23 October 2006

Chess As It Applies To Life


I have come to realize in my travels on this earth that life is a lot like a game of chess. Yes, you can play it like you would a game of checkers, and your outcome would be the same as if you'd played a game of checkers. However, I don't think the person that treats life like checkers is too unhappy or to surprised when life kicks the crap out of them. But in life, as with all things, if you take the time to think even a few moves a head, trying to bate fate into doing your bidding, life takes on a whole new intensity that makes even the mundane pawns embrace a unique and tantalizing dimension all their own.

This analogy/simile/metaphor came to me when I was trying to figure out my mom and trying to see her life through her eyes without anger, without frustration, without the general feelings of being manipulated so completely by her. Yes, the old feelings that keep me from moving my pieces on the board of life in a more energetic fashion. Part of this also happened because of a game of chess my nephew challenged me to the night before I wrote the enlightening journal entry. I watched as he used his pieces and made bold, sweeping moves over the whole board. Very brave, very ambitious and very much who the man he has become. And then I looked at my side of the board. My king and queen were carefully guarded by a rook, a bishop and a host of pawns, only moving when absolutely having no other option. I lost, mostly because I have too hard of a time to disengage my brain from the now and from the mire of the past to focus on the move I'm making, let alone try and figure out the next three or four moves in advance. But I feel knowing this about myself is a piece on the board of life and I am learning to use it as a tool.

How does this impromptu game with the boy work into what I was talking about before and how does my mother play into it? Simple, we are all playing chess, only not against each other or fate, but with Life. We are each in our own game, and no one can play on someone else's board. We can combine forces at times and seek out help for our moves, but ultimately, the choice to move, to capture or to sacrifice a piece is sole our own. It is a game we are going to lose, no one gets out of this life alive. Mom, to me, is a woman that has few pieces left on the board of life. A few pawns and her king. She's within two moves of getting one of her remaining pawns to Life's side of the board to liberate her Queen or Rook, but Life keeps her in check. She keeps trying to out maneuver his pieces, but with the ability to move only one square in any direction, only to be put in check on his next move frustrates her and stymies her, but she doesn't declare defeat and lay down her king. Life on the other hand still has almost all of his pieces in play and has a sweeping vista of the board, any plan made by her is perceived and countered several moves in advance, though with the stealth of a jaguar so she doesn't know she has been thwarted until it's too late. Though she has sacrifices a lot of her men in the cause of her children, expecting to have them charge in and not only save her but rebuild her army with their own, but like I said before, we can't play another persons game. Her gambits are too easily spotted and, when offered unsolicited, go unused when offered in order to protect our game.

It is a sad, sad place to be in at her age and I feel a sence of meloncholy for her situation at times. But I, like her, are powerless to do anything about it and strangely enough, that is comforting. This new vision of Life and her role with it has helped me understand her better. Though I can't add pieces to her board to ameliorate the pain and frustration of always being put into check, I don't fee guilty because she doesn't have the pieces on the board any more, nor do I allow her to make me feel like I owe her something because of it. I never asked her to cash in her retirement any more than my sisters asked her or required her to cash in her retirement in order to support them or give them what she thought she wanted them to give her in return. Reciprocity isn't a one to one, dollar for dollar commitment on this temporal plane. (I know it would be nice if it was, but it's not.) I do what I can, the sisters do what they can, but it will never replace the men she sacrificed, it will never give her the full range of the board again. She doesn't have the pieces to plot behind so now when I see that she has finally caught on to the multi move gambit it is just behind her eyes, visible for the world to see, and frustrating for her daughters who sees it and have always been powerless to stop her maniputlations in the past. Now, I don't see them as manipulations, per se, I see them as the desperate attempts of a woman trying to regain control of a board she hasn't seen from corner to corner in several decades. And my heart cries for her.

13 October 2006

Age Classifications

After many years of human observation, I have concluded that there are new classifications for age beyond the numbers.


Ages 10-20 (More actually 16-20) - Hip
Ages 21-30 - Cool
Ages 31-40 - Retro
Ages 41-50 - Vintage
Ages 51-60 - Antique
Ages 61+ - Relic.

Someone who is hip is on the bleeding edge of now. Not only do they converse in their own improvised language, their sense of style is uniquely theirs. Even if they copy their style from someone else, it will be another cool hipster in their age group.

Cool is just that. You've claimed a stake in a transitory world. You sit back and enjoy the Retro's eyeing you with envy and the Hipsters consider you traders to the ethos you once clung to.

Retro is more of a reactionary age. You have the pressure of being an "adult" (whatever your definition is for that term), you are stifled in your job and you are continually looking back to your Hip and/or Cool days longing for those expansive moments in the sun where they one monthly payments you really had to worry about were your car, rent and your CD club membership.

By the time you reach your Vintage years, you are more secure with yourself. You have a handle on where you are and more importantly, where you want to be in the coming years. You have fully blossomed into a rich bodied soul that you could never have fathomed in your Hipster or Cooler years.

Antique doesn't mean broken down or unusable. At least not in the general sense. You might get pushed out of younger crowds because of your penchant for imparting your wisdom on unwilling ears, hearts and minds. Like most antiques, you aren't really used for that much any more, at least not until you are found by the right collector and then you find yourself truly being appreciated

Relic is a time where people seek you out to hear your wisdom because you have proven to them that you can still be cooly hip with the retro lingo and the vintage glow. You have come full circle and you can see from your vantage point that what effects the hipsters, the cool ones, the retros, vintage and antiques is the same, just the names have changed.

09 October 2006

Yosemite Memories I

This is one of my favorite pictures that I took when I had a break and went to Yosemite...ALL BY MYSELF. It was glorious. I got to watch TV when I wanted to, I ate what I wanted to, and surprisingly enough, it was actually good-for-you food. Mostly just meat and frozen veggies. (The fresh ones freak me, it's like I can hear them cry out in pain when I cook them.....Not really)...But I digress.

I took a tour with one of those bus tours and this is one of the places we went. I'm sure it's one of those pictures that every tourist has in their album, but I think mines special. It was at the beginning of April, a time when I thought it would be rather clear, and according to the weather, it was supposed to be, but instead it snowed. For those of you who don't know me, I have been in the snow maybe three times before this picture, and never when it was actually snowing. That is the freakiest thing I had ever seen. I bought a special hat to wear so I wouldn't get sunburned on this trip, instead the brim worked as a snow catcher and the cute festive cherries on the ribbon ended up with their own little hillocks of snow on their cheery red sheen. I think this picture really shows that. It shows the water running, the green of the trees with the snow heavily sprinkled with confectioners sugar. The bare tree, it's fingers stretching in the spring is starting to show it's green finery for the coming Spring. In the background, if you look closely you'll see the stone masonry work of the footbridge, adding just a touch more of texture to the picture. At first blush you might miss it because it's obviously made from local and natural materials, but it just sort of sets off the picture. Well, in my humble opinion.

05 October 2006

A Moment of Perfect Silence

In the midst of all the hate, destruction and profound confusion a community mourns. Ever weary of the public eye on their private life they strive to keep to their standards, which includes inviting the family of the man that killed their five young girls to be with the families as they all mourn their collective loss. What an example to the people of the world about healing, about hating and about true Christlike love. Though their bucolic lifestyle might never be the same after this tragedy, they've done everything they can to show that even in the maelstrom of bullets and TV cameras, love truly can be the best weapon of choice.

04 October 2006

Hope in Hell

Our purer essence then will overcome
Thir noxious vapour, or enur'd not feel,
Or chang'd at length, and to the place conformd
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;
This horror will grow milde, this darkness light,
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting, since our present lot appeers
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to our selves more woe.

John Milton
Paradise Lost

03 October 2006

Gentle Mental Musings

Thoughts for the day

..........if at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you

......"deja moo" is the feeling that you have heard this bull before

......the trouble with doing something right the first time is no one appreciates how difficult it was

......money can't buy happiness but it makes misery easier to live with

......they say one out of four people is mentally ill. Take a look at three friends and if they're ok, you're it

......the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

02 October 2006


I just love this picture. Little Fairy penguins are dressed in hand knitted sweaters to wait while their body's start to produce the oil necessary to keep them warm. This only happens after a large oil spill and they are cleaned, truly, within an inch of their life. Since the rescuers have to use an oil stripping detergent to get the oil off them they loose the natural ability to keep themselves warm. Some concerned citizen got a bunch of other knitters together and they knitted over 20,000 of these little sweaters for the waddlers to keep warm with until they were ready to be released into the wild again. In the mean time, there is this contingent of wild penguins wandering around South African zoo campus dressed in their hand-made finery. Though they do inspire the general "aww" from passers by, and the desire to just pick them up and cuddle them, we need to stop and think as to why they are in this situation to begin with....The stupidity of MAN. Man meaning both men and women here. Why are we still so addicted to fossil fuel that we are willing to not only put these precious creatures at risk of dying from an oil leakage, but all the other noble and innocent creatures in the ocean? The animals that don't find their way to the shore for help and recovery? They normally just sink to the bottom and join the never-ending circle of life. But poisoned links in the chain only leads to poisoned links in the chain until the food chain breaks down and we have none of these creatures left. The woman who started this didn't do this for one incident, it was needed because this is an almost annual event for these little guys, and slowly they are going to be cuted right into extinction.

I know I'm a hypocrite in that I drive a car. I'm very fond of my car too. I'm just for abolishing transporting the oil across heavily populated channels of water. Which, in essence, means no water at all. Drill on the land that has oil as long as it's not in a nature preserve, and slowly wean people off the whole oil addiction. This isn't going to be easy for the Hummer and Denali set out there. True, the Governator has a bio-diesel Hummer, but how many have the additional income after the initial purchase to afford that kind of conversion to their already $75k SUV. (I guess I assume buying a $75k SUV would tap out people...I know it would me, but if they have that kind of discretionary income, maybe they can). I'm rather opinionated on this subject as well, no one needs a car that big for everyday use. There are some needs for it, but for running to the grocery store or taking the kids to the park, no. Absolutely no need. Especially when these little guys are the ones that are suffering for our addiction.