Of Ghosts and People

So I wrote my last post on the floor, arched awkwardly over my computer in the one spot in the whole apartment where I could access one of the three unsecure wireless networks that appear and disappear infuriatingly and without any apparent logic or purpose. My post was, as such, a bit awkward and stilted and uncomfortable in its own right. For this I will make no apology, but rather point accusingly at the stupidity of the various multinational corporations involved in the collective production of the "Wireless" God, who for whatever reason could not find a reliable way to beam the entirety of the world's electronic knowledge directly into my laptop.

So! Dan and I met up at 5:00 outside his office and grabbed burritos or fajitas or enchiladas or god knows what they're called - basically imagine a mound of rice, corn, sour cream, beans, guacamole, cheese and salsa poured into an insta-toasted slice of soft tortilla wrap, encased in tin foil, slammed into a plastic bowl and hurled at you on a tray, and you've got New York Mexican Fast Food.

DRAMATIZED DRINK-PURCHASING EXPERIENCE:

"Anything to drink, cabron?"
"Uhh, I'll take an orange juice."
"We've got MANGO orange juice, puta."
"No plain orange juice?"
"MANG-"
"Okay, okay, I'll take one of those."

We ate fast. I'm talking FAST. They're still telling stories there about how fast we were.

"Those two, eh hombre, they were pretty fast, no?"
"Si, si. Muy loco - crazy tontos! Ate like no tomorrow, mang."

*Error: Insensitive ethnic stereotyping detected! Error! Initiating security protocol PC-ENFORCER10001101*

**BZZT**

Ow! Shit. Blogger's got some mean political correctness software installed! I'll have to be more careful.

Anyway, so Dan and I played go, down at the New York Go Center. Same shtick. Same more or less awkward and vaguely annoying people. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love go. I've had great times playing the game in the past. I've met some fantastic people who also happen to play go. Truly marvelous, splendid, generous, and enjoyable folk. It's just... when you get a room full of go players, a strange, eery, disconcerting transformation takes place. They become... infused with the hysterical power of GO KNOWLEDGE, and wield their awesome wisdom with untramelled determination and, well... frequently an un-funny and relentless sarcasm.

Well, here, let me give you some examples. We, Dan and I, are playing a game by ourselves, off to one side of the room. This old guy, maybe in his 50s, looks like Baron von Munchausen without the hat, is giving some kind of teaching game to a freakish 17-something-year-old, couldn't be older, really doubt it, but anyway who somehow WORKS at this Center, and whose duties involve wandering up to you while in mid-game and showering you with questions and unsolicited information about deals and offers and membership fees. Let's call him Scruffy.

Let me try to recall some of the more choice snippets:



Baron: Hahaha, what do you think you're doing?
Scruffy: I just want to live.
Baron: You can't live there! Can't do it! No way!
Scruffy: Why can't you be nicer?
Baron: Teehee, I'm going to squash all your groups.
Scruffy: ...
Baron: Hey what do you think you're doing? How dare you try to invade!
Scruffy: Oh yeah? I can live in the smallest spaces!
Baron: You have no hope! I'm not going to let you off that easily! Hahaha.
Scruffy: Whose move is it?
Baron: Oh oh oh! You're ALL MINE NOW!!!

Which really doesn't capture the very annoying, quite condescending, and at times vaguely creepy tone the Baron possessed, nor Scruffy's general state of confusion and childishness. Nor the fact that both were having a wildly good time despite all of it.

I guess I'm only belaboring all this go stuff because I feel guilty for ragging on them in an earlier post, and that I should somehow be like this Patron Saint of Go since I play it so much, and have attained some kind of Respectable Status or something, at least among go players, and further because they really do often seem to be the sort of people who could use all the help they can get.

But that said, I do really love the game, and find it incredibly beautiful, and I guess in some ways I think it's a shame that in our culture you can't really love something so headsy and abstract without being all funny and detached and incapable of relating to other humans, basically. Which I don't get.

So anyway, we played, and then left when we were both starting to get a bit tired and cranky. We grabbed a couple drinks at a nearby bar and started talking about our lives and our dreams and our pasts. Of course our differences outnumber our similarities, but there is still a lot of common ground between us. I have a hard time articulating my emotions... but I felt sad for him. Not sorry, not sympathetic, or pitying, or anything like that. Just... sad. I can't explain it. Maybe in time I'll understand why. Maybe it has something to do with being dogged by who we were, who we could have been... and who we could still, maybe... one day be.

I had to walk underground to Bleecker St. station on the way home, to make a connecting train. The station was dark, and the platform was long and narrow, like a decrepit collonade with crumbling tiles and mortar. Innumerable lines of tracks, laid side by side, disappeared gradually into the darkness across the way. Then, as if out of the air itself, burst a number 4 train with a green eye-like circle suspended in the dark, and it tore through the open space with a shriek and a rumble, for all the world like a hounded wraith. Then it was gone. That place felt, for a surreal and lonely moment, quite like a catacomb for the dead.