Days 9, 10 and 11 ... The Hustle Eclipsed

Its becoming somewhat of a blur for me these days, i had to ask if today was Day 12 or what. I am writing on the 12th day at noon, about the last three days. I suppose the theme of the past few days has been the death of the hustle.

The scalpers are gone and the public has more or less turned against them. As a mystically connected whole, the buyers of tickets have refused to pay high premiums for tickets, forcing the professional scalpers to melt into the crowds. The Chinese scalpers are doing their thing, but they get picked off like stragglers in a school of tasty tuna, encircled by enemies.

Yesterday I saw a spider sting on three or four peasants from Henan selling flags and buttons. As they wrestled with the hired mercenaries, another peasant came up to me and asked if I like Chinese girls. The fabric is slowly splitting, as the rest of China squeezes through the cracks and into the Olympic World: Many Worlds, Many Dreams ...

I spent all of the night of Day 10 being the collaborator to the Dutch fascists. Of course that is much to harsh a phrase. The Dutch won a few medals and decided to have the big party on Sunday. At around 11pm the place was full to capacity and the word came down to let only Dutch in. They put my ass on the front line to let the masses know what was up. The hectic chaos made time fly and I had a small group of supporters (mostly Aussies, love ya'll) that bantered with me in the lulls between groups of arrogant Germans wondering Vy? and drunk Canadians trying to slip past and Brazilians strollin up bold sayin: "Who knows how to party like we do? Nobody! The Dutch have invited us here to teach them ...!"

But the highlight of the past few days has been the Bird's Nest and Olympic Green. I made it in last night courtesy of a green-eyed princess from Slovenia, Miss Nina Krajinovic. It was amazing. I watched all of this.

I was sitting next to a very beautiful Russian woman who held up the flag while Isinbaeva went for the record. The whole crowd was with her. We clapped, whoa-ed and held our breath. When she went over clean the last time around, the whole place erupted and everyone turned to each other and passed cameras, as in church to pass the peace.

I was alone and that was a little sad. i wished I could have had someone to enjoy it with. I wondered through the crowds catching eye contact, watching couples embrace and smile, Angolans, Greeks and Chinese flash peace signs for a Canadian cameraman.

The Green is like a slice of floating city-scape from a city we haven't built yet. The avenue is wide and flat, unobtrusive as it leads you forward past sculptures of women running holding torches, the Buddha pair: monkey upon elephant and abstract bubbles in future-friendly colors.

A tower in the shape of a helix keeps the gate, sending soft waves of color into the sky at set intervals ... soft purples and reds, sleepy greens and blues.

Just behind the helix, the Bird's Nest peeks out from its cement web, a red underglow casting out through the trees and bushes that dot the gardens around it. To the right, the water cube prepares for lift-off, its bubbles drifting from shade to shade of ocean and sea.

I ducked and skipped through the pictures and found a back way through a stone garden to the subway. I happened to turn back for a second to watch a little chinese girl dance for her mom, and I saw the torch blazing against a dark sky.

I blew it a kiss and headed out.