Maybe it was the fact that I had no intention of keeping
score. Maybe it was the fact that I’d had a rough couple of days in my
off-course life that were making me feel emotionally under siege. Or maybe it
was the fact that, since I work from home and sometimes speak out loud to no
one all day long, spending time with friends and strangers got me back in touch
with humanity. Whatever it was, I had the most fun I’d had in awhile at
Wednesday’s deep twilight round.
The beginner golfer’s group met up around 5pm at the local
golf course and there were a lot of us. The walkers included myself, Dodi (a
dark-haired Peruvian intellectual who is a twilight regular) and Debbie Harry
(I think there’s just something so rock-and-roll about her). Our threesome went
out first. There’s something so relaxing about knowing that you’re probably
only going to make it through nine holes, and you’re with people you know and
like. The chitchat is easy when you know people well enough to ask about their
lives since the last time you saw them, but you don’t know them so well that
there’s nothing left to say. That’s the kind of pleasant chitchat that doesn’t
interfere with my golf game.
Speaking of which, I didn’t bother scoring, but I did keep
track of my drives, and even with a new technique I’ve been working on
(involving spine tilt and sweeping up on the ball), I felt that I did
okay. There was a sense of progress, and the laughter and camaraderie and
talking shop from the beginner golfer’s perspective – all of this added up to a
deeply soul-satisfying time. Then the sun began to set and there was that moment of
walking quietly along the fairway, watching our shadows grow long on the
fresh-cut grass, with the twinkle of light on the reservoir as a backdrop –
that moment of walking into a sunset that makes you feel like your life is a
movie. Well, it inspired me to create this sketch on my iPad, an image that
could be the cover of a book, if this blog was ever made into one:
Actually, this picture looks more like the cover of a children's book about golf. Hmm, now there's an idea...
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