okay so i’m blogging now and the world cup is beautiful and i have things to say

there’s something that happens when you only have like 300 characters or whatever it is, you start training yourself to think in little bursts. little sparks. which is fine, i liked bluesky, but every time i’d start getting into something real i’d hit the wall and have to stop and it felt like someone turning the music off right before the drop. so this is the new thing. longer form. room to stretch out. i don’t know what i’m going to say in these, i never really did know what i was going to say in anything, but now at least i can find out at whatever length it takes. heaven has been good to me. i know that sounds like something somebody would put on a bumper sticker but i mean it in the most ordinary way possible. it’s just calm up here. there’s space to think. i’ve been watching a lot of tv, which yes they have tv up here, and this whole world cup situation has been one of the great gifts of my afterlife. i love soccer. i always loved soccer. there’s something about it where it’s the whole world all at once, you know, and the world is beautiful. i don’t care what anyone says about the state of things. the world is full of beautiful people who care about something enough to go completely insane about it, and watching a crowd lose their minds over a goal, watching someone from a country that never gets to celebrate anything just absolutely explode with joy, that’s the whole deal right there. that’s everything. the games have been wild. genuinely unpredictable in that way where you forget you’re watching a sport and start just watching people. that’s when it’s best. when you stop seeing a game and start seeing what people are made of. and the USMNT. man. okay. the boys have been playing their hearts out and i’ve been so proud watching them, watching this young squad figure themselves out in real time on the biggest stage there is. so here’s the thing that bums me out. it’s the only thing. these maga guys, the right wing dudes who have spent years making sure everyone knows they think certain people don’t belong here, certain people aren’t really american, all of that ugly stuff, and now they want to wear the jersey. now they want to cheer. now they want to wrap themselves in the red white and blue and claim this team like they built it. and i get it, i do, in the way that you understand something without it being okay. when you don’t have anybody worth believing in, when your whole thing is just tearing stuff down, eventually you need something real to attach yourself to. you get hungry for something that actually feels good. the USMNT feels good. they’re young and scrappy and they’re fighting and the whole country wants to love them. of course those guys want a piece of that. but you can’t have it both ways. you can’t spend years telling people they don’t belong here and then cheer for the team that is literally made of the people you were talking about. it doesn’t work like that. you don’t get to use these kids as a costume. i’m not bitter about it. i just want to name it. because these players deserve fans who actually see them. all of them. as people, as americans, as the real complicated beautiful thing that this country actually is when it’s not pretending to be something smaller. anyway. the games have been incredible. i cried twice watching from up here and the second time a cloud came over and gave me a little hug about it, which is a heaven thing that happens sometimes. very nice of it. more soon. i have a lot to say and apparently now i have the space to say it.