Blog: The World Cup That We Didn't Know We Needed

Hiya! How’re we doing?! How’re we feeling today? I can’t hear your response, as this is not interactive, BUT I hope that your answer was nothing short of great! Now, who’s ready to read a blog? Again, rhetorical, this is not a participatory medium. Anyway, today we’re going to talk about the World Cup! Yay, sports! Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re not here to talk about the actual matches being played, the brackets, the rosters, the predicted outcomes of the tournament, no, no, no. We are here to talk about what has happened around two thirds of the host nations this last two weeks…Canada, you know that you did…

If you haven’t been on the same sides of Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Twitter, Facebook, whatever else that I have been on than you may have missed what’s going on around the North American continent, sans Canada, with all of our global visitors congregated here for the World Cup. No worries, we’ll get you all filled in & up to speed before we talk about why I’ve brought us all here today.

This World Cup has been nothing short of heartwarming. At least most of it has been when you focus solely on the people & not the wannabe tyrannical government involved & the host organization capitulating to it. If you haven’t been privy to the videos & the stories I highly recommend that you look up videos of South Koreans in Guadalajara, the Scots in Boston, the Japanese in Dallas, Curaçao vs Germany, the celebrations of Haiti & Brazil, Algeria in Lawrence, Freddy the German & his trip around The US, & basically any other team/fandom interactions happening around The US & Mexico. In all honesty, the amount of videos that I have seen that have made me tear up or outright cry has been surprising to even me.

But why is that? Why am I getting so emotional over these cultures & peoples from around the world slamming into one another on my phone screen? Because this is what I love about humanity. This is what I love about travel & the fusion of culture, it brings out the best in us. It brings out joy & appreciation & allows people to surrender to something they’ve never seen or experienced with an open mind & an open heart. It’s nothing short of beautiful to witness.

Now there has been a lot of discourse on the internet around this. Around the ‘hopecore’ posts that are flooding our timelines & how much it is reinvigorating the American spirit.

It’s been a rough year & a half here in America. We’ve all felt this pervasive dark cloud over the top of us that seems to get heavier & heavier with every passing day & every passing terribly harmful policy or regression that’s come down the pipeline, we as Americans desperately needed this.

I’m sure most of us would agree that we had no idea just how bad we actually needed the World Cup & the energy of those who came here to follow their country’s respective teams. They have no idea how much their infectious energy, their messages of appreciation, their love for us as a people means to so many of us in what has been an incredibly dark, modern chapter in American history. The kindness, the joy, the acceptance that my fellow countryfolk have shown the people of the world is doing something I never thought I’d see or feel, much less from the FIFA World Cup. It’s making me feel pride in this America.

Not the America of Donald Trump & the ideals of MAGA, but pride in the America that is embracing & celebrating diversity, that is going out of its way to be inclusive & welcoming to those who are different to us. That is the America I can get behind. That is an America that I can love & stand proudly with because that is where our true strengths are found & I think a lot of people are waking up to that. At least I hope they are.

The FOMO has been real & non-stop & I know there has been a large influx of people booking plane tickets to host cities just to be a part of this cultural exchange. People who have little to no interest in soccer itself, but want to be in the cities where these nations have claimed space just so they can feel that joy of what it is that binds us in our humanity being expressed so publicly & joyfully. I honestly looked at ticket prices & hotels myself because I know how rare & absolutely authentic to that which makes us great as a species all of this is. I crave a world that looks like this, where differences are embraced & celebrated, not vilified or made the target of scapegoating. I crave a world where the joy of what makes us different & proud is allowed to flow from us freely so that we can see one another plainly & learn from one another instead of hiding self consciously behind the them.

I hope deep down in my soul that this is not a temporary thing. I hope that more & more Americans see these beautiful moments & begin to see that this is where our strength lies, not with the raising of walls & arms against those who differ from us. I hope the world also takes back the same lesson, that they see this country & these people not so much as the villains any longer, but as honest, welcoming folk.

I hope you’re enjoying The World Cup, if you haven’t had the chance to watch games or anything happening around The US & Mexico around the games themselves I would highly recommend that you take the time to go out & do so. If you are in a city hosting another country, please go to where they’re congregating & engage with them in an openminded, respectful, & heartfelt manner. This is how we heal the world. This is how we make things better for all of us. Not by being afraid of the things that separate us, but by reaching out, engaging, & trying to understand those whose lives look different from your own.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: The Mystical, The Magical, The Mundane

Early this week I stumbled upon a post on the internet that sparked the inspiration for this here blog. I wish I could recall the creator’s name, or find his original post because I would link it here for you all to see. Basically the premise of the video was a shot of a river where the water slowly rippled & was catching the sunlight under a low hanging branch. The creator then came in with a voice over & asked the observer what they would do if they were asked to describe water to someone who had never seen it before. He then asked you to imagine a world in which you had never seen water before & had happened upon the scene playing as the focal point of the video. The video then zooms into the water, omitting the branch entirely from the frame, & you watch the rays shift & cascade off the murky water in almost a globing, morph-like way. He then describes what is being presented as being akin to almost the most revered of abstract art & it does look a great deal like a kinetic piece that you’d find in a gallery somewhere. He then ends with a quote that I can’t seem to remember for the life of me. The gist of it was that we become so accustomed to magic in our every day lives that it becomes mundane.

Now, again, sorry to have to paraphrase this man’s excellently made social post that clearly stirred something within me. I have no idea why I didn’t even ‘like’ it on whichever social platform I happened upon it through. Sorry to this man. I also apologize to you as the audience for having to experience such a wondrous reminder through the second-hand lens of my memory & the cliff notes it has chosen to retain. I hope, at the very least, that you understand the sentiment & feel along with me on this path forward through this blog.

The reason this struck a chord with me actually relates to my last blog about being burnt out by all the chaos & noise & the bad in the world. When it is the constant it is hard for it not to become your only reality when in actual factual reality nothing is black or white. Nothing is all bad just as nothing is all good. In fact I think most would argue that the spectrum of good & evil morally lives on a bell curve flush with shades of grey. It is, however, hard to see over the hill of the curve back to the good side when you have become saturated in the darkness for too long.

We have to save space for wonder to surprise us in our every day lives. We have to find those moments where we look to the sun reflecting on the water & really marvel at it. Stand in awe of the mathematics, the physics, the chance, the splendor, the small moment that has no measurable impact on the world as far as we know, but still is & exists as a side effect or a happenstance but does so with remarkable beauty.

It doesn’t have to be dappled water either, it can be a beautiful fruit or the complex spiraling of a flower. It can be the sound of rain on a window & the lull it induces existing with no regard for you or it’s affect on you, but happening regardless. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be nature, it can just be noticing something funny & cute & human…which of course is also nature. It can be the center ring on a record that exists so that the disk can continue to spin in perpetuity without playing anything specific to help preserve the disk & the needle. The fact that a single groove in the vinyl leads through someone’s creation to a point of infinite repetition. Something intentional that someone at some point had to decide was important enough to include on every single vinyl press. I want you to look for the mystical, the magical, the mundane.

But Charlie why? Why, you might be asking. Because even on the days where the sky is blackened over & the rain screams sideways through the trees there is awe to be felt. There is life to be experienced. The chaos that bears down destruction & ricochets uncertainty all around also brings with it renewal, change, perspective & these too are beautiful, wonderful, necessary parts of what it is to be alive.

Listen, I know the world is shit right now. The planet is warming & no one seems to want to do anything to stop it, restrictions on poisons in food, water, air, earth are all being lifted, it’s literally raining oil in parts of the world. But if that’s the only reality, if that’s the only view that you can see then where do we go from here? Which way is up when all you see is the endless abyss below extending farther & farther the more you plummet? There has to be some speck of light to reach for, some flicker in the dark of hope that makes enough of us scream out “NO!” & claw out way back towards a future we all know is possible & that would benefit all of us, not just those who cling to greed & monetary wealth that none of us could possibly spend in a thousand life times. We have to be the many who demand a brighter tomorrow & stop letting the few who do their best to bring about our end make the calls. We do that by keeping the hope alive. We do that by finding magic, gratitude, hope, love, wonder, mystery, marvel in the every day!

As Always, Much Love To You All,

-C

Blog: Shake Off The Snow

We’ve had a hard winter. There’s no denying that. Outside of my own personal rampant anxiety & seasonal depression, the geopolitical landscape is a cluster, The US is in the process of a full on hostile government takeover that nobody with the power to do so seems to want to stop, & I know a lot of us also went through dramatic moments around family, friends, & love. It was a long, cold couple of months but it seems to sun is finally peeking through.

Despite what the clairvoyant groundhog may have decided, it seems spring is gradually creeping in. I feel typically we have a little more ‘hard stop’ to winter, but this year it seems we’re just easing into spring. Honestly though, that makes sense to me. The sun is slowly hanging around longer, I think for the majority of The US we gained about 45 minutes more sunlight during the month of February, but it probably isn’t something that the majority of us noticed. I however have noticed the gradual return of my mental health, overall desire to live, & the steady dissipation of my ‘dark night of the soul.’

The world seems, quite literally, a little brighter, even though the news continues to grow more & more grave as each day passes. I think the reason for that is also a sense of the shifting energies. We as a society are upset, we’re anxious, we’re in distress but I think we’re also getting to a point where what was presenting as rage is now shifting to spite, to motion. You see rage is a very mobile emotion, it causes us to want to take action, to kick the door down, to scream & writhe & bear our teeth, & when aimed correctly, tuned, & distilled, rage can be an excellent tool & an excellent motivator. You see, I think a lot of us over the last couple of weeks have been riding the rage train out of the pits of despair into something more productive & proactive. We are beginning to see that the actions of those involved are not sustainable, nor are they backed by the populous & that shift in energy & the light screaming through the cracks feels like a weird shifting tide of hope.

I didn’t want to get overly political while writing this, I definitely have my share of blogs that veer heavily into that space, but I wanted to mention the above paragraph because it does play into this shift out of the cold into the warmth. Out of the darkness into the light. We are feeling the resurrection of the sun & the fires are starting to burn away the shadows that have drug us down & encased our hearts in fear & woe. I think that with the shift in the seasons, so too will we see a massive shift in the world & society around us.

So what are we to do? We’ve felt the call to emerge from our caves, to return to the world anew & grow once again towards the light, to unfurl our branches & put out new leaves & return from the ground where we’ve buried our necessities back to a place of expansion & vibrance. We embrace that. With every fiber of our beings we embrace it because that is where hope & change & progress are found. Not in the pitfalls of winter, but in the promise of brighter days to come. We crawl from our dins, shake off the snow, & give it permission to return to melt back into the earth so that it can be used to burst shining new fruits into existence. We continue the work, we adapt, & we continue chasing the sun because that is where our hope lies, in the promise of good conquering evil, of the many over the few, of life over decay. So hear the calling, shake off the snow, & answer with luminous hope radiating from your heart.

Much love to you all,

-C