I'm pretty sure I had something else to say earlier this evening, only apparently my boy went and scored a hatttrick against Granada in the unholy hours of the day and became Barcelona's all-time leading goalscorer.
Here's a video of all 234 goals, for those of you with fifteen minutes to spare. Several of these I saw live, on streams of varying degrees of quality at fuck-all o'clock in the morning. Sometimes the players appeared to be little more than colored bits of fuzz on my computer screen and I only knew where the ball was by virtue of how everything else was positioned, but there'd be a quick flash of motion and I'd
know it was Leo, sure as anything. He plays like a video game figure and like a physicist's dream and like very fast calculus, and sometimes he does things like scoring five goals in one game (two goals is a brace, three is a hattrick, and four is a poker- thank you, Diego Milito- but is there a word for five? Has there ever been a need for a word for five? Because
he's just going to get better, so someone had better get on it), and classes and exams and proper sleeping schedules have
nothing on that.
Lionel Messi pulled me kicking and screaming into football fandom one and three-quarters of a year ago, seventeen years old and out of love with the world. There is nothing I can say about him that has not been said, and better, by someone else, but I owe an incredible amount, so consider this me trying.
---
Met the mother at Mega (alliteration completely unintentional) and then went to pick the brother up from Pisay, and that tree beside the grandstand was in bloom again, pale pink taking over the top branches. The last time it was in bloom was three years ago, when
we graduated. And look, Dagupan is my first home and Manila is my last, but you could blindfold me and I'd still be able to pick my way through the campus, SHB ASTB caf gym field grandstand, if with allowances made for the construction going on around the creek. That was the table Muon took over during Sir Vlad's birthday and that Benjie ate cake off of, and that was where we played agawan-base during first year intrams when Jan took
that picture of Thea, and there on the far end of the field beside the balete was the gazebo that will always be mine and Guia's, and those are the kalachuchi I learned to climb trees on, and I can still sit down on the ground of the oval and
look and not feel like I'm running to beat a ticking time bomb. The line I use is that it's the people that are important, which, of
course, but the school's mine, too, as much as every place you leave your loves in is, it's
mine.
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