This is gonna have to be a fast blog... theoretically, I'm working. As always.
Yesterday came the news I half expected, half dreaded, half resisted. I was in a mind and a half last night, let me tell you. Having spent most of my life in two minds over any and everything, it's an improvement. If I can just get the voices to lay off for a while, I'll be on a winner. Just me and the birdsong.
Jeffery's gone... from the purple, at least. I was surprised at my reaction, to be honest. Sadness, and a feeling best described by that howling wind noise in that Supertramp song about the Quietest Moments, I think it was. No youtube today, though. No cheesy distractions... just a quiet chat with a few friends about life and things that pass.
I admit to a discussion here at work a week back with a couple of blokes I enjoy talking footy with. They mentioned Jeffery and retiring and I said I thought he was a 50 / 50 chance of staying on. I hate it when the other 50 bites you on the arse like that. The fact is, Jeff's been a high risk proposition, as I see it, for the last couple of years. Not in my eyes, and yours too, I guess, but in the eyes of those who have to weigh up the options and make those cold and hard decisions about team balance and progress. We have to trust and respect them in that... they're paid to do it, they love to do it but they also have to do it. I saw Harves negotiate another of those excruciatingly embarrassing by association Zempilas moments last night and he looks to have grown into the media role of the job really well... he smoothly, easily, steered Zempilas away from the predictable and small minded agenda about discipline and suggested we remember Jeff the player for the magic he brought to the game. He suggested that the modern trend in the game is leaving players like Jeff behind, including the sanitisation of it all.
I suggest, friends, that we do the same. We've been priviledged to have called our own, one of the most electrifying characters the game has seen. It's been an absolute pleasure to have been a part of this man's playing career and to have celebrated some of those magic moments with him. Who hasn't done a little Purple Jesus of their own in the crowd from time to time, eh? Or perhaps a little frantic jig of excitement because you just don't know what to do with yourself because of it all... these are the things we relish, we can trot these memories out and savour them as we wish, but ultimately guys, we have to let go and move on.
The Bhuddists advise us that attachment leads to suffering. Any bloke my age who's gone goggle eyed over a twenty something girl at the local shops / cafe / bar knows exactly what that's about.... well, some of what it's about, anyway. When we attach emotion to something, we invest part of ourselves in it... and the risk is always there that we might never get that part of ourselves back. Despite that, we continue to take part in that glorious dance anyway... and we wouldn't have it any other way, would we? It's life, after all.... but we need to remember the suffering part of the equation because that's where we find ourselves, our true nature... yeah, I admit it, I'm a bit of a bloody Bhuddist, really. I quite fancy the idea of sitting under a tree living on nothing but fresh air and sunshine for years, communing with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and all that.... but it gets in the way of footy season, so bugger it.
So, if you've become a bit lost in there somewhere, what I'm saying is... let him go gracefully, remember all of it, the special, shining incandescant things that Jeffery Farmer casually plucked out nowhere and placed, carefully, on centre stage for us to marvel at. Remember also, the flawed genius at work... the brain snaps, the involuntary actions which carried a weight of repercussion we can never know fully ourselves.
Best of all, though, is the humour. Most of the time, Jeffery was toying with it all and loving it, lapping it up,playing to the crowd because he could and that's how I want to remember him as a player... the consummate showman plying his trade.
How silly, in the big picture, that we should attach such importance, such weight of emotion, on the shoulders of one player. How perfectly human it is, though, to do that. Good onya Jeff, you little bloody ripper. All the best to you in the future, life after footy could be challenging with a career like that behind you. You'd come out of a career like that well equipped, though, to guide others.You've been an inspiration already, after all.