The watch on the wrist makes a ping noise, BBC notification: The football great PELE has died, aged 82 and the Israelite Hospital Albert Einstein in Sao Paolo, Brasil.
Most of us had never seen him play or watched TV images of his play, or may not be even international soccer fans, but one name we all knew PELE from BRASIL. It is also an example of International Grief felt for someone who lives only in your imagination or magical memory.
this reminded me very much of the soliloquy by Macbeth which I had memorized as a child .
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow’, Spoken by Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
While Chief Crowfoot and William Shakespeare reminds us of the evanescence of life, fear and reprieve and punishment in case of Macbeth, it does not give us a sense of loosing someone of the stature of PELE, all across the continents ..
France has a fecund local and regional and international journalism and in this regional newspaper, like in every single newspaper published in France, the headlines featured PELE
They remembered his hat trick against France when he entered the international arena as a 17 year old in 1958..
I also carry in my heart the funeral oration given by the great UmonHon chief UnPaToNga Big Elk
Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, and always comes out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past, and cannot be prevented, should not be grieved for. Be not discouraged nor displeased, that in visiting your father here, you have lost your chief. A misfortune of this kind, under such afflicting circumstances, may never again befall you;
Those of us in the millions who grew up so far away from Brasil and Pele, what makes this man so endeared that tears come to our eyes at the thought of his death?
Strangely enough I received this article about GRIEF this morning. Humans and Nature, an article about Apprentice with Sorrow by Francis Weller..
Grief is more than an emotion; it is also a faculty of being human. It is a skill that must be developed, or we will find ourselves migrating to the margins of our lives in hopes of avoiding the inevitable entanglements with loss. Through the rites of grief, we are ripened as human beings. Grief invites gravity and depth into our world. We possess the profound capacity to metabolize sorrow into something medicinal for our soul and the soul of the community. The skill of grieving well enables us to become current—to live in the present moment and be available to the electricity of life. We gradually turn our attention to what is here, now, and less on our need to repair history. We remember we are more verb than noun, more a jumpy rhythm, a wild song, a fluid leap than a fixed thing in space. As Spanish poet, Jaime Gil de Biedma said, “I believed I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”
to live in the present and be available to the electricity of life..
the present looms large and permanent, not the evanescence of a buffalo's breath or a story told by an idiot signifying nothing.
It is also our faculty of being human
We mourn for Pele because we are human beings. I close my eyes and think of the square and the walk towards the museum in Santos in my only visit to that place where his 100 year old mother still lives.
Strangely enough, when I heard Brasil has lost their bid in the WorldCup in Qatar, I imagined the feeble heart of Pele breaking and his spirit dying,
His physical body is dead. Pele born under very trying circumstances became an universal icon, from Minais Gerais to the world ..
PS If you are deeply involved in the present, you would begin to see the banality of the behaviour of so many people around you as they march to their permanent oblivion .. avoid these people, attach yourself to people who maximize every breath, are considerate to other human beings, not angry or jealous and have some sort of connection with this universe.
