Miracles

happen everyday. Often it takes us a while to see the beauty in something that might be painful, the victory in what seemed like a 1-1 tie with an inferior club. But when you marry a wife you also marry a family, and with that family often comes a sports club. If you are a contrarian, you can cheer for their rival, spice things up around the TV, or else you can just go along with mom and brother and dad, while their daughter remains distainful of football and any other thing that involves sunlight and muscles. I chose to go with the family flow, helped mainly by the team's colors, green and white. Green and white aren't my favorite, but colors of the other clubs in town- red and black (with white)- are in fact those to which I am diametrically opposed for all life, though for purely aesthetic reasons.

Indeed its interesting when arriving in a large city with multiple football teams, you don't only have color schemes to consider but also the respective class images of the teams. Usually there is a team of the lower classes (Corinthians) a team of the upper crust (Sao Paulo) and a team that figures somewhere inbetween. Here that inbetween demographic turns out to be Italians. Palmeiras, the club pictured above in their first game as a seedling group, is built completely around their Italian identity and has been conserving it ever since thier formation in the 19teens. Current endorsment deal? Pirrelli. Previous? Parmalat. Third color? Red. Formation? 3-6-1 (god save us). Ethic identity of the hoarse screaming man behind me in the stands or the emilio estavez coifed galan just in front? No need to mention. Last name of my new family? ends-in-elli.

The actual word Italia had to be taken out of the name after that whole blackboot affair, and in a country where race divides wealth as neatly as in the US (admit it) the idea of a team conserving its Italian identity so strongly is a little troubling. In fact considering that all three teams have hooligan contingents, the fact that Palmeiras' is the weakest reminds me of some shitty movie where some rawer, hungrier gang comes in and ripps the gone-soft third-generation mobsters to shreds.

So why do I choose Palmeiras? Colors, yes. Also a strange echoing of Seville, with two clubs, one red and black, the other green and white, and me on my visit there choosing Betis, the green one, because of the alligiance of my sister's host family and the player that was spotted by 10 year old Pedro leaning against a church among the crowds that gather in the streets to watch church groups dressed like the Klu Klux Klan carry cadillac-sized wooden effigies of Mary through the streets.

This was my choice, made on faith. And now that faith was rewarded. Sunday I attended my first game with my brother in law, and draped on the fences along the sidewalks to the stadium were all types of gear, and I remember noticing and asking about a flag with a white cross on a red shield on a flag of green. Thats the "Cruz de Savóia." said Bro, and thats what you see in red on the photo at the top, the first insigna of Palmeiras. We got to our seats under a light drizzle, but in true Sao Paulo fashion the weather changed and left us baking in the sun. By the middle of the second half the players were no longer able to run and I was taking turns protecting one forearm with the other from the sun. This incomplete strategy had limited effect, and by the time I got home I knew I was in bad shape. The tender laughter of my beloved only increased the burn. She insisted on a foto, and it was only after seeing it today that I realized the miracle that had been instilled in me. Look below and notice that it was the very cross of Savoia that took form on my chest, set in a field of sunburnt red. Note that the straightness of the lines across my arms is nothing less than miraculous, and that god didn't forget to burn my face and knee caps shiny to make sure the cross was bordered on all sides with red.

As for the trail of hair down the middle that spoils the snowyness of the white, I will just remind you that the donkey has a similar trail of hair down the middle of its back. And some people think that's symbolic too.