Friday, July 27, 2007

As Everyone Here Knows, I Only Play Patzers










...According to Funkyfantom ('profile not available') I beat patzers, of course, taking the easy way all the time! Is a ratio of only 33.1% wins the mark of someone who only plays weak players??

The other night, I lost EIGHTEEN games in a row to a 1900 elo, then beat him the last game. See lattest comments, here, at Blue Devil Knights nice post (original post has nice chart, see link for html:).

I'd like to know why he ran out of strength, and what bothers him?



















His post is closed, yet he can snipe at the side. Sound familiar? The chessDog of yesteryear (not now, who has made himself available for direct, and interactive communication. Thank you again, chessDog).

Who is this guy?

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Medis Res














I am busy like wildfire right now. "The middle of things".

Five or six major projects. I intend to blog extensively still, but until my first project is done, no big posts.

Two things: I am very indebted to Underpromoted Knight for the most wonderful mention of the Ziatdinov articles at IM Silman's very useful website and while I had seen these articles before, in whole or part, never quite read them the way I did today. Here is a clip from UPK's most insightful and inspiring post today:

"In any case, I've purchased Silman's Complete Endgame course, and I'm working my way through it in addition to my opening studies and, of course, tactics. Speaking of which, if any of you followed Ziatdinov's "Training Tips" on jeremysilman.com, you would have found his rather bold claim that if you take a collection of 1000 tactical problems and learn them "by hand" (i.e. so automatically that all your calculations are actually subconscious) then you "will have the tactical ability of a Grandmaster." I don't know whether or not this claim is true; however, I'm going to, ah, pretend it's true, and spend the next year or so (as long as it takes) internalizing all main lines and side variations of the problems in CT-Art, to perfection".

Thank you UPK! It is, simply, in my humble opinion, impossible to undervalue what he says, similar to Grandpatzer. What he says, I hang onto:

"I think it's important to analyze your games--even online blitz. Part of that analysis should include how the opening was treated. Of course, you'll also be looking for errors in tactics, endgames, and strategy as well, but I don't think the opening should just be ignored, regardless of your chess strength.

"If you do not want to maintain an openings repertoire, and just fly by the seat of your pants, then you could keep your opening study down to spotting gross errors. However, if you've ever bought an opening book with the intent of playing certain lines routinely, I strongly feel you need to understand the suggested moves, and have followed the main line through the opening so that you understand what each side is aiming for. If you're plopping money down on opening books, but just "looking up the answer" to what you should have played, or just trying to memorize lines, you're wasting time and money. You owe it to yourself to try and understand the lines you want to play, and I believe that studying openings in this limited but focused way can improve your chess as a whole".

Ditto all the way baby! In martial arts, one thing you always do, is watch every move that your senior blackbelts make. Bravo!!














Secondly, the article may not stay up at Nature long, but a discussion with a friend from blogger offline about the recent chessBase article about checkers being 'solved', led to my being directed to this nice article. See link to comparison of complexity of checkers, chess, go.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Blunderprone is coming to Seattle

Gosh, I hope that I said nothing to offend him! Blunderprone must be really serious about something. He is even bringing his wife. Why is he asking to see me? What do you suppose that he wants? Am I in any danger? :)










This is for mid August, so no one tags me till then! And, oh, do I have a real plan for my answers! You will all have hell to pay. :)

We agreed to meet and pound down a few glasses of the hard stuff:
















Mid August, he says. So I beseech almighty god for me to get to 1400 bullet again fast, so I can write his post soon, and therefore, the rest of them... the work of many nights. Only 464 games in the last 21 days, and not all of them bullet. I am ready for this to end. I had it to within 2 elo. Ouch. Hence, the photo below of the gorging bull.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Lossing at Chess

Is this how it feels? :















[no one tags me till at least mid-August, please, i am burried, pls see my responses to comments below. i can be near last :) ]

Michael Lenahan, 23, of Philadelphia, Pa. is gored in the leg by a fighting bull during a traditional bull run in Pamplona, Spain, Thursday July 12, 2007. Two American brothers were gored Thursday during the longest and bloodiest morning bull run at the San Fermin festival in the northeastern city of Pamplona. Lawrence Lenahan, 26, of Hermosa Beach, Calif. and Michael Lenahan, 23, of Philadelphia, Pa. were gored by a bull who strayed from the pack, turned around and ran the wrong way. The older brother suffered a eight-inch (20-centimeter) goring in the left buttock after a dangerous sharp right turn in the course Lenahan described as a 'dead man's curve.' The younger brother was injured shortly before the bull ring, the end point of the daily runs, after the bulls horn entered beneath his skin in his right shin. (AP Photo/ Inaki Porto)

I am cooking up a nice post on Blunderprone, one of the funniest Knights, but also very advanced emotionally, so this is a work of sustained meditation... soon my friends. :)

Friday, July 06, 2007

Prolegema: The Blue Devil Dialogues. Chess Relearner, or How I did Strunk and White: Essay Nine












Chess Relearner, The Complete Human: Essay Nine

We have Hegal, Kant, we have Kasparov, and Capablanca, we have big science, big finance, and big ideas philsophy, but we also have normal folks, tinkering away in humility, day after day at chess while leading exemplary lives of... we cannot always do everthing big, and sometimes...

BDK (Blue Devil Knight): Hey transformation, how goes it?.

DK: Greetings to you sir. You--what is in your true heart today?

BDK: Acknowledging all these new knights properly as befits a knight, then adding them to my tool bar is killing me!

DK: But you at once, were voted in and nominated yourself. And as Sartre says, 'existence precedes essence', and as you well know, 'life is choices', is it not? Have you tried the circles to calm yourself or to relax from the tool bar and announcements? I mean, from the Ray of Creation, galaxies, through organic compounds, DNA, RNA, etc, then latter the Neolithic revolution in progression from hunter food gatherers to more agriculturally settled people involving language, culture, tool making... In time Homer, Dante (La Vita Nuova and his love of Beatrice), Proust evolved, then complex adaptive systems, if not integration of layers of meditative healing release... Then after Adam Smith and Kant who were precursers to the Knight Errants, they...

BDK: Wait!

DK: What?

BDK: Hey, ground control to DK! Check, check. Halt! You said something about a Strunk and White?
















DK: Yes, simple, clean, clear declarative English sentences. Just as I am doing now, as you just heard me.

BDK: You can do better than that DK. So lets have it. You promised.

DK: Oh, yes, thats right--sorry, ok. Let me start over. Chess Relearner is...

BDK : I am all ears!

DK: Where to start with Chess Relearner? There are so many good things to say! To start, he is the kind of person who makes the best sort of friend.

BDK: How is that? I mean, you seem to always have so many superlatives--about people, about everybody here in our circle.

DK: Yes, such as Temposchlucker being the practical sort of person, or Wormwood talented, or evenhandedness, in your case.

BDK: Or Peter Norvig so widely accomplished, or Grandpatzer as ...

DK: ...highly relevant! And, to round out our 'cast of characters':

BDK: ChessDog as being--?

DK: fierce and having great human potential. So now: Chess Relearner.












BDK: Can I interrupt for second?

DK: Of course BDK, I trust your judgement as to what needs to be said. Please go ahead--

BDK: I mean, all these cats are bloggers, with ample posts. And as fine as Chess Learner's reputation with you, and what little I have seen, and all impressive, we haven't seen him blog since, was it, March?

DK: Exactly. Not here anyway! Ok. Chess Relearner is a balanced man. I mean this man writes a leading checkers column, evidentially with more subscribers than any other newsletter globally (of course, I don't play checkers, but you kind of have to like that!) with the longest sustained uninterrupted record of publication of any of it's kind, he is an accomplished computer engineer who went to the best school of it's kind ON THE PLANET, does fast and mean cross word puzzles (he eats them), and, of course, in addition to being a chess player is alos a committed student there, mainly at CTS, ICC, and FICS, and reads Hebrew EVERY DAY.















BDK: 'Hot damn!'

DK: Yes, or as 'you all say in the south', 'he is a high brain dude'.

BDK: 'Lord have mercy'.

DK: Lets quote him directly:

"In March 2005 I completed a very long term project, the reading of the Babylonian Talmud. In the tradition started back in the 1920s, the "Bavli" as it is called is read over a period of just under seven and a half years (2711 days to be exact). There is a reading for each and every day, seven days per week with no days off, no sick leave, no vacation".

BDK: Some heavy weight cogitation.

DK: Yes, but BDK as I like to say, 'Brilliant minds come a dime a dozen, but great minds with big hearts are rare'.

BDK: Truer words were never said.

Wormwood (WOR): Can I get a word in?

DK: I believe that you already have!

WOR: I am 1900 at Red Hot Pawn. That is pretty good. I only started playing chess three months ago.

BDK: Weren't we talking about Chess Relearner?


DK: I thought so.

ChessDog (CDG): Did I hear something! 'Woof', 'woof', 'woof!' Where is the bong? Where is DK? I want to show him this cool iPod video of me boxing a guy into the ground!

DK: Oh, ChessDog, I am glad you are here. Right when we needed you. See, god exists!










Worlds Ugliest Dog Competition: Sqiggy

DG: At your service. Wormwood. Guy keeps saying he is 1900 at RHP and but only 1152 ICC blitz and 1130 5-minute. See any contradiction? I mean, is this honest? How can I buy a program? Where is the ChessBase.com or Rybka website? How can I get an AutoCAD workstation in my brain or a Blackberry brain? If I get my hands on him...

DK: ChessDog, you are 'the shinning light of god's love', and god loves all beings. Have compassion.

CD: For you?

DK: Me or him? Well I meant Wormwood; but for me also cannot hurt. Why, yes, even I can use some of that, if you wish. I am a recovering arrogant, recovering narcissist, just as some are recovering alcoholics. And we need to give everyone time. The larger the ego, the more raw head similar to natural irrigation systems.

BDK: DK! Like in the Roman aquaduct, or Roman Emperor Hadrian's Villa?

DK: Yes. It all rolls down hill. Entropy. Old age. Ratings. Regression to the mean. The Ray of Creation permeates...

BDK: You promised me to stay on subject, and brief.



















for athletic events, upper body strength is critical

DK: Ok. Sorry. I was gettng excited. But ChessDog in his incommensurable potential needs walking around the Agora.

BDK: When did all this Greek stuff start? Now Rome. Some kind of message here?

DK: With you.

BDK: [silence]

DK: So, where were we? Oh, yes, brilliant minds with a heart!

BDK: That was it.

DK: And this is why Chess Relearner is so exquisite. Well, one of the reasons. Blunderprone has this. Yasser has this.

BDK: What is that?

DK: Sorry--and Temposchlucker has it. All of them. A human heart.

WOR: I had three hours sleep last night, and five beers. And just did 340 CTS problems and selected moves for forty correspondence games, five minutes per move.

Chess Relearner (CRL): Balance. Balance. Balance.

Blunderprone (BLP): Balance!


DK: Balance? My goodness, it is getting crowded. I have a lot of things, but NOT balance. I have excess and imbalance.

WOR: And I don’t? Who cares? I write for me, and for alone.

DK: Wait a second. Everyone here, even ChessDog is interactive with me, and with you, it is like a thread that leads nowhere, in a conversation with itself.

CRL: Sorry guys, but I am listening and cannot help but comment with emphasis please.

DK: Yes?

CRL: It is best to never say anything about anyone unless it is good.

DK: So this is what chessDog taught me?

Temposchlucker (TEM): Absolutely.

DK: And I am?










TEM: Really, a lot like him. Similar polarities attract--so as to mutually demonstrate character, or 'chief feature' in the 'Gurdjieff Work' [which DK and Tempo both studied, a system of awakening that says man lives in 'sleep'].

DK: [silence. Thinking quietly, 'I used to have an anger problem 15 years ago'].

BDK: Where were we after the 1900 thing and the beer thing and the Ray of Creation?

DK: Chess Relearner.

BDK: Yes.

DK: The second thing about him is that he has never said one bad word about anyone, and I swear, I have never once heard him complain.

BDK: Not once?

DK: Not hardly. The man is a saint. He is a devoted father, and told me that at his job--

CRL: David, don’t forget my privacy.

DK: No worries.... that at his job, he supervised 500 persons and, when they asked him to step down, THEY SAID THAT HE WASN’T HARD ENOUGH ON PEOPLE. Can you imagine.

CDG: Sounds like some oversized place to work, as they all are. The bastards.

DK: [pause...] Chess Relearner has recently faced a major life challenge, and never complains. Maybe why this is why he stopped posting, yet of course still comes to visit, to the benefit of us all when he does. All this man wishes is to be able to ride his bicycle sooner rather than latter. If only MY life were that clean and crips.

BDK: What is all this Love stuff you always say?

DK: Ah, love. A man can love many things, not just conjugal union

CDG: I am ready man! Where is she?

TEM: Sec. I think DK wasn't talking about either Eros, or Agape. He means Philia
full link to all three, here:].

DK: Exactly. I feel so much love for everybody, even Wormwood! But sometimes...

BDK: Stay on track DK!

DK: I feel a deep love for Chess Relearner. A man can love his wife, or a mother her son, a girl her cat, a student his vacations--

CRL: Or a man his books...

DK: Amen brother!

TEM: Amen to that!

BDK: ditto!


DK: Or a man can love the beauty of nature, or risotto, but the sincere and regular and honest exchange between two persons, when sincere, and with respect, is a beautiful thing.

TEM: And helping others!

CDG: the bong!

BLP: Eating!

DK: ten minute naps after short sleep! Two a day!

BDK: Getting attention at blogger! Especially from Temposchlucker!

DK: Ok, ok children. Back to class.

BLP: But we were just getting start!

DK: Where was I? Oh, yes--Chess Relearner is a man with whom I can discuss anything.

CDG: Even?















having a little chat about missed assigned work at school :)

DK: Yes, all the body functionality. But not in a crude way.

BDK: DK you have shared many an email, and often with us. But wasn't Chess Relearner the only one among us outside your very dearest and oldest personal friend Robert (the wildman in big, southern, conservative law who once left intelectual property and international law to go homeless, then his firm took him back after his hiatus) that you offered to write Yasser an email, to introduce him ? So that the door was open?

DK: And make an appropriate, gentle, but committed introduction. Yes, I was ready to write Yasser about Chess Relearner.

TEM: And how did it go?

DK: He didn’t want to bother him. Can you imagine? Who your friends are is what says the most about you--outside perhaps personal appearance or way of speaking to others.

CD: Wow. Serious man. Dude.

BLP: Amazing.


DK: I now copy Chess Relearner to some emails, just as the good Grandmaster copies me with notes to or from Silman occassionally.

BDK: About Chess?

DK: Heck no! You think we discuss chess? uTube videos, Bush, the immanent US collapse or the real estate mortgage bubble.

TEM: Hey DK--

DK: Yes?

TEM: What, after all, does Chess Relearner want? For it is aim that is the second way we show who we really are.

DK: He wants to go to his second home on a far off island, and soon take an early retirement, read his chess books, lord knows Spanish and French and German, and VA Linux, or what else he can cook up that he has not yet told me much of...





















BLP: Sounds good. Better than the World Open, office park oasis of King Prussia Pennsyvania! [nice informative report linked at left through Blunderprone's post on the World Opens, to Steve Edden's]

DK: You bet. But he has to sort a lot of stuff before he moves his family and--

TEM: And?

DK: All his books, including the three hundred chess books.

BDK: And what else does he want. Surely more?

DK: To be a good husband and father.

CDG: Might I suggest?

BDK: Please.

TEM: Go for it.

WOR: I did 90,000 CTS. I set the record for the fastest comment at DK's prolegema post, in proportion to his effort and time expenditure.

BLP: Yes? Go ahead DK--


CDG: DK, you have said enough. Let some mystery be. And...

DK: consecrate...

CDG: ...the divine in man.

DK: Chess Relearner is not our most noble or highest exponent of chess improvement. Many others can represent that. But like GM Seirawan, I honor his friendship and treasure it, and hope that I never let him down, and it is his character, both these men, that I approach. Not Yasser's chess, nor his wins, nor his books, but it is his character that attracts me. And Chess Relearner like Temposchlucker has a good character that is gold, for me, and I honor him deeply and hope that you do too.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Prolegema, or Kant Help it: WFMU, Part IV















WFMU, The Best Alternative Radio in the USA, or The Pulse of New York: Essay Eight
This is our second wild card feature, and occurs every eight essay.

WFMU Radio is something that I all hope, no matter what the taste, be sure to check out, using of course the usual windows media player resources or MP3, etc... This will add 150 elo to your blitz games, but, of course, perhaps not your standard radio indeed!

WFMU is what I listen to when I go back home to see family, back east. Last visit, I luxuratd hearing it, while practicing chess tactics at CTS or writing friends at blogger. New Your does NOT need an introduction or explaination.

But for one brief moment, then we let it speak for itself: I went to college in New York, at a school perhaps harder to get into than MIT or Harvard, which tests for creativity on a full scholarship, tuition free basis. One day, in my wild Nietzsche Oberman days of fasting, photographic mind philosophy, and da Vinchian notebooks which I carried everywhere to the point of absolute legendary status, I yelled at a man who was litering. He looked at me, and in his kind wisdom, said (jive, and hip tone of voice " M A N , you can't beat New York. You can't beat it. No one can!" He wasn't being mean, in fact, he was being kind. Thus begins the slow life change which has taken 49 years of acceptance.






















One of the women who hang around rock and roll stars!

So when I tell you that as confident a young man as I was, even getting my own apartment in New York at age 17, when my mother said" "you can't do that!" (as if to say), 'you don't have my permission', or 'I won't allow that!') nor at all fearfull for my physical saftey, often running at night through miles of back street gettos without an ounce of fear (I should have had it, oh those days!)...

...when I tell you that I used to take a deep breath every time I took the bus to New York, as we circled down into the 'Holland Tunnel', for the feeling of returning there after a weekends visit to my mother in New Jersey, as I did hundreds of times in those years, it was not so much insecurity, as feeling the mass, the weight of all of New York like a neutrino or quark or black hole of collasal energy.

I never want to go back there, for otherwise my already shattered heart will truly burst, and don't look back. Too much feeling. To much remorse. Too many years gone by of mispent youth. But in some strange way, I have started to listen daily to this music from the grunge backwaters of Seattle, especially during tactics, as I feel a primordial jungle beat, and my courage raises such as Somalis feel in eating "Khat, which contains the alkaloid cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant which causes excitement and euphoria". I feel the need for this power now, and this music gives me the feeling of putting a pipe from New Your directly into my brain.





















dk after 187 chess games in nine of the last ten days (only 25.7% of games, wins!), all played in late night after massive blogging, working eight of the last nine days straight at a 'job', preparing 25+ low fat healthy meals, and--even--financial trading...

WFMU is an independent freeform radio station broadcasting at 91.1 fm in the New York City area, at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley, and live on the web in Realaudio, or in Windows Media, as well as two flavors of MP3, and all programs archived in MP3 and Realaudio. Listen Live on the Web Most Recent Playlists and Program Archives WFMU Podcasts Upcoming Special Programs DJ Homepages





















Jimi Hendrix - live - Sunday, June 1, 1969 - Waikiki Shell, Hawaii

"WFMU-FM is a non-commercial, freeform radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. We were formerly on the campus of Upsala College, in East Orange, NJ, but relocated in 1998, having procured our independence in 1994 from the college. We have a relay station, WXHD, 90.1 Mhz FM, broadcasting in the Hudson Valley, Lower Catskills, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania".

[Note to reader: I am moving things around to make things easier for the reader--and will continue to do so daily on short hours here this corner--but following Tempos kind suggestion, for now can only note that the next set of essays below is what still remains of part II, comments for essays five, six, seven are after Wahrheit, Grandpatzer below, and subsequent lead body paragraph posts ten, eleven, twelve et. al. Sorry this isn't easier, it wasn't for me either. Thank you tempo! dk]

Prolegema, or Kant Help it: Chessdog Part III

Hereby begins single, seperate post, following tempos kind suggestion. It was getting hard for me, too! Thank you tempo!





















Notice the "chi" in those eyes: ChessDog and Sheree!

Chess Dog, The Most Evolving: Essay Seven
Saturday 30 June/01 July, 2007

I just received a fax marked urgent from the World Bank President Houevos Maximelia in Zurich, and co-signed by Devos World Economic Forum Co-Chair Demetry Bottovorshky, and they have deeply implored me to include ChessDog of CTS in the further interest in the maintainance of World Peace, I really have to yield on this one under extraordinary pressure. Many letters and faxes have poured into today, and even temposchlucker weighed in via a direct email.

Improvement can take many forms, such as physical, mental, financial, moral, or even in matters of technique, but real improvement can transcend such specific domains and change a whole persons life, the very fibers of his or her being in a way which is of lasting and enduring altering life value. When these qualities start to awaken, something of true beauty and arresting heartfelt care and connection can flourish...





















ORIGINS
How far a distance would not just a person—but two or more respective persons--have to travel in a relationship interpersonally to go from alternating sharp, curt vicious attack then immediate counter recriminations, or from jocular locker room back biting more suited to a Saturday Night Live skit then social psychoanalytic thrusts in kind, how far would persons in this kind of ‘situation’ have to go from that, to get to one centered upon kindness, authentic sharing, tender vulnerability in forthright sharing and mutual support? I can assure you, this is most rare, and as such, is all the more deeply cherished and treasured.

New bloggers cannot know or understand, and this is not the place to share the *hemmm* richly embellished “specifics”, but for now, can only most rapidly note that after hitting my first 10,000 tries at chess tactical server, I made a comment or two about my sense of accomplishment, yes, and there he was, completely himself: chessDog. ChessDog was in a category all of his own, twenty thousand problems at that time towards 96%. This was one tough dude.

I didn’t know him, only that he was most unusual, and I mean that sincerely. But he let it be known quickly that, for whatever reason, that I had his displeasure. Somehow it would die down, or he would make nice (for that moment!) or a friend or two such as LikeForests or Spacecowboy would weigh in with some supportive remarks, but it got to where I couldn’t make a single comment without him being right there on my tail. Whether he felt justified or how or what we it went, is not our story now, for it really turns out well in the end about my friend chessDog. But it got so disturbing I hadn’t read a single CTS comment at the message board for four months, with no plans to ever go back, closing my eyes there and practicing only. “OK. Say what ever you want, but I will never see it”.


















TRIGGERS
I broke a rib in November, nothing really terrible, but one of those little things that happens is bad but not unbearable, but days latter when you ‘just sneeze once’ it literally feels like you’ve been hit straight on with a baseball bat and fall to you knees. Thereafter I was home on medication and painkillers on State L&I for 12 days, and started playing hundreds upon hundreds of bullet chess games, luxuriating in Dionysian frenzy.

Don’t ask me why, but as psychic as I am (and those who know me, know how across hundreds of occasions I ‘just’ seem to know things such as who died, or who is where, or what will happen, in dreams and bodily sensations that are knows as ‘something’), I just knew to go to the CTS message board. I told this to him in one of our many subsequent exchanges at my post before we became truly acquainted directly, but don’t ask me why, I read the first line at the most recent post and there he is saying simply: “dktransform, I really miss you”. My goodness. And then I knew something was really up... The Twilight Zone indeed!
















I don’t mean anything more than that. I didn’t know the disposition, only that I needed to pay real attention, as did he had been, and of course as I had been doing in my own way. In therapy, there comes a point where you cannot go any more or much rather, really don’t need to go any more, and this is not a bad thing. You get over someone having betrayed you in love and see how you empowered them to betray you by turning a blind eye to the truth in order to get something thought of as value, or start to fathom how the missing parent figure (and I mean me, not chessDog here please) has tainted all you social communication, or learn how to commingle in the work place by supporting others and communicating constructively and clearly.

MINIMAL SIGNALS
So when you graduate, it is when you can do therapy with yourself, and the learning is permanently and operatively and ongoingly installed in you, much as software would be installed, but it is in your brain and gut and heart, your eyes and your fingers… So you learn, most of all, to watch or learn and listen, or as my therapist Steven R from the late 90’s called ‘the signals’, ‘the signs’, or more specifically ‘the minimal signals’.

In what I now like to call adulthood, we still can stand on what I like to call the train track, and if we get hit with a train (and again, I don’t mean chessDog here but me directly) we start to where we see it coming. We vocalize and stand, saying: ‘Boy, do I see that train coming!’ We start to get what Bertrand Russell co-author, mathematician, logician, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called ‘foresight’. We start to see and have discrimination. We start to view others and study them, and not just project from our own needs and feelings. In ‘noticing’, we start to see when we are talking with people how they turn their shoulders away, or their eye pupils contract, or how they flick their ear with a finger, or a lip dips to one side. We get past noise and see what ‘the content’ is. The real content.












GROUP PROCESS
I had the good fortune, in my latter stages of getting the basic lay training of what a 'trained therapist' would have, of meeting up with the Mindell Group Process Work, aka Worldwatch. It is like EST, or The Landmark Forum, or Lifespring, only larger, more inclusive, and more mature not to mention more caring or less confrontational. One of the basic tenants of this work, at once incorporating Jungian psychology and organizational development, is that the seeds of a conflicts resolution lay in fully experiencing the conflict itself; it also says that only by fully investigating a conflict can it be resolved, if not healed.

MY guru Joy always used to say, "No matter what you care to say about David, he keeps showing up." The same can be said about chessDog 100% completely. What is so truly magnificent about WHAT HAPPENED with chessDog as against chessDog himself (that is to say without his or my ego alternately), is that despite his repeated attempts to comment along the edges of my world when our conflict had not yet resolved...

...was that up to and including his emailing me at ICC under an new identity which I of course--at that time!--immediately censored, and despite my three fold repeated STERNLY TELLING HIM that no longer would he get any response from me, in response to his three fold writing comments at my blog post, what is so magnificent about him is that he kept coming back.

This man is a fighter bar none, a warrior down to his bones. I warrior does not need to be right or wrong, only believe. And as we all know, I am not exactly low energy, so go figure the size of that cloud of smoke! Smoldering.

I told him in no uncertain terms, three times, that unless he give me a way of reaching him outside here or providing a place to comment unilaterally, things being what they were, that we are done, and I of course meant it. I can go a long with almost anyone, but when I am 'done', I am 'done'. Then I made him a dinner guest after Dante and Leonardo da Vinchi, and the next thing I knew, he gave me his email, and quickly thereafter, we exchanged many personal and cordial notes off line via email. While out conversation was and is private, temposchlucker, Blue Devil Knight, Chess Relearner were all more or less aware.

ENERGY
Did you ever notice how no matter what the resolution to finish a book, or call a friend, or return a phone call, or fix something at home, or even edit a chess database file, somehow the energy is never quite there? And alternately, on three hours sleep to go on an exotic and long dreamed of trip, or in meeting someone for a drink with endless things with which to discuss, somehow we don’t feel tired?

My posts with temposchlucker and Blue Devil Knight were in some ways while truly time consuming relatively easy to conceive since I know these fellows--at least relative to cyber space--quite well. But however much I might regard Grandpatzer, or Wahrheit (or Robert Pearson) significantly, I had to struggle a lot, especially with Robert, since I don’t quite know these guys, again, however great my regard. His post was the hardest for me.

SIDENOTE SEVEN POINT TWO:
Now since 10:55 am Thursday am (when I had 6.2 hours sleep that night, and only 5.0 hours last night) I have had only 11.2 hours sleep in two days, and only one ten minute nap last early last night, and I AM NOT TIRED. Two days at my job, meeting 600 people yesterday and today, 34 bullet games and 3 blitz games in those two nights, and one revision of Warhreit, AND I went to bed at 8:03 am this morning and got up at 1:04pm today

(my goodness: I somehow fell below 1400 bullet, and no matter how hard I tries, EVERY TIME that I got within 2 or 3 elo of that, would loose one more game, so spent, well *himmm* an entire night playing bullet. One whole night...),

and now I have energy for chessDog after ALL THAT, running home after work to type after starting this during 30 minutes at lunch today? Why is that? I am currently working 8 of 9 days in this work period, walking virtually the ENTIRE time.

No matter how young in spirit he is (and similar to temposchlucker, I mean this in the very best way), he has ESSENCE. Now whatever we say about other people, despite Sartre's proclamation in his famous Existential yarn, Nausea, that "Hell is other people", we can also say that HEAVEN IS OTHER PEOPLE. What can we not say about another which is, after all, but a reflection of ourselves? In honoring others we honor god, we honor creation.


















Me at left; my brother in arms Shawn right, at his first wedding. With his being the most familiar with my highly creative investment work somehow was handed the better part of the $40,000,000 either secured or grew at Migrain Stinely Invesment when I 'left' in late 2000, despite my being at his bachelars party and canceled a serious mountain climbing trip with my oldest childhood friend to be there, as solemnly requested by his best man and brother: "It would mean a lot to him if you could be there", despite all that, somehow when I questioned their $40 exit fee when I moved my account out of there, explicably never heard from him again! Ah, the love of our brothers!
















Photo at Shawns (left) second wedding (me, right), after insulting me in the chapel right before things got 'started'.

WARRIOR
We have all seen the fast friends come and gone, the loves of such vigor come and gone. But where are all those people now? Whatever happened? Oh the love people proclaim, and the friendships forever! But sometimes it is better to never say such things, I have finally learned. And sometimes, as my teacher of architecture, great architect John Hejduk of the New York Five (cf. Five Architects, Museum of Modern Art, or Richard Meyer, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and Peter Eisenman of the White Architecture Movement) used to say: "I have noticed how your friends become you enemies (wormwood) and you enemies become your friends (chessDog)". It is best to let it flow, and let those who need to go (wormwood's short reply to my post, while drunk and not much of anything there after?) and those who need to come, arrive. One door closes and another opens, the cosmic principle.

And as often happens, after two men resort to fisticuffs, what with such pugilistic rancor and bludgeoning as occurs in the primordial and primeval cosmic school yard, after the blood dries, and they latter admit, 'boy, you nearly kicked my ass', or 'Man, dude, you sure know how to fight'.



















Photo of Wrestler Chris Benoit applying his craft, long before his recent ill fated 'murder suicide'

Somehow in football or boxing, there is a certain charm, that even god loving men enjoy in seeing a bunch of men kicking ass. There is a certain brotherhood or kinship which is real and enduring, or, as Sandra Ray in her highly recommended book Loving Relationships said: "love drives out everything unlike itself". And, for chessDog, I feel a certain love, much as I do for temposchlucker and Chess Relearner (latter has not posted much, but we have a now large and varied intimate correspondence which is, of course, private).

MOST EVOLVING
I started to write last week, that he was 'ChessDog, The most improved', but to say that he is the most evolving is far better. You can improve the finish on your car, or kitchen floor, or being on time to work, but 'evolution' is far grander, for his potential as a HUMAN BEING IS enormous. His passion is so deep, and his ferocity so great, that when he integrates his core, he will be a complete man with the loyalty and heart of a fierce and indomitable warrior. I am not a complete man yet, close but no cigar. This is often a lifelong quest and not many get there.

More on this subject must come latter, but for now, can but note the tip of the iceberg, and let everybody know that my father was arrested by the FBI six months after I was born. So much tension was around me, that my mother did not want to leave the house for an entire year, being naturally too ashamed to show her face. He got straightened out in a big way, and fast, and we were all raised to be upright and honest, and to face all challenges, to help others, and to speak the truth, with of course my mother adamently behind all this. So we never know what other folks must face, or what mental illness two parents could carry, and how we would have to learn all from a zero start line, stone cold, alone. There were no parents. I have had to become the parent of my own self.


















LOVE AND TRIALS
We do not choose such things, but follow where the muse pulls us, or, as Homer says: "Sing us of Muse, Oh rosy finger Dawn" in the opening lines of the Odyssey, written 2700 years ago.

It took Odysseus nine years to reach Ithaca after leaving Troy, and I can but note, that we all accept chessDog as he is, and whether he choose not to blog, or comment only, or not at all, respectfully note, that with or without proper 'is's and are's', if the day were to come that he simply had a tiny post, if only for a place to put comments with one tiny word alone saying "post", or now and again tell us of his world, or his chess, we would all embrace him with dignity and good cheer (after of course the requisite initial rubbing by temposchlucker, and good natured fun by Blue Devil Knight).

It is not my place to divulge the details of his personal life, and this if ever is for him to tell, but I can tell you that he is a performing artist (big surprise to me!), has recently returned to the gym as an accomplished boxer again at his local gym (IS ANYONE AT ALL SURPRISED AT THIS??) after some hiatus, has a very good woman named Sheree whom he dearly loves and whom must be the most special woman in the world to be with him and love him, and has a hand in guiding some special young people in this world, and, with Temposchlucker and Chess Relearner, is one of the three bloggers that I think that I will probably meet or talk with one day on the phone, or both, and what a day that will be!

I realized with a shudder months ago, when I was on Wall Street, managing the big bucks, that I told my guru that I'd like to mentor young Afro Americans, never making the connection that I have been doing this for the last five years at my very inner city store, all very rough and tough and in your face (and I mean it is very brutal as only such can be, day after day).

And somehow it all fits, and with chessDog showing up as he has now, it is spiritually a major sign of my own change in Karma, and I often joke with some grain of truth, that my current job is like some type of prison sentence, and that I am 'doing time', or 'serving time' for my own previous boundless arrogance, and his at times riveting authenticity is so freshing, and a blossoming friendship with chessDog is very dear to me, and I treasure him, as I hope you do, too.