the woods so that I couldproperly store my bike in the shed.

My parents didnt so much mind having new neighbors. We were still buffered by a few acres of thick forest. The real problem was the prospect of a diminished water supply. We

were too far away from real civilization to be connected to a larger system of pipes, so we

relied on our own wellnot a primitive hole in the ground encircled by a charming stone wall and covered with a little thatched roof, with a bucket attached to a rope, but our own

Drawing by Hannah Christ, CC 13.


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modern pump system. But when one development company decided to build four housesin the same area, they had a huge incentive to dig one very deep well that would extendinto the aquifer above which we lived. This would lower the water level for the entireregion, rendering our three-hundred-foot-deep well utterly useless. When this plan was laidout at a town meeting, we were conveniently offered to be included in the new pipingsystem for a low monthly fee, but I was having none of it. Its just not fair! I told my dad.

After a lively debate between the residents whod been in Barrington for fifty years, andthe jackasses who moved here less than a decade ago, the Chamber of Commerce decidedthat more research was needed before they could approve Greenhills drilling plans.

Its just not right, my father would tell my mother.The construction crew had brought in two backhoes, with which they tore up trees and

bushes so that four families would have lovely front yards. Im sure they would have keptthem classyroses bushes, not plastic flamingos. Through October, four wooden frames

went up. Tim, Nick and Eric and I continued to play hide and seek and various forms of cops and robbers (the best one being Cops!) around the site. As the solstice approached,the sun started setting at six oclock, then five thirty, and the afternoons grew chillier. Thetowns Chamber of Commerce still hadnt come to a decision regarding the Greenhillproblem.

Having two backhoes a quarter mile from my house was one of the best parts of 1997.In an abandoned backhoe, one can pretend to be an astronaut, racecar driver, policeofficer, or, my favorite, a construction worker.

As October came to a close, I knew I would soon have to stop biking to school. Theroute I took was only fun when the Crowley familys apple orchard was open and I couldsteal a snack on the way home, anyway. On the first of November, the date agreed upon ina family meeting, my mom was to resume driving me to and from school. That first day, Irequested to be dropped off at the Greenhill site after school so that I might hide in one of the nearly finished homes to wait for my brother and the McKennys.

Yes, but only because I want to take some photographs of you four to send to yourgrandparents.

Thanks, mom!That afternoon, my mother and I slowly drove up the dirt road leading to the Greenhill

site. See, thats the backhoe where Nick and I battle Tim and Eric. And then wesometimes race, or hide in the houses. I was excited to show her everything.

Whats that yellow truck?Oh, I dont know. Nick said it was an air compressor.Did he say those are pipe clamps and a well probe, too?I dont know what he says!My mother snapped a few photos of the mysterious equipment which Tim, Nick and

Eric and I had always just ignored. She also cleaned off my face and took my hair out of its

ponytail when she made the four of us pose on the staircase of one of the unfinishedhouses.

A week later, after they picked up the developed photographs from the drug store inLee, my parents had a secret conversation in the kitchen, then mailed half the photos toTown Hall. In December, the Chamber of Commerce levied a large fine on the Greenhillcompany, leaving them with only enough capital to complete one home. The following

year, my family ignored the invitation to the housewarming party.


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Expectationsby Nathaniel Ratapu

T APIOCA and chocolateThey called at the altar;

Find yourself A gentlemen caller

Of a nicerBreed.

Child calling,Little caf au lait

Squealing and stomping,The flower pattern

Trailing fromRounded waist.

Cowboy vestHidden away,

Still stained(Spaghetti Bolognese);

Reception cancelledBecause of rain.

Misplaced,The invitation lost

In the purse;

Grandma writes,But Im sure you'll

Work.

Jeweller frowns: Wont come off;

Guess sixteen Years on a finger

Is sureTo make a mark.


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Alexandrines on India

by William Jacobs

W HEN I sojourned in Patna for Shravan, VarunExultant over rahki hugging starchy sleeves

And blocks of humless officesthe car in whichThe other volunteers and I were sitting cooled

At Bodh Gayas dewy, fetal hinterland.

This Saturday was set aside by our four hosts As respite for commitment; they, however, wouldNot entertain a break, nor share a leisured bowlOf milky rice like other families, since their

Avowal of fast filial ties came through the work.

They work as medics, shrinks, optometrists, and man A clinic in the crowded burghal streets, a rock For tone, against arpeggiated car horns and

Apartments built from advert-mortar silica.They work there all together till the city gleams.



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Flames sluiced infection, xysters scraped the sockets whiteIn surgery, through all the thirsty dawn. The eyeFelt nothing, even bustling in to greet the lance.The patients naturally were set on bearing wraps

And their attendant, awkward stares as need must be.

Stalls steamed with voices, some for much, and most for less,Grooved road at every junction jumping to a new Department, mossy cloisters now bifacialized,The tableland but newly loamed and cut, and sticksMade rows and columns, shades to the cerulean.

To one arriving streetwise with the night, the sightSeemed not much compromised, displeasing pastimes drawnBehind a tattered curtain, sounds full around to show

Ways straight and narrow, marked and left untouched exceptBy jabbing, pulsing rhythms in farragoed black.

These midnights seem too quiet now. My skin now scalesTo feel the breeze, my ear to hear no prickling sounds,My hosts fair garden now, green defilade, all gone.

Jade ghouls that shriek like babies sail a scented wind.They take on flowers faces and secrete their spines.

Eidetics wind this thinning twine in misery.Blood holds its cruel dimensions, peace in name subsistsIn emptiness, imploding vacuums, cornered frights.I gift you Chaos, wish the rest what willfor ILive in profession foreign here, like stones to stars.


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Shower

by Julia Tejeda

THE alarm clock pulsed a neon 11:43P.M. Her 6:20 morning wake-up callthreatened, warned against taking ashower, but Hannah felt sweaty and grossafter her gym workout from earlier in theday. She slipped off her bracelets andrings, put them on the bedside table and

walked through the beaded curtain intothe adjoining bathroom, stepping out of her jeans and pushing her socks off.Pulling her shirt off in a stretch that

cracked her elbow, expertly unhooking herbra with her left hand, she tossed herhandful of clothes through the doorframeand kicked her socks and pants after them.Ever since Jacob had started sixth grade,he had complained about Hannah leavingher dirty clothes everywhere; sheunderstood that his underlying protest was

that he didnt want to see her lacy bras orunderwear lying around. She sympathized,didnt want to make him uncomfortable,and so tried to keep their sharedbathroom as gender-neutral and age-appropriate as possible. The awkwardstages of the advent of puberty were adistant memory for Hannah, but not sofar off that she forgot what it was like tofeel an abashed curiosity in the oppositesex. She knew that a sibling provided theperfect opportunity for the satisfaction of that inquisitivenessthe proximity of sharing a bathroom alone allowed for acertain exposure unachievable fromschoolmatesbut even intellectualizationof someone elses body felt wrongsomehow, like uninvited nosiness orprying. She flipped on the fan and turnedon the shower, then turned to brush herteeth, reciting her French vocabulary

words in her head: sur, enfant, jeune, mon jeune frre

Drawing by Gloria Tsai, CC 10.


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She stopped, trying to remember where the accent was placed. Grabbing the pen andone of the Post-Its she and Jacob kept on the counter to write to each other, she wrote itout a couple times until it looked right and then stuck the green square onto thepatchwork quilt of Post-Its on the mirror. She knew Jacob wouldnt understand, and soscribbled out another ( PRACTICING FRENCH VOCAB WAITING FOR SHOWER TO HEAT UP ) toplace beside it. Testing the water with her armstill not the scalding temperature she

preferredshe admired the collage of notes they had created. Jacobs scrawling sixth-gradeboy handwriting and frequent misspellings next to her neat sharpied letters; purple andorange and blue, and the latest, green. It worked out perfectly: he would write one or two

when he woke up in the morning and was brushing his teeth before school before she wasawake, she would respond in the evening while she was warming her shower, often havingthought about what she would write all day. She had had to move the original notes fromthe middle to the top of the mirror; who could have known that her original HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! the night before Jacobs eleventh would have started such a tradition? He had

written back and now their mirror was no longer usable as a reflecting glass to view herphysical form inshe could only see the Hannah that Jacob saw, the distortion of anadmired older sister making her appear more perfect than she felt she could be.

Steam was coming out of the shower now, and so she stepped in, shivering in pleasureagainst the scorching pinpricks on her back. She let water run over her, across her back,and shampooed away the dirt of the day. Standing in the aftermath of soap, not yet

wanting to leave the sauna-like pleasure of water, she was suddenly stricken withinspiration, the thought of something shed always wanted to try coming to her as if by chance. And so she stepped out of the shower, dripping a path across the floor to the lightswitch. She turned it off.

The bathroom was plunged into darkness, and Hannah crept along the wall, holding thecounter cautiously like a rappelling mountain climber making her way down. She couldhear the water drops hitting the floor of the shower, splatting against the curtain. Holdingher hands out in front of her, she turned and used her memory to guide her back to herprevious spot under the stream of water. It was absolutely impossible to see anythingwasthis how blind people felt? How strange to have her eyes open and be unable to see herhand in front of her face, to stick her arm out and feel her fingers pressing against

something she could not see. Closing her eyes was almost less dark, as if her internal beingsupplied some luminosity that lit up her insides. The water hitting her back seemed to slow down, her senses engaged to a point they rarely were. She felt she could hear eachindividual drop falling and then splashing against her, the floor. She opened her eyesagain, and all of a sudden, she realized she could see the gleam of the shower-curtain rodthat wasnt there before. Turning around provided the same phenomenon: the showerhandle was glowing, a faint outline visible in shades of gray. Hannah looked up and saw through the window the faint glow of the moon from above the house. Her eyes adjusted

to the darkness, she turned the shower off and grabbed a towel to dry off. Stepping lightly across the room to avoid bumping into anything, her foot brushed an unfamiliar object.She bent over to grab it; in her room again, hair toweled up, she flipped on her bedsidelamp and saw that her French vocab Post-It had jumped, rejecting its place on the mirrorquilt, the different spellings of brother wet from the bathroom floor and smearingtogether.


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12Drawing by Hannah Christ, CC 13.


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Void Coefficient

by Frederic Jennings

E ACH control rod now in place,

Rotate out to summon fission At the steady marching paceOf the atoms bold collision;

Tell me all about your life:Every horror, each mutation,

All the joy and all the strife Woven through each iteration,

And Ill share with you my fire, All these dreams that would decay

Over eons, through desireBut for errors underway

Hear the bubbles overflow: What reaction could it be?

Do these neutrons boil through,Or is it the steam that soothes me?

Better factor figures fast, dear,Fore the glow of chain reaction

Sends the gamma rays to blastThrough our flimsy lead protection,

And though from one atom, split,

See our fission products yield A factor that will fit,

Like two lovers on a fieldBeneath this sacred leaden shieldIn that crimson sky, revealed,

Born on helicopters fingers.

Here in the cooling towers shade,

A glance at Geiger counters gauge,Its sweet and clicking serenade

Sings, Remember me


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In our wormwood forest vast,Here Im buried; you ride fast,

Dosimeter not long to last,For the briefest, softest visit.

Leave flowers on the iron grave,Remember me and all we gave,Drops in a bucket, names engraved,For all we lost, so little saved:

The atoms, and the graphite flame.



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Fever Dream

by Brooke Rosen

I was down by the ocean for the first time in a year. I remembered it like a dream, afever dream, and now I was back. I stepped in the sand, step after step, the sand bathingmy bare feet until they were raw. Tissue-paper skin and aching bonesI must have a fever, Ithought. I lowered my hands into the ocean, and the water from my hands dripped acidicdripping onto fragile skin and nerves, nerves everywhere. Nothing had ever felt so real. Ichanged pace, walking even slower now. Walking back to the car, rolling up the windows,and making my way back to Corinnes apartment in Miami Shores, Florida, where shelived with her new husband and their noticeable age difference.

The door was unlocked, which meant come in, and I was grateful to hear silence when Idid. Corinne usually left the television on. Either that, or her parents were over and yellingin Italian. I always felt shy for not understanding. Time was going faster than I was,carrying bones and tissue-paper skin into the bedroom to find the newlyweds, but they

werent there. They werent in the apartment.Pounding my left temporal lobe, the fever wrapped me in ache and nerves. I sat. I felt

my forehead and lowered my hand to cover my eyes, seeing hurt. More time passed. Maybethey stepped out? More time. More time. More time. I reached for the phoneit hurt. Idialed some numbers, Corinnes mother answered in Italian, I asked whether she knew

where her daughter was. I didnt mean to sound like one of those anti-drug commercialsbut I guess I did because Corinnes mother started yelling at me for accusing her and cameover.

An angry Italian mother and the embodiment of fever. This wasnt good. I needed to liedown, but instead Corinnes mother made me call all of our acquaintances while shedialed the family. I was in no state to talk. I pretended to call John, Cory, Maria and Gaby.I mumbled, Yeah, uh-huh, yep, okay, into their absent ears and closed my eyes. The fever

was pushing down on my forehead. I opened my eyes. The fever was Corinnes mom.Youre so haht!The door opened.Bambina!Surprise!I didnt get it.We wanted to see how you would react if we went missing!Not fair. What if someone hadYou left the door

We know, we waited until you pulled up to sneak out.Goosebumps, tissue-skin, acid sweat; I slept for days.


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Catullus V Translated by Stephen Blair

L ETS live, my Lesbia, and love, And reckon talk of stern old menNot worth a dime. The sun above

May set, and soon come back again;But you and I, when our brief light

Winks into dark past human ken,Must sleep one neverending night.

A thousand kisses, then a score(And when youve filled the order quite),

A thousand and a hundred more, And then a thousand for the road;

Then when our lips are swollen and soreFrom paying off the kisses owed,

Well muddle up the ledger-booksIn which our kiss-accounts were stowed

In notes of credit, bonds, and stocks,Till we ourselves forget the sum;

And so hold off the dirty looksOf meddling eyes, and render dumb

Invidious tongues, lest they should learnHow rich in kisses weve become, And how much wealth weve left to burn.

Football, the Highest Form of Art

Why would any thinking person be interested in footballa repetitive, purposeless

spectacle of choreographed violence?Because it is the highest form of art. Like all great art, a football game is a stylized

distillation of life, a not-to-scale representation of human struggles that more than makesup for in intensity and beauty what it loses in scale.

Because as a 1:1 map is useless, and art which doesnt relate to the human experiencebrings nothing out of the viewer, the game is the perfect picture of struggle: dynamic,flowing, and unscripted. It is a robust, symbolic alternate reality filled with ugliness andbeauty.

As in lifewith its pursuits and gameswhen entering this simulated reality, its possibleto lose oneself. To forget about the goals, constraints, and even existence not only of thebroader world, but of oneself as anything more than an agent within the simulation. It is aliberating suspension of disbelief, an escape from self-awareness, hyperanalysis andmetacognition, bringing freedom from existential doubts and complex worries.

As does art, the game contains beauty and ugliness that move us on a basic level, apartfrom any meaning. There is the ugly, dirty, desperate struggle in the trenches, with fat

by Andrew Hamilton


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Surgam| 17

linemen pushing each other, but the offense still dares to dream of a soaring aerial attack, with the sun glinting off the arc of a rapidly-spinning, perfectly-spiraling deep pass, hangingup in the air for a seeming eternity, before dropping into outstretched arms; the precisionof a perfectly-executed play; the spectacular diving catches and the symmetry of aformation. Ugliness is in the air as well: wobbling, errant passes (ducks);miscommunications; terrible decisions; devastating injuries.

As is often the focus of art, there is the supreme glory of the exceptional individual. Thebull-rush, pancaking a lineman and resulting in a sack; the ball carrier, in the open field with one defender to beat, executing a jaw-dropping fake and escaping untouched; theleaping, diving, sacrificing catch. There are also the unsung heroes: the linemen who arenever on camera, never touch the ball, yet keep those in the spotlight out of harms way.

As in life, however, although cooperation is the soul of the game (it takes fifty-threemen, eleven at a time, to win a match), there is the chance for great personal glory, or forone mans hubris or miscalculation to lead his team, or his nation, down to utterdestruction. The outrageous arrogance of going for it on fourth-and-seventeen instead of kicking a field goal. The terrible interceptions that ought never been thrown. The instantthe ball leaves his hand, just as in the moment after one commits a rash act, the man ragesat himself, unable to believe what he has done.

After the decision is made, there is the point at which nothing more can be done. Theball has been thrown, the application submitted. The play has been called, the order given.The general or coach or quarterback must then watch helplessly and hope that the decision

was the right one.Decisions, those pregnant junctures we agonize over in lifeespecially on the fine line

between boldness and desperationare distilled perfectly in the fourth-down decision (thelast attempt to gain territory before the other team gets the ball). And, in the endas is sooften the case in lifea hard-fought struggle comes down to a single moment where a few inches or an unforeseen slip can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

In 49 BC , Gaius JuliusCaesar faces a fourth-and-long in his own Rubiconterritory. He can play it safe

and kick the ball away, buthe decides to go for it,knowing, as he walks up tothe river of scrimmage, thathe is staking all on this must-

win situation.The man standing in front

of the Chinese tank in

Tiananmen Square in 1989 is like the punter who has to bring down the return man onhis own in the open field. Everything seems to have failed, and hes doing something thatsnot part of his usual job description, but everything depends on him.

Every little game situation stands out as a symbol of life. What better manifestation of amorous advances being coldly rejected than the stiff-arm? Life and football are two distinctcategories, but life does not map onto anything else with such accuracy, force and beauty.


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Anyone who has eaten at the simple restaurantsopening onto the streetsof Bangkok will feel trans-

ported upon walking into

Thai Market Marian Burros, the New York Times

960 Amsterdam AvenueBetween 107 th and 108 th

212-280-4575


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2895 Broadwayat 113 th Street

(212) 666-7653


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Documents

Surgam - Spring 2010