What Shape Are Our Lives?

I was able to leave work at a reasonable time this evening, so I made the trip home, dropped off my briefcase and picked up my cue case, and got back in the car for a trip to World Class Billiards up in Peabody.  (My next door neighbor was leaving at the same time, and she rolled down the car window. "What have you got there?  Is that a bow and arrows?"  If you don't play pool, you probably wouldn't recognize a cue case.  It gets opened by TSA every time I try to take it on an airplane...)  I haven't played nearly enough lately, maybe a total of ten hours or so in the past two months.  I used to play that much in a week when Sacco's was still open.

Anyway, I was driving north on I-95 and listening to NPR like the good liberal I am, and they did a story on a new release of a very old record.  When Motown Records moved from Detroit to LA in the early '70s, making the transition from The Supremes/The Temptations/Smokey Robinson to Diana Ross/The Jackson 5/The Commodores, they spawned a number of small sub-labels:  VIP Records, Rare Earth Records, and their original LA label, MoWest.  There's a new anthology of MoWest songs just re-released, and it takes its name from a song by one of their artists, Odyssey.  That song, and this record, are called "Our Lives are Shaped by What We Love."

And I think that's true, but only if we make it true.  Our lives can be shaped by what we despise.  Our lives can be shaped by what we fear.  Our lives can be shaped by what we think we need.  Our lives can be shaped by what other people tell us.

Or our lives can be shaped by what we love.

Last night, I was home from work and scarcely able to move.  Our friend Ursula once commented on a line from my second book—"There were a lot of evenings when I went home and did nothing." That was Wednesday.  But I watched a taped pool match on the DVR, with Karen Corr playing really well to win a tournament against Helena Thornfeldt.  And I suddenly saw the table in a new way.  I knew what ball was next to be shot; I saw what pockets it could or could not be made in; I saw where the cue ball would have to land to make each of those possible shots; and I understood the relative ease or difficulty of getting the cue ball to each of those places, and thus which choice was most likely successful.  It was a revelation, a sudden understanding.  "Oh, so THAT's how you make decisions when playing position..."  It was like someone sent me the next chapter of the textbook.

So when I went to play tonight, I actually looked forward to practicing 9-ball, a game I usually don't care for.  And although there's plenty of rust on my shooting, I played really well in a genre that has been uninspiring to me.

Our lives are shaped by what we love.

I'm feeling like I'm getting closer to understanding how to play position on my own life as well.  Marrying Nora has been a revelation, the arrival of the next chapter.  So now how do I get from there to Vermont, to writing, to independence from organizational dysfunction?  I don't know entirely, but I feel like I understand the layout in ways that I didn't even a month ago.