{

Both.

Oops. Should be posted on Metadeveloper, sorry kids.

}

I went back to the chess club last night. One fellow wearing a Ron Paul button had the delicate features and acne of a teenager, but his voice and comportment suggested him as an adult. I overheard him talking with someone about a failed bid for the South Dakota State Senate which convinced me that his look did belie his true age. The local county commissioner plays chess as well, and from what I saw his game is very strong; he was the state champion as a youngster. The Grandmaster stopped in but only for a few moments to discuss a tournament this Saturday. I wonder if I'll ever see him play anyone from the club; from what I observe chess protocol frowns upon the wasting of a Grandmaster's time.

But the Grandmaster's time and conversation were the irony: he was talking about his kids and wife, kvetching the way most normal people do: "I was busy... who's gonna watch the kids..." and so on. It's so strange to see a person in the mundane whose name only a week before you circled in the New York Times. It puts fame into a different light for those of us who pursue a modest amount: perhaps a name in a newspaper is even more sad than anonymity because it's a lie that you avoid the malaise of day-to-day living we all experience.

My best moment, however, was when the organizer of the chess club, Mr R, opened up and told me a little bit about his life. I'd played twice, losing the first game playing black¹ while being impatient, then having a complete collapse when my opponent, J, turned the board around and let me play white. J is a jolly fellow who managed to repeat the word "devastation" without sounding condescending. His matter of fact "I devastated you" description was as emotionally mute as a box score. After being left to ponder my "devastating move²" that lead to my "devastating loss," Mr R pulled up a chair. He gave me a chess puzzle which I failed miserably. It was a simple test of whether I could think more than one move ahead at a time.

Mr R revealed that he is a Chicago native and at the tender age of 5 was written up in The Tribune as a chess prodigy. He said "I didn't have the nickel it took to get from where I lived to the chess tournaments" and I took this on as a euphemism. Did his parents care? How rough were the times? I made my closer examination of his face seem casual and guessed he was in the waning years of his 70s. He continued, probably aware he'd got my attention, saying that after missing that opportunity for "a nickel" he fought in World War 2 which was more evidence that he was likely a youngster during the depression and the misfortune of that timing was what held him back from the game. During the war he said he played anyone he could and "never lost" a game of chess. He thought he was "pretty good" at the time and may have come back to the game, but he returned home to married life and children. Mr R's pivot point in life and chess was when he and his wife parted ways and it was in this aftermath that he started to play again, entering tournaments while he was in his 40s - the same type of tournaments he would have played when in as an adolescent if he'd had that nickel. I wonder what it's like to look at the precocious teenager on the other side of the board who is the younger form of you, the form that had the opportunity to play without the baggage of depression, war, and a failed marriage.

Whether he intended it or not, I think he was trying to tell me that he too had started late and with many obstacles. Earlier in the week he had called me to encourage me to come back to the chess club after I'd skipped a week. I offered the excuse of having an infant - my presumed carte blanche to invoke everyone's false sense that a family is an excuse not to play regularly, to put a pause button on the game so that life can go on. He didn't respond and we spent an uncomfortable moment listening to a white noise resembling the type of crackling you might hear on your television when there's snow.

Last night, after telling me about himself he gave me three magazines, recommending I start with Chess Life For Kids.

¹In chess, white always gets the first turn. This is a small advantage since you get a chance to control the tempo of the game in the first moves. What throws me off as much is that most of my books are from the white perspective so I'm just used to looking at things that way.

²Reading my chess book this morning I realized that there is a name for my bad play with black: "Damiano's Defense." Here is what Pandolfini says: "Other than resigning, or making a suicidal decision... this is practically the worst defense Black has."

Ory grew up in Nairobi, probably not too far from me. She's one of the New Africans for whom I'll keep my ears perked. By "New African" I mean a person who lives a life between Africa and the first world, educated here but with a heart and family that's left over... we aren't typical immigrants you see and in Ory's case, she went back to make a difference. You can see her talk at TED here, make sure you get past the Harvard name dropping to the meat of her message.

I remember long ago, sitting across from M in a Whittier cafe when he showed me his schedule for the new year. Down to the quarter hour it revealed everything: work, eating time, study, exercise, sleep, and chess.

Today I made a plan and I'm feeling as fanciful.  Plans never seem to survive the friction of day to day living.  It's time to get some sleep so I can fail better tomorrow.

The irony of turning 30 was that so much was new: I'd gotten married the preceding March, I was a month into my new job, and was still learning the ins and outs of our apartment near the downtown portion of Sioux Falls. Three years later and much seems old hat: marriage life has founds its steady rhythm, Sioux Falls poses less of a mystery and work, despite another change in company, is much the same as its always been.  In that sense the day is more of a formality except for the fact that this will be my last birthday without children. 

I've read two books about old men in the last year or so and ended both despising the would be protagonists. Jonathan Raban's Foreign Land and Philip Roth's Everyman were books I would have wanted to like; books that might tell me a little about my future should I live a long life. Instead, ironically, they both wound up as good Christian books to me*: morality tales on how choices have consequences and human relationships are what persist in value when death looms close enough to eliminate all of life's normal pretensions. The two old men suffered from a narcissism I recognize in our high school selves - such self obsession that all conversation turns inward and we stop to really "see" the people around us because we're so busy making everything an aspect of that big old number one: ourselves. This thought really crystallized over the weekend when an old friend from my school days in Nairobi stopped by on a cross country trip with his family. Not only did we recollect different things, I felt a sense of us really seeing each other despite all that time we'd spent doing the equivalent of "shooting hoops" through those teen years. Jed the father, I hardly recognized you -

Well, here's to being 33, and here's to the hope that I keep seeing even when I'm old. Here's to human relationships, the preservation of marriage and the hope of longer life.

*I'm sure both authors would be quite unhappy with this opinion.

I love new forms of dance that crossbreed from one culture to another. Here are two breakdancing spinoffs from Japan and France respectively.

Teaching a class this week and of course feeling very old...

A few months ago I saw Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - the backstory being his diagnosis with a terminal illness and departure from Carnegie Mellon.  He passed away yesterday and this morning I watched it again perhaps as an attempt to hold onto what he was planning to leave those alive with after his death. It was as moving today as it was when I first saw it, especially with his ending "head fake"; that the lecture was for his children.

What an inspired life; even though I can't physically be surrounded by people like Randy, listening to him makes me feel the cushion of listening to another dreamer whose dreams were done.

Added: A New York Times summary has some good links related to Dr. Pausch

Today I learned of the death of a person I knew in school. Married, like me. 33, like me. Wife expecting, like me.

Who knows how short life will be? The time that we have around here is just a gift.

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,  
Gone far away into the silent land;  
When you can no more hold me by the hand,  
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.  
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:  
Only remember me; you understand  
It will be late to counsel then or pray.  
Yet if you should forget me for a while  
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave  
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,  
Better by far you should forget and smile  
Than that you should remember and be sad.
- Christina Rossetti, "Remember"