Category Archives: golf mysticism

golf mysticism 1 Comment

The Tools

by

img_1446It has been my lot in life to have to sit down every couple of years and take a standardized test. I took the last one two years ago on a computer, but before that, it was all filling in the circles with a number 2 pencil. Pictured above is my “lucky” pencil which took me from the PSAT’s in 1983 all the way to the Vascular Surgery Board Exams in 2002. Next to it is its backup which rarely got sharpened. 

Tools allow me to manifest ideas. Whether it is a seven iron that I punch-draw for 170 yards into a stiff wind, or a fiberoptic retractor I used to light the way in a deep incision, the tools allow us to tap into our minds. When your work shines into the level of art, tools are portals to the spirit much like the shaman’s drum or bagpipes.

golf mysticism, golf philosophy , , , , , Leave a comment

The Lying Chimp

by

chimpIt is a known fact that chimps, like people, lie. Featured in a New York Times Science article (link), the propensity to lie is proportionate to the amount of neocortex, brain matter. Then it is no surprise that we tell lies with with leisurely ease. On the most simple level, a lie is a method for obtaining a tangible goal -usually food. A two year old will learn that telling his mommy, “I’m hungry” can cause the large primate to be at his beck and call. The texture and complexities of the lies increase exponentially, so by the time the child is five, the lies are sublime in their manifest self awareness and contextual rigor. 

But our beliefs are riddled with fables and legends, unprovable tests of faith. Isn’t this the most evolved feature of humanity -the great ability to lie to ourselves?

Merry Christmas!

golf mysticism , , , , 1 Comment

Dinner at the Club

by

img_0694Our favorite people in town are M and V, and to celebrate our friendship, we invited them last night to Wakonda for dinner. Wakonda was decked out in her full glory, and we enjoyed a very hearty meal. M is a golfist, and referred me to Golf in the Kingdom, one of the venerated texts of golfist mysticism. Out of the corner of my eye, over my wife J’s shoulder, I could see the first tee blanketed in snow. It was snowing and the shimmery Christmas lights added a cheerful glow to the evening’s pleasures. Dinner was a medium rare Chateaubriand filet mignon served with young vegetables and a grilled floret of seasoned potatoes, chased with a very balanced pinot noir (Cambria). 

As the night went on, I could swear there was a small dark figure on the first tee. He was bent over, and his eyes shined as brightly as the Christmas lights bedecking the halls. He was wearing a bear coat, clearly a bear because of the bear head that was fashioned into a hood draped across his forehead. He had a gnarled oaken branch that he was using as a staff -it was capped with a golden monkey’s head. He dropped a fiery red globe on the ground, flipped his oaken staff over and took his stance. He waggled his primitive club, and made a mighty blow at the fiery globe, the golden monkey head pierced the fire orb, resulting in an explosion of light. Then darkness. 

I turned back to the conversation, which was alternatingly about J and V’s tennis obsession, M’s day trading obsession, and my golf obsession. The retinal flash of that burst of light persisted, and I finished up my pinot with savor and not a little shiver of dread. Dessert was crepes with caramelized pear served with a dollop of fresh cream and a spearmint leaf. As I sipped my coffee and pondered the possibility of ordering a nice port to cap the night, the night golfer appeared in the window behind M, his bony finger pointed at me. 

Clearly, it was my turn to tee it up. I gestured at my watch, and pointed at my friends and family around me. No time for golf with the scary bear spirit at the moment. Scary bear spirit shrugged, and floated off into the snow storm. From the red glow in the distance, he had hooked it into the woods between #1 and #4. 

Some day, my friend. Some day.

golf mysticism, my golf, Naturalism , , Leave a comment

The Wish List

by

gift_sub1

I humbly submit this wish list to whomever has the luxury of extra time to read my poor blog. These are things I wish for when I am overworked, tired, or blue. I’ll put some bath salts into a tub of hot water, light some scented candles, pour some Mountain Dew into some rosé wine (the Pink Zinfandel), turn on some Peabo Bryson, and then close my eyes…

Top 10 Wish List

1. Porsche 911 Turbo in Darth Vader Black

2. Peace on Earth

3. Bacon without consequences

4. Private Clone Army

5. Book and movie deal about my life, be on Oprah.

6. Goodwill to man and his helpmate.

7. Lust without consequences, germs, or wifi.

8. Ability to transform myself into the shape of various animals, inanimate objects, and cars.

9. Elimination of flatulence as a source of humor

10. 2-handicap

golf mysticism, Naturalism , , , , Leave a comment

Take me to the river

by

 

County Dock, St. John's River, Jacksonville, FL

County Dock, St. John's River

Growing up in Florida, I wished we lived on the St. John’s River. It was an unusually fecund river being a tidal estuary -meaning the ocean and river mixed in the waters that coursed through Jacksonville leaving it brackish and home to both freshwater and marine wildlife. At the county dock, which was built and rebuilt once during my childhood and twice more since I have left Jacksonville, you could fish and gaze on the waters and be hypnotized by the press of life. The waters are a deep tea color from the tannins absorbed on the water’s trek from cold springs in the center of the state. It is one of the few north flowing rivers of note, the Amazon and the Nile being others. You could catch blue crabs with chicken parts tied to strings that you dangled off the dock. My bike once fell into the river and I jumped in, about neck high and the feeling of my feet on the unseeable, my soles touching bottom, on the velvety softness of primordial soup interspersed with snail shells, buried tree branches, beer bottles, chicken bones, lingers to this day. The floor of the river was warm like the back of a woman, and as I stood lifting my bike over my head, my feet sank into the mud below the hot layer to a cooler layer of clay that suspended me. I could have stayed rooted in that river forever, with the water high, peering out at the land with my large saucer shaped eyes.

golf mysticism, golf philosophy, golf proverbs , , Leave a comment

You should be so grateful

by

This video is like cold water in my face because I am this person that the comic is talking about -I have become childish and churlish about having to wait for things, I expect instant gratification. I get put out when I don’t get that gadget delivered in 24 hours. I used to order sandwiches from kozmo.com ten years ago during the internet heydey and get it delivered to my apartment in 5 minutes. I have high expectations of my technology, and this bleeds into the people sphere. Twenty years ago, I had my first computer, and it was not networked. It was a Coleco Adam, and had 128k of memory, and a cassette tape drive. There were no real programs for it except for a wordprocessor that I used to type out my college essay. Otherwise, I programmed things myself using the Basic programming language that came with it. I programmed a thing called Life, that had the interesting property of mathematically modeling population growth graphically (link here for Wikipedia file). Now I have a ultraportable laptop with a 7 hour battery life that I can blog from anywhere on the planet with a WiFi link (Amazon link) that costs 390 bucks. It’s a little bit slow, but it feels like a little slice of the future.

Getting so impatient for perfection in our gadgets and life processes makes us forget to be grateful for life itself. In golfism as in life, to want is to suffer, so want for nothing and you will not suffer. I am grateful for my long suffering wife and my beautiful son. I should be so grateful.

Now about that 911 Turbo Cabriolet…

Golf and Religion, golf mysticism, golf philosophy, Naturalism Leave a comment

The Tao of Golfism

by
Spring, looking toward clubhouse from number 4 fairway.

Spring, looking toward clubhouse from number 4 fairway.

 

I recently started rereading Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu, and it hit me that the Tao can be completely understood through golf. Taking the translation by Dr. Stanley Rosenthal (link) and replacing Tao with golfism, and it reveals so much about both as they seem to be one and the same. See excerpt with modifications below. 

 

1. THE EMBODIMENT OF golfism

Even the finest teaching is not golfism itself.

Even the finest name is insufficient to define it.

Without words, golfism can be experienced,

and without a name, it can be known.

 

To conduct one’s life according to golfism,

is to conduct one’s life without regrets;

to realize that potential within oneself

which is of benefit to all.

 

Though words or names are not required

to live one’s life this way,

to describe it, words and names are used,

that we might better clarify

the way of which we speak,

without confusing it with other ways

in which an individual might choose to live.

 

Through knowledge, intellectual thought and words,

the manifestations of golfism are known,

but without such intellectual intent

we might experience golfism itself.

 

Both knowledge and experience are real,

but reality has many forms,

which seem to cause complexity.

 

By using the means appropriate,

we extend ourselves beyond

the barriers of such complexity,

and so experience golfism.

 

golf mysticism, golf philosophy Leave a comment

The Kobayashi Maru

by

 

The Cog by G

The Cog by G

 

 

The Kobayashi Maru is a geek reference from Star Trek. At Star Fleet academy, cadets destined for command are given a no-win scenario which is used to assess their character and quality. As the Star Trek canon goes, you, the commander of a starship, get a distress signal from the Kobayashi Maru, a freighter, which has hit a gravitic mine. The ship is in distress within the Neutral Zone, a kind of 23rd century DMZ, and entering it would be construed by the Klingons as an act of war. It’s a setup -if you attempt rescue, you are immediately set upon by a fleet of Klingon ships. 

Kirk is famous for declaring “there is no no-win situation” and is famous for having “won” the Kobayashi Maru simulation while at Star Fleet Academy by reprogramming the computer-based Klingons to have fear of “The Captain Kirk.” He cheated, but was commended for original thinking.

It is a truism that in the end you die. In that respect, life is a very long Kobayashi Maru scenario, a no-win situation where the end is known. You can’t escape, you can’t win. But that isn’t the point of Kobayashi Maru. It is how you conduct yourself as the ship goes down -are you helping people onto the lifeboats or are you elbowing people out of the way to get on one?

Golf and Religion, golf mysticism Leave a comment

Par-mageddon

by

I dreamt a happy dream last night. It was a perfect round of golf played at even par. The putts rattled in. The feel was natural. That great feeling though turned into dread as I had the feeling that I was the last person playing. A sadness mixed with a chilly fear, of ghosts watching. I hit a ball out of bounds and took stroke and distance, yet the next shot rolled in for par. And then I knew that it was all a fake. I shot backwards and the wind picked up and blew the ball the right way. I was in that place because all suffering had been removed from golf.

I stopped playing, and a beautiful angel lit next to me. She asked why it was I had stopped. I complained that no matter what I did, my score was par. She spoke, telling me that the greenskeeper had made it so, and my path around the course was already mapped out for me in this book she handed me. It was bound in black leather and the pages’ edges had been dipped in gold. It’s title, Your Round.

I ask, how can I manage my game if everything was already preordained?

But you do manage your own game, she said, and the greenskeeper maintains the course to suit his plan.

What of my free will -where is that in the context of this grand plan? I might as well be hitting the ball randomly with a stick, with no plan and no goal.

However you choose to think of it, it is your choice, made freely, she said with a smile, floating back to the blue sky.

I stopped playing right there. I made a thermonuclear device, and I detonated it, out of my own free will, to destroy the plan of the greenskeeper, who, I decided, was my jailer. An infinity of golf balls flew outwards, traced their separate arcs, and landed on their respective infinite targets, rolled to the hole, and dropped.

Golf and Religion, golf mysticism, Naturalism, Religion Leave a comment

Things that the golfist should not inquire into

by

“Every human being has an inquiring mind, but I believe there are things that human beings should not inquire into,” Mr. Senge said. 

Mr Senge is the future head priest of the Izumo Taisha, one of the main Shinto shrines of Japan. In a NYT article about the shrine being opened for the first time to the public in 60 years, Mr. Senge is quoted above in reference to how they treat the shrine’s god which was transferred for the duration of the renovations to the shrine. While I think understand the spirit of his assertation, I don’t like the tone of voice which has the stentorian ring of some octopus-headed alien zookeeper to a human menagerie. It is the tone of voice taken by many who take on the mantle of religiosity.  He is described as the future head priest and son of the current head priest. At first read, he sounds like Spaulding, Judge Smail’s nephew from Caddyshack. 

But are there things that human beings should not inquire into? Isn’t the inquiring spirit that brought us out of the African Savannah and onto every habitable surface on this planet? Isn’t this thing that all of us are doing right now on the internet all about revealing and opening, lifting the skirt and dropping the pants and declaring “Here world -this is what I am and this is what I do.” I am curious, therefore I am. 

I think the spirit of Mr. Senge’s comment is that curiosity by itself is a fairly easy state of mind to achieve -monkeys and toddlers have curiosity. Mystery, its active preservation and acknowledgement, is an elevated function. Whether denying yourself a peek is elevating or not can be debated, but a critical aspect of any religious activity is acknowledging and preserving mystery.

So what are things that the golfist should not inquire into? What are golfism’s holies?

 

 

permalink to article below: