Temples
Faith, Balloonerism, and transcendence at the wedge range.
The weather’s nice on Sunday nights. The sky hangs gray with fog or blanket clouds for morning but clears by mid-afternoon and calls to head over. The wedge range is a liminal space, absent the parish, not of refinement but of discovery. A bare tapestry under cirrus clouds reaching wind-swept tendrils towards tangerine dreams. There’s a new Mac Miller album that deserves a deeper listen, and I toss a bud in my right ear and five balloons on the ground, five balloons to launch up towards clouds caramelizing in the golden lights of Shangri-La.
The skies opened up on Thursday afternoon— my letter sent, my afternoon game cancelled, left to find another mode of self-actualization. Having lost the security of a plan. Might as well go to Jax and get those boots, not waste a storm. Ninety minutes in the car to think — I think too much, though I don’t think it’s that simple.
Tell us the truth about it.
Those who reach success — money, power, fame — say it doesn’t deliver what you’re looking for. Enough of them to believe it and learn it the easy way. We’re after a truer success. Don’t invest in false securities. They’ll tell you what doesn’t pay but not what does — maybe they’re still looking, too.
Listen to a victory interview: they’ll thank God, a spouse, a team. The win itself a false barn in a Potemkin Village; they’ve already won. They’re already there, have been a while.
Do you have a destination?
Chipping was my weakness. The bounce couldn’t save me from the leading edge. I cringed at the word “knife” for years. It cost me money, starts, confidence, worth. Held down by the simplest shot. Spent my first five days as a pro chunking five-yard chips. Maybe it’d always be a fault, something I’d succeed despite. Maybe I’d always dread missing greens. Maybe I was bad at chipping.
Where are you going?
Maybe I’ll be from here wearing the boots, but I’m a yankee buying them. Wanting change isn’t bad, it’s all change anyways — the trouble is trying to stand still. But do you grow into your own image or the world’s image of you? The shop worker is friendly and assuring: I’ll belong, in these, in South Georgia. Belonging generally, as a highest self — that’s what we chase with success, to project our own clear image into the world. But success doesn’t get you there?
Do you have a destination?
We met for dinner while I was in town. We simplified it’s complicated two months ago, but we keep in touch. After dinner we went across the street to shoot pool and think out loud. In your early twenties, you can daydream love as a backcourt, two skilled teammates to create space. That you find the right one and it’s all uncontested shots from there.
But keep dreaming and sleep through the future. Making the team isn’t a team sport. You need to be good on your own first, hone your own skills and patch your own weaknesses. She said it might be a me problem, and I think she’s right. Golf and writing are single-employee enterprises, and maybe this is too, for now.
What do you need?
Back in Georgia, Friday night, a rare weekend where nobody’s competing — the boots need a spin. We go out. Rafters and Bubbas, conversations with friendly hallucinations. The boots are a costume, then a question, then shoes. From September or tonight, we’re all old friends, borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
I went to bed famous and woke up invisible.
The headache is another solo activity. But the real hangover is a couple inches deeper, the questions, cortisol sans dopamine, hanxiety. Let them in, because fighting it makes it worse. Let them in and look without touching.
I’ve worn a wedge smooth, and I’m working on another. Keep it in front of you; don’t let it inside. Restrictions create freedom. The bounce starts to emerge, then hides again. But more familiar now. Technique is simplicity, simplicity is repeatable, and repetition builds confidence. Slowly, slowly. Ball by ball, week by week, growing familiar.
The wedge range is paspalum, for the Tour guys, basically teed up. Chipping spherical cows in a vacuum. Mini-tour Bermuda silt still demands 9-iron bumps. But paspalum grants the freedom to hit what you imagine: the high spinner, the two-hop-and-stop, the full lob. Forgiving turf fosters creativity, expression, exploration. Sit there a while and discover and let it open to you.
What’s the difference ‘tween the truth and things that we pretend?
Why does it take a second to dirty a kitchen and five minutes to clean it? How can you live just in one moment when it’s connected to other moments? Will I achieve my own image? Play the role as I’ve written it or as they have? How long is the film-montage part of my life, and what’s it setting up? Shit just end up workin’ out, why do we wonder why it does? Is there a deep down, or are we just the things we do? Does the inspired madman eclipse technique alone? Should he? Is the stream of consciousness thing dumb? Is it naïve, between your temples, or arrogant, or even true? Do you know anything at all?
Don’t be afraid to put your two cents in.
Ok. Tracy Austin might be simple enough to break Wallace’s heart. The doubt I carry, mine or otherwise, has a false premise: it’s up to me. Rational confidence requires explanations that irrational confidence doesn’t. And I’m a better pool player after two beers.
The writing hedges the golf: it’s better writing when there’s conflict. They’re different compulsions, golf and writing, to perform and to describe, a reflexive commentary. At least I’m good at describing what’s going wrong. But the problems are more compelling than the solutions. Usually the solution is nothing at all. And I’m getting better, and I believe in the problems less and less, wondering if they can fall away. A naïve thought — problems tend to come back. But maybe belief in them doesn’t have to.
The difference between poetry and prose is ill-defined. I’ve tended towards the latter, twenty years of gravitating towards intricacy, bigger word counts to get the point across — is that what prose is? A failure of distillation, of clarity? A concession, that close is close enough, that it’s just too big to get it to rhyme?
But the weather’s nice on Sunday nights. And the temple is empty and the canvas is blank to be who you want. Grab five balls to send skyward and go back to Shangri-La, to get your meditation on, to take in the golden light, to practice Balloonerism, to let go and to ascend.
The best is yet to come.
I hit a short-sided high spinner, one hop and stop, and there’s applause. Funny, that some member-guest chip-off across the parking lot should fill out my imagination for me. Another chip, and they applaud again. And another. I look up to the houses, and there’s a group on the balcony, enjoying cocktails, watching, clapping. I give a hat-wave of appreciation, only half in jest, that feels real and might be.