kites

A little coincidence as a segue: A couple days after the kite image appeared in my poem, I read the following in Golf in the Kingdom, a book I found recently among my father's molding golf magazines in a basement corner. In this paragraph Shivas Irons, the mystical Scottish golf pro protagonist, says, after deeply meditating and scaring the wits out of the author, who think's he's dead:

"Do you na' ken ye're flyin' heer like a kite -- wi' nai mair than a threid holdin' ye?"

The book is written by Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen institute, and is neither a "real" golf book nor a very deep metaphysical discussion, but sort of a lite Teachings of Don Juan in a grand Scottish golf setting rather than the Sonora desert, with Shivas as the likely-fictional vehicle for the author's thoughts on Big Stuff. The written Scottish accent sometimes gets in the way and the scenes can be contrived, but overall it's a nicely packaged expansion on some things that golfers may begin to grapple with as they work on their own inner game. Was Murphy trying to reach a wide audience with esoteric ideas?

April 29, 2004 10:10 PM