Jono's Journal

Pool Hall, Knuckleball
The other day, an interview with Paul Newman. The interviewer brings up a line from a movie I never saw ("The Hustler").

[Fast Eddie is bothered because Bert called him a born loser]
Fast Eddie: Cause, ya see, twice, Sarah... once at Ames with Minnesota Fats and then again at Arthur's, in that cheap, crummy pool room, now why'd I do it, Sarah? Why'd I do it? I coulda beat that guy, coulda beat 'im cold, he never woulda known. But I just hadda show 'im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's REALLY great. You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don't care, BRICKLAYING can be great, if a guy knows. If he knows what he's doing and why and if he can make it come off. When I'm goin', I mean, when I'm REALLY goin' I feel like a... like a jockey must feel. He's sittin' on his horse, he's got all that speed and that power underneath him... he's comin' into the stretch, the pressure's on 'im, and he KNOWS... just feels... when to let it go and how much. Cause he's got everything workin' for 'im, timing touch... it's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling when you're right and you KNOW you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue's part of me. You know, it's uh - pool cue, it's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood, it's got nerves in it. Feel the roll of those balls, you don't have to look, you just KNOW. You make shots that nobody's ever made before. I can play that game the way... NOBODY'S ever played it before.
Sarah Packard: You're not a loser, Eddie, you're a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything.

I've heard the idea before. Everyone has - it feels good when you're "in the zone," when you're doing really well at anything, right? When I heard the line, I immediately flashed back to this book that I read in a crazy little Eastern Philosophies class in my crazy little high school - Musashi's Book of the Five Rings. Essentially, a samurai sort-of-guy explains how you can achieve enlightment by being extremely good at anything, using his own amazing skill at combat as an example. By devoting his life to beating the shit out of people, he learned to beat the shit out of people so effectively that he immersed himself completely into the activity, and the conscious mind whose cravings and insanities make us miserable fades away - we are mindless in action, one with the world, enlightened. Like the Hustler, he believed that anyone could do it with anything - through combat, art, bricklaying, anything - if you devoted yourself to it so that you existed as an extension of that. Through any activity, we can achieve a state of grace.

And I think that I've felt that, a few times, in flashes. Sometimes, writing flows out of me and it's an ecstatic experience, but painfully rarely. I've felt flashes of it a few times in a range of things: performing, laughing, working, flipping burgers. I can't devote my life to flipping burgers (career-wise, anyway), and I let the opportunity to pursue performing vanish unfulfilled rather than risk failure (a waste, a waste, and i'm trying to let that drive me now - "Better to live in hope than to never have lived at all"), so the most socially acceptable pursuit is writing. But then again, for every minute of writing in which I've experienced sheer joy, I've also experienced ten minutes (an hour, a year) of gut-wrenching fear and pain. Is it worth it? If I've spent these last few months knowing that writing could be my ticket out - that which makes me feel fulfilled (and were the girls a distraction from that gap?) - and wanting to make something of myself - but being too lazy or afraid to do actually do something, am I really cut out for it? Is it worth it? Would it work?

And I know that I won't be happy unless I try it and do it, but let's see when I actually write something new. She gave me a picture of a closed door when I graduated - and I know that I will always regret not trying to tear that motherfucker open if I don't follow through with this - and yet, and yet, and yet.

Anyway, here's another story. I wrote it before I really knew much about baseball, so there are things that I really regret about it now, to the point of writing this namby-pamby disclaimer - and yet, and yet, and yet. Forgive it, forgive me.

( Knuckleball )

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