WEIRD, ARTICLE

I Wanna Be the Free-est Man

I met a guy in Santa Barbara named Ken Loch. He may or may not have been homeless at the time. He kept a meticulous blog about the Tennissance. You see, the Tennissance is the ultimate mind / body confluence, a perfect melding of peak psychic powers with a mastery of physical motion, all embodied in the sport of tennis. I can't find the blog anymore, but his internet presence pops up every now and then on comment boards.

Ken Loch told me the next major advancement of the human race would come once enough people practiced the true technique of tennis, not that rinky-dink competition shit, but real tennis, which is meant to be a melding of tennis and yoga, sort of.

Anyone who's had an up-close encounter with religion or religious people can attest to the weird inverted freedom that comes from complete assuredness accompanied by unquestioning devotion. You wanna sit in a pew? Ken Loch is out there swingin' a racket! He's whacking a tennis ball with a tightly-wound thing specifically made for whacking tennis balls. His legs are pumping, his mind is focused; damn—he's a body in motion breathing air and sweating and pausing and then whacking that ball—inscape, know-whaddi-mean? He is a thing meant for hitting tennis balls.

No time to be the soft pink nugget of flesh encased in a car, a speeding mechanical insect, going from his house to his job and back again, he told me. He's a Tennissance man.

Tennissance forever.