'why i love golf' from "The Anatomy Of Vines Letters"

Sometime around the end of 2002 I began cultivating a seemingly unnecessary yet vigorous hatred for all things Pennsylvania and/or Ohio. It was pretty easy to get into the pattern I guess, all summer long here it’s one after another. On the road, in the stores, the beaches, public restrooms, next to me at the bar of the only god damned steak house worth eating at in Kill Devil Hills...bumping me; smelling of too much cologne, solarcaine, and naiveté as they lean in on my space, seeking cheap, piss American beers or "rum and diet’s.” Maybe it is also the fact that every morning as they walk by, searching for our shop, their big arms embracing gallons of soft drinks, pretzels, cheese balls, chips of all known sorts, and snacks only found in the darkest regions of the Midwest, and cheerios, for their stupid, fat, lost little babies, most of them have no idea what they are even signed up for. Being naturally more inclined to the finer pursuits in life, like seeing to it that unelectable morons get the fix in, via brainwashing steamroller back home, in Jesus' name, or shuttling back and forth to and from the Norfolk airport to hand out bibles to the Arabs getting off the planes to show that there's " no hard feelings for them that came and blew us up on 9.11", and trying to find the coupon for that shuttle in the Corolla Visitors Guide, completely oblivious to the fact that every time one of them flushes a rented toilet, or drives an automobile at 34 mph in a 45 mph zone for more than five minutes, an angel named Self Reliance is lobotomized in a back alley for want of a sanitary stem cell research facility, maybe. Maybe it is the fact that all of these cretins remind me of a stubby little Ohio born and Pittsburgh raised kid who I will only refer to this once as CJM, and after this as "it" or "the it". It met me sometime in the '95 or '96 period of my beach existence, during the "Jihad" era when I lived with Roots on Ocean Acres. It shared a dank bottom floor dwelling with another similar creature of similar circumstance. It preferred to live in the woods, having had what I think was a bad "magic" mushroom experience, coupled by the unwelcome advances of another little fella who must have misinterpreted his aloofness as homosexual signals....anyway, the it liked to live outside. Maybe the fact that our reggae band would swell between seven and twelve members, depending on who showed up with a drum on any given occasion, and it, being the last and the least in rhythm to show up, things started out rocky at best. When I came up in the Norfolk scene, young, wet, stupid and full of myself, there were very real human walls that would remind me and the other grommets of our place, but not down here at "Camp Jihad". No, down here, all you had to do was "want to", and even the slightest of dust particles could feign stardom, illuminated in the musical explosion from us few. "Jihad" moved to Asheville in December 1997. I will never forget the day. I left the beach early, sunrise. The drive took us west on 64 through the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge, along the sides of ditches and canals. There had just been an ice storm and everything around me was frozen and still. The trees, stripped bare months before by Autumn and the preparations for more future road, the telephone poles and wires, the dead marshes and the mud, all encased in a fine and fragile shimmer. Everything covered in a dusting of white. I had dicked around with heroin enough back in September to make the better half of October indescribably soul wrenching and unforgettable. I wouldn't call it a turning point by any stretch, or a life changing experience of any type. But it was the first and only time I have ever considered the weight of the word dependency. That word is cold, ugly, inarguable and repetitive. Before August 1997 I had never tried "drugs". Well, I had popped plenty different kinds of pills, acid, mushrooms, pot, mescaline and well no, that's it I think, but never coke or heroin. In the time from August to October I had now tried it all. I learned that heroin made me feel really, really good...and that coke, well that was what made Jenny feel really, really good. I thought Jenny was gorgeous. She had a boyfriend, but we worked together and enjoyed hanging out. I knew there was nothing there, but I guess I had some sort of need to rescue her or some shit. We came to know each other about the same time the drugs came to know me. They were just a vehicle; it turns out, Jenny and the drugs. They drove me up to the big screen, showed me pretty, and showed me ugly. I met Jenny sometime in the early summer that year, and three days before I drove away from that incestuous frozen wonderland, Jenny died. It was just another stupid thing. One person can change the world if he or she tries, but five or six casual junkies working together to kick dope can't change a fucking light bulb. They just may manage however, in some cases to move mountains of grief right onto the heads and hearts of mothers and fathers like Jenny's. I drove away from that beach with the Duster loaded up to the roof, three FAT spliffs of good green herb ready to go, and eight hours between then and where ever the fuck "now" was going to be next. By the time I reached the other side of Roanoke Island, there on the bridge, a nice warm air from that '73 Plymouth's heater mixed with the frozen ghosts of the swamp which crept in through my cracked windows as I exhaled a Kentucky frost. Behind me, a large boom box rested atop a stack of pillows and comforters. I turned it up and pressed the gas, the Congos singing in beautiful harmony "early in the morning, I'm up with the morning sun, it's a good, good, good day". Between 1989 and 1997 I had been in four bands, worked at countless restaurants, had a few girlfriends worth forgetting and had narrowed down the list of people whom I could trust to fewer than the number of fingers on one hand. And then there was Asheville, and THE restaurant, my restaurant. That was my first marriage to end in divorce; my marriage to it, a marriage to” the” it. I would pick up a few tattoos along the way, as well as what would later be settled upon as $54,000 worth of debt, to it. The long and short of it goes like this. We were living together on Beaverdam. There are many references to this place in the Asheville poems. One of the bars in town was flirting with the idea of installing a food vendor ship sort of arrangement. It and me figured that for a relatively low cost we could set up a nice little hustle and PRESTO, -music studio funding! That bar didn't work out, but we got into another discussion with another bar, five grand turned into fifteen, into fifty and so on. Yamama's Snaqueria was born, in August 2001. It started out pretty well. I got great reviews, regular clientele, but never enough to pay any of the bills. I had figured on needing a minimum of about $150- a day to stay open, and we were lucky most days to see fifty. To make things worse, we had fronted around $20,000- to the owners of the club we went into, for the renovations inside. In effect, we gave them tax free money to build with, and then built it for them, with money we were paying taxes and interest on. But I guess being young, sort of lazy, overzealous and naive got many fools like me into situations like mine. I remember the day that I told it that I was near done, and that the hardest part was knowing that the price for my freedom from that dream turned nightmare, would include the ruin of my relationships with the many loved souls who had helped and nurtured me along the better of the journey of the last ten years of my "professional" life. A month later I closed the doors. I woke one morning in the back of my Isuzu Trooper. I went to the house on Beaverdam and packed all I could into the truck. I left so many wonderful and dear possessions at that house. I also left a storage shed full of everything I had saved since childhood, having no money to pay the lady that held them. I left Pete sitting on a concrete curb outside Vincent's Ear early one Sunday morning. I went by the Grey Eagle, where Yamama's now was poised to "have once" been, took the few dozen dollars from the cash register, and a big German stein, glass, and full of change. I still have that. I drove back towards the beaches, only it was hot there now, not frozen. My head pounded from all the Jack Daniels and guilt. I felt like I did back when I ran away from home at 17. I didn't feel warm, not safe, not justified. I felt like someone who had just ripped off a family, but had done so to avoid jumping into a volcano. I did not know at all what I would find to do for money, all I knew was I would not find that money in a kitchen. I thought about Rick and Pam, and of the wild horses I had never seen, and that seemed like fun, but also like a foolish and selfish daydream. I couldn't think of deserving any reward for the achievements of the last five years, only of finding a place to stop, and lay down, until the rest of it all would. I had driven away from that beach in the wake of the death of a flower. A frozen world had stopped to watch me as I drove out and past and I took with me lessons which apparently followed the blue gray wisps of escape and Xanadu right out of my grandma's unrolled window. Somewhere during all of that I took up golf. I loved it right off. I always approached golf and that golf world really, with a healthy dose of caution. Those types of people and that breed of success was surely where my grandfather would have fallen short, chosen the shotgun. And me, long knotty hair, hand me down clothes and inappropriate shoes, I just look like trouble to them, most of them anyway. But this seems a good place for me really. I was in, but not in the picture. I am not a chef, nor a musician, although I have been pretty impressive in both sets of clothes. I am not a skateboarder, not a salesman, not a lion or lamb. I am nothing more than a good mimic. A shy kid that used to get his ass kicked around the playground, until one day discovering how easy it really is to keep all of that hell at bay. I learned pretty early on I suppose that most of the herd around us is pretty easy to manipulate, to manage, negotiate. This came as welcome change. I mentioned before that I was never the chief decision maker in my life, more comfortable fitting in with the plans of those I favor. It wasn't until I began realizing how very unhappy and angry I was, and for seemingly no apparent reason that I began to cast off the false sense of protection found in those friendships and really be who I wanted to be. This is why even today I find it so very hard to empathize with those who want pity for the woes of their own making. I have created my own hell several times over, and I have walked through it alone. I came to realize that no matter how hard someone may be suffering as a result of my actions, I am suffering ten times as hard, as THE CREATOR of that suffering, and being ultimately without the ability to forgive myself, and seeing in most cases no readiness to forgive from the other sides, so I walk on. But golf is what I wanted to address, and why I enjoy, or pursue it. I need all of that rambling above to do so, and will add a little more as well. Since I began this game, just like in the game of golf, I have been outmatched, ill prepared. On the course I may not always have been able to afford to keep up with the fashion, or my ball. Most of the people I play golf with are and will continue being exceedingly more skilled than me. I can accept that, it is the privilege from whence the opportunities arise for those skills to be honed by those few, would be contemptuous critics of mine where I find the object of my disdain. And the big funny cosmic truth of all this shit is that I am not programmed for hate. I am a being of love, forced into girding by the evils in this beautiful, yet unattended garden. My whole thing against Pennsyltucky, it all stems from my attachment to it, the it, and its family, a brother with whom I haven't spoken since, that I really loved. I fucked up while in charge, well joint charge of a lot of their money. I failed as a businessman. I have lived seven years in the shadow of that knowledge, and six under the terms binding in a civil suit levied by it, and never protested. I offered on record at the tribunal, no it present, only a lawyer and officer of the court, my heartfelt apologies for any harm or hardships coming to that family as a result of them believing in me, and helping me to try and realize a goal. The entire proceeding took seven minutes. I was driven the eight hours to get there and I wore borrowed clothes. I have always played golf in hopes of someday whipping the shit out of someone with better clothes, more money, a nicer car, more talent and an easier lot in life than I think I have. I must acknowledge that I could be way off in my snap evaluations of would be competitors; it isn't nice really to generalize. And I must also note that the only reason I focus my hate, scorn, whatever you might call this on good simple people is rooted deeply in my hatred of something I see of myself in them, or something lacking. Perhaps I find a strange jealousy of their blissful blank stares, ravenous appetites for empty caloried experiences, vanilla, or chocolate. Most of the world anymore, is allergic to strawberry, imagine that. But yesterday, I went and played golf with three very nice people from Ohio. Nick, the father, Adam and Matt, one of whom said nothing to me the whole time. He was really good, they all were actually. After the front I was at five over, one better than Adam, three better than dad, and tied not only with Matt, but with my personal best score for nine holes. This is where I usually fall apart, over think it and I almost did. I started all right with a par on number ten, then double bogeys on eleven and twelve. Now I'm playing golf I thought to myself, four over in two holes. Then a par on thirteen, I noticed Matt getting a little more tense, as I just got quiet. A sandy par on fourteen, a par three, then thirty foot birdie putt made on fifteen, three over now, three to play. I'm adding all the numbers in my head, where I might be if I par this, bogey that....then pars on sixteen and seventeen. Seventeen, again out of the sand, on a 185 yard par three over a lake a guy suicided in, later for that one. Matt had given up at this point, and the others were by now enjoying beer, and the beauty of a late afternoon in Currituck County fall. I hit the eighteenth green in regulation, and tapped in a three foot birdie to go three over on the back. 38. My previous best was 83, and it has been a couple of years. I walked away yesterday with a 79 in my pocket. I broke 80. Talk to any golfer, they will all tell you that's a major milestone for most, who only care about golf. For me, it was the product of thirty five or so years of growth, from the scared kid on the school playground to the now unpublished author who just about knows why everything has always been so goofy, so certain, even in times of uncertainty. I got to play golf with three perfect strangers, who I imagine, held a fairly low opinion of me at first glance, and I beat the shit out of them. The quiet one, Matt, shook my hand and said "good round". "You too brother..." I trailed off as we broke away from the day. I had won and maybe for the first time in my life.