Whose Shake Is This!!?

I was, quite possibly thinking of calling this post Confessions Of A Man Insane Enough To Live With Beasts, but that title was already taken. I suppose most titles are already taken, or have been, at some point in time. Grand Prince of Monaco. Taken.  He handed the trophy to Mark Webber this morning. The Shallow Men? Taken. Clowntime Is Over? Taken, both by me AND Elvis Costello. So, in the end, I called this whatever I called it.  Most likely stolen from somewhere or something in the poetic universe. And most likely I won’t live up to it’s semiotic potential that always rides with me as I careen from here to there to somewhere.

I should be writing a poem about writing this. That would make fascinating sports journalism. Also, I should be writing this in some obscure and secret place, a little known state or county park by a river, at an intersection where the secret make-believe world overlaps with the anthropology and archaeology of the past. There, sitting on a boulder,  while the quiet suns ripples like knifeblades on the water below, I begin to write. And if not poetry, then a essay somewhat like this. There I am, but as invisible to you as the elves are invisible to you.

What gives me the most pause is that I’m leaving myself out on a limb. The soul of man, the soul of the poet, the soul of a sportsman or athlete…well that seems to carry more portent than I might be willing to live up to to. Able, I have no doubt about that…willing, well…that depends I guess on my soul. I suppose, however, since I called the shot, I’m duty bound to go through with it. I’m quite sure that when we finally reach the checkered flag, we’ll all be rather disappointed. But in sport, someone is ALWAYS left disappointed at the end. Might as well be us.

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Silly Season is finally over. There is a less than a day to go…23 hours and change as I begin writing this, ’til the start of the Daytona 500. And as I write some of this, Danica Patrick’s quest to save NASCAR has begun in earnest with the Drive4COPD 300 Nationwide race at Daytona. But tomorrow, the green flag drops and 43 drivers tee it off at the Daytona 500.

However, the fairways looks a bit different than last year. Over the winter, Silly Season reared it’s silly head and some big names in NASCAR have for all intents and purposes disappeared forever. Sponsors like DeWalt, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam have fled the sport. Teams have merged and remerged and re-remerged as vastly different entities. It’s really been hard even for me to get my arms around all this and get up to speed for the 2010 season.

Most of the usual suspects are still around, but some of them have found themselves in suspicious circumstances…

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