You add to good looks a clean heart.
It shines through, you can't help it.
You are beautiful inside.
Your mind is a verdant pasture
Fruitful and calm
Your spirit refreshes like water
Pleasant company
You are positive and radiant
Uplifting conversation
The things you say
speech in due season
The way you say things
An absolute delight
In the course of life you suddenly meet
A yawning chasm,
from which no light escapes,
But all things swirl in a turbulent vortex -
a downward spiral to perdition.
None dare whisper a word of warning.
The deafening scream of quiet despair,
a hateful choking stench,
in saying it all, struggles to muffle
the frenetic psychosis accompanying
such irreversible plunges.
Chirpy jingles wanly sound,
morale-boosting work songs proliferate,
sudden outbursts distract the wary,
striped in panic and uncertainty.
Foul decay whitewashed with lies
smiles that do not reach the eyes.
Anyway in the belly of the beast
lamentations are ignored -
Why think about it too hard?
Strive to pass without incident.
Let the headlines trumpet the winners.
Hold steady now, keep your head.
The multitude's grasping ambition rallies
Human nature supplies momentum.
We dive headlong into its black heart,
Anxious to make it or die en route.
A cold indifferent roar greets us
an icy blast of contempt and hate
belched from our downward destination
concealed by indiscernible darkness.
Yet we unfazed in pursuit of Happiness
will know her when we find her,
for whom with zeal we lend our arms to the oar
and our backs to the whip...
Stop.
Look above, think beyond,
Make your ardous journey
to that land of answers
across, not inside, the abyss.
The World Cup is with us again. I am underwhelmed as usual. This was supposed to be fun, in the particularly narrow sense of having lots of football to watch. That part isn't so bad. The rest of it... where to start?
The thing which gives me the most grief is the poor ratio of hype to significance in the venture. The hype was and still is disproportionate. After the hangover has lifted, the smoke has cleared and the streets are swept, all that will have happened is a series of football games. Good for a fling, and just as brief. But the flock of marketers jumping on the World Cup gravy train rather detracts from the football.
Probably if my country was in it I could have pride to justify zeal, but most of the egos out here are headbutting for teams they have no inkling of connection to. Just because someone decided to support a fancied foreign team, they find enough grounds therein to sink their emotional lot in its fortunes at a remote tournament. He will even argue with friends and fight strangers for this team. Likely even bet a princely stake, a ruinous amount.
Inevitably someone's favorite team gets eliminated - we were never all gonna get to the final, see. (I always get triggered when the host country gets eliminated a good while before the final. Awkward for the survivors' visiting fans huh.) It's like gambling: everybody cries so that one person can smile very broadly. It's probably a good thing we didn't qualify and spend all that time and money only to go and get humiliated on a global stage. And then assemble at the airport to aim rotten eggs at the team bus. Or, more typically, throw a major tantrum on radio and TV talk shows.
By all means buy and wear the foreign country's jersey, who cares really what you brand yourself with, or where you come from, or what sense it makes. Sport is supposed to be fun anyway. It gets more thrilling when there are stakes involved, something to be won or lost. I play football, I should know.
There comes a time however when a line is crossed and the stakes are just too high for this life and the only real winner is the corporate sponsor orchestrating the scam to peddle merchandise. And, of course, that one winning country.
