January 2012
7 posts
5 tags
Second Round: Houston Texans v. Baltimore Ravens
Among the dust-orange brick and low-slung rowhouses of the city north of our capitol, the sunken but not sunk polis of Baltimore, which, though it bears the weather-beaten visage that has faced hardship without the benefit of turning away, does still fairly stand, amidst this loss are perched the Ravens, wings black as ink, as if they had taken on the grit and grime of the city over which they...
5 tags
Second Round: New England Patriots v. Denver...
It is a rare but undeniable occurrence that the world will so arrange itself as to tempt us to bestow pity, that final car of emotion, onto those who in every way best us. To pity Tom Brady seems initially, and indeed almost finally, so a perversion of the natural currents of sympathy that one suspects our sensorial gravity has been supernally and unfairly altered. And yet, those occasional men of...
5 tags
Second Round: San Francisco 49ers v. New Orleans...
There is no greater misdemeanor of the soul than that of underestimation of others. For surely our worth must stand in the exact relation as those who peer into ourselves and take our measure, and thus stand we at each other like towers, seeing in the slant of those before us our own sad lean as if in a mirror and decrying our weakness as theirs; it is precisely the knowledge of our own...
9 tags
First Round: Pittsburg Steelers v. Denver Broncos
If it is rather, in the end, true, as my brother would have it, that the religious experience is indeed a varied and individual one, what make us of loss, indeed, of loss suffered no less in our efforts, moral or otherwise, to realize ourselves, than of loss of ourselves in the entire, namely our bones, our muscles, our very lifeform? For it is into these bodies we are born—once these bodies...
5 tags
First Round: Atlanta Falcons v. New York Giants
It is the singular endemic aspect of America, and surely the most illuminating quality of all our newly illuminating qualities—for when on earth have the lights of human effort shone brighter?—that one is sheered from one’s past, voluntarily or by conscription, as yet the moth has no choice but to arrive at its eventual commencement, whether or not it ever dreamt of spreading...
5 tags
Wild Card: Houston Texans v. Cincinnati Bengals
It is, without being too fine with the subject itself, for it is not only grandness that draws us to the rugged sport but drive and persistence as well, and a need to pick yourself out of the lowly dirt in front of the crowd, yes, even, fairly, to brush the dirt off and in the brushing to show that that what was once vulgar is no longer quite so, not the prime matchup of the postseason. ...
5 tags
Wild Card: Detroit Lions v. New Orleans Saints
In the multitudinous glow of the many-lighted stadium, where stands the individual in relation to his fans, to his city, to his sport and indeed to the firmament? To whom, in the very minute and turn of it, does victory belong? Shall we hand it, as indeed we have before, to Mr. Brees of Austin, Texas, now of the once-swallowed yet ever-swallowing city of New Orleans? For it is in the perfectly...