Mystical Hoo Hah

One of my neighbours is a avid practitioner of yoga, so much so in fact that she's training to become a teacher of that ancient and venerable art.  One assumes then that she must be quite good at it.  When not bending, stretching and contemplating, she is just your everyday London 30-something - i.e. likes a drink and a fag.  This dichotomy fascinates me.

I remember years ago, the husband of a friend of mine was something in the world of tai chi.  There was no apparent dichotomy in this chap.  He practised obsessively, ate nothing that he wasn't prepared to kill first himself (no, really), drank no alcohol and generally led the life of a trainee acetic.  He was very well regarded by the tai chi cognoscenti too.  There was talk of him being put forward if the old slow kung fu made it into The Oympics.  He was no slouch when it came to tai chiing then.  But there was a dichotomy when you got close enough to him: he was by far and away the most uptight human being I've ever met.  You could just feel the unease seeping out of him like sweat.

If he could become a master of tai chi, then all its claims to afford insight and calm to its adherents were clearly bullshit.  The truth of the matter is slightly more material and prosaic then the ancients would have us believe.  If you're born with some natural aptitude and practice hard enough, you'll get good.  You don't need to dismantle the ego and assume your place in the cosmic consciousness first either; you just need to get up early, put on a pair of jogging bottoms and get on with it.

This realisation was initially quite disspiriting for me.  They really doesn't appear to be anything beyond the objective material "out there" that our senses assure us exists.  Transcendence is very probably an accident of sentience, a result of neurons randomly firing-off, as many scientists also now believe dreams to be.  We used to ascribe great significance to dreams, didn't we?  But now most informed, rational observers of neural science agree that they almost certainly mean fuck-all.

Be still, my beating ar5e

Well, that was an intense evening.  I jollied along to Orient last night for the second leg of the League One play-offs.  All went as planned and Orient prevailed.  It did remind me, though, of why I don't attend football matches.  It was two hours of nerve-shredding confusion and anxiety.

I have, even if I say so myself, a "footballing brain" as it's termed.  I see the game well, its territorial aspects etc.  A lot of schoolboy footballers, while technically adept, have no feel for the sport.  They look at their feet, the ball and about 20 feet of turf in front of them.  And their reaction to receiving the ball is always the same: running with it.  You'll never develop into a useful footballer with that world view.  One needs to look up and assess the situation.  You only pin back your lugs and give it the full Forest Gump if the lie of the land demands it.

Despite my sang-foid on the pitch, when spectating, I'm a gibbering wreck.  It's just a blur of colours and sounds.  All I can do is tremble and swear.  I cannot follow the game at all.  It's like trying to watch a production of The Cherry Orchard from a roller coaster.  The see the action, but it doesn't really sink in; the nuances are lost.

Unfortunately, my torment isn't over.  We're off to Wembley en bloc on Sunday week for the final.  For everyone else this will be like a works outing, full of drunken laughter and tears.  But for me it's the emotional equivalent of Cain carrying a burning-hot cauldron in the opening credits of "Kung Fu".  If you're under 80, you might need to Google that neo-classical reference.

I'll try to maintain a phlegmatic expression, but the beads of sweat on my brow and quivering lips will tell their own story.  - I come in peace...up, The Os.