The diminishing space of philosophy

Philosophy is essentially abstraction. What is abstraction? Abstraction is a movement away... it is gaining distance; it is buying time and the right to breathe. (Isn't all of Hegel's phenomenology a strategy for buying time?). Moving away and gaining distance from what? From life, from existence, from the 'phenomenon', from reality. One moves away from life to breathe! But why? For many reasons; one of them is to look at life as it presents itself; for one cannot apprehend and hold the phenomenon of life in constant purview if one is deeply and passionately embroiled in the phenomenon, for one is then part of this very phenomenon. One is then too close to it to see it and appraise it. So one seeks distance, a relief. One becomes a subject who wants to apprehend its object. Hence Plato, the philosopher, criticizes the inspired artist who is too close to his art, who ends up being a mouthpiece for a force he does not comprehend. And for Plato, this force must be comprehend. Whence comes this demand?

But this flight of abstraction is not innocent. For in this flight, which makes all 'phenomenology' possible, the very object of apprehension is distorted. Phenomenology's possibility is also its impossibility. Such is its violence. Meaning: gaining this distance compromises the very purpose for which this distance is sought in the first place. How could this not be? The eye cannot see itself even if it squints! Abstraction is a kind of squinting. Just like for geometrical abstraction an apple is nothing but a sphere of so-and-so dimensions, for philosophy existence becomes a composition of some bare essentials or vital properties. Just like the physicist listens only to the wavelengths of a musical piece, a philosopher describes a body as the amalgam of bones, tissues, blood, fibres and neurons. All the oppositions of philosophy (mind/body, subject/object, et. al) arise from out of this abstraction. The final objective of this abstraction is an extreme polarity through which philosophy acheives its completion and death (Hegel).

But what after Hegel? After Hegel begins philosophy's inward journey, its moving towards under the banner of a self-criticism. Philosophy now wants get close to life, away from abstraction (what else was Kierkegaard saying?) and with each difficult step it takes towards existence, it is propelled two steps back, since to undertake criticism of philosophy one has to still philosophize. Hegel laughs in his grave. Kierkegaard longs for death and becomes ironic. He laughs back at Hegel, and so at himself. But with Nietzsche, Derrida, and Deleuze philosophy attempts the impossible: to breathe life into philosophy. To make philosophy itself concrete, artistic, creative, poetic. To take something away from life and give it to philosophy, but at the same time, to give back to life its core, its concreteness, in the form of a new philosophy: claiming that life itself gives birth to philosophy, life itself needs an abstraction, which nevertheless has to be concretized to fulfill life itself. This 'eternal return' of philosophy to life is not an abortion, but a lofty sacrifice. Still a kind of buying time and space, but nevertheless, just as surely returning this space back to where it belongs, but in a more aesthetically enriching way (what else is 'deconstruction'?). An eye which does not still see itself, but sees its own infinite persectives in the reflection it casts on its object. Such is the impossible space of this new philosophy which is diminished in its very inceptio. An impossibility, which, perhaps Hegel already anticipated.

Nietzsche's bad taste

There is an art of gliding on the surface: the art of living. This art requires a faith in life, an innocent faith in its forward movement, in its seductions and its 'metaphysical' delusions.
The impetus of Nietzsche's philosophy (the antennae of his 'cleanliness') lies in its ability to smoke this faith and these seductions out of their subterranean hideouts - bring them onto the surface, as if to show that a backward, almost atavistic movement belonged essentially to the forward thrust of life. As he says in his Ecce Homo, he gets hold of every secret: 'the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character'.
But perhaps the secret behind his secret is a mechanism which reveals his will to survival. Only by retracting life is he able to live, able to create. Only at this abysmal point of his philosophy his will to survive is revealed to be virtually indistinguishable from his will to create. At this point, where survival and creation coincide, and where need and abundance come together, we see the limits out of which Nietzsche's philosophy emerges: Nietzsche's very sterility. As a result, Nietzsche is obliged to appraise and pronounce judgments upon things about which a more naive and trustful faith chooses to remain silent. This shows Nietzsche's bad taste. (And is not Nietzsche's critique of all philosophy before him essentially directed against this philosophy's naivety and self-satisfaction, its 'good taste'?)

Genuine and fake

The real test is for one to invent the very image one must grow into, and not secretly borrow this image from some other source. But also: This image does not arise out of nothing, but processed out of the images given by others, by past, and even by the entire history of mankind. The more encompassing and rich the number and kinds of sources, the more genuine is the output. And for one who passes the test, this processing yields a whole which is not the sum of its parts.

contra-Naturalismus

'Naturalism', like all shoulder-shrugging pieces of non-philosophy, appeals to something that is 'given' as a bare fact, in order to exclaim "this is how things are at bottom! So do not probe anymore!" Appeal to nature is always an appeal to fact on this account. 'Nature' or 'natural' means precisely that which invites no further criticism - Nature as this domain of innocence where something is what it appears to be; the angels of heaven are thus domesticated and brought down to the level of farmers and peasants.

A case study of the 'ascetic priest', as someone who is a master of instincts, but who nevertheless chooses to shepherd the herd, the case study of the possibility of this ambiguous type would bring about the ultimate refutation of such naturalist readings of Nietzsche. For no such ambiguity belongs to nature!

Different strokes

What is commonly called 'misunderstanding' between two people is a cover-up for, and a result of, a misplaced amount of faith between them; or what amounts to the same, it is a consequence of a self-betrayal as to what the genuine distance between the two people is, regarding their respective ranks, tastes and styles. However being true to this distance and difference does not restore a better understanding. It only creates silence. A parable.

The politics of struggle

When one desires to be ruled, one also desires and expects a certain kind of ruling that is appropriate to the power ratio. One craves for a certain amount of severity, deception and cruelty from the ruler, and may even call it 'love'. But when the ruler rules with a different or a lesser degree of severity (perhaps due to curiosity or pity or boredom), then the ruled seeks revenge and becomes ferocious. The latter creates a turmoil until the power ratios are restored. He calls this his 'revolution'. For, a deep concern with the restoration of the ratio is what determines the ruled as the ruled. The ruler, on the other hand, is a revolutionary in an entirely different sense because he is haunted with the creative spirit to tremble and upset the existing order of power relations, at times, even risking losing the power which is given to him over the ruled. The secret tragedy of the ruler arises from his disdain for the comfort of a rote repitition. The revolt of the ruled interprets this tragedy as the decadence of the ruler.

Under the sheets

The commonest form of self-deception is taking one's own inventive skills to be merely passive skills of discovery. A kind of underestimation of one's own ingenuity. And then one holds onto these truths as if they have been given to one by some mysterious external source. At the same time, one congratulates oneself for discovering these truths, which one believes to be available for all in the same form of hue and dilution in which one has uncovered them. One then sets up and passionately advocates justice and objectivity. It is only by virtue of a prior act of self-deception that one invents philosophy (a.k.a. phenomenology).
But these truths are only lenses through which one views everything in one's field of vision. They are 'truths' precisely because these lenses makes all truth possible, as such. A Kantian act of self-invention by the virtue of which one gives to oneself what one has already given to oneself. The 'as such', the golden commandment of phenomenology, has nothing but this structure of self-bestowing. (And didn't Kant mean by 'critique' precisely a way of unraveling this un-Gordian knot?).
A self-invention, which relying on its obscurity to itself, kids itself to be a modest self-discovery! And beyond the realm of this self-giving, oscillate infinite reverberations of terrible self-contradictions, dark-spots and abysses, against which one does one's best to guard oneself. But this dark arena is the secret source of philosophy, the Hades from which it springs and to which it passes away, where one being discourses with the other even though an infinite distance hangs between them.

Difference between beer and wine

What an individual genius is for a German is a cultural phenomenon for the French. What speaks of profundity and gravity for the German is frivolousness, shallowness and play for the French. What is speech for the German is song for the French. What is Romanticism for the Germans is Napoleon for the French. What is life for the German is love for the French. What is philosophy for the Germans is art and coffee for the Frenchman.

A rhetorical invitation

At least, at a basic level, everybody projects oneself onto the world. By doing thus, one feels comfortable and familiar. The uncaniness of the world is tamed. However, because of this self-projection one also fails to take delight in the simple discoveries of the world, the things that constitute the world and one's own place in this world. One fails to notice the uniqueness of one's own vision of the world, one's "constructivism," since one has already compromised one's singularity in order to feel at home. One becomes ever so slightly: dogmatic. But then can one avoid this self-projection if one has already limited oneself? And still: who can avoid this self-limitation and still go on living?

A psychologist's question

A lover places her love so far above the earthly that the mere appearance of her love in the world, his limited manifestation, is a turn-off and an objection to her love. But who can see that this need to idealize and interpret the temporal as imperfect hides behind it a profound self-pity and self-loathing, which more than anything else does not want to be loved?

The body of writing

Some people do not write because they feel writing will cheapen their beloved insights and strip them of their vitality. They are their own worst and most critical readers who come back to what they have written, after gaining some distance from it, and are appalled at the banality and pretentiousness of their words. Gaining this distance gives enough time for that madness and adrenaline to subside , which induced them to writing in the first place. They rather prefer to read somebody else's writing, and take envious pleasure in the fact that the author has expressed something which is close to what they would have expressed, if they were not so disgusted with their own ink. Isn't this quite strange? They forgive others of their shamelessness to express themselves easily, but are inexplicably hard on themselves and are ashamed at their own immodesty.

What a writer requires is that distance from himself, such that he does not feel ashamed and disgusted at his own insights and words. He should earn the right to be immodest. This distance should be gained before he begins to write, not after he has written something. Gaining this distance means to lend body and power to one's writing, to let one's pen control one's thoughts, and give content and form to the latter such that they are transformed in turn. Put crudely, a writer should not really be clear about what he is writing. But to gain this distance, one should also have thoughts which are strong and lively enough so that they can traverse this distance uninhibited, without losing their brilliance, their suddenness and their surprise factor. But this is another matter.

The curious memory

We willingly open up some past wound just to check if it is still there. And after we are assured of its existence, we are comforted. We shut it and move along with renewed strength, apparently forgetting that the wound would not have been there if we had not opened it up.

Recipe for the born-again - type I

Ultimately, the greatest solace for the one betrayed lies in grasping the insight that other people, how these others have appeared to one, the roles that others play in one's life, the disgust and the happiness that one sees in others, the degree of expectancy, love, comradeship one has with others, the mutual trust and understanding that one thinks one shares with others, and the whole order of power relations between one and the others, exist because one has put them there. It lies in the insight that one has built one's own world and colored it with one's own brushes. And that one can, as easily, take these colors away if one wanted to and thereby see this world and the others in it as totally devoid of any meaning or significance. This requires selective memory, suppression, transitional stupefication of the senses, wearing a thick skin, abstraction from the influences of the immediate sorroundings, distantiality and other psychological ingenuities. The end result is the ultimate victory over the others, reducing all the sufferings, the resentments, the frustrations of misunderstandings and misplaced levels of faith and trust to a nought. One then laughs in magnanimity at the world. There is a unique comfort in this solitary insight denoting a great triumph over the world. It calls for a Herculean strength and clarity of one's soul. And after one has grasped this insight, one must multiple this strength a hundred times by enacting the power of this insight and embodying it as the new light which guides the path of a new life; in short, one has to die first in order to be reborn.

The Mole

Beware of the truth which when given to you makes you placid and indifferent. Lest you want your truth to bore you. Beware of this truth because it is not a gift but something you have collected as a trophy for your previous accomplishments. You stare at your trophy as in a mirror admiring your own image in it. And it gives you pleasure, the pleasure of possession. This is why you decided to encash. Does anyone know of this great pleasure?
But what else? Where do you go with it? Where do you grow with it? Like a permanent mole on your face, it distinguishes you from others; but it also sets you part eventually isolating you. How can you go back now? How could you go back to playing a game, whose victory you have already celebrated with your trophy? Doesn't the muddy water bind you to stagnancy?
Can't live with it, can't live without it: like two strange cosmic lovers who kill their love only by the virtue of being together; but who love each other deeply only when they are apart, when they do not even know each other. Is your truth too a counterfactual, something that you cannot show to anyone, something that does not belong to this world, to this earth? Are you ashamed of your mole?

A personal touch

Back in the US after a busy and, nonetheless, eventful summer. I went back to my home country, and for some reason (which, of course, I am aware of) I felt more distant and alienated from its people, its culture, its noise, its buzz, it spirituality and its superficiality than ever before. I barely survived!
Also went to Europe, and lived in Germany for two months. I have never felt more at home than in Europe. It's in my blood this place- this continent's stoned streets, its corners and alleys, its people - both dead and alive, its architecture, its pretentious philosophy, its lofty finesse, its style and music. Even its 'common' people are acceptable to me! - This is the kind of freedom I experienced - for the first time in my life!
Now I am back into a retrogression, with an emptiness in my heart, which testifies to a certain lack of direction that I am currently feeling. I need a new project, a new alibi, an excuse, a new constellation, new planets around me, a rebirth, a new philosophy, a new love to pour into - i am single again! - and hopefully this time the container does not spill over!

Illusions of the few

Few people (the rare ones, the solitaries, the geniuses) walk on earth as if they are hunchbacks, who are burdened by the urgency of a million decisions. In their weak moments they seek kindred souls to share their strange and unique story with them, but to their despair they find none. In their strong moments they see how they outlive every one-sided and oppositional limitation, into which they have learnt to place the predictable paths of other mortals. There is a great unparalleled joy they experience in this later discovery, which is bolstered by the fact that they cannot share this joy with anyone! They also see how impossible it is for them die, to limit themselves, to define themselves, to know themselves! -- the true meaning of the 'passion for the infinite' -- even though in their weaker moments they wish they could die, in order to lose the hunchback's eye and ear which survey and listen to the music and the chaos of the entirety of being. Since, to know oneself is to corner oneself into a particular taste and manner of existence -- and does this require, first and foremost, a very strange and deliberate (?) passion for stupidity that stubbornly decides to turn away from the expansive growth and unity of being, in order to set up its own 'self' (a 'self', therefore, in opposition to the world)?... or is this conjecture itself an illusion, a self-projection? However, during their more speculative moments the few think that the majority of these self-limiters are themselves illusory beings, smoke-screens set-up on the stage of the world to make the latter more interesting and unpredictable; and that in truth these self-limiters know that they are putting on a show for the solitaries, secretly laughing at their crests and troughs, their laughter and tears. In any case, the 'few' do not really comprehend the self-limiters and self-knowers. The latters' mystery is a source of comedy, curiosity, tragedy, nay, life itself for the few. This mystery represents the illusory point of forbidden knowledge, of death.

Shame as pride

Many people (teenagers, women in love, economical men) convert the deep shame they have before themselves into their pride. This is the reason why they want to hide their pride at any price. Occassionally they find themselves obligated to give up the object of their pride (love, life or the world itself), especially when they fear that the source of this object would be revealed to be this very shame/pride. They renounce the object only so that they may go on staying afloat on the surface, go on being proud. Many call this their sacrifice and suffering.

What is greatness?

A great person has within him the experiences of the entire history of humanity. And something more. His 'growth' into an adult symbolizes the assimilation of these experiences, most unconsciously, into his being. The curious on-looker only has to study his various gestures - his thoughts, his body language, his anxiety, his pain, his hand-movements and his joy, since these different things interpret and display this history in a new light - the light through which his particular genius shines through. This rare particularity and specificity is nothing but what one thoughtlessly calls 'individuality'.
Achieving individuality is a rare thing, and is certainly not an easy task. It is not all pleasure and happiness. The great individual has to live and die many times, since only in doing so can he rehearse the history of humanity inside and outside of him. He has to survive multiple bruises, go on lonely cruises, and learn not to expect other people to comprehend him. He has to accept disappointment as a part of greatness. This is tough to do, since being human (read 'naive') he instinctively expects more than 100% from others all the time, since this is what he gives to them in all his engagements. But he has to see that human beings are not created equal, and the creator-god has squinted eyes. He has to learn to see that his contemporaries do not understand him since they are dependent on him to show them the way. (Achtung: "The tendency to let oneself be debased, robbed, lied to, and exploited could be the shame of a god among men"). It is as if even his common contemporaries 'recognize' who he is and what his destiny is! The present gets its meaning only through a creative reinterpretation of the past - this is the greatest lesson he learns from his friends, family and other strangers.
Individuality and greatness is achieved only when the person not only learns life's tragic lessons, but has that extra energy in him to appear at the other end of the tunnel with an unbruised limb and multiple wings. Even though a part of his being is as old as the mountains, there is another part of his being that is beautifully preserved and fresh, breathing the life of the present and the future. Like the meeting point of autumn and spring he comes to the scene to create his art, and also the appreciators of his art!
But this is not easy. The world, his contemporaries, will resist him as they come to disbelieve their own instincts about life. And this is the greatest challenge for greatness. For now, it has to learn not only how to create, but also to preserve itself in the face of the toughest resistance. This is when greatness stares at abysmal madness, and it needs this madness to do this double job of creating and preserving. Few survive this test for a long time, and in failing this test they become part of history, however only to point themselves towards a future greatness, towards the individuals to come...

Great passage

"Independence is an issue that concerns very few people:- it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him:- and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again! - -"

- NIETZSCHE

Willkommen in Deutschland!!

Arrived in Frankfurt in a plane, where every 50-plus oldie - on their way to visit their software son/daughter - believed that every road leads to Chicago. After demystifying their presuppositions, I arrived in Vaterland. Stood in the line for immigration clearance. Then came my turn:-

Me: Hello
Officer (looks at my passport, and says with German English): What do you done here?
Me: What?
Officer: What have you do here?
Me: I am here to attend a language course.
Officer: What language?
Me: German..
Officer (with a surprised, gleeful smile): Verstehen Sie Deutsch?
Me (with a fake German accent): Ja, ein bisschen.
Officer: Wo studieren Sie?
Me: Im Freiburg, bei Goethe-Institut.
Officer: Haben Sie eine Zurueckkarte?
I showed him the return ticket.
Officer: 27th Juli, Eh? He stamps my passport, and says "Willkommen"
As I go past him, I hear him asking his officer-pal next to him, "Wer is besser, Goethe oder Schiller?"

What if....?

1. What if people in this world whimsically made decisions in their lives based on numbers? No, I am not talking about some astrological excursion, but something more naive, more un-rational. For instance, what if your girlfriend breaks up with you because she does not like your new phone number? For some idiosyncratic reason she does not like the pattern of 7s and 2s in your number. You say 7182477122, and she hangs up the phone and never sees you again. Again imagine you are flying into town, and you tell your folks the flight number 521 and they decide not to pick you up from the airport. Wouldn't that be fun? But we do not do that. Why not? Is there a reason? It is almost as if your girlfriend and your folks tell themselves, "What his phone number is or what his flight number is is pure chance. He does not have any control over that. He is just "given" these numbers." Is that right? They decide to forgive and overlook these small things. The boundaries of legitimacy and justification humanity seeks are not drawn on this landscape. Not yet, at least. These boundaries only come later, and little further down the line -- for instance, if after giving your girlfriend your phone no., you tell her not to call after 10 pm since you would be busy with other things, she would, quite justifiably, dump you. Where the boundaries are drawn is a matter of convention. But is it arbitrary? Can the whole of humanity easily will to change these boundaries simply because they want something different? Or is there a compulsion, a necessity, to this convention? Whatever it is, there is a lot of "covering up" that we do before we come to our sense of justice and normality. If we had covered up starting from a different point, we would have had a different set of conventions, a different dance to dance.

2. Imagine a world where academic people, researchers, do not depend on grants and scholarships to conduct their research and make their livelihood. What if only filthy rich people got into academia? Then, no one could pressurize them to finish their dissertation or book in a couple of years. They would have the required financial independence to prolong their projects until the project comes to its own fruition. The thoughts would come to them, and not viceversa. They would incorporate all the boredom, the deviations, the alterations of their moods, their natural growth into their works. This financial independence, more importantly, would give them freedom from the political status quo, the norms of bureaucracy, including the norms of scholarship. Perhaps then the quality of the works coming out of our academic institutions would also be a lot higher. Money is indeed underrated.

3. What if none of our languages had the active voice, and we conversed only with passive voice? We might not be better off, but perhaps we would've checked a lot of uncalled-for aggression in us.

Pet Peeve

I cannot stand someone insulting my intelligence. This happens especially when the other person tries to deceive me. I am not implying that it is impossible to deceive me, but only that when something is uncovered as deception, it no longer continues to be one. The deception itself or the intent behind it is not something totally bad by itself. I am no such purist. In fact, an immaculate deception has always intrigued my fancy. But the audacity or the stupidity to think that I will not figure out that I am being deceived hurts my intelligence. (I experienced this recently when grading papers of students (and I have also experienced this time and again dealing with different people). One Lisa thought that I could not differentiate between a Kant and a Lisa!)
Sometimes, I get the feeling that the deceiver knows that I know that I am being deceived. But then he tries to play this inarticulate game with me. He goes along with the deception, hoping that I will suppress this knowledge for some unknown reason against my own better sense. As if with a wink of an eye he can seduce me into his world, and then leave me stumped in the real world! In such cases, it is really a plea which says either that "Come on! You know how things are, you know how it is.. just pretend that you do not know what I am doing." Or that, "Come on... you have deceived and lied in the past too... you understand the need!" Sure I do, but I was the deceiver then! And I did not get caught!

Thoughts after 5 pm

1. The mark of being a great philosopher is that no thought, no sense, no nonsense, no action, should elude you. You should have surveyed the whole at that decisive moment of conception. After that, everything else is at your mercy. You are the potter who molds the clay. The world is your child, which will listen to you if you speak its dialect.
2. A scholar not only demands that you tell him something, but also that you mention to him aloud that you are telling that thing. He does not just open his eyes, but he really opens his eyes wide. He demands that you wear yourself on your sleeve.
3. In this sense, all of Western society since the beginning of its history has been 'scholarly'. The arguments, the debates, the philosophies, the archives, the psychoanalysis, the demand for freedom and individuality -- all as signs of giving to itself what it has already given to itself.
4. The non-scholarly Eastern society is for this reason not properly documented. Hence it risks losing itself to the clarity of the West.
5. The demand for scholarly clarity is ultimately a demand for completing one's death. It is a question of health - to seal this death off in order to inaugurate a new birth. But the Eastern wisdom believes that there is no death and no new birth, that in the demand for closure something vital irretrievably escapes the vicinity of the self - life. Hence the shifting and fluid individuality of the Eastern self.
6. Wittgenstein is to analytic philosophy what Christ is to Christianity. Both individuals were counter-factuals with respect to their followers.
7. It is true that the sense of what is written is not entirely at the hands of the writer. It awaits an appropriation and interpretation by its reader. This reader may be this very writer who has now dipped his pen in a different ink.

Very classical, very pristine, very rubbish (roobbish), very soapy, very British

One sure way to tell whether a nation is on the ascendency or descendency is to see how they perform, at the global arena, at their favorite sport(s). That's how the Greeks understood it; and if you look at the performances at Olympic Games in the last 50 or so years, you can tell the difference between India and China...

But be that as it may, let us talk about the servants of the Queen - the British. Anyone who has followed the exploits of the English in recent decades knows it is a bit of a nonsense. Now, I don't want to just bring out the negativities, although there are no positives to speak of, especially since I am not a getting-carried-away English journalist. I even have a soft corner for these sportsmen, especially since I have a habit of rooting for teams that don't win.

Take football for instance: the likes of Shearer, Beckham, Owen, Shelton, Rooney, Sherringham - all superstars on paper - can't win a bloooody international tournament! And most of these guys are already retiring. The only time England won the world cup was in 1966 at home soil. But they have no chance of winning anything outside, especially since they are able find a lot of excuses for their losses. But what makes this worse is their shameless, and quite stupid, media. They look at their sportsmen through high-powered lenses and bloat up what is really a speck. The sportsmen then convince themselves that they really are that good, they roll the drumbeat, but they never come on stage! They end up being whisperers and gossipers applauding a Brazil, a Argentina, a Italy, a Germany, and even recommending them to knighthoods. True servants!

But their cricket team is perhaps worse. The cricket media even. (Recently, I came across a headline on BBC (days before England's tour to NZ)which read: "Sidebottom refuses to be complacent"... is this bravery? who accepts to be complacent, anyway?) The last good English team had Botham, Lamb, Gower and Gooch. Since then it has been a big joke. They have repeatedly convinced themselves that Australia are really interested in playing Ashes against them. And so whenever they lose a series to a lesser team the captain ejects an excuse, "It is a learning experience... we are preparing for the Ashes". Bollocks! The Australian A team of the last 20 years could have beaten any English team of the same era. Yes, the 2005 Ashes victory was a fluke. No wonder all the English bowling heroes of that series are no longer in the team anymore.

The ENG. team's one-day style of playing is again stuck in the 80s. The only change now is that they do not mind wearing colored clothes, and they have stopped complaining that the new white ball swings too much. Not to mention all the tourist-like wicketkeepers and openers of the last decade, who pay a visit to the team and leave for some other business after just one series. Then the ridiculous coach ('Duncan Fletcher' -- was that guy for real?), then Ashley Giles!
And who has not giggled every now and then at their funny sounding names and totally-undeserving-favorite-player-nicknames? Sidebottom, Gilo (who also goes by 'Ash' and the 'King of Spain' - I am so glad there is an 'a' in Spain!), Athers, Banger, Bloodaxe (Ramprakash!). Even their beloved mediaman has a nickname - 'Aggers' - who lacks any independent perspective, but is a cheerleader for the team. Both the team and the media are awakened to reality, when an esteemed rival player (whom they will recommend to a knighthood, I'll bet) reminds them of this. How sad is this?

But let us the enjoy this travesty! The show must go on...

Life's cliches

It is a common cliche to note that the artist needs an occasion or a pretext which inspires him to let his creative juices out. The main fear of the artist is that he will internalize himself, which will result in his creative forces turning inward and burdening his back with a sack full of indispensibles. What lacks a context never takes birth, becomes a scholar, and ends up burning within itself like a dark inextingishable flame.

Perhaps, it is a cliche too to note that almost all of us live life without being born? We - artists without contexts, sailors without seas - we are life's cliches.