{"id":2355,"date":"2012-03-22T11:54:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T19:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=2355"},"modified":"2012-03-22T11:54:50","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T19:54:50","slug":"hemingway-had-the-pilar-i-have-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/hemingway-had-the-pilar-i-have-golf\/","title":{"rendered":"Hemingway Had the Pilar, I Have Golf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every morn\u00ading while liv\u00ading in Key West and Cuba, Ernest Hem\u00ading\u00adway rose ear\u00adly to write, and every after\u00adnoon he went out cruis\u00ading and fish\u00ading on his yacht, Pilar<\/em>. There are many arti\u00adcles out there, includ\u00ading this one<\/a> and this one<\/a>, that detail what Hem\u00ading\u00adway did dur\u00ading his after\u00adnoons on the Pilar<\/em>, as well as how much the boat meant to him, so I won\u2019t dis\u00adcuss any of that here.<\/p>\n

I only men\u00adtion the Pilar<\/em> because as much as Hem\u00ading\u00adway loved writ\u00ading, he need\u00aded an activ\u00adi\u00adty that took his mind off it. Spend\u00ading hours cruis\u00ading and fish\u00ading (and hunt\u00ading Ger\u00adman subs dur\u00ading WWII) enabled him to for\u00adget his writ\u00ading and enjoy him\u00adself for a while, so he could return to his work the next day refreshed.<\/p>\n

As a boy I loved to fish, but some\u00adwhere along the way I devel\u00adoped an aver\u00adsion to han\u00addling slimy, squirmy things, so in the last 25 years I\u2019ve fished maybe twice.<\/p>\n

The promise of the 1st tee<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead of fish\u00ading, for relax\u00adation I\u2019ve turned to anoth\u00ader clas\u00adsic obses\u00adsion: golf. While I\u2019ve tak\u00aden a few lessons and read sev\u00ader\u00adal books on the game, I\u2019m only an aver\u00adage play\u00ader, typ\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly shoot\u00ading between 100 and 110 (par is 72) and occasionally\u2014if I\u2019m on fire\u2014in the low 90s.<\/p>\n

But most of the time I don\u2019t even keep score. I play for the Zen aspect of the game. For those few hours while I\u2019m play\u00ading, noth\u00ading else exists.<\/p>\n

All wor\u00adries about char\u00adac\u00adters and plot and reviews and fan mail and roy\u00adal\u00adties and where in Europe I want to trav\u00adel and whether the sec\u00adond book in my detec\u00adtive series will be as good as the first and my friends\u2019 and rel\u00ada\u00adtives\u2019 health and why lit\u00ader\u00adary jour\u00adnals tell me they enjoy my sto\u00adries but con\u00adtin\u00adue to reject them and bills and the incon\u00adgru\u00adous\u00adly gor\u00adgeous postal work\u00ader I chat\u00adted with that morn\u00ading and what I\u2019ll write next and what I\u2019ll talk about at the par\u00adty I was invit\u00aded to that week\u00adend and whether I\u2019ll ever amount to any\u00adthing as a writer\u2014all of these wor\u00adries fall away while I\u2019m play\u00ading golf, leav\u00ading just me, the course, and the ball.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much I love about the game, I can\u2019t pos\u00adsi\u00adbly express it all here. Nor do I want to. Some\u00adday I want to write a novel\u2014or at least a story\u2014about my love of golf, so I have to keep a cer\u00adtain amount of my pas\u00adsion to myself. If I write it all now, there won\u2019t be any cre\u00adative ten\u00adsion to write more in the future. I will share one obser\u00adva\u00adtion, though:<\/p>\n

Besides the qui\u00adet and the soli\u00adtude when I\u2019m able to play alone, I love the panoply of green on golf cours\u00ades. As James Kaplan notes in his short sto\u00adry<\/a> \u201cThe Mow\u00ader,\u201d con\u00adtrary to what most peo\u00adple think, there are about a thou\u00adsand shades of green on a golf course: green-green, yel\u00adlow-green, blue-green, orange-green, black-green, gray-green and so on.<\/p>\n

Walk\u00ading a course forces me to see\u2014really see\u2014the world in greater detail, which is exact\u00adly what a writer needs. Golf gets me out from behind a desk and actu\u00adal\u00adly see\u00ading<\/em> things, not think\u00ading about them, mulling them. It reminds me of why I write in the first place: to attempt to cap\u00adture some of the beau\u00adty and poignan\u00adcy of moments in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every morn\u00ading while liv\u00ading in Key West and Cuba, Ernest Hem\u00ading\u00adway rose ear\u00adly to write, and every after\u00adnoon he went out cruis\u00ading and fish\u00ading on\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}