Every year a subset of America goes a little crazy-with-the-flow in a phenomenon called “March Madness.” This is the sixty-four best college basketball teams engage in an elimination tournament so that they become thirty-two, then the Sweet Sixteen, then the Elite Eight, then the Final Four. Alas, the team of my alma mater, the University of Arizona, just got eliminated.

But at least the tragedy was fodder for a journal page, and a deeply allegorical one at that. Even the acrosticization reflects March Madness in its wild interlocking of names and conditions.

When I was a kid there was a show on Saturday called “ABC Wide World of Sports.” Each show had an opening montage with an overvoice declaiming “The thrill of Victory…the agony of Defeat.” (RIP Jim McKay, who was really James Kenneth McManus, host of the show, who was at the 1972 Olympics in Munich when the brutal slaying of Israeli athletes took place. Not to digress, but I think MUNICH is every bit as important a movie to see as SCHINDLER’S LIST.)

This page is in two disproportionate parts: DAYBREAK (The Thrill of Victory) and UPDATE (The Agony of Defeat). Here are most of the words.

— D A Y B R E A K  —

UnDEFEATed is my college
EYELASH batting carnaL knowledge
LOTTEries are won & lost
Battles grim; IMPASSES crossed
Craft REENTERS atmosphere
Gazes STEELY show no fear
Phoenix/TEMPE/Mesa leer

— U P D A T E —

Buzzer-BEATen was my team
OLEO has smudged a dream
BoOKRAcks filled w/tomes of woe
cast aSIDE the Place & Show
Heartbroke horns of DiESEls blow

I’ll be okay in a few days, honest.