It’s all so gorgeously disorienting. Pleasure comes from the most unexpected sources. Every team is pulling a fast one on us, or really, they’ve been there under our noses the whole time as we allowed ourselves to keep watching ghost versions of them, reflections of who we wanted them to be. I pride myself on not falling prey to stereotypes of national identify, and yet I’ve been as exposed as anyone for holding nonsensical notions. Right now, we can’t trust our eyes. Or actually we can only trust our eyes, and nothing else.
After watching Germany’s last couple of games I have no idea what is real and what I’m creating out of some sort of heady liberation from my preconceived notions and my senses. All I know is we might only have another 90 minutes to watch it happen. So we need to keep our eyes peeled. They’re moving fast; they’ll dummy us all if we’re not careful. As for me, it’s clear I can’t trust myself. I am under various spells and being acted on by various forces. The first opiate: bandwagon fumes. I’ve always been susceptible, it's the curse of the contrarian. So driven by my own resistance to what is popular that the harder I fight the harder I fall. The spring from my own resistance has a momentum of its own. Perspective is lost.
