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ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE | WINTER 2017
instead, a hive, an ordered purpose; there
is a dance, and the swarm is trying to tell
each other something. The journal page
turns, and the writer scratches out the
new words: elegant, flowing, humbling,
precise, and adaptive.
As eye and mind adjust to the drama on
ice, also to the full-blown sensory
environment on the safer side of the glass,
we begin to find and follow the puck
more easily. It can rip the air with the
cleanest aerodynamics or wobble
dangerously like a slow-motion bad day.
The cloud of unknowing descends upon
player and observer for about as long as a
human can take intense uncertainty.
Hockey requires, more than any other
game, intervals of rest. And this
necessary structure is one of the most
important lessons drawn from the
lecture hall of college hockey. The
curious ratio of inverse effect, that
oftentimes, the less you do, the more
insight and productivity you gain, is a
proof-point easy to miss during an hour
of top speed and highly technical
performance. Yes, Coltrane and Dizzy
took breaks, even while in the music.
Hockey represents a quiet irony or,
better, a wise counterpoint to the
dizzying pace of riffs, licks, and
improvisation today, when the
prevailing adage everywhere, especially
on a college campus, is “to power
through,” no matter what. Hockey, as it
turns out, resembles some of the best
courses taught at St. Lawrence because
it abides the wisdom of self-reflection,
how getting off the ice, taking a breath,
is an essential part of the game. Not at
first, but I now believe it is among the
many beautiful and hard things to do
or see in life, because in Appleton
Arena every Laurentian faces the
inescapable challenge of thinking about
something differently. n —WLF
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subliminal about the knotty-pine
woodwork and the empty surface
beneath, a flat, unscratched looking-
glass, as if bringing an Adirondack pond
indoors to admire on a cold night.
Once the puck drops, the game erupts
into a state of chaos, which by all
appearances will seem abstract, merely
formless athletic power and speed. What
to think or notice, whether it’s your first
game or one among the hundreds
before? An observer’s journal entry
begins in staccato syntax, no full
sentences, just words: hard, scrappy,
profane, intense, and discordant. All
seems frantic and quickly exhausting,
and then the next wave jumps the boards
to renew the desperate hopes for
possessing an object worth no more than
a piece of kettle coal. The stakes are high
for something so small.
Trained to be theoretical (as are the
best jazz players), can we find a pattern
in this scene of blinding hyperactivity?
After a while, strangely perhaps, a
student’s intellectual capacity to analyze
the action may seep into the
experience—ah-ha, a paradox on the
page. The perpetual motion of twelve
players, colliding, spinning, falling,
while the most heavily armored of them
also darts sideways like a bumble bee in
a jar, suddenly breaks into a design, not
exactly Euclidean as in baseball or
football, but coordinated nonetheless.
We would mislead ourselves if we
merely thought a slap-shot is the prelude
to some slap-stick entertainment, where
the laugh is always on somebody else
suddenly made to look foolish. There is,
President ST. LAWRENCEuniversity magazine
VOLUME LXVI | NUMBER 1 | 2017
Once the puck drops, the game
erupts into a state of chaos.
VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS
Melissa Farmer Richards
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Deborah Dudley
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Ryan Deuel
Meg Bernier Keniston ’07, M’09
June Peoples
(1963-2016)
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR
Tara Freeman
CREATIVE SERVICES DIRECTOR
Ed Lemire
ART DIRECTOR
Jeff Macharyas
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR
Susan LaVean
CLASS NOTES MANAGER
Anna Barnard