Today it finally happened. I know it seems logical that if you're interested in a topic, you should read the book. I finally sat down and read the part of my billiards book that was relevant to my problem. For years, my pool game has been off. I don't feel like my grasp of geometry is off, my understanding of the amount of force (in general) needed in the stroke is off, or that I'm somehow inherently incapable of playing this game. However, I have been off by something like an inch or two for YEARS.
It was infuriating, humiliating and just plain frustrating. I found myself dreading the game with something akin to panic when it was suggested. I tried every excuse from "let's play something else" and "oh, I would love to, but I have this thing, with my, uh, thing" to "well, how about you guys play, and I'll just sit here, watch, fetch more beer and look pretty." I think my aversion to this game, which my ex husband has a passion for, was a strain on my marraige, he was just too polite to say so. After all, even tho we may think it, saying out loud things like: I can't love you as much as I could because you play pool like a drunken monkey isn't going to go over well in a relationship. My mother grew up with a pool table in her bedroom. That's right, it was worth giving up space in a house with 5 kids to have a pool table in the bedroom they all shared. (don't ask, I've never quite figured out the logistics. At least one of them had to have used the table for a bed, that's all I can figure) Playing pool with her was the ultimate in familial disappointment. She, and my ex, would do their level best to kindly and gently reduce my drunken monkey pool technique to something more appropriate, like a sedated orangatun maybe, I don't know that they had high expectations after years of effort.
Through the wonderful world of college education, I've managed to improve my fundamental shooting form, my break is now really quite wonderful, (it's not entirely unlikely I may actually get a ball in on the break anymore) and I get the cue ball to generally go where I want it. Why then, can I not get the damn balls in the pocket? Why am I off by those couple inches that are the difference between in and "that should have been in, why wasn't it??"
Let's talk about point of aim versus point of impact. With this little detail, seemingly insignificant, you can change your game entirely. Or, at least, it changed mine. This isn't to say that the most radical improvements in my ability to control the cue ball didn't come from improving my fundamentals, it did. However, until I could get the idea of where I should be aiming the cue ball, being able to put it where I wanted it wasn't going to help me much. I'm not going to geek out on the details, but the basic theory is that you draw a line from the center of the object ball to the center of the pocket you want it to drop into, extend that line out past the back of the object ball approximately the radius of the cue ball. You aim the center of your cue ball for that point (point of aim) so that the edge of the sphere that's the cue ball, hits the edge of the sphere that is the object ball at the point where it needs to be touched to deflect into the pocket. (point of impact)
Voila, the damn ball goes in the hole, just like that. That's it, no tricks, no complex algorithms. My partner and I played around with it, trying to figure out exactly how far away from the object ball the radius was, and got our minds wrapped around the idea of aiming at some vague point on the table that has little to do with the object ball at all and we practiced. We missed, then we missed, then we checked our stance and we missed some more. We put the balls back in the same approximate position, determined to make this happen. It's nice playing with people who are at about the same level. There's a few sharks in the group that make me break out in hives at the very notion of having to play with them. I break out in a cold sweat and flash back to the look on my ex and my mom's face... the tight smile and the forced helpfulness when I knew inside they were saying, "I'm playing with a drunken monkey, please shoot me before anyone I know sees me." Eventually, we got it. We took turns putting balls in, throwing any semblence of game playing out the window, and moving cue and object balls around into positions that seemed somewhat likely to meet with success. The number of times we had to shoot the exact same balls in reduced with practice, success!
She left, and I hung around to practice on my own. I shot, the ball went in, I shot again, the ball went in. It was like magic. I shot some more and said to myself, "ya? ya, who's the Drunken Monkey NOW, eh??" I was afraid to stop, afraid I found my groove and by the next time I play, it will be gone again. But not this time, baby, I have so got this down.
Edit 4-9-05: Ya, I still got it. I put in a couple rounds after a meeting today, and it went juuuust fiiiiine. Woohoo!!
Friday, April 08, 2005
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Dreamscape - Where's Waldo?
I dream about him every night. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for many years, and in the last couple have worked harder on the skills that go with it. At one point, I tried to stop remembering what I dream, because they were all about him and it freaked me out and made me sad. Ironically, it was him that changed my mind. He said something to the effect of: Well, maybe it's still good to remember your dreams, maybe they're telling you something, or maybe it's at least good to know what's going on in your unconcious. Reluctantly, (I'm no wuss!) I went back to my exercises.
In the last 3 months, it's begun to be a mental joke when I wake up. My eyes are closed, and I'm relaxed. I will myself into that hypnotic half asleep stage where you're still in touch with the dream world, but actively awake at the same time. In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the way to fly is to forget to fall to the ground. The way to stay in touch with the dream world is to forget to completely wake up, while taking your waking mind with you... it's sort of like a little tiny camera in your gym bag that you take in the girls locker room to make internet porn. It's sneaking a concious mind into a place it shouldn't be, to be able to recall what isn't meant to be recalled.
I remember the basic content of the dream, and then the game begins. Where is he? Sometimes he was just there, present, a companion. Sometimes he called me up, asked me to join him. Sometimes, no warning and no justification, he's grabbing me and dragging me off to my room, the other day he said he was going to spank me with these felt chalkboard erasers... I curled up in his lap, melted into his shoulder and said "ok Daddy, but I prefer your hands." Sometimes we argue. In the butterfly dream, I thought they were monarchs, he said they were anglewings. Turns out, he was right. I didn't even know there was such a thing as anglewings until a friend looked them up after I told her about the dream. I can't even win in my own dreams.
I had something of his, and I thought if I gave it back, the dreams may stop. They did, for a 2-3 blessed days. Then they came back, more vivid and invasive than ever. In Dreamscape, the movie, there is a man who violates a woman he likes (but who has rebuffed him in the daytime) physically. There's some question as to her agreement to the situation, since they were playing in an arena *they* knew was real, but was still "just a dream." Did he rape her because she never gave her consent when they were awake? Interestingly, the answer to that tends to be split down gender lines. Generally women say yes, men say no. It becomes a question of whether something is real if it doesn't happen physically. Perhaps since women are generally more in tune with metalanguage, they understand that something doesn't have to be said out loud or experienced physically to still be real. (this is often the basis of conflict for sexual harassment issues: women don't object to the words being said, but *how* they were said. Men don't think they should be accountable for their body language and inflection, but only what they actually say or do.)
How real is the dreamscape? It's a recurring theme in our culture and cultures around the world to wonder how much interaction people have when they sleep. With him, I've always thought of our interactions on the dream plane as in some part real. We shared dreams, we met and danced on the dream plane, arguing and making up and saying we were sorry when we slept. It made changes that were felt in the daytime. What is it doing now that we don't talk in the daytime?
I watched a movie recently, Stepmom, I believe it was, where the mom and the son made dates to dream together. When they were apart, they would decide on a place to meet while they were dreaming, so they could be together there. My immediate reaction was: Oh wow, that's a good idea, I should suggest that to my boys when we have to be apart and they miss me. There was never even a question in my mind that the meeting wasn't real. I only wondered about that later.
In Willy Wonka, the shrink says something like: believing in the content of dreams is a sign of psychosis. Then turns around and demands to know what the angel of his clients dreams told him about where to find the golden ticket. It's meant to be amusing, to show how desperate he was to get the golden ticket, but deeper than that, it shows that we just don't *know* what the deal is with dreams. We have no idea why we have them, and what we're tapping into when we're on that plane. Sometimes, we're just working out the details of our day, but some dreams... perhaps the one you remember most intensely the next day, have a different quality. They have power. They have the power to disturb us, comfort us, solve a problem we can't seem to get.
Shamanism is based, I believe, on entering this state willfully. From all descriptions of the experience, the rhythm of the drumming, the inward exploration are all trying to get you to tap into that place inside you where you know everything. The conversations you have with your totem animal, we all know that's a conversation we're having with ourselves. But, where does that knowledge come from? Where is the wisdom you access through this self hypnotic state coming from if you don't possess it when you're awake, presumably thinking clearly?
Maybe there's a place, the place where all the minds meld, a place that floats in another dimension where the dragons and unicorns went. In Mute, when they surgically removed a persons psychic ability, that energy went somewhere... it went out, and it collected and became a force in itself, gathering strength as it grew larger from new additions. It was the uncontrolled psychic energy that had been utilized by individuals before being cut loose. I like this idea of psychic energy having a shape and density of its own, I like how it relates to my pondering of the dream world. Many many primitive cultures valued the lucid dreamers of their people. They felt the person who could tap into the power of the dream world at will could be counted on to have expanded wisdom to help guide the people of their community.
He may be consuming my subconcious in a way that makes me feel helpless and confused about my concious, but I think he was also right. Ignoring your dreams doesn't move you down the path of better understanding and expanded wisdom. I'll close with wise words from Mr. Willy Wonka: There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free, if you truly wish to be.
In the last 3 months, it's begun to be a mental joke when I wake up. My eyes are closed, and I'm relaxed. I will myself into that hypnotic half asleep stage where you're still in touch with the dream world, but actively awake at the same time. In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the way to fly is to forget to fall to the ground. The way to stay in touch with the dream world is to forget to completely wake up, while taking your waking mind with you... it's sort of like a little tiny camera in your gym bag that you take in the girls locker room to make internet porn. It's sneaking a concious mind into a place it shouldn't be, to be able to recall what isn't meant to be recalled.
I remember the basic content of the dream, and then the game begins. Where is he? Sometimes he was just there, present, a companion. Sometimes he called me up, asked me to join him. Sometimes, no warning and no justification, he's grabbing me and dragging me off to my room, the other day he said he was going to spank me with these felt chalkboard erasers... I curled up in his lap, melted into his shoulder and said "ok Daddy, but I prefer your hands." Sometimes we argue. In the butterfly dream, I thought they were monarchs, he said they were anglewings. Turns out, he was right. I didn't even know there was such a thing as anglewings until a friend looked them up after I told her about the dream. I can't even win in my own dreams.
I had something of his, and I thought if I gave it back, the dreams may stop. They did, for a 2-3 blessed days. Then they came back, more vivid and invasive than ever. In Dreamscape, the movie, there is a man who violates a woman he likes (but who has rebuffed him in the daytime) physically. There's some question as to her agreement to the situation, since they were playing in an arena *they* knew was real, but was still "just a dream." Did he rape her because she never gave her consent when they were awake? Interestingly, the answer to that tends to be split down gender lines. Generally women say yes, men say no. It becomes a question of whether something is real if it doesn't happen physically. Perhaps since women are generally more in tune with metalanguage, they understand that something doesn't have to be said out loud or experienced physically to still be real. (this is often the basis of conflict for sexual harassment issues: women don't object to the words being said, but *how* they were said. Men don't think they should be accountable for their body language and inflection, but only what they actually say or do.)
How real is the dreamscape? It's a recurring theme in our culture and cultures around the world to wonder how much interaction people have when they sleep. With him, I've always thought of our interactions on the dream plane as in some part real. We shared dreams, we met and danced on the dream plane, arguing and making up and saying we were sorry when we slept. It made changes that were felt in the daytime. What is it doing now that we don't talk in the daytime?
I watched a movie recently, Stepmom, I believe it was, where the mom and the son made dates to dream together. When they were apart, they would decide on a place to meet while they were dreaming, so they could be together there. My immediate reaction was: Oh wow, that's a good idea, I should suggest that to my boys when we have to be apart and they miss me. There was never even a question in my mind that the meeting wasn't real. I only wondered about that later.
In Willy Wonka, the shrink says something like: believing in the content of dreams is a sign of psychosis. Then turns around and demands to know what the angel of his clients dreams told him about where to find the golden ticket. It's meant to be amusing, to show how desperate he was to get the golden ticket, but deeper than that, it shows that we just don't *know* what the deal is with dreams. We have no idea why we have them, and what we're tapping into when we're on that plane. Sometimes, we're just working out the details of our day, but some dreams... perhaps the one you remember most intensely the next day, have a different quality. They have power. They have the power to disturb us, comfort us, solve a problem we can't seem to get.
Shamanism is based, I believe, on entering this state willfully. From all descriptions of the experience, the rhythm of the drumming, the inward exploration are all trying to get you to tap into that place inside you where you know everything. The conversations you have with your totem animal, we all know that's a conversation we're having with ourselves. But, where does that knowledge come from? Where is the wisdom you access through this self hypnotic state coming from if you don't possess it when you're awake, presumably thinking clearly?
Maybe there's a place, the place where all the minds meld, a place that floats in another dimension where the dragons and unicorns went. In Mute, when they surgically removed a persons psychic ability, that energy went somewhere... it went out, and it collected and became a force in itself, gathering strength as it grew larger from new additions. It was the uncontrolled psychic energy that had been utilized by individuals before being cut loose. I like this idea of psychic energy having a shape and density of its own, I like how it relates to my pondering of the dream world. Many many primitive cultures valued the lucid dreamers of their people. They felt the person who could tap into the power of the dream world at will could be counted on to have expanded wisdom to help guide the people of their community.
He may be consuming my subconcious in a way that makes me feel helpless and confused about my concious, but I think he was also right. Ignoring your dreams doesn't move you down the path of better understanding and expanded wisdom. I'll close with wise words from Mr. Willy Wonka: There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free, if you truly wish to be.
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