My favourite and only sport is frisbee. No rules, no training, no special clothing. The only equipment required is a plastic disk available from any general store. It holds 
an hypnotic attraction for participants and spectators alike. Above all, it’s not competitive. It’s co-operative: you adjust your throw so that the other person can catch it, easy or challenging according to their need.
Coombe Hill is a magnificent place for frisbee. It has wonderful views and good grass cropped short by rabbits. Karleen took the group photo but perhaps two tins of beer had affected her sense of the vertical, which I easily corrected by rotating 4° anticlockwise. She said afterwards that I had played frisbee like a 16-year-old, which pleased me greatly since my son and daughter are 21 and 18 respectively; he looking here like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
In frisbee, three players is best, for the triangle can go in either direction, and keeps adjusting position to deal with hazards like trees, other people, the sun in your eyes, the wind and so forth. But a magical rhythm gets going where you throw and catch in ways you never dreamed possible. Even the missed catches can be balletic, heroic or hilarious.
In my last I was unable to express what has been heavy in my heart lately. Now that I feel lighter again, I can tell you more. I tend to perceive my domestic economy as fragile though it is well above subsistence by most of the world’s standards. Like everyone whose existence is precarious, I depend on good fortune coming my way; or as I see it, angelic blessings. Lately my clumsy attempts to defend my own interests have been weakened by a sense, not so much of others’ greed, but their human frailty, personality flaws if you like.*
And so it has felt as if the whole burden of the world’s imperfection has invaded my space. Others are incompetent, but so am I too in a different way. Who pays? So I am trying to be magnanimous. No more can I sit aloof on a cloud as I’ve always tried to do.
* PS 5th Sept. 2018. I can’t remember what this was about. Some money tangle, I suppose. Money has always frightened me – the thought of loss & debt. To have none has always seemed somehow synonymous with personal freedom, a sort of monastic (or mendicant?) ideal. But these things belong to imagination. In practice I’ve instinctively been frugal. When my son called me “cheap bastard” the other day (for getting him to ring me back if it was going to be a long conversation), I was strangely gratified.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Vincent,
Ah, yes, Frisbee. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon with freinds.
My best frisbee partners were when I was in College. They each enjoyed the activity as much as I.
We were so well in tune with one another that we could perform wonderful feats of fancy that amused onlookers as they passed us on campus.
One fellow was an expert in Tai-Kwon-Do, which is a form of kick boxing I think. He taught us ways to fling the disc while performing leaps of various kinds.
We would skip the disc off the side walk that passed between us. Hitting the mark from 25 feet way or so.
We would catch the disc in interesting ways sometimes “tipping” the disc to one another.
I tried Ultimate Frisbee for a while, which is sort of like football (american), with a frisbee.
But it never caught my interest like what we called freestyle. The competitive nature of the game was not appealing to me.
Today, I throw with friends and my daughter. It is more tame, but just as enjoyable.
Nice to know we have that in common, makes me feel a bit closer to you.
Thanks for sharing that. You all look very happy in the pictures.
LikeLike
'give me a million and I'll get you an Oscar.
I am not sure if Jack Nicho;son got the million he demanded but he got them an Oscar. Unforgettable film, Milos Foreman was it ?
This post has a deep impact on me Vincent, Frisbee a simple sport. So relaxing. I just wonder where the violent sports and their growing popularity going to take us. Are we a very violent race ? Why competetion becomes an ugly obsession ? My next post deals with the trap we find ourselves in.
LikeLike
The sunny and bright landscape is beautiful
LikeLike
Lovely, Vincent. Looks like son and daughter are enjoying themselves with Pa, and that is a very good thing indeed! And perhaps, that moment, that enjoyment, is all we are made for.
nothing, it seems, is “safe.” we all build precautions into our equations, but should we switch to alogarithms we still wouldn't be able to compute the variables.
LikeLike
One always wonders how the frisbee, the art of gentle conversational interchange – became an intercontinental precisely guided, explosively ballistic missile .. but am generally stupid.
The name of the Literacy teacher bloke that I fondly remember from Stone and Ivy college days was Flexmore Hudson .. gaaaahh! did we really have names and wear costumes like that?
LikeLike
(..tho have yet to figure out the exactitude of putting an “a” or an “an” in front of a word beginning with “h” ..heh.)
LikeLike
On the subject of Angels .. am not a follower of the Roman church doctrine and dogma, but .. dunno yet, something other than my own efforts are “looking over/after me”. Too many things could have become disastrous recently, but didn't. Am keeping an open mind.
LikeLike
Hello, Vincent. Thank you for your kind visit and comment on my blog.
I think I never tried Frisbee, but the way you presented it, it looks fun, playful, interactive.
Your blog is a nice interesting place, I'll be back.
Joice
LikeLike
“No more can I sit aloof on a cloud as I’ve always tried to do.” Yes, I know that feeling, having myself entered a phase of “duty” in my life! But that also brings its own new learning and rewards, the inner world is enriched through the distillation of the intruding outer world…
Frisbee, yes, I discovered the joys of frisbee-ing as a student in London, in Regent's Park. Glorious days…
LikeLike
dear vincent,loved to see you and your kids. it's obvious they love their dad. you are blessed.
LikeLike