Burj-eye view

The Burj Khalifa (nee Dubai), the world's tallest structure as of this minute, is a sleek, mirror-plated skyscraper that towers above the UAE's newest (and biggest) mall/hotel complex/condo community. This weekend, I traveled to the top on the world's fastest elevator (64 mph!) with K and her brother, who is visiting. My brother, who visited two weeks ago, had previous made the trip solo, but his descriptions and pics couldn't do justice to the experience of being 1, 450 feet above a city without the aid of an aircraft.

The trip also provided an interesting view of the Dubai, both literal and figurative.

To get to the observation deck of the Burj, visitors first must find the access point in the maze of the Dubai Mall, which opened about this time last year to much fanfare. It features an aquarium, underwater museum, a dancing fountain (a la the Bellagio in Vegas), an ice skating/ice go-carting rink (ice go-carting?), an organic grocery store, every shop you can imagine from the four corners of the globe and the country's only Taco Bell. Once you locate the Burj entrance, you are ushered through a metal detector and down several long, windowless corridors that feature displays of the building process and reminders of how far Dubai has come in such a short time. One 3-D exhibit includes an old Bedouin-looking man with a falcon peering off into the "distance" where Dubai slowing (and digitally) is taking shape before his eyes. In the final panel, a comet is shooting into space, implying, perhaps, that not even the sky is the limit. This exhibit ends in a white wall and the line for the elevators. (pictured above is a new of the fountain and the hotel/souk complex right next to the Dubai Mall. You can see where the development stops right at the top of the photo)

The elevators. The lead up, already Disneyfied, infuses the wait for the elevator with a pre-roller coaster feel. The line is even organized into switchbacks, like at amusement parks or airports. There are two elevators that lead up to the observation deck, and there are three different staff people who eyeball guests to avoid overloads. (This may be because an unlucky group of tourists were stranded between floors for 45 minutes in February, forcing a shutdown until just a few weeks ago.) All the ultra-modern decor and careful prep add a frisson of thrill. It makes the elevator ride itself a bit anti-climatic, despite the dim lights, blue flashing arrows and a space-age soundtrack. It was almost impossible to detect any motion, though my ears popped several times. In a mere 30 seconds or so, the doors soundlessly opened and we stepped out onto the platform.

I'm pleased to report that building technology has changed over the years so much so that I could barely detect the motion of the tower from its 124th floor. (The Burj has 160 floors in total.) More than 15 years ago, my father and I clung to the inner walls of the Sears Tower observation deck; he because of the heights and me because of the very noticeable sway on that Windy City day. Although it was windy, the Burj barely moved at all. K explained that tall buildings, including the Taipei 101 (designed by the same people as the Burj) now feature a huge steel pendulum built into the top of the building to counteract the sway. Whatever it was, it worked like a charm.

Dubai spread out before us in all its glory. Sort of. Around the Burj were a thin cluster of skyscrapers lining the main highway, a low strip of housing developments, a few parks and malls, and then the vast expanse of desert stretching out as far as the eye could see. From 1,400 feet, the urban miracle of Dubai looked a little like one of the those movie sets of the Old West with buildings lining Main Street, but nothing but scrub just beyond the swinging saloon door. I experienced the double vision that often accompanies a trip to Dubai. Despite the manic expansion and shiny new feel of the place, I can't help but overlay a more tumbleweedy scene, as I imagine the years creeping by and the money running out. Dubai is doing everything in its power to stave off that day (as is Abu Dhabi), and I don't want to cast aspersions on their efforts. But you don't have to spend much time in the UAE before you get the feeling that large numbers of people just weren't meant to live here; that everything is necessarily temporary because eating 95% imported food, drinking desalinated water and being encased in an air-conditioned bubble for so much of the year simply isn't sustainable. It casts mega-projects like the Burj and the Dubai Mall in a different, almost melancholy light.

Or maybe it's me who is melancholy, since I won't be living in this strange, intriguing place for very much longer. I won't miss the out-of-synch feeling of it not quite being real. I will miss the audacity of the world's tallest building emerging from the sands.

The tao of softball

This post is about fate, karma, change, chance and the physics of force, speed and momentum. I'm not talking about the big universe of supernovas and shooting stars. I'm talking about the universe contained on a green diamond between two baselines, one of the most deceptive simple places on Earth, but one that contains constellations of events that Einstein himself couldn't tame. There are places that boggle the mind, because they are both real and magical at the same time. Venice is one; your neighborhood softball field is another.

This weekend, the JV girls team at my school traveled to Doha, Qatar, to play a tournament with five other international schools in the region. We went last year and got third. We went this year and took fifth (even though we were the only ones to beat the team who came in first). The fact was, we had lost our experienced pitcher, and a single season is not long enough to train another, given the number of regular-season games before the tournament (three, two of which we won). Standings and scores, however, are almost beside the point when discussing softball. As a coach, I know I'm supposed to want to win. And I do want to win, because winning is more fun than losing if that is the paradigm on the table. But this weekend, I was blown away by the beauty of the game well before the match that decided our last-place ranking.

My love of softball reaches back to elementary school and an early appreciation of a single basic truth: Softball is a game of skill, strategy and strength, like all sports. And softball is so much more than muscle mass and a good playbook, which is where the magical part comes in. In softball, anything can happen, and often does. The weakest player can tower above the greats in the blink of an eye. A whole game can turn on a butterfly effect, like the centimeters that separate a foul from a base hit or a ball from a strike. After practice is over, pep talks given, warm ups completed and the game begins, all a player or a coach can do is sit back and watch it unfold.

I most love the small moments, the hero moments, like our right fielder catching a ball up against the fence to prevent a grand slam: the crack of the bat, the endless arch of the long ball, the collective intake of breath from both dugouts...then the reach of the glove and the look on the face of a struggling player who realizes what she has done. It's a scene that's been rhapsodized and romanticized by writers and filmmakers through the years until it seems a cliche to non-fans--and yet I promise you, Hollywood technicolor cannot touch the true victory of such a moment. I would argue strenuously that no other sport so graciously distributes access to pure triumph. Softball throws open the curtain and allows anyone to step into the spotlight normally reserved for superstars.

It's no accident, then, that baseball and softball are common metaphors in the American narrative fueled by a rabid belief in progress, achievement and hope, along with a dash of kooky optimism. That the game is pretty much confined to the New World, and not just philosophically, is clear as a coach of an international-school team where some of the girls have been playing since kindergarten, and others aren't quite sure which base is which. One of my favorite players, however, is a sophomore and a native of Spain who is so thoroughly European that she threw a fit when I told her my shoe size was 8 1/2 rather than 38 (the Euro version). Yet she has played this most American of sports since 6th grade (having learned it here) and wouldn't dream of skipping a season. She also leaps into the air to catch a fly ball, regardless of her field position, jumping toward it, even as it races to her. It's a technique that lends itself to graceful plays, along with the occasional dramatic miss. Softball, however, is not a game where you tell your players to stop moving toward the ball, regardless of how artistically they choose to do it.

I returned to school today and had to face the questions, from the athletic director as well as other competitive sorts. In the league my school is in, last-place finishes are not common occurrences, and no one expected us to lose (including us, obviously). We'd had the best season in a long time. I understand the impulse, and tried not chafe. For competitive people, it's embarrassing to come in at the bottom. It makes me sad, though. I couldn't rewind to the moments that would allow them to move past the many walks of our rookie pitchers and arrive at our victories. The catches and leaps. The physics of tag outs, slides and line-drive shots. The confluence of fate and skill that leads, time and time again, to Possibility with a capital p. For me, the magic contained in those moments transcends the outcome. I wouldn't trade it for the world.