Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

I’ve been operating under slightly tweaked writing rules for a little more than a month now, but I never bothered to update the Rules document. I’m rectifying that today. Check it out here.

Tottenham Hotspur went to St. James’s Park needing only a draw against Newcastle United to end a 21-year streak of finishing behind their arch-rivals Arsenal in the Premier League. To be more specific: they needed only a draw against already-relegated, nothing-to-play-for-but-pride Newcastle United.

Would you like to guess the final outcome?

Spurs completely humiliated themselves, losing 5-1. Arsenal, meanwhile, handled their business comfortably, beating Aston Villa 4-0 and stepping over Spurs to finish the season in second place.

I could offer analysis but I won’t. Today my disgust as a fan reigns. The players and coaching staff seem to have forgotten that they make millions of dollars a year not because they’re terrific athletes and tacticians but because people like me find watching terrific athletes entertaining. And when they can’t even be bothered to try to be terrific, well…

At least Mauricio Pochettino had the decency to say he was embarrassed by the result: Mauricio Pochettino apologises to Tottenham fans for Newcastle shambles.

We’ve begun focused work on rebuilding my golf swing. We hoped that by using centering (as Jerry has described here in recent posts), we’d be able to make changes quickly. Unfortunately, the process has turned out to be a little more complicated than that.

The faulty patterns in my swing are so deeply ingrained into my body that they feel “normal.” I literally cannot feel when I’ve gone out of center during the golf swing. In many ways, we’d be having an easier time teaching me to swing a golf club if I’d never played the game before at all and thus wasn’t working against years of patterning.

We brought a couple of video movement-analysis apps to the range last week, and being able to watch myself helped immeasurably. Watching in slow motion made it clear that there’s a lot to work on.

Most critically, what I noticed from those videos is that I usually start out of center–I collapse my shoulders in toward my chest, drop my head downward out of line with my spine, and make the forward bend in the body from the spine rather than the hips. Each of these problems is so ingrained that I don’t feel out-of-whack when I step up to address the ball. I still feel that I’m centered.

Now that it’s clear to me that the problems with my swing begin there, my work toward improving the swing gets simpler. There’s a clear focus. The actual work will involve invoking the ritual approach that Jerry describes. First of all I will come to center. Then I will take my stance, trying to build the feeling within myself that an engaged spine, balanced energy at the shoulders and grounding at the hips is more centered than the various breaks in the body that I do now. And then, rather than hit the ball, I will step back and repeat the process, again and again, until my old pattern stops feeling “normal” and is replaced by the new one.

It’s nothing glamorous, the work I’m describing here. Indeed, if I don’t bring careful concentration to what I’m feeling, I’m likely to succumb to boredom and fall right back into my old patterns. But if I’m diligent, eventually my initial set-up will get re-patterned. It won’t be fun, per se, but the first step to rebuilding my swing comes from fixing the faulty foundation.

I realized I’d been looking at this situation only as a taking away, a loss, something I’d have to survive. But when I peered forward at what the next six or eight or ten weeks will have to look like, I saw that while they won’t be filled with what I had previously expected, they’re certainly going to be filled with something. From that perspective, I could see that what that something will fill isn’t loss but space, and that with clear consciousness, that space might come to be something I could really enjoy, really treasure.

In this situation, there might, unexpectedly, be a gift as well.

Jerry would say–quite possibly will say, when next we meet–that, energetically speaking, oftentimes injuries occur because there’s something we need to learn. What do I need to learn in this instance?

I’ve been exploring that question a lot in my drafts today. A number of things have come up, and I’m interested to see how they develop, but the summary answer to the question is another question: in what way does it serve me to mirthlessly grind activities that supposedly exist in my life to bring me joy?

I tore my hamstring in a soccer game yesterday. That sickening pop in the muscle. That deep pain.

I did not casually push my body beyond its breaking point. I did not do so without reluctance and even resentment. I understood that in my behavior I was taking a risk, but because I place great value on loyalty and keeping my word, because I felt like I had made promises to others, today I find myself in pain, barely able to walk.

Perhaps I need to realign my values.

Today I am angry. Today, sometimes, I practiced avoidance. Though I am in no denial about the severity of the injury, today, sometimes, I checked out into the easy single-mindedness and time-passing of my favorite video game. I escaped. Today I felt like escape was okay.

I’ll have to be careful, going forward, about using escape as a coping tool. I’m prone to depression, and I’m facing (best guess) eight to ten weeks of very limited exercise. I rely on exercise to keep my mood elevated. In the weeks to come, it’s going to be crucial that I only escape appropriately. That’s an unusual thing to say, but it’s true. I have to make sure I keep doing what needs to be done, lest I misuse escape and simply disappear.

Of course the main story from this weekend’s Premier League action was the trophy presentation for Leicester at the King Power. The overture, a 3-1 victory over Everton, was their victory lap, and the fans sang and celebrated the whole game. Yea, there was much rejoicing. Congrats to Leicester for their amazing accomplishment.

In the meantime, other teams still had stuff to play for. The most important matches featured the teams still battling for Champions League spots. In terms of both a club’s finances and prestige, the difference between a 4th-place finish and the spot in the Champions League playoffs that go with it, and 5th place and having to settle for the Europa League, is huge. To a lesser extent, the difference between 3rd and 4th, and direct entry into the Champions League rather than needing to play a playoff, matters too. While I can’t think of a season in which the British 4th-place team failed to qualify for the group stages–the 2nd place team from Armenia, or whatever, rarely poses too stern of a challenge–there’s still the not-insignificant energy expended on the home-and-away tie.

Thus ManU’s 0-1 win at Norwich, coupled with Man City’s 2-2 draw at home to Arsenal, could add up to major repercussions for next season. Man City remain in 4th place, two points ahead of ManU, but because ManU have a game in hand, Man City have lost control of their own destiny. If ManU wins out against West Ham and Bournemouth, and Arsenal beat dreadful Aston Villa–a near surety–then Man City would find themselves in 5th place and playing in the Europa League next season. Not exactly where City were supposed to be in advance of Pep Guardiola’s arrival. Oops.

My beloved Tottenham Hotspur went into the weekend with a vastly superior goal differential over both Arsenal and Man City, meaning that there was no realistic scenario in which Spurs could fail to finish at least third. From a certain perspective, the difference between second and third is negligible–2nd earns the team a bit more money, but both positions earn direct entry to the Champions League and the riches that go with it.

But I don’t share that perspective. I’m a die-hard fan. To me, the most important thing, now that Champions League play is assured, is that Spurs finish ahead of Arsenal. We need to finish 2nd. We need to finish 2nd.

Unfortunately, for the third week running, Spurs dropped points from a winning position, this time holding a 1-0 lead at White Hart Lane over Southampton before giving up two goals to lose 1-2.

So it comes down to this: unless Arsenal beat Aston Villa by 14 goals, a Spurs draw against at Newcastle earns them second place. The mid-season Spurs side would be a shoo-in for at least a point against Newcastle, but the team we see now is a lot different.

Mauricio Pochettino continues to say that the problem is that Spurs are young, that they haven’t fully developed the mental/emotional toughness that will give them the tenacity to close out matches. And while some results from earlier in the season support this hypothesis–their 2-2 draw against Stoke at White Hart Lane back in August, in which Spurs held a 2-0 lead, and their 1-1 draw against Leicester at the King Power a week later, in which Dele Alli’s 81st minute goal was negated by a Leicester equalizer only a minute later, both come to mind–that’s not what we’re seeing now. In each of the last three matches, the same thing happened when Spurs took the lead: their intensity fell through the floor.

The main players for Spurs are clearly exhausted. They literally cannot maintain full competitive intensity for 90 minutes. To say that they’re showing cracks under the strain downplays what’s actually happening–consider that both Dele Alli and Mousa Dembélé have been suspended for the rest of the season because of violent conduct charges, in both cases the incident in question being far more petulant than actually dangerous, a loss of discipline and control.

I was hoping that I could get to the final weekend or two of the season with only a relaxed interest in the results–“Oh, look, ManU lost”–but it hasn’t turned out that way. Now, I go into the final week worried that Spurs are going to fail to get that final point against Newcastle, and that Arsenal will finish ahead of them in the league for the 21st straight year.

Which fuck that. COME ON YOU SPURS.

Last week, even as I published, I felt some discomfort that my conclusions in my piece seemed to lack a certain solidity, but I couldn’t figure out why. Late that night, I saw what the problem was. It stemmed from my initial conception of the piece. The right initial approach isn’t a statement: “This is how we’d help Jordan Spieth.” Instead, we’d start with a question: “Jordan, how did you help yourself?” Regarding ten, eleven, and twelve on Masters Sunday, I trust my assessment of what I saw–after all, over the course of those three holes, I correctly predicted where Spieth’s shots were going to end up, just based on the energetic signatures of his body–but I have no access to what Jordan Spieth did to re-center himself after the disaster of two balls in the water on twelve.

But without a doubt Jordan Spieth did something with that fifth shot on twelve. Were we in a position to help him, the right jumping off point would be to find out how much he could say about what he did differently on that fifth shot. Whatever he did to re-center right then would be the foundation on which we’d help him build the structure for containing his energy and allowing it to flow in the face of the kind of pressure and stress that cost him the win that day, pressure and stress that he will surely face again and again in his quest to become a truly great golfer.

Now, it’s completely possible that he doesn’t really know. He surely recognized that something had changed–it was a radically different outcome, after all–and I’m sure it felt different, but it may be that he can’t fully describe how it was different. Here I draw on an experience I had during ski season. I was working with a skilled teacher, and I was struggling to bring what he was teaching me into my skiing. I thought I was following his instructions, but I was also kind of confused and frustrated. Then on one run during the latter part of the day, for a few short moments, maybe eight to ten turns total, it was suddenly like my feet had become weightless. It was wonderful. It didn’t last long, and it hasn’t happened again. But it happened once, and I know, now, the feeling I’m seeking. With good instruction and a lot of practice, I believe I will find it. So Spieth may be in a similar situation. He doesn’t quite know what he changed with that shot, but he surely felt something change. That’s what we’d be looking for. “Remember that feeling? We’re seeking that feeling.”

Here’s why all this matters: The major puzzle Jerry and I are trying to work out in our training together right now is how to unlock my golf swing. I am tall and long, and the simple physics of the golf swing would seem to dictate that I should be able to hit the ball a pretty long way. That I am not so able indicates a substantial energy block. We’ve been experimenting but haven’t been able to figure it out yet. Right now it’s getting worse instead of better, and honestly I’m getting frustrated to the point that I’m starting to imagine finding a high bridge or cliff to throw my stupid clubs off of. But I think back to two shots this year that flew high and true after swings that felt pretty much effortless. That’s the feeling that’s keeping me going. That’s the feeling I’m looking for. I don’t know what I did differently. The answer is in my body somewhere. Our task now is to find it.

It was no creation of mine, that simile. I knew it right away. It had to have been something I heard or read somewhere.

It’s from “The Office,” it turns out. A quick Google search found it directly. I had to laugh. It’s from an episode from the middle of season 3 that I watched no more than a few weeks ago. In it, Jan, the driven but icy New York executive (played by Melora Hardin), speaks to the camera about her decision to follow her therapist’s suggestion that she surrender to her impulsive and perhaps self-destructive attraction to Michael (Steve Carell), the emotionally stunted, cheerfully pathetic boss of Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton branch. She says about that choice:

I am taking a calculated risk. What’s the upside? I overcome my nausea, fall deeply in love, babies, normalcy, no more self-loathing. Downside… I date Michael Scott publicly and collapse in on myself like a dying star. Why is this so hard? That’s what she said. Oh my god, what am I saying?

Do you find that line as interesting as I do? When I watched it a few weeks ago, I immediately rewound to listen to it again. It’s a peculiar poetry coming out of Jan’s non-nonsense mouth, but there’s more to it than that. There’s something odd about the construction. Maybe it’s that there’s no subjunctive mood, nor any qualifying adjective like “potential” in front of “upside” and “downside.” It’s as if all of these outcomes, positive and negative, are not hoped for, but certain.

I laughed at the time of watching, of course. But it obviously evoked something for me. I felt a strange resonance to it when I watched it, a resonance that continues. The phrase may have been born of a TV show, and a comedy at that, but there is something about it that continues to demand my attention.

Language is funny. We hear or read something, and sometimes it’s like a bell rings inside us. That bell marks the moment when a feeling, heretofore ineffable, takes form. Suddenly a mystery, personal to us, becomes something we can share. It ceases to be solely inside us. Through the words we can connect. Through the words we cease to be alone.

A week ago, during my despair-y day, I had that sentence pop into my head. I wrote it into that day’s zero draft, then turned and wrote it on my whiteboard. At the time, it was a howl, of futility and frustration.

I kept seeing it there on the board. It had an insistence about it. As my mood improved over the days, it came to be a mystery, a puzzle. It evoked not a deep truth about myself, which is how it felt when it first arose, nor a memory of a time moved through, but the power of a story. There was something out there and it demanded exploration.