No mourning here, @#$%&! that shit, no one died, no bodies, no shock of a hand never to be held, lips not to be kissed, warmth lost to time and dirt... none of that - and that's the thing, that's what keeps the bluebaggers ready to stand and cheer again, the days roll on, the sun returns and we will stand again at the MCG beers in hand and sing that damn @#$%&! song... its just not going to be easy, that's all - and isn't that the point, the thrill, isn't that the exact ingredient this once mighty club forgot - it isn't easy - oh look at us in the 60's, growing worst in the 70's and 80's and then reaching the dizzing height sof blistering boils of schadenfreude with fat old Elliot popping them with the tip of his fabricated cigar - oh lets be truthful here at the end of another disaster, we thought it was @#$%&! easy. We thought it was ours for the taking, little bluebaggers Admans and Eves plucking GF apples like 70's hippies picking magiuc mushrooms - it was trippy, unreal and for us bluebaggers, not sustainable - and so the great fall - and how many books warn of the fall...well we fell.
But - and here is the point, the not mourning (besides the lack of a decomposing corpse, or failed love interest, or the old dog needing to be buried in the soil under the Sycamore tree, we are not dead. If this season has taught me 1 thing - we are not dead, its just...and this is maybe the hardest part for us, it just not that easy to be the best but look at us...we lost, yep, we are teased and tortured, finger-pointed and laughed at but we are not helpless, not a shambles, not a freefalling comet burning up in its own inflated grandiose dreams, we are Carlton and we are building...
So no, not mourning, anger, yep...plenty of that, we should have won both the final games and then there were other moments that glitter at night in the mind like black pearls hit with the light of what could have been!
But not dead. We are not dead. I thought we were, really, I remember saying to my son "this club is goning the way of Old Fitzroy, its irrelevant, its stuck in the past, its ready to be buried...I was wrong.
We breathe. We hurt
but we also inflicted pain this year!
We showed real growth.
We are back...what we now have to understand is that we are back with the others, being back does not mean we have returned to that shining moment of plucking apples at will. Those days are dead and buried. But we are alive and we are developing...make the right choices...have a hint of luck and who knows, the next apple might not be as far away as we think.
This year I loved the footy, even that last damn game, there were moments, I mean that third...@#$%&! me...so no, not mourning, accepting, the road back is always harder then the fall. So I am angry and yet...and yet I wait for the summer to slowly erase the pain and I look forward to the New Year, the new hope, the new games..I love this damn football club and I think, I just think, its growing back into something worth loving.
_________________ This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!
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