10-2-11

I was fetching a coffee from the kitchen when the noise on the street was heard. Whoops and hollers, the thumping of bass, horns honking. I opened the front door to find the intersection being controlled by a throng of police, a caravan of Olympic sponsor vehicles, and a gathering crowd of people along the street. Standing across from the house was a girl holding an unlit Olympic torch looking down the street in anticipation. And then he was there, surrounded by a new group of men in black with suspicious bulges in their running gear, a man carrying a lit Olympic torch.

I won't pretend to be super enthusiastic about the Olympics. It has its issues with cost overruns being propped up by the taxpayers. And the corporate infiltration of the competition is offensive but it's hard to be too critical of that AND get upset about the cost since one is offset by the other. I am looking forward to watching the hockey, Olympic hockey is some of the most exciting to watch. Despite my apprehensions surrounding the games it's moments like this one, the torch run, where the torch is modestly carried carried by my home (modestly in the sense that it's not Arnold Schwarzenegger carrying it through a barriered road way, there is still an intimidation factor embodied in the Men in Black) that remind me if you look at the core of it all, the competition of the world's best athletes in a grand sporting event, it's really exciting. I wish I could afford tickets to see some of the events and I wish that some of the money spent on this spectacle could have been spent on social housing or health care or arts funding or education or day care subsidies. I wish there was an easy answer.