beyond the felt

today was a very interesting day....i'll get to it later.

yesterday- I woke up early(but not early enough) to go to the cinema art group meeting that I was 10 minutes late to. However, kim was even more late than I was, so I had breakfast with her and she told me about her spanish class and some other shit. Definitely a cool chic. Anyways, I proceeded to work on my English paper from 11-12 and then went to english to learn something. Did about the same in Stats and Psych. In cinema art we went over cinematography and watched some LOTR scene and got out early. After school, I ate and picked up nick to go to skyview. In the 40 dollar game I basically never found anything to play, and blinded myself to death with 4 tables left. Oh well. The real fun started at 3/6 limit. For about the first two hours I was floating a little bit under 100. After kinger and kloby left at 11, nick asked me if I wanted to go, and I said no. I was slightly under 100, but I thought that with some cards I could go on a tear. After going outside to call my girlfriend(what a pussy move), I hit a rush that lasted for the next two and a half hours. It wasn't so much that I was recieving great starting cards, but more so that I was semi-bluffing at oppurtune times and my bluffs were working in limit. Another reason I won is because this kid also named Matt gave me most of his chips. He remarked that he was leaving for a 10/20 NL game after this at the Hamptons, and he said that I was one of the better limit players that he'd ever seen. The whole skyview experience was fun and landed me up about 300 for the night. I payed the debt that I owed nick and took him home about 2. By 3, I had crashed in bed.

today- I woke up at 10 and turned in my stats activities. By the way, I declared this a homework free day(first one in 6 weeks) so that was good. All day, I basically watched tv, went to western union to deposit on pokerstars, and then went to work at 5. Ron was back and had some wild tales from the west to tell us. Okay, so he didn't, I lied. But it would be pretty sweet if he saw Wild Bill's grave or something. Anyways, I worked with angie most of the time and she and I argued(kinda) about how the store should be operated. Of course I'm right, and she'll come to that conclusion eventually. After work, I played some serious PS and talked to some people online. I was up about 75 for the day, but no, my greedy ass decided to take a "cooldown" session playing 1/2. I lost 20 because I just couldn't get anything started. Then, I got even more greedy and signed up for a 35+3 game where my queens lost to aces. I even knew he had aces or kings, yet unwillingly shoved in my stack after he bet 300 on the flop. He called and flipped over aces and I was a 90/10 dog and was unable to hit anything. After the hand, I said to myself, I knew he had aces when he raised double before the flop. Why didnt' I lay it down? One thing led to another and I began to realize that there's more to this "dream" life that I've been wanting to live for the last three months. Playing cards is a fun thing to do. I really like to play and could play probably three nights a week and not feel burnout. I learned my lesson from bowling and baseball. When I was 13, I pitched everyday and my arm hurt so bad by my last season of pony that I've only pitched half a dozen times since. Same thing happened with bowling. My sophmore year, because I wasn't able to play baseball, I practiced seven days a week, three games a session. By the middle of the season I wanted to shoot myself anytime that I saw a bowling alley. Had it not been for the social excitement that n00b, bethanne, maura, mike "the sleeeeeze" roth, jesse, and i-am-pie-tro brought to the team, I might have quit out of sheer boredome. I have decided not to make that my destiny so to speak here. Just remember that some lifestyles are not what they appear to be, and playing cards is one of them. I used to gawk at Daniel Negreanu when, in his blog, he would state that he took whole days off to "chill out". Man, I thought, if I had his bankroll, I'd never stop playing. Well, I realized that he probably would have killed himself if he played everyday. So I'm not stopping playing poker, just not thinking about poker a lot. As Larry Phillips states, there is a world beyond poker- one "of nature and love and art and music and people, a world of pheasants in fields on autumn days and daughters graduating from college and bright faces on children in playgrounds, a wider world, one more well rounded and multidimensional than that of gambling." How true is that, I have almost forgot about that world over the last three months. Ahh what I've missed, I'm not sure. I can only hope for the future.

the poetry is one of my favorite selections about the simple pleasures of life....enjoy the 200 lines.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
By: William Wordsworth
on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses.Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,Is lightened:-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on -
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft -
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart -
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished though
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led -more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. -I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. -That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear -both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, shouldI the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee; and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance -
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence -wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service; rather say
With warmer love -oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!