A Look Back Four Years

Author’s note: this is something I wrote several years ago; I found it today and the question  is still there.

May 2, 2009: This is the 1^st Saturday in May and the 135^th running of the Kentucky Derby.  It is cloudy and cool.  We will go out later.

Yesterday, the body of James Hotchkiss was put in the ground.  I arrived at the cemetery just in time to see it poised over the hole, and then lowered into the grave.  He ended his time on earth at age 71.  His wife, Ernestine, of 55 years, took good care of him for the past several years as one calamity after another besieged him.

This is the 40^th notebook.  The last on spanned from 2-11 until 4-20, or 79 days.  At two pages per, that’s 50 days, almost every day.  I don’t intend to write every day even though I have it on my daily task list but it usually works out that way. 

(There are robins nesting above me on a horizontal run of downspout under the deck and they are wondering how they will get to their nest with me sitting here.  That’s their problem, I’m sure they will figure it out.)

I didn’t set out to write 39 notebooks plus 100 pages or so of printed notes beforehand but that’s how it is.  I haven’t re-read any of them at a sitting; although I may have referred back from time to time.  It seems that if I do the review exercise at Bernheim, I should not only take the log but also the notebooks from 2004.  That would expand my recall of how it was and how I was thinking at the time. 

(The robin is still wondering.)

I seem to be at a point of practice.  I have deduced, pondered, rationalized, and examined; I’ve reasoned and analyzed; I’ve observed and studied; and now I am at a place where I must put into play those results.  I have begun to do so in many endeavors, especially in golf and pool.  I know what needs doing and I am working on doing it.  There is a gap between knowing and doing; it is an experience gap.

 

Yet, especially in moving activities, there is a level, a set of personae, or at least one who knows what to do, because he’s seen the pictures in imagination, and he may even do it from time to time.  But for some unknown reason he can’t be relied upon to do it every time.  Either another gets in the way, or he’s not up for it, or whatever, but he isn’t able to take charge and get it done. 

This is true especially in golf.  They are not such a simple set of movements that they can be repeated faithfully without a lot of practice; and I mean a lot.  Yet there is a set of them, that when peformed, result in a good shot. 

It is bringing that knowledge and control to the intellectual part of the golfing persona that practice enables.  To focus the entire golfing persona on the desired result, knowing what is desired, able to produce the movement to get it, and exclude all other influences from the scene.  This is what it is all about.  And it is the same for pool.  In both sports I am at about 30% of being able to do this.

All of the endeavors are similar in this regard.  They all have an underlying game strategy that has to be executed.  Some are more complex; some are not being pursued diligently, some could be excised from the list but I won’t.  Of all the things in the world to do, I keep coming back to these 18.  It is as though I am committed to them, as in most areas of my life, “I said I would do it, so I guess I’m stuck with it.”

I often think of doing other things but keep coming back to these.  Some are on the list but not really pursued.  Yet I keep them on my list to be reminded that if there is time this is what I’ll do.  Meanwhile I make time for golf, pool, and others.

I need to spend less time writing and more time doing.  Yet, from time to time, take the time to write just to keep some order in my thinking, to stay on course, to stay focused.

So my writing may delve deeper into endeavors and details of same in order to hone in on the necessary knowledge, theory, and imagination.  The amount of practice, performance, is to be a larger proportion of lifetime now that I have a good basis of understanding.

Lately I have been struggling with the concept of life.  It is difficult to define, although, I have described it previously and effectively.  But with all of its forms is it a biochemical process?  Well yes it is on the physical side but there is a non-physical side as well.  The biochemical is going on but it is directed, intentionally.  And this is the part that is giving me pause.  What is this other aspect?

The biochemical is enabled by the substances existing here on Earth.  The intentional is an added aspect that defies definition.  It is individual, yet it is also organizational.  At times it seems to spring from somewhere else, some other influence besides the individual, even besides the influence of others.

The well-spring is from within somewhere.  The inspiration of artists and performers, and demons, i.e. the terrible, all seems to come from beyond the mere biochemical reaction that allows for the reversal of entropy.

(The robins are getting bolder.)

It is within this capability, allowed by the biochemical reactions, that the development of beauty and ugliness occurs.  It is the source of this that intrigues me.  It is the source of this that I can’t seem to fathom.  A ship floats, it sails, and it then proceeds on a course to a destination.  What/who sets the course?  Yes, there’s much more than I know but it is the wondering that interests me.

(I’ll go now and leave the robins in peace.)