Appendix

About the Book

         Within the pages of this book you will find a history of Bocce play, both ancient and modern.  The construction of a court and the right equipment required is discussed, as well as numerous tips for playing and excelling at the sport.  Official rules and regulations for everyday and championship play are included.  This book is a valuable reference guide to resources in the United States and foreign countries for the sport of Bocce.  The volume concludes with a photo section and miscellaneous treats from the author. 

From the introduction of Rico Daniele's A Sport for Everyone

 the travel guide of the Oregon Coast

 the 1966 California official highway map

 the texts of Bocce Balling on the West Coast

After returning to my home and job at the end of January, I didn't play bocce until mid-April when Tristan returned from his new residence in Quincy, California.  He visited to pick up things up and stayed for the Sea Otter Classic bicycle event.  We played bocce late one night at the Custom House courts by the wharf.  Tristan beat me and Alexandra.  I realized it had been five years since the summer of 2006 when I first played bocce with Bill Workman late at night after working at and closing down the Central Avenue Bakery.  He worked at John Steinbeck's Spirit of Monterey Wax Museum on Cannery Row and lived out of his car always claiming that that night he was going to steal a paddle boat and sleep on the island in the middle of Lake El Estero.  Green and red balls were locked in metal bins next to the courts and Bill somehow knew the code.  One time we played with Tristan and Andrew and a man named Jeep who happened upon us in the middle of the night.  Afterwards we took him out to Denny's and he refused to have us pay for his coffee, spoke with the manager, and hoped to never drink another cup of coffee that bad.  It just tasted like Denny's coffee to me.  It had been five years since I asked Carly on a bocce date at ten o'clock at night and we ended up at the top of all the best hotels.

That also meant it was seven years since I had graduated from high school and played bocce on my front lawn at my parents' house with the balls I was given as a present, seven years since I left that same set at the park and never saw them again, and seven years since my parents turned the 30 by 8 foot bocce trench I had dug in the back yard into a water feature.

Tristan and I eventually came to argue.  He hadn't contributed to the book.  I had fallen out of contact.  That was all.  It was more of a brief spat.

I played bocce again in June.  I went to a Saturday afternoon party at my parents' house for my father's students.  At the end, as we were leaving to return to Monterey, Chad and Carly asked if anyone wanted to play bocce in town and I said yes and it was agreed to meet at the Custom House courts by the wharf.  They had to stop at Patrick's house first to get his bocce balls.  I got a ride to my house in another car and got my bicycle.  I played Chad, my dad's student, first to ten and I won.  Then I played Carly, his girlfriend, talked about how five years ago I had a bocce first date with a girl named Carly, and won again.  I felt ruthless.  Chad told me about his late Spring trip to the Pacific Northwest with Patrick.  They had a blast with the whole city of Vancouver when the hockey team won a game in the Stanley Cup finals; and they left before the riots that broke out when the team lost.

Alexandra bought me a bocce ball set off the internet for my birthday and we have played several times, and I hope to more frequently.

I also have looked up and found two books on bocce, one very helpful and thorough volume from the library—The Joy of Bocce by Mario Pagnoni—and one fascinating study in literary composition from Amazon—Rico Daniele's Bocce, A Sport for Everyone. 

Five reviews exist for this book:

1.

This book is less than desirable. The print quality is poor, the diagrams are obvious cut-and-paste examples, and over 80 pages are no-value lists of Italian resources where Bocce information MIGHT be found, and poor quality photographs from a personal album. This is a very amateurish book and provides little value. I recommend Amazon drop it from the catalog.

2.

No tree should have been cut down to print this. I wanted to know how to play bocce and how to build a court. This book did not satisfy my needs.

3.

I have to agree with Reader from Houston. This is the cheesiest book I've ever seen in print. It could only have been self-published. Over 50 pages of illegibly-reproduced random clippings and home album photos. Interspersed are about 30 pages of useful information about how to build a court and rules for playing the game. If you really need this information, the ... price tag is not too high. Other than that, it's a masterpiece of ...

4.

If you purchase a Bocce set, it will surely come with instruction on how to play the game. Use those and don't waste your $14 dollars on this collection of photos of the author and his Bocce cronies. 

5.

Reading "A Sport for Everyone" brought back memories of warm Sunday afternoons at my grandparents. After a big family dinner, both adults and kids would go out to the back yard to play Bocce, Just enough exercise to help digest. I haven't played in years, so when we built a vacation house, I ordered this book in hopes of putting in a Bocce court of my own. The chapter on building courts was very helpful and clear. The rest of the book deals with equipment and rules, all very useful and upbeat. I'm now the proud owener of both the book and a truly fine court. This is a book written with the enthusiasm of a Bocce zealot. Even though the pulication is technically a bit primative [sic], I hope it converts others over to a great "social" sport.

Mr. Daniele's abrupt and irreverent transitions through genres and media elicited the very responses that I wanted for my own narrative.  This tone, however, does not seem at all deliberate; rather the choices seem to simply stem from the arbitrary need to give sequence to the various media found in a collection of scrapbooks, photo albums, and bocce archives.  The implied presence of Daniele stands behind, or even within, these choices—he is each placement of newspaper clipping, collage, recipe, diagram, regulation, or other "miscellaneous treats from the author," as he calls them. And all that he chooses, writes, and is in the photos and text becomes a fascinating character. He remains infinitely sincere as he pops up into nearly every photo with his signature grin, neatly parted hair, green polo collar sticking out from his white Wonderful World of Bocce W.W.O.B.A. sweater, and bocce balls in hand.

"Who includes the 'O' from the 'of' in the abbreviation of their organization?" There is obviously a unique character in Rico Daniele, a man who self-published an "official W.W.O.B.A publication" through an organization that shares the same address as his own "Mom & Rico Daniele's Specialty Market" in Springfield, Massachusetts, and fills it with his own story of coming to America from Italy and sharing Bocce with Western Massachusetts and the greater New World. 

I shall here present the content of Bocce A Sport for Everyone, for those who do not care to devour it themselves.

Pages 1-2: The History of Bocce, "An Ancient Game": "Bocce must have been part of the therapeutic advice given by the early Greek physicians Ipocrates and Galileo who indeed believed that the invigorating exercise provided by this game could have beneficial results. It is said that the early Romans were among the first to play the game, at times using coconuts brought back from Africa."  It should be noted that Galileo was Italian and an astronomer.  But that's not the important thing.  The important thing is that he played bocce.

Page 3: The first U.S. Bocce League—Western Massachusetts, list of Presidents since 1932. 12th and 16th Vice Presidents (1988-1990, 1994): Rico Daniele.

Pages 4-5: Teams and clubs in the history of the league.

Pages 6-8: Newspaper clippings from the 1957 and 1933 and 1938 tournaments.

Page 9: the first W.W.O.B.A. team to enter international competition, Trump Plaza, Captain Rico Daniele.

Pages 10-14: SO YOU WANT TO BUILD YOUR OWN BOCCE COURT, including a "materials" section that quite resembles the expenses in Walden, "so that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been received..."

Page 15: endorsement by Giuseppe Polimeni of Agenzia Consolare d'Italia, "representative of the Republic of Italy in Western Massacusetts"—"It gives me pleasure to endorse the efforts of Mr. Rico Daniele to promote the game of bocce throughout the United States."

Page 16: YOU'LL NEED THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT

Page 17: Contact information for bocce equipment retailers.  Number 10 on the list is Mom & Rico/Daniele's Specialty Market/899 Main Street/Springfield, Massachusetts.

Pages 18-22: WHAT THE BOCCE PLAYER NEEDS TO KNOW, Physical Conditioning, Choosing the Right Techniques, the Puntata Method, the Volo Method, the Ace and Bank Shots, The Raffa shot. NOW LET'S PLAY BOCCE!

Pages 23-33: W.W.O.B.A.'S OFFICIAL 76 REGULATIONS FOR THE GAME OF BOCCE
Regulation number 76: "For information about bocce tournaments throughout the region, the country and the world, become a member of W.W.O.B.A. for just $19.00 and also get: / Free T-shirt, Hat or Insulated Cup / Free quarterly newsletter."

Page 34: "LET'S PLAY BOCCE" and W.W.O.B.A. logo

Pages 35-43: SPECIAL RULES FOR PLAYOFFS AND CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES, 6 SIMPLE RULES FOR THE GAME OF BOCCE, A Summary of the PUNTO, RAFFA, VOLO REGULATIONS of the Confederation Bouliste Internationale, and EXAMPLES OF THE REGULATIONS.

Pages 44-82: RESOURCE DIRECTORY
"Organizations that already include—or that we feel should include—as part of their activities range from informal clubs to extremely structured leagues and tournaments, depending on where you live. The following list, as complete as possible, will give you some suggestions who to contact in your area."        —Page 58: Wonderful World of Bocce Association, 899 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01103.

Pages 83-118: SOME GREAT MOMENTS, FACES AND PHOTOS OF BOCCE
Photographs and collages either taken by or including Rico Daniele and Bocce

Pages 119-124: TIMALLO DI BOCCE, Some Personal Thoughts
A sort of brief autobiography and statement of purpose, personally signed by Rico C. Daniele

Page 125: Newspaper clipping about Labor Day Bocce Tournament, 1993, including enlarged quote from Enrico Daniele, "We wanted to get it in here as a family thing.  I'm trying to get bocce into schools to get kids interested."

Pages 126-127: Brackets for two 1993 tournaments.

Pages 128-135: List of good bocce players, first, by state, and by country

Page 136: Letter

Page 137: Introduction to the bocce characters, with the nine planets as the nine bocce balls

Pages 138-149: Ten Tasty Bocce Recipes.  Bocce related dishes with "the bocce characters" hosting their description.  The characters come from Daniele's realization that there are 9 planets and 9 bocce balls.  The sun is the court; the pallino is Pluto; Uranus is cowboy with a mustache; Neptune is a crowned merman; Saturn is a sombreroed, similarly moustachioed Mexican; Jupiter is a blond hulahooping youngster; Mars has the Roman mohawk of Marvin the Martian; Mother Earth has a bun pinned with a stick and is smelling a flower; Venus has a bow in her hair; Mercury has a propellor hat and wields a bocce ball; and the sun brings us a recipe for Italian-American Bread.

150-151: More newspaper clippings.

152: Sample Bocce League Financial Report (Income: $5,852.00 - Expenses: $5,635 = $217.00)

153: Seven Steps to Stagnation, 14 Ways to an Unsuccessful Organization

154: Letter in Italian to "Gentilissimo Enrico" from the Mayor of Bracigliano, Province di Salerno, Italia

155-158: The Joy of Growing Up Italian, Author Unknown

159-163: Ackowledgments

164: Wonderful World of Bocce Association Membership form

165: Bocce is the Perfect Sport for You, a poem by John V. Tranghese

166: blank

167-194: more clippings, collages, premise for movie called Bocce Bella written in the margins of one clipping: "A little Irish girl Katie Fitzgerald grows up to become a bocce champion with Italian friends."

195-196: blank

 the themes of Bocce Balling on the West Coast

Friday, January 7, 2011

You relate the events which you have seen and are still seeing to the field.  It is not only that the field frames them, it also contains them.  The existence of the field is the precondition for their occurring in the way that they have done and for the way in which others are still occurring.  All events exist as definable events by virtue of their relationship to other events.  You have defined the events you have seen primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) by relating them to the field, which at the same time is literally and symbolically the ground of the events which are taking place within it. 

You may complain that I have now suddenly changed my use of the word, "event".  At first I referred to the field as a space awaiting events; now I refer to it as an event in itself .  But this inconsistency parallels exactly the apparently illogical nature of the experience.   Suddenly an experience of disinterested observation opens in its centre and gives birth to a happiness which is instantly recognisable as your own.

The field that you are standing before appears to have the same proportions as your own life.

John Berger,

"The Field," About Looking 

*      *      *

10:20 PM Monterey, CA, Custom House Bocce Courts

Alexandra Parker & Andrew Shaw-Kitch

7

Tristan Kadish & Andrew Anderson

15 

—The only authority to accompany us on our trip

from Tristan's mom's bocce set

The first game of bocce is played at the Custom House Plaza courts in downtown Monterey, California with Alexandra Parker and Andrew Shaw-Kitch losing to Tristan Kadish and Andrew Anderson around midnight.

The Preface to The Joy of Bocce:

Bocce, though already catching on rapidly in this country, would really take off if it got the proper exposure.  Hopefully this book will help.  I'm not talking about it flourishing as a tournament event with complicated rules, state-of-the-art equipment and high-powered authorities running (or ruining) the sport. I'm referring to a simplified recreational version that can be played by anyone almost anywhere. The game doesn't require great strength, stamina, quickness or agility.  You don't need catlike reflexes or the hand-eye coordination of an NBA backcourt star.  Men and women as well as boys and girls of all ages can participate and enjoy the sport, making it as competetive or non-competetive as they desire.  And it is well-suited as a game for the countless physically-challenged individuals worldwide because anyone who can roll a ball can play.  Best of all you don't need expensive equipment. And, played as described here, you don't even need a court--your backyard or neighborhood park will do nicely.  You can play recreational bocce on grass or dirt, on level or unlevel terrain—even at the beach (on the shore or on sandbars during low tide).

Bocce suffers an image problem in America.  People see it as an "old fogies' game" played at social clubs. The word bocce conjures up images of cranky old coots competing on customized outdoor courts.  Arguing and kibitzing (sometimes even cursing--usually in Italian) and generally having a great time, these old-timers seemed engaged in some sort of geriatric lawn bowling.  It looks about as exciting as watching cactus grow in the desert.  But it is a wonderful game, full of skill and strategy--one that requires finesse as well as some occasional brute force.  This book attempts to dispel the misconceptions about bocce, and aims to promote it as a lawn game that is the ideal recreation for family cookouts, picnics, and other get-togethers.  In addition, this book helps guide those who may want to take the game to the next level, whether it be the social club level, tournament or international play.  Most of all, our goal is to get the word out on what has been called "the best kept secret in sports," bocce.

In the weeks preceding our journey I found myself deeply involved in two sagas, both lingering for over a year in the vestibules of my consciousness, and both suddenly coming forward at year’s end to occupy center stage and all of my attentions—intellectual, emotional, and actual; though quitting my job at the local independent movie theater would seem to constitute the freeing of my attentions, that was not the case at all. Instead of passing my time happily sweeping up popcorn and thinking of all the things I was to accomplish, I was sitting at home fretting about money, about how things had gone wrong, and wrapping myself up in the aforementioned second saga—the Grapes of Wrath—a novel I began for the first time about the same time the year before, and neglected for seasons at a time.  

On Christmas Day the movie theater received a film that was, for every reason, to attract masses of people to our tiny art house cinema: it was a British period piece, it had immense Oscar buzz, and ended up winning immense amounts of Oscars, it analyzes an affliction that has not been exploited by Hollywood, it’s sufficiently predictable while not being stupid, it has Geoffrey Rush, and it came out on a holiday—the King’s Speech.  

My mother was a little late preparing Christmas brunch for my father, me and my brother who was visiting from Seattle, so I ended up coming to work thirty minutes late, no crime, I self-righteously thought, for someone who requested the day off before two people to whom it was granted; the Colin Firth-inspired fervor, however, made things look very bad for me when I got there. But rediving headlong into Steinbeck had gotten to me—the company had unceremoniously increased my hours to full time at holidays, knowing, but not asking, that I would not be substitute teaching on Christmas or the week that followed. Any day off requested was never given.  Promotions were given to those who didn’t question the incompetent 18-year-old floozy who was put in charge around the time the boss started sleeping with her.

I was so sanctimonious by the end of the weekend—closing shift on Christmas Eve, opening shift on Boxing Day—I completely forgot that I was working on Tuesday.  I enjoyed several days with family, pleasant evenings trekking with the Joads, the healing qualities of happiness, until I came back to town, when my folks took my brother to the airport, and learned I had missed a day and was suspended.  I furrowed my brow in a scowl and read a hundred more pages in a sitting.  The Joads reached California and it was not the workers’ paradise that was promised.  

On the night I got back and was advised by my coworkers to call the boss and explain myself, I was drying out my black workshirt that I had washed in the sink by the woodstove in my living room.  I stared at it as my boss explained I was indefinitely not to come back to work.  The Joads’ struggle became mine in the hyperbole that emerges from great emotion.  I loved the work that the job entailed, but they owned the means of production.  I had no power.  All I could do was read on and grit my teeth as my polo shirt dried out.  

The next day my friend Brandon called me who also worked at the movie theater.  He needed me to cover a shift and insisted I talk to the film-reeling tyrant.  So I did.  I explained, apologized, argued, pled.  “Why punish Brandon? You usually are indifferent to our requests, now you are going out of your way to make sure we don’t get the schedules we want.”  I didn’t say it that eloquently, or directly, but he wouldn’t have cared if I did.   The most important thing, though, was that I knew I wouldn’t get the weeks off I wanted for my upcoming bocce journey.  He would bring me back on the very days I didn’t want to work just to fuck with me.   I wanted to work the weeks before to save money and not worry on my sojourn; and I no longer had faith that the boss and his girlfriend who did the scheduling gave a fuck about what I wanted.   Like the centuries of family-owned and farmed agriculture in the United States in the 1930s, my year-and-a-half career in the movie business was over.   "Why don’t you just make this suspension or whatever you called it two weeks and we’ll be done with the whole thing." 

After rent and my bills, Christmas break from school, and these new circumstances, I had very little money left for the trip.  We packed up Tristan’s jalopy with jars of olives from my parents’ backyard I had cured a few weeks before, camping supplies, all the food we could scrape together, clothes for a week, firewood, and Tristan’s mom’s bocce ball set.  Ideally all we would need to buy was gas.  Tristan’s truck was all oiled up with the fluids in order.  With our friend Andrew coming along the first leg, our inaugural game played at the historical Custom House Plaza in Monterey, our itinerary roughly sketched out, the three of us, all former employees of the same general manager, were ready to go.  

Rose of Sharon’s baby was born, and from the despair cried out by the trampled-upon worker’s heart, idle in the midst of California’s bounty, came new bittersweet possibility, the celebration of the human spirit over capitalist corruption of the human world.

 

*     *     *

Peter Shaw’s imagining of the Bocce journey

“Take photographs, play a token game, interview local aficionados.”

Clarification of token

“It’s a actually a term derived from linguistics, where we talk about types and tokens, so in order to establish a certain type, or category, of, let’s say, lexical items in a particular language, you collect a number of tokens, that is, actual examples.  So token would be one representative of the class of dedicated bocce ball players.”

*******************************************************************************

7/27/2011 (Tk Addendum)

So is the field of play our span of the West Coast?  Is it the heart's runway we use to take off, out of a jaggedly unjust, apathetic and trite work environment to broad northwestern avenues, trailheads and backyards?  More probably and tangibly, is the field of play wherever we lay down our belongings for a time and decide to roll balls around on whatever terrain we happened to have found vacant?

I think it is easy to say that our field of play was all of these things and more, changing from day to day and still changeable today, three quarters of a year later.  Part of the liberal interpretation of the game that we employed then was that we could make our field of play wherever and whatever we wanted.  We kept our own score.  We did not have to appeal to an authority other than that which we created between ourselves.  How appropriate that we spread our wings towards our own venues and rules of play, branching out, or rather, throwing out new seeds, just as the Joads did in striving for California.  However they were not playing any game, as it might seem that we were, our trio of bocce players.  Yet despite the setting of a game, our struggle as individuals, or our struggle as a group of misfit sportsmen was not any less epic or any less represented by that game we were laying out, one playing field at a time.  The Joads too laid out their journey in campsites and relationships, one by one towards a greater future, each on their own and together as a family.  We differ in that we were comforted and transmitted through a game but also our common drive of companionship, sportsmanship and even chivalry.  Really you could look through our periscope, splashing just above the water line at the very least, at times an enchanting kaleidoscope of contentedness in the moment or washy vision of the future, and you would see scenes on a path towards freedom, a freedom we are promised daily here in this American country.

The game was always something we did after work at the theater.  We were so thankfully done with the meaningless jargon of a minimum wage parade and thus craving the connection between humans that enriches and breeds camaraderie. It was nearby, we could drink beer in public and the fun cost next to nothing.  It was, and still is, just about perfect.  The brilliance of bocce might be summed up in the word simplicity.  I think it is also a fantastic demonstration of democracy. The rules are agreed upon by a consensus, verbally, the time limits are agreed upon in the same fashion, and in the case of our journey, we got to decide where the game was played.  On the tour, we were enabled with the ability to shape our landscape into exactly what we wanted, a field of play.  Not only that but if we had a problem with the landscape, we could go and find another.  Are those not extremely appropriate abilities for a world of freedom and democracy?

The value in the journey was obvious, unraveling adventure via weeks in the useful American highway infrastructure easily within our reach despite gas prices and the thin walls of our pocketbooks and coming along with us: 9 multicolored balls to give some sort of dynamic stability to our days.  It was a brilliantly lit stage.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Leaving later than planned, Tristan, Andrew, and Andrew arrive at the courts at Almaden Lake Park in San Jose at sunset and are met with harsh words from the ranger closing the park for the night.

I misremembered the location, name, and actual character of the venue in San Francisco that was hosting the book release of my friend Sam’s so-called “fanzine” for the skateboard culture periodical THRASHER.  This of course was a humble way of describing the high concept Duchampian streams of thought that no doubt went into the conversations with collaborator Israel Lundi and the forty-odd page black and white photocopies of the highlights of their respective collections of the magazine.  By the time we got there—after a brief attempt to play bocce ball in San Jose, trying to find the place and park simultaneously in the general area where I recalled it being, calling Tristan’s mom who had internet access, calling Sam who was outside the venue smoking a cigarette but who could not describe anything beyond the character of the alleyway, finding the building, and attending another event for ten minutes or so on the wrong floor devoted to bondage-related sculpture and polaroids—the event had dwindled to what appeared to be its close.  Tristan was dressed for the wilderness, from his floppy hat down to his boots, and Andrew was frazzled by the event downstairs, but I was happy to see Sam and proud to see him travelling for a book release like a big shot, but one who deserved it.  

               
A charming duo was asked to perform for what was apparently the second time and I was quite impressed by the successful incorporation of a fire false alarm into the rhythm of a song.  We said we’d see Sam in Portland when we passed through, congratulated him and complemented the Japanese half of the duo who was smoking pot with two girls outside on the way back to the truck.  

Tristan’s brother Tyler was kind enough to host us on the other side of the bay and Andrew cooked a noodle feast to thank him and his roommates for the hospitality.  We shopped for groceries at a Whole Foods and I bought a bag of spinach among other things that I ate while they checked out.  I ate the spinach and talked to an older man about the marxist traditions of the Salinas Valley, and its biggest proponents of social justice in Cesar Chavez and John Steinbeck.   This conversation seemed natural and logical in the Whole Foods in Berkeley.

After dinner we watched several installments of the Japanese cooking program Cooking with Dog on youtube. Tyler insisted on sharing it for the incredible effect the culinary virtuosity of the woman—non-dog half of the show—had paired with the absurdity of having a terrier sitting next to her on the counter with an overdubbed male voice describing the procedure, giving the effect that it was the dog who was narrating.  

*     *     *

January 8, 2011, 5 pm - 8 pm
@ SF Cameraworks, 657 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA

Lawrence Rinder launches TULEYOME; Israel Lund, Sam Korman, and Colter Jacobsen launch THRASHER FANZINE

Lawrence Rinder launches a new fiction, with photographs by Colter Jacobsen, Tuleyome; Israel Lund and Sam Korman launch Thrasher Fanzine; with live music by Coconuts. There is a suggested donation at the door, but all are welcome regardless.

* * *

 

Basho traveled.  He, as far as his audience is concerned, transformed these travels into poetry.  On one level he bisected beauty with his own subjectivity, concentrated his ego into the singular perception of nature; on another level he took this singularity and put the natural encounter into verse; and he left this poem for his hosts; or he interacted with peers and composed with them a linked analysis of a poetic apprehension.  It is now hundreds of years later.

THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN

And there he stood, blushing a kind of reddish green, the president of the senior class and author of "Manhattan Melodies"—Kermit the Frog. "Way to go kermit!" and "What a frog!" his classmates called out to him over thunderous applause.  Kermit was overcome.  It felt wonderful to have an audience clapping for the show he was so proud of.  "See you on Broadway," yelled someone in the audience.  Kermit laughed at the thought.  Then he bowed one last time and ducked back into the wings.

"Why not?" Scooter asked the others backstage.  "Why don't we put the show on Broadway?"

Miss Piggy, who was still swooning with happiness at seeing her adored Kermy taking his bows, suddenly woke up.  "Broadway!" she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up like giant searchlights.  "Moi can see it already!"

"Yeah!" agreed Fozzie. "Broadway must be dying to get a show like this."

"Broadway! Broadway!" chanted Animal, the wild-eyed drummer of the Electric Mayhem Band. 

"But the show isn't good enough for Broadway," said Kermit.

"Not good enough!" chorused the others. "It's more than good enough.  It's great!"

"It's a tempting idea," said Kermit. "But we have to think about our plans for the future."  

And then Fozzie had a brilliant idea.  "So I guess if we don't go to Broadway, we just have to..." He paused, looking as forlorn as a bear can look. "...we just have to say goodbye to one another." He waited for the words to sink in.

Kermit looked around at each of his friends.  The thought of the gang breaking up and heading off in different directions was painful.  No one spoke, and Fozzie held his breath.  "Well!" Kermit said at last. "What are we waiting for?  We're going to Broadway!"

Before anyone had time to say "Are you sure?" or "Maybe we shouldn't rush into this" or "Help!" the gang was there, gazing in awe at the famous Manhattan skyline.  Right in front of their very noses was the Empire State Building, as pretty as a picture—it was a picture!  It hung on the wall of the not very clean bus terminal that was the only part of Manhattan they had seen so far.

The terminal wasn't much, but it was home.  They decided to stay in their lockers that night, even if the lockers weren't exactly first-class accommodations. "More like twenty-first class," said Fozzie.  "Right up there with park benches."

"But it's just for one night," said Piggy.  "Because we'll all be Broadway stars tomorrow."

"No problem," said Gonzo, whose personal habits have often been described as "unusual" and even more often as "really, really weird." "This is much better than the file cabinet I used to live in."

"Squawk," agreed Camilla, and everyone else settled down to sleep.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

After much arguing and another elaborate feast we set off the next morning in the afternoon.  Well into day two we were two hours from Monterey.  


Before stopping at the Muir Woods overlook for what was to be the first bocce game of the trip, we stopped at a yard sale outside of Tamalpais to find, hopefully, a pot functional for camping.  Instead Tristan found oil for future bike repairs, and I found Emmanuel’s Book, a text that became of great interest to us in the next leg of the trip, and certainly influential in its overall meaning.  Due to the nearly inaudible portable speakers we had brought and Tristan’s long-ago maimed and stolen stereo, we filled the space with reading from many books, and Emmanuel’s granted much insight as we made our first assent into the redwoods of northern California. 

Ram Daas introduces the book as legitimate, saying that the authors who, on their radio show, fielded questions and presented them to their friend in the spirit world, they are sincerely communicating the message of an entity on the other side, and when Pat Rodgecast “conveyed Emmanuel’s words…the differences were very noticeable” (xiii).  

We now found ourselves, to fill the audio void, giving voice to Emmanuel’s truth, announcing our divinity and foreshadowing many lessons yet to come, the first poem/koan/psalm appropriately named “An Overview of the Human Adventure” (3).

The purpose of life is exploration.

Adventure.  Learning.  Pleasure.

And another step towards home.

Physical bodies

Are rather like space suits.

Your physical bodies

can be symbols to you of restriction,

of ultimate pain and death,

of surprising and alarming needs

and of unexpected triviality

that knows no bounds of denigration.

Or they can be seen as chosen vehicles

that souls are inhabiting

because, rather like space suits,

they are necessary where you are.

It is within your humanity

that you will learn

to recognize your divinity.

The spiritual and the human have to walk hand in hand

otherwise the spiritual has no foundation

on which to take hold.

We are all one.

Ours is one reality, one energy, one perception.

The mind cannot grasp this fact 

or accept it without battle

but the heart is yearning to know it.

Is this not life’s purpose—

to know that you belong,

that you are safe and eternal,

to know that in your spiritual reality

you are already one with God?

The human condition is not the antithesis of heaven.

It is the reproduction, within a limited vision,

manifest in physical form.

There is nothing in human experience 

that does not exist in spirit.

This is why the human condition is a blessed one.

It is a mirror, a faithful replica

of the spirit’s situation.

There is Divinity in all things

and in order to find that Divinity

one must work with the material at hand.

To disregard the clay

is to question the Divine Energy 

that formed it.

Your text has been completed. 

It is all here.  There is nothing more

that humanity needs to hear in order to grow.

There will be no new teachings,

for they are unnecessary.

What we in spirit are here to do

is to point you

to what has already been given.

You live in a loving universe.

All the forces are here to give you assistance,

to give you support.

We admire you tremendously.

Those of us who have been human

know full well the courage it takes.

John Muir Overlook

Tristan: Guitar music

Andrew: “We’re here at the Muir Overlook, Marin County.  We can see the San Francisco Peninsula.  And we’re on day two of our tour of the west coast and discovery of its best bocce locations and experiences to be offered.”

Andrew: “I guess we could just play freestyle bocce ball.”

Andrew: “There’s a beautiful lawn patch resting on this overlook, of what would you say this drop here is? 100 yards?

Tristan: “Oh, at least 1,000 feet.”

Andrew: “And I couldn’t think of a more ideal spot to play bocce.  Now on our opening night in Monterey we played the full fifteen points, though nowhere near thirty points were scored—it was not a close game. Tristan and Andrew beat Alexandra and myself, 15 to what? What did we end up getting? 6?”

Tristan: “7.”

Andrew: “As I was very distracted partway through the game, by a lot of visits from people getting off work.”

Andrew: “Also Alex had never played bocce before.”

Andrew: “She had some incredible shots, but there were parts when I realized she had never played before.”

Andrew: “Yesterday we stopped in San Jose at the Almaden Lake City Park, which I had picked out on the internet as a prime bocce location and indeed when we stopped there.”

Tristan: “Low and behold.”

Andrew: “Astroturf on the courts.  Four of them. Beautiful.  Right next to the lake.  Unbelievable moment.  Tristan had not set eyes on the courts before the state ranger—city-whatever-you-wanna-call-him—“

Tristan: “The man with the gun.”

Andrew: “the man with the gun.  He didn’t get out of the car and shout at us.  He stayed in the cab and announced it.”

Andrew: “How about an inaccurate reenactment right now?”

Andrew: “Alright.”

Andrew: “’Scuse me! ‘Scuse me!  Park is closing!  Park is closing!”
Tristan: “Half an hour ago!  Half an hour ago! Half an hour!”

Andrew: “Half an hour ago!  I’ve been making these announcements!”

Tristan: “And he had these three voices and was just yelling at everyone.”

Andrew: “Well, we were just, we wanted to look at the bocce—well get out!  Get out!  Go home. I have a gun.”

Tristan: “leave.  Leave now.  I’m gonna kill you.  I’ve killed already half your soul.”

Andrew: “Thank you, sir.”

Andrew: “So no bocce was played then.  But Andrew did manage to crack, barely, the beer that we had planned to drink. And made for”

Tristan: “And when we went to put it back in the very chilled environment of our mini cooler.”

Andrew: “Not realizing that it had been cracked slightly.”

Tristan: “It then spilled all over our food.”

Andrew: “It prematurely ejected itself from the bottle all over our cheese emotion.”

Andrew: “So what do you say? A round?”

Andrew: “Sure.”

*       *       *

2:45 PM Muir Beach Overlook, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, CA

Andrew Anderson

7

Tristan Kadish

3

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

4

From the late east bay start the sun was down by the time we were about where we wanted to camp for the evening.  We continued to wind up highway 1 with no radio, no light to read by, and no space between Tristan driving on my left and Andrew wedged with his arm out the window on my right.  The moon glimmered on the ocean ripples below us.  Every five minutes a pair of white headlights appeared before us and became a pair of red taillights behind us.  Sometimes it would be a faint pair miles ahead atop the next ridge. Sometimes it would be a blinding light suddenly appearing around the next corner.  Nothing was visible to the east until the road curved that way and the truck illuminated it. We stopped at a state park.  Spots available.  It was a beautiful campground, sheltered in a dropped down meadow below the highway and above the precipitous descent into the Pacific.  Forty dollars.  "Does it come with a TV?" we asked and continued on, the gear shift wedged into my left thigh for reverse.  We stopped for gas.   I filled my mug with convenience store powder hot chocolate and coffee to warm me up.  We climbed back in and got back on the road.  Fourth gear hit me in the knee.  We approach another state park, similarly ideal.  "Forty dollars?" and we continued on.  By now we had had our groceries that we had picked up in Bodega Bay and been all set for a couple of hours.  The headlights don't come at all now.  It's too late to be winding on this road.  The game of bocce has been played.  The car is in the garage. The television show has begun.  The kids have brushed their teeth.  But for us the destination is uncertain.

Then it was the cruelness of the sea, its restlessness and awfulness, rushed upon me.  Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime.  I held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fogbanks that hid San Francisco and the California coast.  Rain-squalls were driving in between, and I could scarcely see the fog.  And this strange vessel, with its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and out, was heading away into the southwest, into the great and lonely Pacific expanse.

—Jack London, the Sea Wolf, page 25

Monday, January 10, 2011

It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

—John Steinbeck,

The Log from the Sea of Cortez

11:00 AM Stillwater Cove Park, Sonoma County, CA

Andrew Anderson

1

Tristan Kadish

7

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

4

Andrew: “Bocce Thought Number 7.”

Tristan: “7?”

Andrew: “Bocce thought number…number—what are we on? 6? Point Arena, California.  Monday January 10th.”

Tristan: “OK.  I don’t know about those dates, but I think I believe you.”

Andrew: “Day old bread. I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure that’s good on the record.”

Andrew: “Check for—yeah, day old bread.  It’s either—Sunday, Tuesday, you’re gonna get fresh bread; Monday, Wednesday, day old bread”

Tristan: “Wait a second that’s not what we were going to say at all.”

Andrew: “OK. Check for bocce.”

All: “Check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Check for bocce.”

Andrew: “Check.”

Tristan: “Concept being, you never know what might turn up.”

Andrew: “If you need to take a, take a bathroom break in the wilderness…”

Andrew: “Don’t be afraid to stop.”

Andrew: “It’s not an inconvenience—it’s an opportunity.  Check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Make life into an opportunity, not into an inconvience.”

Andrew: “Kinda like, ‘stop and smell the roses.’ Or stop and check for bocce.”

Tristan: “Check for bocce.”

Andrew: “And concerning big concepts in life. Some might say that you have one idea just grows bigger and bigger like a snowball, we say, these ideas, they bocce ball.  There are a whole bunch of different ones and they congregate.”

Tristan: “They slide.  Sometimes the bocce ball goes where you want it to go and sometimes it slides out of control.”

Andrew: “Every time it does resemble a tiny universe.”

Awaking in Sonoma County, Tristan, Andrew and Andrew play a game at their campsite.  

*        *        *

2:50 PM Greenwood State Beach, Elk, CA

Andrew Anderson

6

Tristan Kadish

5

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

7

We stopped at a store in Stanley.  I bought a candy bar and asked how the trout fishing was in Cuba.  The woman at the store said, "You're better off dead, you Commie bastard." I got a receipt for the candy bar to be used for income tax purposes.

The old ten-cent deduction.

I didn't learn anything about fishing in that store.  The people were awfully nervous, especially a young man who was folding overalls.  He had about a hundred pairs left to fold and he was really nervous.

—Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

*      *      *

4:00 PM Greenwood State Beach

Andrew Anderson

15

Tristan Kadish

11

Andrew Shaw-Kitch

13

Further up the one, later in the day, three games were played in Elk, the last on a court made of driftwood on the beach.  A game was played late at night on the courts of a church in celebration of the arrival in Arcata.

Two thoughts were recorded in Point Arena after stopping for coffee and food at the Point Arena General Store:
1. In deciding we would leave town without playing a game of bocce on the slopes of a nearby park or finding a bathroom for Andrew, it was realized that any future stop would serve a dual purpose, that of the practical intent and the more theoretical search for an ideal bocce setting.  The motto "check for bocce" is agreed upon and is understood to mean that the theoretical was to forever accompany the practical, the immediate was always a gateway to a greater potential.
2. That thoughts do not "snowball," in that the addition of further thinking to initial stages does not create an expanding mass, picking up more and adding to the cohesive whole as the sphere continues its journey; instead, thoughts "bocce ball"—a principle idea is thrown out there and subsequent corollaries aim to get as close as possible and end up imperfectly clustering around it, a sort of nonteleological thinking.
These tenants were discovered and agreed upon early enough that they found their way into the core approach to the rest of the journey, leading one to understand them in a variety of contexts.

To "check for bocce" was not simply an added vigilance to seek out flat patches to serve as potential courts; it was to include a heightened awareness of all that could benefit the trip as a whole—the narrative of bocce on the scale and execution of a single round, but also the narrative of the greater purpose for which we were aiming: life as bocce, as constant motion with a reasoned control, as a shared event with friends, life as a communal commitment to order and ceremony, life as pure physics, placing our selves symbolically into analogous balls, our spherical avatars.  We would stop for coffee, but we would also ask if the area could claim any courts; we would stop at a yard sale to find a pot to use while camping, but we would also find important texts to help us understand our journey; it was never simply necessity, and it was never entirely diversion; like the game itself every moment contained the duality of being a necessarily serious commitment to a short-term task at hand and simultaneously a playful appreciation of the greater history that surrounds any single moment.

The second thought, about the composition of a larger idea, lends naturally to the way the first thought creates these ideas: if the context of one's life is always potentially constructive to its essence, then the way things end up—the cluster of thoughts, moments, symbols, books—is the starting point of understanding.  We do not end up with a teleological mass to content our need for conclusion.  We have a scattered collection inviting interpretation, measurement and argument.  Everything—the three of us, the things we encounter, the things we cast out into the world, the ideas we have, and the universe itself—bocce balls. 

*      *      *

1:00 AM Church Bocce Courts, Arcata, CA

Andrew Anderson & Chloe

6

Andrew Shaw-Kitch & Tristan Kadish

15