This year has felt like a sort of groundhog day type year, the same stuff over and over again, and I don’t just mean in terms of the mistakes I’ve made. I wish I just meant that. With Monday’s night events it feels all so very familiar, indeed the same things are said all over again. The same hatred and racism is brought to the fore. Lots of things are said but little changes. A lot of people are ignorant of what’s going on in the wider world and they want it to stay that way. Syria seemed like a place far away and so the events there could be ignored, except now such things are happening right on Europe’s doorstep. And some people’s answer, to ban all refugees from entering Europe. To refuse to help the very people who are trying to escape things like this. I don’t know, nothing makes any sense, I’m not sure anything ever did. I just don’t understand how anyone could be so blinkered and ignorant not to care what’s going on there. The fact it’s so faraway should make no difference, nor that the people are of a different nationality or religion. People are people no matter where they’re from. It certainly doesn’t feel right to be celebrating Christmas whilst all this is going on.
Monday was not a good day anyway, and it become less of one because of what I woke up to. Just when you think you have a shot at getting back on track something else goes wrong. In reality I don’t think it had a shot of going right, I just wanted to believe it could. Everything feels just about as pointless as it’s ever done, yet I can’t stop writing or doing any of this. I’ve seen what happens when I do that, no matter how pointless it seems you have to carry on. A few days ago (I’m not sure which one exactly) I was watching The Counsellor, I don’t know why I decided to rewatch it, I didn’t think much of it the first time round. I felt drawn to it for some reason. I saw it at the cinema when it was released with a friend. Before seeing it I thought it would be good and they thought the opposite, after seeing it our positions were reversed. They said it was better than they expected and I was disappointed with it. I’m not sure I can articulate why exactly, I do however know why it angered me. The main character doesn’t care about the violence in Mexico when he has the potential to make money from it, he only cares when it affects him, when it’s someone he loves that gets hurt. Which is kind of like the situation now I suppose. The majority of people don’t care what’s happening somewhere else as long as it’s not affecting them. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much or why I can’t stop thinking about all this, maybe it’s because I’m often accused of lacking empathy, clearly that’s not true.
I have plenty of distractions but none of them are working, I don’t feel much like watching football, I couldn’t focus on tonight’s game in which Dortmund drew 1-1 with Augsburg. I don’t think the game made any difference, had I watched Gladbach’s game I probably would have felt the same. It’s a good thing I didn’t watch their game in fact, I would have felt even worse. After losing again there’s a good chance Gladbach will be parting ways with Andre Schubert before Christmas. I hope Wednesday’s game does a better job of distracting me, though at the same time it feels wrong but then almost everything does. Even writing this but I had to, I couldn’t not write it. As suffocating as routine is it can be comforting too, and sometimes it’s a little of both. Truth is without routine I wouldn’t know what to do.
Speaking of routine that brings me to the final part of the post, the advent calendars. Behind door number 19 in the Freiburg one was summer signing Janik Harberer and in the Dortmund one Andre Schürrle. And behind door number 20 was Julian Schuster and Roman Weidenfeller. Harberer scored his first Bundesliga goal the weekend before last against Leverkusen, he also got the assist for Niederlechner’s equaliser against Schalke last weekend:
Löwland 