Chess dharma

Illustration by Michael

Things aren't always as they seem. Never underestimate the person in front of you.
I offer this not as advice, but as self-admonition.
I'm less likely to forget that which I've written down.

Because of Sunday's monsoons, I played chess at the public atrium inside the Sony building at 56th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
When I arrived, there were five or six games going on, and a few were compelling enough so that their spectators didn't feel like peeling their eyes off the action to play a newcomer.

Sitting at a small table by himself was a fellow with arms folded across his chest, half-dozing, half-watching the game at the table next to him.
"Wanna play?" I asked.
"Uh, yeah, sure, I'll play," he said in a flat, emotionless voice sprinkled with a hint of uncertainty.
He spoke with his eyes half-closed. He was dishevelled. His flannel shirt was half-unbuttoned. His sneakers were old and tired and didn't have laces.
I wondered if he even knew how to play.
It turned out that he could play, and masterfully.

Jeff and I wound up playing more than seven straight hours of chess -- from 3 till past 10 p.m. -- with each other and as part of a foursome.
I'm just getting home now, and my head is still spinning.
Jeff critiqued my games, gave me a lesson in key opening moves and complimented me on my creativity (but pointed out in no uncertain terms just how much I have yet to learn).

Through karate, I've learned to respect all opponents as if they were deadly foes, which they often are. But sometimes, this lesson gets left behind when I leave the dojo.
Through chess, I get to see this principle in a perspective that's at once different and identical.
I picked up some great pointers Sunday, the most important being that the beauty and intricacy of a person's mind has little or nothing to do with outward appearances.

All in all ...

"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious."

Jack Kerouac
"The Dharma Bums"

Relativity

Sunday was chess day, as has become my custom this summer.
For the past two weeks, the small group with whom I play gathered at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. We had been playing in Washington Square in Greenwich Village, but we grew tired of the constant come-ons of the drug dealers, the keen competition for tables in the shade and the non-stop din of latter-day flower children with their drum circles and sing-alongs.
Bryant Park is more quiet and civilized.
I saw a few familiar faces from Washington Square and met a new cast of characters who have turned Bryant Park into a chess haven.

It seems that few of the players go by their given names. They all have nicknames.
There's Elementary, a master player so dubbed because his moves are textbook-perfect as he dismembers you.
There's Doc -- yes, a medical doctor -- who says he has a strong aversion to knights because he was forced to eat horse meat during World War II. It doesn't make a difference, though, because Doc (one of the best amateur players around) could spot you both knights and both bishops and still beat you handily.
There's Van, whose nickname origin is lost in the mists of time.
And Sunday, I met Cornbread, a lanky, laconic man whose soft drawl and thousand-yard stare give one the impression that he's a little spaced out and detached. But the gears of that beautiful mind are always in motion, and I watched him whip a strong player and still fit in a two-minute nap between moves.
I also saw Dave, a clever and resourceful player who had beaten me quickly and soundly in Washington Square a few weeks ago.

Watching the several games going on simultaneously was an older, slightly disheveled fellow in a sky blue silk shirt and fedora. He looked like he stepped right out of 1950s Little Italy.
Leaning forward in his chair, he would intently check out the game in front of him for half a minute, then shift his gaze to the other games being played nearby.

Dave defeated his opponent, and it was my turn to play him. We played two games. Dave easily defeated me both times. I turned to the fellow in the fedora and asked him if he wanted to play Dave.
"Ah, no, he's too strong for me," Dave said. At first, I thought he was being sarcastic. "If he spots me two minutes, I'll play."
We play timed games, either five minutes or seven minutes long, depending on the ability level of the players.
The clock was adjusted so that Dave had five minutes to complete his moves, and Hank, the fellow in the fedora, had three.
Within a minute, Dave found himself in a world of trouble. Within two minutes, his situation was hopeless. A second game was played with much the same result, and Dave quickly got up and moved to one of the other tables and was quiet for the rest of the afternoon.

Hank, it turns out, is a master player, a former member of the oldest and most prestigious chess club in New York City. He knew Bobby Fisher when the onetime world champion was just a teen (and a world-class player even then). Hank has played with some of America's finest.
And here he was playing me, game after game.
Of course, he crushed me. We'd get maybe five or six moves into a game and the stage would already have been set for a lopsided victory. He would tell me where I went wrong, we would set up a new game, he would be on the verge of annihilating me and then would explain how I had walked into the trap.

It turns out that Hank is a chess teacher in his spare time. I asked him how much he charges for lessons. "Do you think you can manage 10 bucks a lesson?" he asked.
I became his student today.

Still here

It has been two weeks since my last entry.
I'm still here.
I just haven't had much to say.
Call it the summer doldrums.

One interesting note: The site meter I use for this blog allows me to see how people wound up here. Lately, there have been a few visitors (or perhaps the same repeat visitor) who have been steered here through search engine inquiries on parathyroid cancer and related topics.
This is a compelling development, in that I'm always willing to share my experiences with other people who have this illness. I encourage such visitors to contact me either by commenting on this blog or through e-mail (via the hyperlink on my profile).

Please know, however, that I'm not interested in dwelling upon doom and gloom. Sometimes, I have a natural inclination to do so, but I strive to rise above it and I certainly don't need fuel for it.
So, yes, I'm very interested in sharing my experiences and hearing about yours, but let's try to be as circumspect and optimistic in our correspondence as possible without ignoring reality.

Finally, just a word of advice for those of you who may be using the Internet as a research tool on parathyroid cancer -- or on any serious illness, for that matter.
Don't do it.
Or, at least, don't consider the information you glean from the Internet to be the final, authoritative word.
A lot of the information is outdated or misstated. What you read will have you thinking that it may be time to settle your earthly affairs and prepare for the end.
That's bullshit.
Find a competent doctor, and then find a second and a third to weigh in on one another's opinions.
Otherwise, you'll scare yourself silly, often needlessly and mistakenly so.

OK, I'm off my soapbox.

Learning and admiring

Some of the boys. The chap in the straw hat is the strongest player in our Sunday group and one of the best amateur players in the park. He is unflappable -- a natural-born killer on the chess board.

My chess education continued under a blazing sun Sunday in Manhattan's Washington Square. All the tables in the shade were snapped up by the Scrabble players and some lucky fellow chess enthusiasts.
So, we basted in our own sweat, as if the competition wasn't heated enough.
And I learned.
The upshot of today's lesson was that a situation that seems like a threat isn't always a threat -- at least not an immediate one. Circumspection usually bears this out, once my instinct to react in a knee-jerk fashion is overcome.
So, panic often is for naught.
Overreaction often is for naught.
As the Japanese say, tomorrow's wind blows tomorrow.
My first karate teacher is fond of saying that chess and karate are almost identical. By extension, chess and life are almost identical.
I'm beginning to understand just what he means.

Maya, right, and her mother

After four hours of chess, I had dinner and a few beers at my friend Shiki-san's Japanese restaurant in the East Village. And I was in luck: Shiki's former wife's mother was there.
Maya and her mother are from Nepal, near Kathmandu.
Maya and Shiki-san are no longer married but they're on excellent terms. So, Maya is a waitress/hostess at the restaurant on Sundays, and she occasionally brings her wonderful mom, who has been in the States for a few months now and will be returning to Nepal soon.
In person, I've never seen Maya's mother in Western clothes, though I've seen photos of her in slacks and a shirt.
Usually, she wears traditional Nepali clothing.
A devout Buddhist, she often sits at a corner table and fingers her prayer beads as if she were taking on all the burdens of the world.
And maybe she is.
Her face lights up a room. She's the personification of Kannon and the Earth Mother and all that's beautiful.
People like her draw out the best in others in spite of ourselves.

Battle in the park

Chalk artist creating a masterpiece Sunday on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a few blocks north of Washington Square in Greenwich Village.


On Sunday afternoon, I went to war.
Armed with chess set and clock to time the games, I set out for Washington Square in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
This park is one of a couple of chess hot spots in Manhattan where casual players, serious students and $3-a-game hustlers gather on fine weekend days like ants at a cookout.

To get to the battlefield -- picnic tables set up at intervals along the park's perimeter -- I first had to make it through no-man's land. For decades, Washington Square has had a well-deserved reputation as an open-air drug market. If you're walking by yourself, you're almost guaranteed to be offered an illicit pharmacopia by a legion of shady characters (some of them undoubtedly undercover cops) who call the park their office.

I soon found a game in progress at a table beneath some trees. I asked the lone spectator if he wanted to play, and within two minutes we were locked in combat.
My opponent, Dan, a spry retiree, played at about the same level as I. I won a game and lost two closely contested ones before Dan had to take off.
A University of Virginia student, also named Dan, had been kibbitzing and asked to take his place.
I lost to Dan II but not without a good fight. On two occasions I was within one move of pouncing upon him for checkmate and could practically taste victory before he exploited a weakness in my strategy and put me on the defensive.

Dan II had to leave and Dave, an impish, elderly Hasidic man who had watched our game, asked if he could sit in. Dave asked if I wanted to play blitz chess -- each player has five minutes and whoever runs out of time first loses, provided there isn't a checkmate beforehand.
Dave won the first game when I ran out of time, but otherwise it was a close contest.
The second game, he dismembered me. I knew I was making blunders even as my hands went to move the pieces, but Dave's skill and control of the board were such that he was forcing me to make precisely the moves I knew I shouldn't make.
I felt like a marionette.
Our game attracted a single spectator who promptly left after Dave capitalized on one of my errors with devastating effect.

After this win, Dave opened his wallet and pulled out a wad of chess puzzles he had clipped from a newspaper. He asked if he could work some of them out using my set and proceeded to solve them with legerdemain the likes of which I couldn't follow.
It was like watching a computer in action. Or like watching Mr. Spock from "Star Trek."

He asked if I wanted to play one last game. Seven moves and less than two minues later it was over. "OK," he said, "time for me to go to the bathroom."
Yeah, probably to wipe the stink of such lousy competition off his hands.

As he was leaving, he said over his shoulder in a prophetic tone, "You'll make it."

And thus is the difference between the game of chess and the art of chess.

Yet another beautiful day in Paradise

Hot as hell today here in New Joisey, with temperatures expected to approach 100. This is the part of summer I like least.

I've been waiting for a kidney stone to pass the last few days. (I'm sure you're glad I've shared that with you.)
I get kidney stones fairly frequently. They're a symptom of my parathyroid cancer. Usually, they're nothing more than a minor annoyance, although this one is a little larger than usual and has excelled at making its presence felt night and day. If it's true that this, too, shall pass (and it is), I'm eagerly awaiting it.

Much more significantly, a friend of mine from the karate dojo, a native of Lebanon, went back to his country for a three-week holiday. He left last Tuesday and was probably somewhere over the Atlantic when the shit hit the fan in the south of the country as Israel began its retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah strongholds. Among the targets was the airport in Beirut.
We're all hoping his plane was diverted elsewhere, and that he's on his way back to the States.
Before he left last week, he tantalized us with descriptions of Lebanon's beautiful beaches and compared the summertime water temperature to that of a Jacuzzi, even at night.
He was so looking forward to spending the next few weeks on the beach with his fiancee, whom he left behind in Lebanon when he came here to work.
His family still lives in Lebanon -- in Beirut, if memory serves. I'm sure he's agonizing at this very moment over how to ensure their safety in the face of this madness. I'm sure that if he was given the opportunity to fly back to the U.S., he turned it down until his family's safety is secured.

Up until now, the situation in the Middle East has been rather abstract for me. I had no ties to the region. I didn't know anyone living there, nor anyone in the U.S. military who is serving there.
A friend's vacation plans changed that in an instant.
And hopefully, this, too, shall pass.

We are what we speak

My mentor and first karate teacher, who I've known and admired for a dozen years, always says that when we open our mouths we tell people who we are, wittingly or unwittingly. He says that even when we tell others who we think they are, we reveal our own personality in the process.
As it is with speech, so it is with karate, writing, painting and any other means of self-expression.
That includes chess.
I've been playing chess for 35 years. More accurately, I should say that I have known the rules of the game for three and a half decades, although my abilities have improved but modestly over that span due to lack of diligent study and constant practice.
I tend to get wrapped up in details while overlooking the big picture, which includes threats arising from areas just outside my narrow focus.
I'm quick to attack but slow to analyze the dangers of impetuosity.
I don't assess risks effectively, often coming out on the short end of the stick when pieces are exchanged.
My moves take into consideration only the immediate future, rather than the long term.
When I lose badly, especially through carelessness, it can cast a pall over the rest of my day. When I defeat a tough opponent, the elation that follows infuses my day.
Yes, we truly manifest ourselves in everything -- everything -- we do.

Overheard at a bar last night

Honest to goodness, I overheard the following conversation last night at my local tavern, where I go occasionally to enjoy a pint and play darts.
It was about 9:30. I was sitting at the bar by myself. In walked these two girls. Both looked to be about 21 or 22.
They sat down alongside me.
And here's how it went (of course, I forget the exact words, but this is a faithful reconstruction):

Bartender: Hello, girls.
Girl 1: Hi.
Girl 2: Hi, N---.
Bartender: What'll you have tonight?
Girl 1: Can I have a bottle of Miller Lite?
Girl 2: Do you have any non-alcoholoic, fruity-type drinks?
Bartender, incredulously: What, did you stop drinking?
Girl 2: No, it's just that I totaled my car last weekend. I wasn't drinking or anything, but I was text-messaging [on her cellphone] and when I looked up, I saw that I was gonna rear-end this stopped car ...
Bartender: What?
Girl 2: ... and so I swerved to miss it and then I hit this tree and my car bounced off and then I slammed into another tree in the front yard of this house.
Bartender: You're kidding! You're lucky you didn't slam into the house! Were you hurt?
Girl 2: No, but my friend wasn't wearing his seat belt and his head bounced off my windshield and he got a concussion and bit a hole in his lower lip.
Bartender: Jaysus [it's an Irish pub] ...
Girl 2: And now I'm kinda scared, so that's why I want a fruit drink. You know, my airbags never went off. Do you think I should sue?

*****

And now, my friends, you know precisely why it is that the more people I meet, the more I love my cats.

This just in ...

Today, I visited the church where Charles H. Carrel, the subject of Saturday's post, is buried. I took photos of his grave and the church and added them to the account.

To illustrate the power of the Internet, it took me about four hours from the time I purchased Carrel's Bible on Saturday afternoon to piece together his biography using the inscriptions in the Bible as clues. I discovered where he was from, the basic details of his military service and death in the Civil War and the place where he is buried, which is just a 50 minutes' drive from my house.
At the cemetery, I learned the names of at least two of his siblings and the names of his parents and an aunt and uncle, and some basic genealogical information on the family.
By Saturday night, Carrel's story was on my blog.

Without the Internet, searching for these records would have taken several weeks at the very least. I think Mr. Charles H. Carrel would be pleased and amazed.