Oct. 22, 1998

Dear Ken,

These are the magnificent days on the golf course, when greens are turning to golds before your eyes and a crisp shot soars into the blue and seems to float forever, suspended in air until plopping into the bunker of its choice.

The fact that I am reading a book titled "The Mental Art of Putting" makes me wonder about my own mental state. I've been putting badly because I stand over the ball thinking about all the mechanical things I ought to be doing, yet I get a book that gives me 100 new things to think about.

One secret to great putting, the authors say, is to "approach each putt with a renewed enthusiasm and desire. The past no longer matters, nor should it influence your present putt."

The bane of putting, they say, is self-doubt.

Armed with this wisdom before my most recent round, I missed a flock of near-gimmes and quickly forgot about those beautiful golds and greens and blue heavens.

When you get to the clubhouse with that sorry look on your face at this time of year they say, "Well, it was a beautiful day for golf."

Yes, you grudgingly admit, it was.

On my reading table also resides a book by a psychiatrist who hypnotizes his patients so they can remember their past lives. He contends that some traumas -- both emotional and physical -- may not be so much the result of experiences in this life as carryovers from previous existences.

So if you have a pain in the neck, it may not be your golf swing or your boss at fault but the guillotine you encountered so many, many years ago during the French Revolution.

Obviously, reincarnation could explain away a lot of things -- including bad golf. Oh, I forgot. The past no longer matters and shouldn't influence the present.

I am warm to the idea of reincarnation and the notion that your soul seeks enlightenment through the experiences of varied lifetimes.

Voltaire, all the better to quote because so few have read his work, wrote: "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once: everything in nature is resurrection."

DC has begun another pottery class at the university. She says the students, most of whom know each other from the previous instruction in playing in the mud, are all puzzling over what to do with all the new wonders they'll be making. They've already given the previous creations to boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, good friends, friends, acquaintances.

I tell DC that if she learns to make a teapot big enough to put a tea bag in and a coffee mug large enough for my mouth, she has nothing to worry about. She's concerned that she doesn't yet possess the technique to make beautiful pots. I advise her to concentrate on the technique and the feeling without worrying about results.

No, that wasn't easy for me to say, just hard for me to do.

None of us need worry, of course, about putting, pottery or past lives. If we make a mess of one or the other or all three, we'll get 'em next time.

Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.