Chess

I try to play chess, it comes as the default game with the Mac much like minesweeper comes with Windows.  I don’t remember much about playing chess except that there is a name for moving your knight as your opening move.  I alwasy thought this was pretty cool and often use this as  my opening move.  I never found out what was the second move after this so the coolness doesn’t last long.

As a sign of of the superiority of the Mac over Windows the computer quickly beats me into submission.  I look at the crappy graphic and the simple sentence “Black Wins!” and close the program my enthusiasm for playing chess having dried up as quickly as a puddle on a hot summer day.

The last time I played chess seriously was when I was in high school, we didn’t have a chess club and even if we did no one would have joined it for fear of being made fun of thanks to Saved By the Bell.  We did have a math club which was filled with our math professors favorite students.  One day I noticed another one of my fellow math students had a chess board with him, I don’t know why or how I made a joke about chess being easy. And of course he challenged me, I beat him the first few times we played but then he improved and it became impossible for me to beat him. Since this was the only area he could beat me in he would needle me about it endlessly, it was probably the high point of his day.

That was until I discovered chess books in the library, this would seem quaint to most people today but back then we had no internet and very few of us had computers and there was no internet to speak of so when you needed information you went to the library.

I don’t know if he had done the same or if he had practiced on his own, I suspect the latter since the first time we played after I had read one of those chess books I crushed him.  Cruelly I taunted him by claiming I had only let him win previously to help his confidence.  We never played again.

Thankfully the computer does not taunt me after winning, just to make sure I drag the chess icon to the trash and delete the program.  After all I was just letting the program win to boost the computers confidence it would not do for it to become overconfident.

The past three days in NJ were not that different from any other three days and yet they were completely unlike any other three days.

Watching my dad crawl around with son, both smiling seemed to signal something.  That the world was more connected than we know and expect.  Tina pointed out that my dad scratches his head the exact same way my son scratches his head which is also the exact same way I scratch my head.  Which according to her is the weirdest way anyone would ever scratch their head, after hearing that I had to scratch my head.  My sister’s parking spot is 402 which is also the number of the hotel room we got while we were in NJ.  What does it mean ?  Probably something to someone somewhere and nothing to me.

Pulling out of the parking lot some sort of woodchuck seemed to be chewing on something, totally unafraid of us. He seemed to wave to us, busy on his way but for some reason he did not have a watch, did not run away and was not late for an appointment. He simply sat there holding something in both paws and chewing happily.

Connections abound, 45 or so many years ago 28 students settled into a dorm, one was from Kermanshah, one from Sanandaj and the other from Isfahan. They were probably nervous, far away from their homes for the first time.  The kid from Isfahan tells them the funniest jokes they had ever heard, he tells jokes till they fall over and can’t get up, none of them had ever laughed that hard in their lives.  Finally with hurting stomachs they go to bed, there are 14 bunk beds.  The kid from Isfahan takes the top bunk, the kid from Kermanshah the bottom bunk and the kid from Sanandaj the bottom bunk next to them. In the middle of the night the kid from Isfahan falls down on the hard tiled ground.  As the kid from Kermanshah wakes up and groggily tries to help him, feeling around in the dark he can’t help but remember the earlier jokes and starts to laugh, he laughs and tries to help the kid from Isfahan get up but can’t because the jokes he remembers are too funny. His laughter and the other kids cries of pain mix together in the dark night.

A few years later the kid from Isfahan goes to jail because of a few verses of a revolutionary song he sang dealing with sheep and shepherds. The kid from Kermanshah and the kid from Sanandaj take some noon-roghnai to jail and visit him.  The kids grow up, years later the kid from Kermanshah has his own kid, and that kid has his own kid and when they all get together somehow the kid from Kermanshah discovers that his kid is friends with the Isfahani’s brother’s daughter. No one thinks to chastise the Isfahani kid’s niece for abandoning her blog.

And it’s strange and normal, why wouldn’t there be so many connections ? maybe it’s just life reminding you that it is bizarre  and unpredictable.  My flight should be flight number 402 but it’s not, instead it’s flight 95.  It seems to lack something, like it’s cut off from the abnormal flow of things and is instead grounded firmly in reality.

My son is asleep and somehow I know my dad is asleep too. It’s an instant but it’s an important instant that has to be grasped and enjoyed, much like the woodchuck grasping his piece of wood I grasp the instant in both hands, burn it in my mind and vow to remember it.  My dad crawling around with my son, both smiling.