Moon shadow…

Last night I was decompressing in my aqua office,

a.k.a. my clawfoot tub,

reading Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy…

A lot of women complain about their men playing sports…

I’ll admit that I used to be one of them,

mostly because I hadn’t figured out how to assert my own time for sports,

and I was bathed in resentment…

But I now I get it…

I tell me friends,

Instead of rolling your eyes you should be saying GETINTHECAR,

I’MDRIVINGYOUTOHOCKEY…

That one game a week can make all the difference in an insane world…

I hear grown men at the playground,

while they’re chasing their toddlers around,

saying things like,

If I didn’t play hockey I would go crazy…

All of this finds confirmation in Golf in the Kingdom…

Joe K. Adams claims that body chemistry was altered during wild dancing and other emotional sports…

Dancing helped the bodily functions in general and opened up the mind…

Julian Laing,

a craggy faced old Scotsman,

claims that certain kinds of psychosis can come from a lack of proper exercise…

Better games would empty entire wings o’ oor mental ‘ospitals…

I’ve cured myself with nothin’ mair than games and dancin’…

And listenin’ to the pipes can blow the mind free too…

A few years ago I worked with a student…

A little boy who was ‘suspected’ of being on the autism spectrum,

and underwent intensive investigation in Grade One,

in Kindergarten…

I never asked why,

because it didn’t interest me…

When he came to me for Grade Two I didn’t pay attention to what was suspect,

and hence it didn’t manifest…

But I did pay attention to everything this little boy said,

and one day he revealed something about watching videos of bagpipe concerts,

with his dad…

I asked him how he felt when listenin’ to the pipes…

He exclaimed,

I feel AMAZING,

in a voice older than time…

I asked him if he was Scottish…

He looked at me like I was SLOW or something and said,

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m Chinese…

I asked him,

Have you ever BEEN Scottish???

He hesitated a moment and looked over his shoulders,

like there are spies in every corner,

or speech and language pathologists who were about to force him to sit still for normalcy tests,

while the rest of his classmates altered their minds playing emotional sports in the gym…

Then he leaned in real close to me,

whispered right in my ear and answered my question,

I feel like I must have BEEN…

I once heard this boy say,

at six years old,

while I was minding my own business writing reports cards on the school computer in a resource room used for pull-out

— Tests, tests, and more tests,

all they know how to do around here is tests…

I wonder where they keep the test,

for I’ve been here before..

FYI…

In a country which is currently not sending its men to war,

the emotional game of hockey fills a much needed place…

Men who love games do not have to use other human beings for their sport…

Our North American stadiums bring to mind the amphitheatres of the Roman Empire,

with their modern day gladiators battling it out on the ice…

In my endless gathering of language I hear words of war all over sport radio…

The draft…

the lines…

offensive/defensive strategies…

the walking wounded…

etc.

No need to bore with more details,

because I’m sure I’m not the first to notice these striking correlations…

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist,

or a man for that matter,

to see the strength and direction of the linear relationship,

between these two apparently random variables,

which lead us right back to,

Golf in the Kingdom,

and Peter Mc Naughton smiling sadly,

shaking his head,

Gowf is a way o’ making’ a man naked…

I would say that nowhere does a man go so naked  as he does before a discernin’ eye dressed for gowf…

Ye talk about your body language, yer style o’ projectin’, yer rationalizashin’, yer excuses, lies, cheatin’ rounds, incredible stories, failures of character — why, there’s no other place to match it…

Ye take auld Judge Hobbes,

my God,

the lies he told last week about that round o’ his in the tournament,

’tis enough to make ye wonder about our courts o’ law…

So I ask ye first…

Why does gowf bring out so much in a man, so many sides o’ his personality???

Why is the game such an X-ray o’ the soul???

The answer lies in this simple equation…

You do the math…

Gowf+brogue+pipes+man=MEinacoldshowerhavinaginantonic

Sorry no photos…

This is a family show…