A Morose Story

 

"Let the accidents lead you

And let cool heavenly breeze inspire you

And let your soul float in peaceful rhythm of today

Let's wait for the day to come

The day destined to delight you"

Destiny is blind,

To embellish our failure,

To cover all the shortcomings,

we decided to deceive ourselves,

Falling into decades of passiveness...

Decades of insanity,

Decades of immaculate docility. 

Let the accidents lead your life

And they will suck you dry in blind alleys

And that's the morose story of 

The blind leading the blind. 

pedram 25 March

Learning Valuable Lessons

After nearly two decades' experience of European football, Gary Neville recognises the lessons being learned by United’s youngsters this season – and he tips them to benefit in the long-term…
I think the younger players in our squad will take a lot out of this season.The likes of Smalling, Jones, Rafael, Fabio, Cleverley and De Gea will learn some invaluable lessons. When I and the other young lads of the time started touring around Europe in our early days, we had it the same. In my first game, we were knocked out of Europe by Torpedo Moscow!

There’s a subtlety and an attention to detail you need in Europe. You’re talking about football where inches matter and being yards out of position matter, whereas the Premier League can be a little more forgiving. In Europe opponents are more ruthless, more clinical in front of goal and you can find that you have nobody to mark for large periods of the game because they try and play in-between you, so it’s great experience.

I remember it when we were young lads too; it’s just something you have to go through. We were taken to school for three years in Europe from 1996 through to 1999, particularly by Juventus at times, and these are the lessons that you can see being taught to some of our younger lads this year.

We’ve got a lot of youth in the squad – just look at the team that started against Ajax at Old Trafford – and this is a great learning curve for these ladsl. The manager has said this a number of times in the changing room down the years: whenever you think you’re doing ok in a European game, that’s the point to switch on, because you can find you’re doing well and suddenly you’ve gone from 1-0 up to 1-2 down in five minutes.

Even in my later years I was finding this out. I was playing in Munich in my mid-30s and we were coasting, and then I gave away a stupid handball on the edge of the area and they scored from the free-kick. Five minutes later they scored again and we lost a game we’d been comfortable in. Even in your mid-30s they still catch you out. You think of that Bayern Munich team we beat to win the Treble in 1999, it was one of the most experienced teams that has played in European competition, yet their world collapsed in three minutes.

It’s an underachievement when you get to three finals in four years, then don’t get past the group stage, but these are great experiences for the young lads. I wouldn’t be surprised if the manager picks a lot of them again against Bilbao, because they need the experience and also because the Premier League has to be the priority. The manager may think that we may as well go to school in Europe all year and let the lads learn on the job.

The only way you learn European football is by playing games and getting to the point where you start to absorb lessons. The manager knows he’s got talented young players who are going to be with the club for a number of years, and I think that this year has almost been a step back to go forwards in Europe. You get the fruits of your labour eventually and these lads have huge talent, but for now it’s all learning and getting experience.

@manutd.com

My Album Of The Month (December 2011)

My Bloody Valentine (Loveless 1991)

Landmark in the history of Shoegazing genre. I like the dynamism spread in this album. The rhythm and tempo is splendid and the vocals are catchy. It’s interesting to know what a huge sound engineering process has been behind this project, at cost of approximately 250,000 $. 

My Author of The Month (December 2011)

Stig Daggerman has had the touch of magic on my soul, irritably shaking the core with his shockingly direct and masterfully aggressive style. Daggerman epitomize the very simple and defenseless intellectual exposed to harsh reality of 20^th century. Sweden, his homeland was passing a crucial period with much pressure hinging on the laborer and low-income. Anarchism and syndicalism was surging all across the Europe stir up the calm nature of region. Joining syndicalism was the fruit of a complicated political/social background which is less dignified. Like all well-known public black-outs, a surging interest in his works has appeared since 1980s and a reward is called to his honor. He was the full-view representative of intellectuals highly affected in the wake of post-world war II era. His writings convey the themes of existentialism via artfully expressed feelings of fear and uncertainty. Imagine Kierkegaard’s level of consciousness stripped of all intangible chase for spirituality (Kierkegaard’s 2^nd and 3^rd layers) more focused on aesthetics of social conducts and family affairs instead.

I think something, an unknown factor still dominates his lines, haunting the reader. Definitely Dagerman’s family life and emotional conflicts have made the fair ground for his outstanding streak of writing to flow. I’ve spent a number of my desolation days with the highly emotive pulsation of Daggerman’s “Snake” under my skin. Feeling insecure lonely and hopeless is not a heavenly gift but admittedly has yielded some literary masterpieces, as history has shown.

I spent some pleasant time with Stig Dagerman's short stories in december. pedram

Limbic

“When the child then runs through the garden it thinks all the time about the river and the boat and the fish who are swimming and nobody whispers to it that it has eight minutes to live and that the boat shall remain where it rests all day and many days thereafter.”

Stig Dagerman

Closure

Small table
Back corner
Stark bar
He'd have nod off


Ghosts of the beloved...
Would have greeted him
Angels of oblivion
Would have embraced him
pedram

My Album of The Month (November 2011)

A decent post-rock album by german band "Collapse Under The Empire". The duo manage to conjure up a perfect blend.Shoulders & Giants is the first half of a two-part concept work that thematically deals with the human existence, the dream of advancement, a life of absolute freedom, isolation, and death. The album is bleak and severe, but subtly lit from within with touches of hope and beauty. It immerses the listener in the sensation of being alone in the mountains and crevasses of an arctic environment – the harshness of the bitter solace, the joy at the soaring beauty of nature’s splendour.

United: Adapting To Adversity

When Manchester United are at their fluent attacking best Sir Alex Ferguson's players delight in confounding opponents by frequently, if temporarily, interchanging roles. Invariably wonderful to watch, such positional rotation is something only very good teams dare indulge in. Moreover their managers tend to ensure that these fluid interludes of movement are firmly underpinned by the reassuring presence of tactical safety nets.

Under enemy fire, leading sides usually revert to default starting formations with defenders deployed conventionally and even free spirits in the Wayne Rooney or Dimitar Berbatov moulds detailed to perform specific marking tasks. Yet as Ferguson prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday on Saturday he knows that so many pieces of United's basic framework have recently required patching up with ill‑fitting parts that he has little option but to improvise for entire 90-minute stretches.
With 11 senior players – including the long‑term absentees Nemanja Vidic and Darren Fletcher – occupying the Old Trafford treatment room the phrase "positional rotation" has assumed a whole new meaning as United's fit squad members are asked to pretend they are Ajax-type "total footballers".
If Michael Carrick and Patrice Evra cannot be described as exactly "ersatz" centre‑halves, the fact that Ferguson's team played much of their 5-0 Boxing Day thrashing of Wigan Athletic with the midfielder and the left-back paired at the heart of defence can only have warmed Roberto Mancini's heart. Even so, Manchester City's manager knows that a wounded United represents a most dangerous enemy. Since his side humiliated Ferguson's men 6-1 at Old Trafford in October, their neighbours have proceeded to win eight of the subsequent nine Premier League games, the last two 5-0.
Yet if fielding a talented winger such as Antonio Valenica at right-back and again promoting the hitherto unwanted Darron Gibson from the reserves to central midfield, clearly did not cramp United's style against Wigan, greater challenges await. The prospect of being without a cadre of key performers during a January programme featuring tricky league trips to Newcastle and Arsenal could conceivably cost United the title.
Pointing out that they now stand level on points with City at the top of the table, Evra takes a rather less gloomy view. Although Chris Smalling and Phil Jones may well recover in time to man the centre-half stations against Blackburn on Saturday, the France international is confident he and Carrick could, once again, prove able deputies.
"At United, the team is the star," says Evra. "That's why you can put me and Michael Carrick at centre-back and we're still going to win. It's about the team effort and the team spirit and that's why I'm confident. The United spirit is that you can play everywhere, in any position. No other side has United's spirit. That's why I'm so proud to play here."
There have been blips along the way but Evra now regards the Champions League exit to Basel as a disguised blessing. "It was a big disappointment when we went out early," he says. "But it was a wake-up call; maybe everyone looked at themselves in the mirror and said 'we can do much better'. What the fans expect of every player, we're all doing now. We're working hard. Nothing is easy but we have to keep our momentum going and trust each other."
If such endeavour is thrilling Ferguson, his side surely cannot keep on exceeding the sum of their currently out of position parts. "The injuries start to be annoying," acknowledges Evra. "We want everyone fit if we want to win the league." The fear inside Old Trafford is that history could be in recycling mode. With the manager's room for January transfer market manoeuvre presumably restricted by the gargantuan debt imposed on the club by the Glazer family, memories have been rewinding almost 14 years.
Despite at one stage enjoying an 11-point lead over Arsenal, a rash of injuries variously afflicting Peter Schmeichel, Gary Pallister, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt in March 1998 saw Ferguson forced to ultimately concede the title to Arsène Wenger.
Coming second to Mancini would hurt more but the Glaswegian is often at his most innovative when backed into corners. "United can adapt to adversity," argues Roberto Martínez, Wigan's manager. "They have the mentality every other team wants. Anyone wanting to win the league has to better United's mentality."
Louise Taylor
@Guardian