German Fußball trainer, Sepp Herberger, is famous for, among other things, pithy quotes that have a cult status in Germany. Like American baseball legend, Yogi Berra, Sepp always seemed to be able to sum up a situation in a way that transcended the everyday and became timeless. His well known quotes often don't mean anything at all, but are like zen koans in their meaninglessness. Some examples:
Der Ball ist rund.
Das Spiel dauert neunzig Minuten.
Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel.
They remind me of a saying I've always attributed to Donny Hathaway, "Everything is Everything." It's a point of view that I've been thinking about a lot today at the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia. Yesterday I had a very high protein breakfast because of some confusion about spirals and caracolas. Today I saw how Gaudi used the snail as a symbol of Nature and the mathmatical structure of the snail as the foundation of many of the miraculously complex forms that repeat throughout his design. It all seems very profound to me right now and I can only say, "The ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes."
Everything is, indeed, everything.
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2 comments:
So, Chris, you actually consumed those caracols at breakfast?
Sepp Herberger's saying, "Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel," was also used as part of the prologue to the film "Lola Rennt" ("Run, Lola, Run"), which I happened to see yesterday. Its themes of parallel worlds and outcomes that vary with small changes in previous events are more like spreading ripples in a pond than spirals, but still similar.
"Wherever you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai.
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