Here I drew a picture; then I went out into the real world and hired actual people to pose in a photo to realize my drawing.
Dear diary,
First, let’s tackle the question: What is pool? — OK, you start with a green felt tabletop in the shape of a rectangle, and it has voids in all its corners and its sides. Then there are balls racked up tightly in a pyramid shape, right at the focal point of the far end of the table. These balls are multicolored. A human player now places a white ball on the opposite end of the tabletop & then uses a long wooden stick to strike this white ball into the balls that were racked, so that they scatter. The goal is to knock all the colored balls into the voids.
Now let’s interpret this mystery: What does pool really mean? — The racked balls represent all the energy of the universe. These are the building blocks of life; and they also make up everything non-living. In the beginning, all of potential is pressed into a singularity; and it has a pyramid shape to symbolize reality’s hierarchy. The human player is God, who claims to have created the world out of nothing but truly only disturbs and rearranges pre-existing materials; all for the purpose of impelling this resultant chaos, as quickly as possible, into the abyss (represented by the various voids).
Now, certain scientists have a problem with God calling this destructive act “creation”; they would prefer that he speak more accurately and cipher everything to a cent. But I love God for this! I love God for this!
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Let’s take soccer next. You start with an indoor field of astroturf (a type of artificial grass), which is just as rectangular as a pool table but bigger in scale. There is a net at each end of the field: these are called goals. Now you place two gangs of humans on the field and drop a checkered ball between them. The players may touch the ball only with their feet. So the player of the red gang kicks the ball down the field — kick, kick, kick — straight past the blue gang, whose members continually fail to steal the ball away from the red gang-member (the blue gang’s deepest wish is to propel the ball in the opposite direction); & ultimately the red gang’s star player launches the ball toward the field’s extremity, hoping and praying that it enters into the net. However, lurking in front of the net is a blue-shirted guard, or gatekeeper, who tries to secure the net by blocking the ball from entering. A point is scored each time the ball outsmarts this security guard and manages to occupy the net.
Now what is the proper interpretation of soccer? — I admit: I don’t know. I can’t figure this one out. At first I assumed the ball must represent the spermatozoon, the motile gamete of a male animal, and the netted goal would then represent the ovum; thus, to “score” would mean to “undergo fertilization”; but this cannot be, for the soccer ball is not plain white but checkered with dark patches in a distinct pattern; moreover sperms have long flagella, which are useful for swimming, whereas soccer balls are just round & lack self-determination.
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Next we have volleyball. This, at first glance, looks promising; for the ball is plain white, and, if you spike it hard enough, it seems almost to develop a flagellum. But volleyball has nothing like a netted goal, unless you interpret the net that divides the court as a type of goal that’s been opened up and straightened so severely that the notions of “outside” and “inside” have become completely equivocal.
But here’s what I’d do, if I were King of the Beach. I’d improve the rules of volleyball so that the net is abolished. That way, the pair of gangs that have been hereto segregated can meet each other and become better acquainted. Then I’d take the ball, and punt it into the sea, and tell the birds to peck it with their beaks. That way, the ball would get pierced & deflate; so, instead of floating, it would rather descend to the ocean’s depths, where it would come to rest beside the Kraken. And I would do this with the full understanding that, in contradistinction to soccer, a volleyball must never be kicked with one’s feet: one should only touch it with one’s hands — therefore punting it into the ocean, as I just did, is a most grievous sin. But I would be unrepentant about my act, because my intention as King would be to bring peace to the entire volleyball court, which, being a subdivision of the Beach, falls within my jurisdiction. And there’s no better peacemaking measure than to wipe off the face of the earth all causes of enmity. So now that these rival gangs lack any ball to volley at each other, and there is no longer any net to prohibit them from mingling, they can safely approach each other and begin to converse. Once the gangs have intermarried, both their property and their offspring will have merged; thus, none of the succeeding generations of players shall be able to determine which side of the court they were ever charged to protect, since all ancestral lines are now entangled; therefore this peace shall prove both universal and permanent: it shall last even if some schismatic government agency reintroduces a net of division, or an evil scientist reinvents the ball.
Now, should I attempt to interpret this game as well? Alright, I say that volleyball stands for the way that the political realm intersects with the modern world. A good idea is tossed about like a hot potato, and no one can muster the will to implement it; for everyone is clad in bathing suits and would rather be reclining. It makes perfect sense, if you think about it for a second.
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And golf is a very boring sport. You drill holes in the forest floor, and you flatten all the trees; then you import rods from the iron range with which you whack at acorns. Soon you realize that walnuts work better, because they’re a little larger and thus easier to whack; and you also paint them white — not only to aid the eye in locating where they land, but as an homage to the good old days of volleyball, which, in turn, was a throwback to pool. For every sport is a memory of some former sport that it’s trying to emulate, like a spindly son yearns to follow in the footsteps of his father, who worked as a centurion for Rome’s Creditor Class. And the common root of all sports is war. That’s why every game contains some likeness or echo, however distant, of the act of vanquishing one’s enemy, enslaving their spouses and bondservants, stealing their livestock, transferring all their capital & non-liquid assets into one’s own company’s name, and then drinking their blood.
*
So now that sports have been explained, what else is left?
The only thing that remains after sports is art. And just as all sports stem from war, all art is basically sex. Sublimated fornication.
*
“Alright, smart guy,” sez my heckler, “so if you think that you can explain away the whole world and ruin all our fun, then just riddle me this: What the heck is a lawyer? Cuz I think I understand what a doctor is: that’s a thing that profits from the sickness and injury of others. But, I repeat: What the heck is a lawyer?”
Well you stumped me, dearest heckler, but of course I’ll never admit that; so here’s the right answer:
A lawyer is like a referee in sports; however, unlike a referee, who is bound by the rules of the game, a lawyer can MAKE the rules of each game (remember, the word “poet” simply means “maker”): a lawyer fashions new rules from whole cloth. A lawyer can even change the rules of the game while it’s still in play!
And a librarian is someone who organizes the Books of Law, so that the lawyer can more easily dream up solutions to current dilemmas — he can say to his clerk (the servant whose duty is to serve her master by fetching him dusty old Law Books): “O thou clerk, go fetch me the volume on Commandment Number One; for my client has broken the statute about having no other gods before God, and I need to invent a precedent for making this bookish intellectual, Jesus of Nazareth, into the son of a Man of War like mighty Jehovah, whom we’re claiming must be the father of my client (at least in a spiritual or heavenly sense); and right now Jehovah claims to be King of the Beach, thus we need somehow to flip these facts so that everything spins in our favor.”
Likewise, waiters are called waiters because they wait. Note how they bring you your food, and then they stand there patiently and watch you eat it. (This is also why angels are often referred to as watchers, in legal documents.) And when it’s time to stroll thru your domain, those who are called your biggest fans carry large leaves to shade you from the sun, while waving goose plumes to soothe you.
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