Time To Take A Deep Breath

"...relax and enjoy it." Bobby Knight, 1988

Since my comments bitch about Ron Zook yesterday, I've read Kevin McCarra's blog post in The Guardian on his overachieving Scots in the European Cup qualifiers and found a little perspective to apply to my view of the Illini season:

Who cares about explanations. Such things occur every so often and only an ingrate asks why. The abrupt return of hope is agonising now that Scotland have become quite good and are abruptly back on the verge of achievement. What else is there to do but join my melancholic countrymen in taking it for granted that the side must suffer a pratfall in Georgia tomorrow?

That's the Celtic soul in a nutshell and it reminded me of my favorite passages, a reflection on The Dying Gaul by Thomas Cahill in How the Irish Saved Civilization:

Fixity escaped these people, as in the end it escapes us all. They understood, as few have understood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things or people.

They pursued the wondrous deed, the heroic gesture: fighting, fucking, drinking, art –- poetry for intense emotion, the music that accompanied the heroic drinking with which each day ended, bewitching ornament for one’s person and possessions.

All these are worth pursuit, and the first, especially, will bring the honor great souls seek. But in the midst of this furious swirl of energy lies a still point of detachment.

...The face of the Dying Gaul speaks for them all: each one of us will die, naked and alone, on some battlefield not of our own choosing. My promise of undying faithfulness to you and yours to me, though made with all solemnity, is unlikely to survive the tricks that fate has in store – all the hidden land mines that beset human life.

So I am just going to live in the moment with the Illini and appreciate their season for the pleasant surprise it is.....Ah, fuck it. Who am I kidding? Saturday, I am going to be uptight, bitching about every other play call, throwing tantrums worthy of a four-year old over the officiating and pleading with pantheons of gods to deliver an improbable and undeserved victory. Come to think of it, for me, that is enjoying the Illini....

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