Point of View: A Beautiful Game

My body was well ahead of my mind and its left hand was spraying shots everywhere, into the back fence, the net, and then Gary served and I began, began to realign, and once we’d tied the score at two games apiece, things, as they say, started to come together. 

When, at last, the connection was made, we won 10 straight games after losing, owing to my volatility, the first two.

“I don’t know,” I said to our eldest daughter later, “it takes me a while to get in sync. I told Gary that, like the brain patient written about in the Sunday magazine, I was arguing with myself. And that, worse, I was losing the argument.”

Later in the match, when things had been going swimmingly for a while, I turned to him and said, “I’m still arguing, but I’m winning the argument now.”

It all, I suppose, is traceable to trying to exert one’s will, rather than trying to be at one with things. At times, I think I’d rather spin confounding serves into the far corners of that good night than go gently. 

There was a time, a delightful time, when I played paddle on grass, and really didn’t care whether anything I hit was in or out, and, of course, wonderful to tell, most everything I hit was in. I called High Times the next day to offer my services as its sportswriter. 

Since then, I — my body and mind, with the inner eye looking on, in bemusement, I trust — have been arguing with myself. And, periodically, I have to check myself in for a realignment.

Mary is helpful in that regard — she, I would say, is my best mechanic. It is to her that I bring all my petty complaints and excuses and it is before her that I shamelessly preen, peacock-like.

“Be Zen,” she says. “Play Zennis.” 

She is right. It’s all one: the mind, the body, the spirit. . . . What’s outside, what’s inside. It’s really a beautiful game when you think of it.

When you think of it.