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Six of Wands
Why Maradona?
Well, I liked the photograph, and being Argentinian by birth, people are always asking me what I think of Maradona. He's a small but persistent part of my conversational topics :) I guess I never liked the original Waite/Pamela Coleman Smith illustration of warriors coming home from battle. I found it too distant and remote and so on.
I like the ephemeral nature of sports victories, they tend to last for all of a week until it's time to play the next team and so on. I liked the fact that so much is made of these sand-castle victories, the frenzy, the complete abstraction of it all... sports victories are victories in the most distilled sense. In war, one can usually measure one's gains: a pathway to the sea, a mountain, increased trading rights, whatever you like. In sports victories, people feel triumphant on the strength of having backed team A rather than team B. I find all this "here today-gone tomorrow" stuff to be very wand-like.
Having started off by mentioning all this, I find Maradona with his see-saw life of glory and ignominy to be the ultimate example of the intangibility of success (well... he's probably set for life, money-wise, but that's not the point). I think it's amazing that millions of people around the world can lionize him and just as quickly and fervently turn around and despise him, and all because he can be pretty good at kicking a ball in the right direction.
I like the way he seems to be amazed at the wands... victory can sometimes feel like that, a whole world opening up that was not really visible or tangible before... a bit like growing up and finding yourself thinking older thoughts that you didn't realize were possible. A chunk of your mind opening itself up, like a secret room.