A Game of Peace
May 26, 2000
7:46 a.m.
Wednesday night Brigid and I played a game called "Peace." I think it was Wednesday night. Or was it Tuesday? I don't know ... all the days are running together this week. Anyway. We played a game. Brigid and a friend of hers had made it up earlier that day while they were at Chess Club--a gathering of kids at Brigid's school that play chess at least once a week. Apparently Brigid and this friend were tired of chess as it stood and decided to develop their own approach. The rules sounded freeform when they were first described. Sort of like Calvinball for all you Calvin and Hobbes people out there. But in the end, they aren't bad at all. The game starts with all the chessmen lined up as in the traditional game. The pieces move mostly as in the traditional game. But rather than any taking going on, when you bring a piece in contact with another piece you have a Peace Conference. Only the player that initiated the Peace Conference can break it off, unless another piece is brought in to disband the meeting. When this happens, the opposition's piece is placed on the square that the breaking piece originated from (meaning that the opponent's piece could be placed a far distance away in the case of a bishop of rook breaking up a session, or really close in the case of a pawn). There are a few variants as far as how pawns move (any direction in our game) and that when queens meet, their conference cannot be broken via outside intervention. But otherwise, those be the rules. You'll note that pieces are never taken off the board. There is no death in Peace. "How do you end the game?" I asked. "When the kings come together to have a final Peace Conference." "Interesting," I said. So we played for awhile. It became obvious that I was chasing my king after hers, and equally obvious that she didn't want to have a Peace Conference at all. The fact that bedtime loomed had nothing to do with it, I'm sure. I chased Brigid around, and she played defense. After about ten minutes, when the strategy became more obvious, I began to realize that this is really an interesting variant on the game. Sort of like Diplomacy, only for two people. We kept playing. An hour later, when my latest game plan for bringing our kings together failed, I said "What's the point of this game?" Brigid looked at me and smiled in that beautific thin-lipped way that she has. "The point is just to keep playing." And so we did. Time continued to tick off the clock. Lisa came upstairs, and made us watermelon. We played as we ate. Peace conferences were held. We both learned a bit more about the strategy of the game, and we traded jokes as we played. It thought I had her dead to rights once, but she managed to find a way out of my grasp. In the end, though, I managed to force our kings into conference, and the land was save from the savages of war. We put the pieces away and went to bed. I read her a little of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" for bedtime (yes, she's grown up since the days of "Puff the Magic Dragon"). She gave me about the best hug of her career as a kid, and I went to bed.   This morning I added a thousand words to the story I'm working on. It went well. With luck, I'll have the first draft done tomorrow. A day or two ago I said the story had come to me, and that the rest was "just turning the crank." Yes, that's true. But not really. Putting words on the page is always more complicated than just turning the crank. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's easy. But it's never just turning the crank. Right now, it's starting to flow more easily. If you didn't notice the front page, Lone Wolf Press has released the Red, Red Robin Project, that includes my work in a short story titled "In-Betweeners." It's a short tale written with janet Berliner, George Guthridge, and Melanie Tem. Proceeds go to a very worthy charity, so take a moment and check it out if you're so inclined. In the name of tidal ebbs and flows, though, the post brought me a rejection from The Silver Web on a story I thought would be up their alley. Well, it happens. Ring up the Accept-O-Matic, eh? This morning, as I look back on the last few days, as I look at the progress I've made on this story, and as I think about Lisa working through her latest projects, and as I think about the release we're developing at work. As I think about Betsy Lerner's book (that I'm still reading). And I think about my career as a whole ... I can't help but think about Brigid. "The point is just to keep playing." When did she get so danged wise?  She's a better writer than me, too Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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