DONALD MIRALLE/NEWSMAKERS Tiger Woods' winning streak and mechanical swing can give clock-work structure to any weekend.

From the Sidelines

Grab a Tiger—and your life—by the toe

The great Modernist dilemma—of applying order and structure where none exists; of imposing form upon formlessness—applies with considerable urgency to me. Choosing a major seems to me a loss, an abandonment of the skills nurtured throughout my youth. I prefer instead the road I have forever taken, and so continue to spread myself academically thin.

We all had to juggle our way through high school, forming sanity-maintaining equilibria amidst extracurricular madness. For me, the balancing act continues, though on a scale much diminished. My activities now number far fewer, and my balancing act has assumed a largely curricular slant. I experiment with academia, dabbling in various realms, fulfilling distributional requirements with ease, but emerging majorless.

That I've developed a peculiar book fetish should come as little surprise. While books' subject matters differ, their presentation remains constant. For now, I consider myself a book major, which, it should be noted, is markedly distinct from the quintessential worm. The worm is not necessarily a fetishist nor a bibliophile. I, the major, am both. I read the words and obsess over the physical mass of the book. The flimsy hundred-pagers, though, structure me only so far for so long.

Where the structure provided by high school extra-curriculars once maintained my sanity, a void now exists—a motivational paralysis, if you will. Substitutes—intense gym conditioning, weekly painting exercises, intramural sports—remain plausible options in theory but not practice. With my inner self offering little means toward self-structuring, I turn outward and seek an order imposed upon me from without. My LOM assumes a divine form, a mechanical purity. Tiger Woods conveniently fills the void.

The other students in my Local Flora section, immersed amongst dogwoods, birches, maples and cherries, appear oblivious to my anxiety. Somewhat conspicuously, I clothe the typical "how many samples left to collect?" in less familiar terms, continually urging the professor further onward, closer to the final tree. Tiger tees off at 2 p.m. The routine slowly takes its form. I toss my parthenocissus quinquefolia (Virginia creeper) twig into my Yale Bookstore collection bag. I skip the optional post-collection plant chat and head out to Prospect Street for the inconceivably long walk back to Berkeley. Tiger—it's 2:30 as I reach the Whale—likely drove the par-4 second for all I know. My pace quickens, though it remains well short of a full sprint; a nannyberry and Russian olive twig precariously hang through a hole in my bag.

The LOM dictates my every step as I arrive, panting, at renovated, cable-ready Berkeley. I assume the weekly stance on the couch. A green pillow props my head into appropriate television-watching position. A green fleece blanket insulates my lower half. Peanut M&Ms provide the ritual snack, eaten not just one at a time, but one per hole. The door to the common room, usually propped, remains shut, eliminating extraneous noise. My visual and near-spiritual dialogue with Tiger demands privacy. Tiger plays the third hole, a par-5. The chocolate covering is now melted. Tiger waits patiently on the green in two, looking, as is his custom, backwards at his partner's third shot. The soft chocolate coating gives way to a peanut core. Tiger two-putts, the peanut dissolves. Birdie. By the 14th, the wrapper finds itself buried with the others in the crease of the couch. There they collectively form a testament to a six-tournament winning streak. They will not move until Tiger loses.

Saturday afternoon, I grab brunch seconds before the 1 p.m. closing, all in a conscious effort to minimize the wait for the 2 p.m. starting time of third-round television coverage. I endure the 15-minute wait, tracking Tiger's progress via pgatour.com's live scoring window. Then the couch, the M&Ms, the blanket, the pillow, and Tiger. He pulls even with Phil Mickelson at 15 under par. Birdie. Though the streak ends several bogeys later, my Tiger Woods LOM persists. Post-tournament Internet reading Monday morning complements my Sunday night analysis of tour statistics. I will not deceive myself—I do not play golf. I will never become a serious golfer. Nevertheless, in a Thursday through Sunday state of literal disembodiment, I am Tiger Woods.

Tuesday night, as I write of my sanity-maintaining Life-Ordering Mechanism, I notice a few loose screws as reality creeps into the picture. The week ahead represents something of a flight into nothingness; Tiger is not playing Doral.

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