V e r i t a s . S o p h i a . I u s t i t i a

Inconsistent and disappointing. Hope to improve...

Sunday.

By some stroke of happenstance and pure symmetry, the day I finished my hundredth book since I started this blog, I also watched my hundredth film. Here's to the next century...

After a Federer-like season last year, in which she thoroughly dominated the women’s tour (she won 10 titles including two majors as well as the WTA Championships), Justine Henin’s unexpected immediate retirement a fortnight before the French Open left a gapping vacuum at the very top of women’s tennis. Just what was the extent of Henin’s supremacy when she retired? Consider this: she was more than a thousand ranking points ahead of then world number two Maria Sharapova when she quit the sport and right after she did so, there was immediately a four horse race for the top spot she had vacated. Sharapova took over the number one ranking for the French Open fortnight but so close behind her were Serbians Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic and her Russian compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova that whoever won the French Open would immediately top the rankings as well. In the end it was Ivanovic who was the last woman standing at Roland Garros and the 16th woman to hold the world number one spot. Still, the first question that pundits were asking before Ivanovic even had time to lift her maiden Grand Slam trophy was how long she could hold on to the top spot. After all, she’s still relatively unproven on grass and with Wimbledon loaming in another two weeks, her reign at the top might prove to be a very short one. It is probably with that in mind that she’s entered the pre-Wimbledon warm-up tournament at Eastbourne to familiarize herself with the green stuff.

Also gearing up at Eastbourne for her run at a second Wimbledon title is new mum Lindsay Davenport. The veteran American has swept every minor tournament she’s entered since her return to the tour last year, but make no mistake about it, Davenport did not cut short her maternity leave to win a few trophies at places no one’s ever heard of. The three-time major champion shrewdly declined to play at the French Open where she has as much chance of winning as Roger Federer as long as Nadal is alive so that she could concentrate her energy into preparing for the one major she believes she still has a shot at winning again. Other than Ivanovic and Davenport though, none of the other legitimate contenders for the Wimbledon crown have deigned to enter Eastbourne and the tournament that was once regarded as a launch pad to Wimbledon glory has lost much of its gravitas and relevance. The real favorites for the Wimbledon title are far too busy shopping at Old Bond Street for suitably glamorous accessories to wear onto centre court.

Defending champion Venus Williams will go into the tournament as the favorite for her fifth title with little sister Serena not far behind. Both endured completely incomprehensible early defeats at Roland Garros but Wimbledon seems to bring out the best in the Williams sisters, who together have brought home the Venus Rosewater Dish for six of the last eight years. As long as they survive the early rounds (who else but the sisters would even dare use the first week of a major to play themselves into form), they will be the players to beat. The elder Williams has yet to win a title this year but it’s practically written in the constellations that from late June to early July that Venus is rising. Another player who finds her best form on grass is Maria Sharapova who started the year in blistering fashion, winning the Australian Open without dropping a set. Since then her level of play has dipped somewhat but she’s the only player not named Williams who’s ever beaten a Williams sister in a Wimbledon final (that was 2004 against Serena) and the quick grass surface plays to her style of power tennis. Finally let’s not forget the other Serb, Jelena Jankovic, who is as consistently tenacious as she is consistently injured. She’ll probably come into the Championships held together by scotch tape but it’ll still take a hell of a high caliber opponent to knock her out. And last of all, let’s hope the stylish Amelie Mauresmo can regain the form and self-belief that won her the 2006 title and give us some reprieve from mindless ball bashing that characterizes the women’s game today.

The main Wimbledon warm-up tournaments for the men have been played and no one’s surprised at who’s emerged as the front-runners for the most coveted prize in tennis- Roger Federer clinched his fifth title at Halle without dropping a set or even losing his serve once while Rafael Nadal captured his first career grass court title at Queen’s Club in London. Federer will be relieved to finally be back playing (and winning) on his beloved grass courts. After all, much as he will deny he's in a bit of a slump, the world’s number one player has endured a rather mediocre season thus far, winning just one minor title (Estoril) before this week and losing more matches in the last six months than he’s lost in the last two years. And even if he really didn’t think he was in the doldrums, all the press speculation about his waning aura of invincibility, coupled with suffering the most humiliating loss in a Grand Slam he’s ever had at hands of arch-nemesis Rafael Nadal in the French Open final cannot have had no negative psychological effect on him. Furthermore, don’t think for a moment that he doesn’t know that Nadal is catching up on him on grass at a more ferocious pace than he is covering the gap between them on clay. If anything, the French Open final showed that the gap is now a chasm, and the competition they beat to win their respective titles last week might well suggest Nadal could be the player to beat at Wimbledon and not Federer. Whereas Federer did not face a single opponent ranked in the top 20 en-route to the title at Halle (his opponent in the final was the 40th ranked Philipp Kohlschreiber), at Queen’s Club, Nadal quite soundly beat the 2004 and 2005 Wimbledon runner-up and world number 6 Andy Roddick in the semifinals and in a final between the champions of the first two majors of the year, he came from set point down in both sets to record a straight-sets victory over the red-hot Novak Djokovic, the third ranked player in the world.

Still, in three of the four years that Roddick won at Queen’s Club, Roger Federer went on to properly manhandle him at Wimbledon, and he did match Bjorn Borg’s record of five consecutive Wimbledon titles last year, so it’s hard not to put the Swiss master down as the favorite for the Championships. However, make no mistake about it, Rafael Nadal is riding on some serious momentum at the moment, having won his last three tournaments and bearing in mind the fact that he very nearly took down Federer in last year’s five set final, already a classic, the Spanish bull is a very close number two. The other players to watch out for will obviously be the Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic, who started the year in red-hot fashion and who’s been the only player to actually push (okay, more like nudge) Nadal in the last month, and the rejuvenated Andy Roddick, who should be swinging more freely, having broken his 11-match losing streak against Federer earlier this year and notched significant victories over the big three of tennis in the spring. As for dark horses, look out for David Nalbandian (if you have trouble recognizing him, just look for the guy with a paunch) who is quickly earning the dubious title of Best Player Without a Major, local hero Andy Murray as well as the break-out stars of the season so far- Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and Ernests Gulbis who reached the Australian Open final and French Open quarterfinal respectively.

The end of this tedium is nigh and already I am missing it. Tomorrow there will be no more cloaking myself in the make-believe night of drawn curtains, there will be no more five hour afternoon naps interspersed with daytime TV in the comfort of a bedroom cooled by an air-conditioner that has not seen rest for nearly a month. Tomorrow I face the mess I've made of my life and I clean it up. No psycho-babble necessary. No more 'pin the blame' games. I've indulged in the willful ignorance of my own weaknesses for too long. I already know what needs to be done. I have to be prepared, be organized, be focused, everything I was not for the last six months. I knew all this before my life went into a free fall, and I alone let it snow-ball to where I am right now, lengthening the shadows of the long day's journey into night. Have I come to the ends of the earth and realized it is indeed flat and imagined that all can be finished by a step into that seductive blackness where the oceans fall in an eternal waterfall? I think so. And it's suddenly so clear, that nothing can be truly finished, that the end of all sensation that this black void promises is all counterfeit. So tomorrow I turn against its pull and begin the long return from tedium. Sure, what awaits me may not, probably will not heal the crevasse inside of me, will probably rip me apart even more, and I know it is likely not a kind father who awaits his prodigal son at journey's end. But so what? I give up. "You give up?" Yes, I am pathetic and a loser and I give up. "You know, I gave up years ago, and that has been the key to my happiness."

Nothing and everything has happened in the last month. I lost it, really, my mind went on a walkabout and I'm not even sure if it's returned yet. There are moments of clarity, brief instances when I seem to surface from this torpidity gasping for air. At times like these, I go out and, dare I say it, sometimes I actually enjoy the experience... ten in the morning, the shops just opening, the cafes not yet filled with people. I really dislike most people. I might have mentioned it once before, I'd be over the moon with delight if a third of the people living in this city just dropped dead, fell off a cliff or something... weekends in the city are excursions through hell. Most of the time though, with nary a dollar in my pocket, there really is naught to do but stay at home. I wake at my usual time, seven, go for a long walk (since I'm really not one for regular workouts at the gym) and then return to bed. Lunch at noon, followed by the most dreaded period of each day- between one and six in the afternoon.

I try to read, and it's a good book- Salman Rushdie's 'The Enchantress of Florence', the language is as lavishly luxuriant as can be expected from a Rushdie novel, and the tale is exotic and comical. Yet, I am so lethargic, so devoid of energy, so utterly listless I do the book's charms no justice. I can scarcely make it through a chapter without my mind losing its powers of concentration, I turn somnolent and stare, really, at nothing... I try to sleep the afternoons away, but that only results in my waking at odd hours in the night; of course it doesn't help that I sleep before ten, having little else to do. And so each day and night passes, I am thoroughly lonely and alone. I hate it. I do nothing about it. I don't believe I can.