I Think I Found Eric Wynalda's Old Jersey At World's End

I currently live in Porto Alegre, the southernmost big Brazilian city, only a few hours from Uruguay and located in what the Portuguese referred to as "world's end". They were wrong, of course, since the Spanish were in control of the world's end only a few hundred miles down the coast, but the point I here wish to make remains intact: that this area is a byway, an offshoot, a tributary.

Which is, perhaps, what contributes to this city's excellent used bookstores. The flotsam and jetsam that passes through here, including the human, is somehow more romantic because it's so far from New York, or Paris, or even Rio. As someone whose first job was in a used book shop, and who has sometimes lived off the leavings, literary or otherwise, of our society, I find the flow and seeming randomness of such things fascinating and romantic. Like the ancient Chinese relics found in Roman ruins in England, the unexpected but undeniable thereness and thingness of the things fills the viewer with life, as he beholds the power and passingness (it's a word now) of life.

Today I was not in a used book shop but in a used soccer jersey shop. Yep. Combination bar-specialty-thrift-shop of super coolness.

And I found something remarkable. I still don't quite believe it. I hope it's real. Even if you didn't care about soccer in '94, or know who Eric Wynalda is, I'm sure you'll still enjoy this video. What remains for us to discover after this video is how the jersey got there in the first place...