…weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
Bill Joel
If you’re of a certain age, (ie: old) you’ll recognize a few names in this week’s Bill Burk Talks. If you’re not, have your search engine ready.
Wednesday around 8:40am. Streaming at https://radio.securenetsystems.net/cwa/index.cfm?CFID=eb6dc10d-c215-45d0-b2e7-e39b6ee456ab&CFTOKEN=0&stationCallSign=WJTN
Special thanks to Macey Estes for producing the bi-weekly sound. She makes me sound half-way decent!
Some walks are longer than others, no matter the distance.
Check out this week’s Bill Burk Talks; About Sports and Life on WJTN.
Wednesday around 8:40am. Streaming at https://radio.securenetsystems.net/cwa/index.cfm?CFID=eb6dc10d-c215-45d0-b2e7-e39b6ee456ab&CFTOKEN=0&stationCallSign=WJTN
Special thanks to Macey Estes for producing the bi-weekly sound. She makes me sound half-way decent!
Apologies to Herman Melville
I’d like to preface this week’s talk by saying that I’ve never had a hole in 0ne, it is my white whale, On a golf course, I am Ahab.
If you’ve never read Moby Dick, all 13,000 pages of practically indecipherable prose, and which one of us hasn’t, you’ll recognize the cursed lament you are about to hear. If you haven’t then please bare with me
I’ll start.
There’s a white whale out there, it exists in my mind, the nod of other, the ones who stand on a level swatch of grass, weapon in hand, goal in front, and a keen eye for a prize. That prize is some distance off, measured in yards and years. It’s elusive, much on the side of impossible. But others, many more of a fact, many more skilled, many less so, many have skulled that white behemoth. Don’t let them fool you, the skilled and the unskilled alike.
They are, to a person, lucky so and sos.
With tee in my hand and ball in the other I set the course, seeking, as so many do, the very soul of perfection, the score of one.
“They think me mad – First for playing this impossible game, next for hunting the incredible within the impossible; hopelessness squared, then trebled, and finally, the last chance, the ultimate par 3 on this maddening sea.
The target -my whale- is almost beyond my aging sight. It’s great white snout barely visible across the expanse of green sea. Marked with a flag, a sign of where to look, where to strike. It might as well be a single wave on the vast sea, so elusive, so finite.
“I’VE piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by my whole race from old Tom Morris, to Bobby Jones, Sneed, Palmer and Niclaus on down; and finally me, the Ahab of these times.
I try all things, I achieve what I can.”
My hopeless resignation is not understood,. It is not appreciated “To be enraged with a dumb brute an unlikely task, that acts out of blind instinct is blasphemous.” The ball nor the hole gives an acre of heed to my strike. It just sits there…
But MOCKING..mocking.
“To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
I strike and wail: Go in the hole you cursed thing”
“That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!” That clubbed harpoon that sails past the whale, and mocks me, looking back to say, what did you think was going to happen? That I’d wind up in that blow-hole? That I’d give you rest? That I’d put your name n the papers, and let you join that unholy cabal that has surely given some part of their soul to enjoy this achievement?
“That ain’t no whale; that a great white god.” I scream
Tis simply a hole in the ground, say my partners.
“Then all collapse, and the great shroud of the sea rolls on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”
I did not feel the wind, or smell the fresh cut of grass. I only stood, staring at the horizon, with the marks of some inner crucifixion and woe deep in my face.” As the small white ball slipped past the hole to settle with grim satisfaction in the shadow of the flag, and my fellow golfers said to me, “better luck next time”, which, incidentally, is exactly what I would have said to the Melvin’s Ahab.
For more of Bill Burk Talks go to WJTN podcasts on the web.
For more of my writing, hit me up at http://www.billburkwrotesomething.law.blog
Or check out my book RUN! From Civil War to the NFL; The Jehuu Caulcrick Story, available on Amazon.
Would love to hear from you.
Moby Dick, the most elusive prize in all of literature.
Captain Ahab, the most obsessive, most human, most pitiful character to ever cross the written page.
I am Ahab.
A Hole in One in golf is my White Whale.
Tune in Wednesday 2/14 at 8:40am to the livestream of WJTN’s Bill Burk Talks; About Sports and Life at: https://radio.securenetsystems.net/cirruspremier/WJTN
Apologies in advance to Herman Melville….
Time has come today…The Chamber Brothers
Hi Friends. Another installment of my essays this Wednesday 1/17 at 8:40am on WJTN. Streaming at https://radio.securenetsystems.net/cwa/index.cfm?CFID=eb6dc10d-c215-45d0-b2e7-e39b6ee456ab&CFTOKEN=0&stationCallSign=WJTN
Time tugs, inexorably, incessantly at the world in general, and you and me specifically. It doesn’t waiver, it doesn’t sleep, takes no vacation, no days off….
Check it out…
Hear it on WJTN Podcast
https://wjtn.com/podcasts/bill-burk-talks
I recognized him as soon as he walked in the gym, the father of an old friend. He comes to watch the local high school teams play basketball.
His face is familiar, he knows most of the other fans (though fewer and fewer each year). A walk from the doorway to his favorite seat is fits and starts of conversation, handshakes, well wishes; “How’s your mom doing?” “You get that tractor fixed? Snow tires soon, going to be cold winter.”
He’s stooped at the shoulders, hunched, but just a little, head bent slightly forward. Gravity has done it’s inevitable, inexhaustible work on him for a lot of years. He wears a driving cap that covers a bald pate and sits above bushy eyebrows. The hat is soft and worn. You can tell the two of them, man and brim, put in some miles together.
This time, walking through the gym, he has his grandson in tow. A young boy who’s tenth birthday is somewhere in the future. The boy holds the old man’s hand firmly, smiles easily as grandpa makes his slow, sure way to the far end of the bleachers. They stop and watch the home team do warm-up drills.
A stray ball bounces where they stand courtside. The boy instinctively lets go of the man’s hand and bends down to grab the ball, picks it up and holds it to his chest. A player run over to him and holds out his own hands, palms up. The boy looks to the old man as if to say, “The ball, Don’t I get to keep it?”
The old man waves a wrinkled hand from inside a too-big coat. The boy frowns and pushes the ball to the player, who steps closer and bumps knuckles with the boy, an adult move from a teenager. The boy smiles, the old man smiles.
From the scorer’s table, the horn blows. Game time.
The PA announces the visiting team. Then the home team.
This same scene is playing out all over the county, the country. Boys and girls are lining up across a thousand foul lines. Toeing the hardwood in various degrees of physical and emotional condition, some strong, some weak; some confident, some wary. Some hurting, some hurtful. Some filled with excitement in their full flush of youth. Some in pain and confusion at their increasingly awkward and vulnerable place in the world.
But all are trying, to do well, to find their place, to hold their heads somewhere important in this gym, along this continuum of time in their lives. None are trying to fail, to do harm that is outside their capacity for reason and accomplishment. That’s a good thing to remember, for everyone assembled to understand. We all act at our capacities of experience and development, we are what we’ve been built to do, by society, by our upbringing, by our relatives, our situations and our teachers. The old man will bark at the officials, demean the coach, question the motive and effort of the kids playing the game.
Or he won’t. He’ll sit and watch and enjoy and appreciate all that the game has to offer.
The boy will take it all in, he’ll learn, he’ll remember.
The national anthem begins. The man drops the boys hand and places it over his chest, motions for the boy to do the same. The boy does, and the Star Spangled Banner plays, not the note dragging Whitney Houston one, the fast one, all horns and percussion.
“What so proudly we hailed…”
The boy, righthand across his heart, reaches across and tugs on the old man’s sleeve. The man, a little distracted, frowns and looks down at the boy. The boy points to the man’s head where the old friend, the driving cap sits. The man’s eyebrows go up, and a quick flush of embarrassment crosses his brow. He removes the cap and returns to the flag. The boy mouths the words, “oer the land of the free…”
I watch this from across the gym,
“and the home of the brave…
And I smile.
Hi Friends. Another installment of my essays this Wednesday at 8:40am on WJTN. Streaming at https://radio.securenetsystems.net/cwa/index.cfm?CFID=eb6dc10d-c215-45d0-b2e7-e39b6ee456ab&CFTOKEN=0&stationCallSign=WJTN This one titled “We’re doing it wrong”. Suggesting there might just be a better way consume our entertainment. Tune in, give a listen and share with your peeps. Thanks. Bill
