Visit with Polly, Castling Queenside Tonight

Dear friends: a lot has been going on behind the scenes, and as is my nature, its very hard to talk about in fragments, or partial efforts, so I wait, and wait to talk about it here. Physically, blogging takes a lot of energy--the way I do it. But I will be back soon. It's been hard.

I have actually been studying an ENORMOUS amount of GM games, and playing a LOT of blitz, and now, actually also, play slower time controls finally.

Within near hours or within one day of the final event that will change my life for quite some time to come, who emails me out of the blue, but Polly Wright of Castling Queenside! What a lovely, wonderful woman. A few emails and calls latter, and we are taking a good walk around Redmond Washington, then meet for tea, and wonderful chatting.

I am not in a mind frame to talk much today, maybe for a week. But, believe you me, I will. Much, very, very much to say. But, for now, let me say I fear to let a single day elapse, and fail to acknowledge her, so do so now, but cannot write enough to honor her. She is out here for a tournament. Funny--I 'never' drive more than three miles and she who travels the globe meets me! I drive all the way to outside the Microsoft Campus, and volla, she is there.

She is very kind, loves her chess, loves the social aspect of playing, and I respect her. She is a good soul and a good heart. It's more accurate to say that she has a heart of gold. You really can learn a lot about a person sitting across from them.

Everyone has their own fixations, and mine is authenticity and honestly. Let me tell you: you are gonna have to meet a lot of people before you find someone more honest and real than Polly. How refreshing! No BS. Just as it is. Wow.

And visting the playing hall, after she got her camera at the hotel to get some shots off of us, we visited the chess playing hall and the obviously well appointed chess bookseller.



Meet the Newest Knight Errant: Pigeon Linus [1]

And this found to be a bit crazed guy is selling not only books, but has some big sign of selling copies of NEW eBooks he has scanned. I am not some copyright Nazi. But I asked him before I knew this: 'Do you have Lev Alburt's new book, the Pocket Chess Training Book, Volume II?' 'No, but I can sell you a scanned copy....' Then his speech, his pitch about all that he could do for a price. A chess book hooker. A chess book prostitute.

Much combustion and I had to tell him: 'I am not with the police or IRS or a copywrite Nazi, but I don't think that this is very fair to Mr. Alburt!' I told him that I felt sorry for him, and that he was not a very nice person [2].

All said by me with a smile, and, of course, much else said before, by him about, government spy's, snipers, having his tires slashed, and much that was probably true but on the edge about the government after him... I meant what I said at a very, very deep level, and to fire a pellet of conscience into his now shrived soul. Sad man.

Then I saw his state, and told him that his body was breaking, and that he 'was on a collision course with disaster'. Told him that he 'could gather all this knowledge, but if' his 'physical form could not hold it, his container [3], that it would all go to waste'. Lord Jesus, my first time in a chess hall since the US Chess Championship in 2003 as a visitor. Ho hum! Mellow dk lacking in any intensity. :)

Polly got to witness all this, a dk no holds bared zen shout of awakening. So it was a perfect evening.

Love dk

[1] Article here, A Stroke of Pigeon Genius

[2] His entire modus operendae seemed to be: 'I have been fucked 4,321 times, so now I get to fuck someone else!' I told him that he was a genius sociopath. He had directed all his brilliance into a negative, manipulative, paranoid state of opportunistic entrepreneurship.

[3] Remember the group suicide by the Hale-Bopp folks? Their leader said they were going to shed their containers. I always liked that. You remember it, the Heavens Gate Folks, ref here: INSIDE THE CULT OF HEAVEN'S GATE.