a man down.

There’s something about playing a man down. It quickens the pulse, lifts the chin, and the tightens the veins—today we were down two. The five of us, the seven of them, and a story-book victory in the making.

When you play with a handicap, you can’t lose. It’s like test-taking without studying and dating without showering. With all the odds against, you, everyone wants you to win, and if you don’t win, “at least you had heart.”

And guts. It takes guts to play a man down doesn’t it…or does it? It doesn’t take any guts to play a game you can’t lose. No cajones needed for being the underdog. Some kids float through life, not trying but getting by, and they (dare I say we?) feel pretty good about it. Hey, they’re doing ok—for not really trying very hard, maybe they’re doing great. It takes brains to be adequate with abysmal effort. Thank god I’m not an “adequate” overachiever.

But it doesn’t take guts. Playing a man down, living without trying, trying without really trying—its really all just to get by and play it safe. No one blames you for not having something if you say you don’t really want it. But don’t you want it? Sure, it’s hard to be the favorite. Hard to expect something. Even hard to want something. But that’s where the players are. They are the one’s on the teams that are supposed to win, making the plays they are supposed to make, knowing that if they don’t, no one is going to say “ah, well, at least he had heart” because no one gives a shit how hard you try when you are on top—just so long as you win. Trying, not trying, heart, no heart, doesn’t matter when you’ve got a full team. And in the end, isn’t that what counts? Are you ever going to win anything if you don’t lose the handicap, sack up, and just win with no excuses?

Eh, maybe, who am I to know? Today we played two men down.

…and lost.

Golf shots.

There’s two kinds of shots in golf—the safe shot, and the not-so-safe shot.

There I am, lining up my third stroke of the par 5 number 8, nothing between me and the green but a surmountable distance…and a tree. I’m not going to lie, it was a big tree, but I was feeling like a big shot, and Christ, a golf ball is pretty damn small, and there is all kinds of open space up in that tree, just begging for a golf ball to weave a path through. Thus, the two choices: safe or not-so-safe.

Oh, unsolvable riddle, who am I to solve thee?

This is bigger than a tree. This is about me, and you, and everyone else, and who I want to be and who I’m going to be and what we are going to do and who you want to become. It’s about law and literature and love and life. It’s about speeding and drinking and wearing a helmet and studying for tests and taking tests without studying and doing drugs and doing laundry and wearing off-color clothes and taking clothes off. Is it the golf ball that will suffer from my poor decision, or is it me? Could it be you?

The golf ball, quite small; the tree, quite big; the golfer, quite bad. Perhaps I am indeed the golfer, carefully deciding the direction in which to drive my life. The ball is then my life, the tree those obstacles in my way: tests and loans and rejection letters and rejections.

Or is it different? Maybe I am not the golfer at all. Maybe I am the ball! And the golfer is fate, or God, or god, or my parents on the phone or the television or the man or maybe the golfer is even you. But what is the tree?

I know. The tree is you. Yes, the tree is most certainly and definitely you. The tree is you and I am both the golfer and the ball and the course would be so interminably obvious and clear if you weren’t there—but would it also be flat, lonely, dull, boring, “safe,” and awful? Maybe, but dammit, it sure would be easier to get to the green.

What is the green? Is the green where I want to go? Is it a great job and a happy family and great wife and dog and a house enough free time to ride my back and maybe play tennis or golf but not so much free time that I get bored, or is the green just where we all wind up? Perhaps the green is old age, the cup—death.

No, I don’t like that version. I’ve changed my mind. The green is now you. You are no longer the tree, you are now the green. The tree is fear and nervousness and a lack of confidence and mumbled words and forgotten facts and everything between me and you. But what am I? Am I the golfer, who has a choice? A choice of going around the tree? Taking an extra shot, but making sure I get there sooner or later, without injury and without fear of losing the ball.

Losing the ball!

Surely losing the ball is death. Surely. Yes, losing the ball is death and if I hurry to get through the tree to you I run the risk of dying a horrible and awful death at the hands of a pond or long weeds or worse yet—a spot of lonely ground that simply gets overlooked.

I don’t much like that scenario, I think that in fact, I would rather not be the golfer, driving my life through all the perils of its fearsome course, aiming for the green, but winding up in the rough.

In my world, I would like to be the ball. The ball makes no choices and cannot be blamed. Yes, it runs a risk, of being lost and never found, and at times, it can take a beating, but it does so with much endurance and rarely, if ever, does the ball break. It gets dirty, and gets lost, and sometimes hits things and sometimes goes the wrong direction, but these are no faults of its own, and it can usually recover…or at least, be dropped back into play. The truth is, I don’t want to decide. I’m afraid of going through the tree, but I’m also afraid of losing strokes and losing time. I’m ready to do either, but I need someone to hit me.

I know it doesn’t work like that. I know that I am the golfer, and no matter how many trees and bunkers and weeds foul things up, I’ll still be the one hitting the ball, though it may be harder at times than at others. At some point, I have to stop thinking about it, have to stop taking practice swings, and hit the ball. In the end, it’s about a being firm but relaxed, graceful but committed. It’s about a good back-swing and a good follow-through. It’s about sacking up, hitting the damn ball, and being prepared to follow it, wherever it happens to go.

Oh, for what it’s worth, on the course today I went for gold, hit the tree, lost sight of the ball, and wandered around aimlessly looking for it until the fellows on the other fairway whistled and pointed to the middle of the fairway—30 yards behind where I started.

Bigness

I finished Moby Dick, for the first time, moments ago, but in truth I have only just opened its cover. For the first time, now, after having read the final page, have I seen the scope of the thing that lays before me--seen how massive, how deep, and how big it is. I want to reduce it, and learn it, and know it, but one cannot reduce and learn and know life--could one possibly reduce and learn and know this? Or will the attempt, the attempt to know, be the end of both known and knower?

Perhaps. I am tired and full of energy. I finished and opened a big thing. And like a child whose toy comes with many parts and many things to look at and play with and figure out, I failt to start the process for how greatly it intimidates and awes me. Who art thou Ahab? Who art thou Ishmael? Who art though Scribbs? Who art though Moby Dick?

What a night. "What's that he said--Ahab beware of Ahab--there's something there!"

Where does the time go?

Sometimes you gotta run. There are times when walking just no longer cuts it. Like when you are late, or when you are angry. I am running, but I’m not sure if I’m running towards something or away from something. To be perfectly honest, I think I would like to stop, but I’m not sure if that’s an option. Anyone want to run with me? I don’t know where we’re going, but maybe we can get some fast food or something along the way.

Losing things

I just wrote an irate post. Not just irate, livid. Not just livid, mad. Where is it? Lost. Lost in gobbledygargon of the internet, lost into a moment in time that already happened but wont happen again. Lost like hat, or even a sandwich, that falls overboard from a boat that doesn’t stop moving, and though its back there all the time, still floating and getting soggy and maybe getting eaten, you can no sooner turn around and get it than you can go back and not drop it in the first place.

I’m not livid anymore. The moment passed—like I said. For a while though, I was going to punch a man—rather, a boy, trying to act like a man because he couldn’t handle the fact that no one cares who he is or what he does or what he has to say about why he is better than you. Fist clenched but fingers relaxed, I was ready. Instead, I wrote a livid post that then disappeared.

Just like that my physical fury melted into rhetorical rage and dissipated into unreachable 1s and 0s without any emotion at all. Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe it would be better if it always happened that way.

This time, however, I’m writing in word; no more lower case “i”s for me—it does it for me (it doesn’t like semicolons and dashes and parentheses all in once sentence though). I guess all I’m trying to say is that if people want to fight the man, I wish they would just do it—rather than just settling for fighting those at hand, whom they think they can beat.

If they don’t owe you anything, then you cant say they aren’t good enough. Good enough for what? They don’t need to be good enough for you. I know that is difficult to stomach, but its true. You’re just going to have to stop berating people for not being you and not being what you want them to be and not wanting to be what you want to be. There, maybe the anger came back, just for a bit. Not all, or even a part, but a smell of its taste, or a feeling its sound.

thefacebook.com

school got added to thefacebook.com. whoopdifucking doo.

i mean, sure, im signed up already, fervently waiting for others to sign up so i can "poke" them...but whatever, who doenst love wholesome online fun.

Lots to say, not time to say it, pretend i said it and you read it and then comment about it. im out.

ps. all posts will be in e-grammar from now on

or not.

All i want to do is sail...