I Compare my Father to Ilie Nastase

Father was positive and paranoid and pissed that the bomb would destroy the world, so he sold calendars of flowers and buttons of peace: Make Love, Not War. That meant, in part, that he loved many women. It was said he could charm the socks off a corpse. He wrote the mother of his children a letter to inoculate everyone from pain. Bertrand Russell and all that. The nuclear family and all that. The larger community more important. Your own children not more important than any other children. Your husband or wife not more important than any other lover of life. Snap.

Nastase’s racquet a wand, his Charlie Chaplin slapstick. The wagging of fingers, racquets, body parts. He could hit any shot, stretch any rule like a rubber band. My father, too, liked to stretch rules. If someone was not at home on Halloween, trick or treat meant he would either steal their front porch light or turn on their hose full blast. Being shy made me do all those crazy things on court. To get rid of the shyness I had to perform. On tour he slept with over 2,500 women. Life as profound, as performative, as a joke, a shower: you have one every day, it feels good, then you forget it, you see? When we think of great artistic talents, Nastase’s right there with Federer, McEnroe. When we think of the great competitors, Nastase’s a mere impish Cupid, a smile of mischief waiting to cross his face, his mind an adolescent boy’s rubber band. The world waiting to be bombed, entertained. Snap.  

About the Artist:

Born in the French Pyrenees, Miki de Goodaboom moved to Goettingen, Germany at age 19 to study mathematics and physics. After graduating, she worked for many years in German industry as a mathematician and consultant until she moved to Spain, Andalucia, where she lives now. A self-taught artist, Miki kept creating more and more art until it finally became her full-time profession. She most enjoys painting sport themes since she loves movement and the challenge of reducing it to 2 dimensions on paper or canvas. If you check out her countless “Sport Art” paintings and posters on her website, you will see almost 300 images from the entire world of sport. But as you can see from her website, she loves to paint almost anything she encounters in the world.

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