Sport offers the opportunity to observe, as well as to participate in our own right, to varying degrees, in the process of achieving a very simply definable, but oh not so simply achievable goal. In essence, this goal is crossing. Of various barriers, obstacles; sometimes only one, and sometimes an entire set of them; sometimes objective, and sometimes – very subjective ones. Ones that are not necessarily easily and unambiguously identifiable, but are easily perceptible. Sport is, in its very essence, an embodiment of one of the most basic, of simply fundamental, principles of being in this world. Everything is change, and through interdependence – individual changes gain vectors, merge into currents, and produce results. Along the way, various, seemingly separate and stable wholes are created; doomed to oblivion, but still handy. Some would argue that the sorrow at these wholes when they fall apart is completely unnecessary. I must confess, I always feel tempted to disfigure the mugs of the authors of such claims – since they would not feel any sorrow. But where was I... sport. Huge congratulations to Iga. (or, Ms Iga, perhaps).

In the context of his new book, Radek Rak told Michał Nogaś that a man can be once – or more than once – a pupa, a chrysalis, if you will, and then someone completely new. I’m not sure about the “completely”. It feels to me that everything is always, somehow, somewhat, incomplete, but a man happens to be a pupa every now and then, and again, for sure.

Pupa is the Latin word for chrysalis. I wonder if Gombrowicz took this into account.