CONFESSION: I’ve been incorrectly using the phrase “fare-thee-well” for as long as I’ve been using it. I believed it meant “good luck” or more literally “I hope you fare well.” It seems so straightforward. Fare “get on, get along, cope, manage, do.” Thee “an archaic or dialect form of you.” And Well “in a good or satisfactory way.” It’s all right there. But ¡NAY!
Fare-thee-well actually means “to perfection; thoroughly.” For instance, “the jackass New England Patriots’ historic Super Bowl loss was a sweet fare-thee-well.”
You might be inclined to think with that knowledge in hand I’d rename this missive in the spirit of wishing Skywalker well as she passes on from the ¡FUTURISMOS! Of course I won’t because I know you know that it’s in our mistakes that we uncover our shiniest finds. Rather than change the name I’m going to flip the order of the words.
Skywalker Fare-Thee-Well
That is to say:Skywalker to Perfection
I’m a Westerner (whether I want to be or not… and 
I don’t). That means I’m an intellectual descendant of the philo-trinity of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle (what I wouldn’t give to be a disciple of their Eastern counterparts Buddha/Lao-tzu/K'ung Fu-tzu). As a Westerner I’m obsessed with notion of perfection.
I’m sure you all remember Platonic Forms. It’s the idea that we live in a world that’s a rough approximation of a perfect world in some ethereal realm. For instance, you’ve never seen a perfect circle. You’ve only seen approximations of circles but you’re able to entertain the idea of a circle even though you’ve never seen one because somewhere there’s a Platonic Form of a circle.
This is a depressing intellectual legacy. Perfection is by definition unobtainable. It’s built right into the fabric of the universe courtesy Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The subatomic world is inherently unstable. Therefore everything in this universe is unstable. Therefore nothing is perfect… for long.
There’s a particularly cruel truth hidden in Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle. One our Greek forefathers somehow knew a couple thousand years before Herr Heisenberg. Perfection cannot be grasped but it can be glimpsed. The fact that subatomia is in perpetual flux means that once in every great while they arrange themselves into perfect forms… but only for an instant.
In futbol (as in life) there are two basic elements of perfection: ability and spirit. While these two aren’t mutually exclusive they’re rarely found together in high degree in one person. Just think of all the professional athletes you’ve seen over the course of your life. For every KG or Shaq–supremely talented and irrepressibly ebullient spirits–there are literally countless multitudes of others who are varying degrees of talented or spirited but rarely both.
The ¡FUTURISMO! who had the highest combination of ability and spirit was Skywalker. She is a true futboler in a way that her more exuberant teammates aren’t. She could flat out play and would have been a welcome addition to any team we’ve faced (yep, even Dynamo). As for spirit she was as likely as any of us to laugh and cutup on the pitch. That may not sound like much to those of you who haven’t been to a game (and that’s just about every single one of you, by the way) but that’s rare. And I don’t mean on our team, I mean on any team. We have on a few occasions played teams devoid of even a single person who was clearly having fun.
To make all of that plain: Skywalker was the incarnation of the Platonic Form of a ¡FUTURISMO! Our pinnacle of ability and spirit whom the rest of us fell to either one side or the other of.
As you already know the problem with perfection is it’s short lived. Luckily time is relative and we ¡FUTURISMOS! were able to play with our own little emanation of perfection for four and a half seasons.
Now the instant of perfection has passed and we are worse for it.
Skywalker fare-thee-well.
I don’t). That means I’m an intellectual descendant of the philo-trinity of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle (what I wouldn’t give to be a disciple of their Eastern counterparts Buddha/Lao-tzu/K'ung Fu-tzu). As a Westerner I’m obsessed with notion of perfection.I’m sure you all remember Platonic Forms. It’s the idea that we live in a world that’s a rough approximation of a perfect world in some ethereal realm. For instance, you’ve never seen a perfect circle. You’ve only seen approximations of circles but you’re able to entertain the idea of a circle even though you’ve never seen one because somewhere there’s a Platonic Form of a circle.
This is a depressing intellectual legacy. Perfection is by definition unobtainable. It’s built right into the fabric of the universe courtesy Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The subatomic world is inherently unstable. Therefore everything in this universe is unstable. Therefore nothing is perfect… for long.
There’s a particularly cruel truth hidden in Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle. One our Greek forefathers somehow knew a couple thousand years before Herr Heisenberg. Perfection cannot be grasped but it can be glimpsed. The fact that subatomia is in perpetual flux means that once in every great while they arrange themselves into perfect forms… but only for an instant.
In futbol (as in life) there are two basic elements of perfection: ability and spirit. While these two aren’t mutually exclusive they’re rarely found together in high degree in one person. Just think of all the professional athletes you’ve seen over the course of your life. For every KG or Shaq–supremely talented and irrepressibly ebullient spirits–there are literally countless multitudes of others who are varying degrees of talented or spirited but rarely both.
The ¡FUTURISMO! who had the highest combination of ability and spirit was Skywalker. She is a true futboler in a way that her more exuberant teammates aren’t. She could flat out play and would have been a welcome addition to any team we’ve faced (yep, even Dynamo). As for spirit she was as likely as any of us to laugh and cutup on the pitch. That may not sound like much to those of you who haven’t been to a game (and that’s just about every single one of you, by the way) but that’s rare. And I don’t mean on our team, I mean on any team. We have on a few occasions played teams devoid of even a single person who was clearly having fun.
To make all of that plain: Skywalker was the incarnation of the Platonic Form of a ¡FUTURISMO! Our pinnacle of ability and spirit whom the rest of us fell to either one side or the other of.
As you already know the problem with perfection is it’s short lived. Luckily time is relative and we ¡FUTURISMOS! were able to play with our own little emanation of perfection for four and a half seasons.
Now the instant of perfection has passed and we are worse for it.
Skywalker fare-thee-well.
By the bye, we lost Skywalker’s final match 3-1. We would have won 1-0 if we’d had a proper keeper. Instead we had me and I’m one of the afore mentioned exuberant but unskilled teammates of Skywalker’s.
1 comment:
I still FIRMLY believe the leg tattoo photo should have been used when screening and interviewing for Skywalker's replacements (if one may deem to call them such) at C+M by day. We should CERTAINLY use them to screen for those who want to fill her shoes Wednesday evenings.*
*Nights, if we ever again book ourselves in the Nocturnal League.
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