Monthly Archives: December 2010

December 29, 2010

Is Someone Speaking To Me?

By moses' blog

Dragons trying to communicate?  In each dream dragons attempt communication.  Rather a dragon.  Who’s to tell if it is always the same hellish reptile or a separate individual each time?  And one becomes two becomes three then four, what is the meaning of that message?   The dragon drew a single line in the sand that become many.  This syncs up nicely with my search for identity.  Am I single or many?  Reality is more than what is seen, heard or felt.  Chaos theory broke the rule of constants making reality a blur of our imaginings.

My first New York apartment had this bathroom medicine cabinet with three mirrors circa 1949.  There was the large middle face with two others hinged on either side.  If you closed the two hinged mirrors around your face, its reflection was splintered off infinitely within the three reflective visages.  You couldn’t tell which one was you and which the reflection.  Is this the meaning of the dragon’s message?

 

One becomes two becomes three becomes four and so on into infinity.  Or was this merely a statement that one cannot stand against many?  If so, why not?  The boy has yet to lose standing against the ten for as long as I have dreamt of this far off desert setting.  Or was it just scratchings in the sand?  No.  I’ve never had this dream on consecutive nights.  Meaning is there only to be mined by the tenacious.

And if there is meaning, from what source?  That is what truly interests me.  Is this my subconscious trying in its very own demented way to illuminate some lesson?  Or are these nebulous dreams from a source I cannot comprehend?  Who is speaking to me?  Is there a person behind the message?

Or am I demanding reason from the Fellini like musings of my slumbering mind.

M. Haygood

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December 28, 2010

Dragons 3

By moses' blog

Three in a row.  I have had three consecutive dreams of the boy battling dragons, or a dragon.  Historically, this happens once, maybe twice a month.  Yet, three in repetition.  Is this communication or just a lazy subconscious repeating stale material night after night?

Dragon Dream 3:

The challenge had been scorched in the dirt at the edge of the boy’s pond.  Again, dragon.  Again, undecipherable.

The boy, emotionless as he read the steaming missive, sipped the last of his green tea.  In the distance, he saw the dragon flying out onto the desert plain.  It landed at a distance that made its bulk diminutive.  This would require a mount.  The boy stepped back inside.

Within his Baobab tree, he left his cup in the sink and stepped to his armory.  With careful consideration, he selected a two handed sword perfectly balanced for his size.  Next a lance of ginormous proportion made from the ivory of a massive elephant tusk.  And finally, his shield with family crest, radio waves squiggling across a sun and moon fashioned by his own hands out of dragon scales.  This was his prize.  Everything else in this world popped into being with only a thought.  This shield he had made.  It was real and warmed to his touch.

Weapons picked, the boy walked outside and imagined the fiercest horse he could.  Particle by particle, the horse appeared, snorting and digging at the dirt under its heavy girth.  The boy visualized tack and armor for his war horse and that too appeared strapped properly in place.  Fully attired for battle, the boy leapt on his mounts back.

He rode out onto the desert plain watching his dragon nemesis the entire journey.  The dragon never moved.  It laid motionless on the sand much like a cat begging for food.  Heat wobbled vigorously up from the desert floor.  As he grew near his enemy, it appeared as if he was descending into hell and the reptile waited to guide him the last mile.

Finally, straddling his mount, the boy faced the dragon from a mere twenty feet.

“You left me a message,” the boy shouted.

“Arrraarrrrooarr,” the dragon replied.

“That’s what I thought.”

And with that, the boy dropped his lance from the neutral position of up to that of offense pointing straight ahead.

“Attack!” he shouted, kicking his charger into motion.

Galloping forward the boy noticed the dragon only lowered its head to the ground.  Almost subservient in nature, the boy’s resolve sputtered.  He halted just inched away.  The dragon did not move.  Only the breath from its nostrils blew at the dust below.

The boy, never letting his lance deviate from the point between the dragon’s eyes, stood atop his mount confounded.  The dragon moved only its eyes looking up into the boy’s face.

“You asked for the challenge.  Scorching my front yard as you did.”

The dragon shook its head slowly left to right showing no menace.

“Then who did?”

The dragon fixed the boy with a strong gaze before pointing at itself with its front paw.

“So, fight then, if you challenge me.”

“Ummmroooaarrrrah,” the dragon breathed out, bits of flame escaped from the sides of its snout.

“I don’t understand,” the boy bellowed at the perplexing beast.

Then, lifting its front paws up in a peaceful posture, the dragon rose.  Its eyes fixed on the boys.  With the left paw frozen in place, the right motioned first to its chest then slowly pointed at the boy.  This made no sense.  Combat was never like this.  You met your foe and then dispatched them as quickly as possible.  There was never discussion or negotiation.  And that was what this dragon appeared to be doing … trying to engage in a dialogue.

The boy watched as the dragon repeated this gesture again and again.  The boy, not releasing his lance, let its tip rest on the ground.  He then took his right hand and repeated the gesture, touching his chest and then pointing at the dragon.  The dragon, if joy was an understandable emotion for them, appeared to radiate just that … joy.  The dragon then started to draw something in the sand.  The boy watched. First there was one line, then two, three and finally four.

Dragon3A

The boy and the dragon were so focused on the sand drawing that neither noticed the approach of the other nine beasts.  Before the boy’s opponent could start a row of five, it was seized upon by its companions.  A fierce fracas ensued as the dragon was attacked from all angles.  The roaring was deafening.  The boy wasn’t sure if he should rush home or stay and help.  With his indecision, his imagined mount began to disappear as if by one atom at a time.  The boy felt his war horse melt away from under him as the dragons fought each other.  With the remains of his horse dissolving underneath, the boy saw the dragon he’d faced staring at him above the fray.  The eyes held compassion.  The eyes held warning.  They were intense and this time held a single message … run.

And so run the boy did.  He left his ivory tusk lance and his two handed sword and ran.  Ran with all the strength his young legs contained.  The only weapon he took was his shield.  The shield of dragon scales.  Slung over his back, the shield gave him cover should the dragons notice his exit and follow.

But, they never did.  The boy ran all the way back to his home in the tree without assault by a single dragon.  At his door, he turned and looked back.  All that could be seen was dust, wings and claws all vying for predominance in the distance.  With a furious burst, one dragon broke clear of the scrum and flew off chased closely by the others.  A fervent look back at the boy and the dragon flew away to the mountains once more.

The boy entered his house quickly closing the door behind him.  His breath came in wheezing heaves.  This was new.  This was not combat.  This was communication.  He had no idea dragons were anything other than irritating, dull, brutish beasts.

+++++

And here the dream ends.  There are so many possible meanings that I can’t begin to articulate the reason for these three successive dreams.  Yet, communication appears the main theme.  I will now have to brew some green tea, have a biscuit and meditate on these midnight mêlées seeking audience with my conscious self.

I will get back to you.

M. Haygood

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December 27, 2010

Dragons 2

By moses' blog

With so much snow last night, there was little I could do this morning but write down my dream.  Again, I dreamt of dragon battles.  But, instead of random violence, there appears to be a theme.

Dragon Dream 2:

On occasions of great curiosity, the boy investigated the desert beyond his pond.  This was dangerous for dragons, when not attacking, patrolled the skies above.  If it weren’t for the ferocious harassment of himself, it would appear that they too were exploring, looking for a way out.

The boy himself, not of this place, wanted nothing more than to go home.  But there was no apparent exit.  Even memories of his prior life were blurry images at best.  He did, though, have a burning need to go home.  And when this feeling smoldered greatly and the sun was not too hot and the dragons fell into a synchronous harmony and stayed in their caves, the boy explored.

This day, the boy hiked towards the far mountains.  With him he carried only his sword freshly polished, a gourd flask filled with water and paper with crayons to map his expedition.  He had been walking for quite a while but the boy knew that time was meaningless here.  He never aged.  Time in his Baobab tree had been frozen in place.

dragon2
He looked up at the sun to take a sighting of his location and noticed that his tree, tall though it was, had fallen beyond the horizon.  Only the reflected heat vapor could be seen rising from the ground.  The boy contemplated returning.  It was never a good idea to be out, exposed on the plain.  But just then, he saw in the sky a single dragon circling.  This was not good.  Not good at all.  Looking about, it was clear that the far mountains were closers than his home.  Without looking back the boy broke into a full run towards the mountain’s base.  His only hope was to reach a hole or crevice before he was sighted, stalked and captured by the dragon above.

He made it.  But just.  There was a crag in the mountain that he could just fit in.  The flap of leathery wings whooshed behind him as he sprang through the thin opening.  Running to the back of the crag, the boy heard the pounding of the dragon’s fists on the rock and dirt outside his hiding place.  He put his back against the farthest wall, his sword drawn only to see what little protection he really had.

The dragon mercilessly pounded the rock outside, splitting off chucks, widening the opening.  Knowing he had little time, the boy crab climbed up between the narrow walls at the back of the crag.  He stopped when he was just above the dragons head and waited.

And that was not long.  The dragon broke through the last bits of sediment and dust.  Sighting the sun again, the boy waited for the dragon’s death blow.  Just as the dragon reared in an apparent strike, the boy brought up his sword and let the sun reflect off its polished surface.  The light was blinding.  He directed the flash at his enemy’s eyes giving him the chance he needed.  He jumped.

Jumped with every fiber of muscle in him.  He looked down as he soared above the blinded dragon’s head.  The boy made a rough landing on top of the reptile but quickly turned and grabbed its ears.  Dragon’s ears are sensitive and so by grabbing them, the boy leashed the beast to his whim.  The dragon reared up to its full height trying to shake the boy off.  The boy held tightly to his anchor points.  Every time the dragon tried to brush against the mountain rock, the boy pulled back harder on its ears.

Struggling, the boy was able to turn the beast about and coax it into the air.  The dragon, not happy by this turn of events, said little and just flew.  Its ears rang with pain.  Its only hope of relief was acquiescing to the pull of its tormentor.  It flew and flew where directed, to the boy’s baobab tree.

By dragon, the trip was short.  His tree broke over the horizon’s edge.  He looked back only to see the other nine dragons in close pursuit.  He knew he could not land this beast and escape into the safety of his house before the others were on top of him.  Again, he had to be brave, use his mind and outwit the dull beasts.

 Instead of landing, he steered his mount around the tree like children playing at a Maypole.  The other dragons followed and on his second in a half rotation of the tree, the boy turned his dragon into the treetop’s thick branches and leaves.  This would be painful to navigate through but his doorway was on the other side and his hope was that the other dragons would crash into one another attempting pursuit.

And that they did.  They crashed and caromed, bashed and slammed into one another tangling in a heap, the branches a shelf for their failure.  Clear of the treetop the boy jumped to the ground.  He rolled once and sprinted inside.  The dragon he’d flown continued on looking back as the boy shut the door.

Outside, the boy heard an intense mêlée.  The other nine fought for position.  But, with the door closed, there was little chance of any of them getting him.  So, after many minutes of vicious war cries, the dragons flew off.

When he judged it safe, the boy opened the door.  He wanted to see if they had really left.  They had except one.  The one whom he had saddled and rode stood on the other side of his pond.  It looked at him in a very uncomfortable way.  Then, it too, flew off.

The boy watched.  The dragon flew straight and true to its mountain lair.  Back inside his home again, he thought about the look that dragon fixed on him.  There was no violence in it but menace none the less.  It was imploring yet anger edged the eyes.  The boy went to his cub bard to make a cup of tea.  His encounter with that particular dragon would take time to unwrap with much mediation and contemplation.  For now, a hot cup of green tea and a biscuit was in order.

++++++

Now, I’ll see if I can dig myself out.  Love shoveling snow.

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December 26, 2010

Dragons

By moses' blog

Earlier I posted about dragons, battles and a little boy.  Be it the holidays or just too much time alone, these dreams resonate strongly with me.  Below is one I had the other night.

Dragon Dream:

The little boy woke to a thumping.  Not so much at the door of his tree but at its midpoint.  As if some large hand were slamming fist to trunk on his home and the shock vibrated all the way down to the tree’s base.

dragon1
The boy slipped from bed, stepped over his crayons and paper left from the previous night and snuck downstairs.  At the foot of his door, balanced on it’s thresh hold, a folded piece of paper.

Another thump rattled cups and bowls in his pantry.  Not trusting the situation, the boy selected his favorite lance, and with great care dragged the note across the floor where he stood near the stairs.  Outside he heard the snarls and bleats of the large beasts that lived high in the mountains.  The boy opened the note.  It was unintelligible but he recognized the writing.

Dragon.

Today’s opening move or declaration of surrender, his or theirs, the boy had no idea.  He could not read dragon.  Every time he tried, it changed and so he had given up ages ago.  Piercing the page with his lance, the boy walked to the door, the dragon’s note a fragile banner.

Carefully, he spied out the door’s peep-hole.  They were all spread out around the far side of his pond nipping at each other.  All except one.  It stood close, using its snout as a rapper on the tree’s bark.  Bits had fallen to the ground near the beast’s feet.

Opening move then.  Unlatching the door, the boy stepped quickly back.  Leading with the note stuck through on his lance, he walked slowly outside.  The dragons stopped their teeth gnashing and focused on the boy.  Their eyes gleamed either out of hunger, triumph or fear.  There was no telling with dragons.  He stood a moment contemplating his next move.

The dragon closest to him, the one who thumped his tree, looked down at him.  He bobbed his snout at the note.  The boy, taking this as a cue, began to slowly move his lance towards this dragon.  He moved slowly so that the dragon would not think he was attacking.  His intention was to drop the note at the dragon’s feet.  Instead, a wind whipped up and blew the note off its perch on the lance and floated it into the middle of the pond.

There was a tense moment as the dragon in front of the boy watched the note sail away to sink onto the water’s surface.  The boy sensed no attack from this beast, but before this thought was thought, the others flew across the pond in ferocious formation.   The boy found himself trapped between his pond and nine fierce dragons.  The monsters reared up and snarled, forcing the boy backward by measured steps.

At the ponds edge, the boy stopped.  He had no place to go.  The dragons fell back on their haunches, readying themselves to pounce.  But this boy was no stranger to combat.  He’d beaten these beasts on more than one occasion.

With a practiced move, he flung his lance from a defensive position in front, up and around to a back handed sword grip.   Its weigh dropped it’s tip into the water.  With a quick turn, the boy stuck the lance into the middle of the pond and with both hands jumped, flinging himself above the water to the other side like a pole-vaulter competing for gold.

Without thought, the dragons tried to follow.  In their hysteria to catch the boy, they had forgotten a very important thing.  That is that water does not like dragons.  In fact, water is to dragons what acid is to little boys.  Pulling back onto the shore, the dragons cried out nursing wounds and looking very cowed.

Without thought, the boy vaulted the pond again landing behind his foes.  With a staunch swing of lance, he paddled each dragon’s behind with the sharp end of his weapon.  This sent each of the dragons into frenzied flight, each taking off in a different direction.  All but one flew off without looking.  It was the one, the one who had thumped his tree so mercilessly.  The one who had slipped the note under his door and watched as it fluttered off his lance onto the pond.  This one, scorched by the water and whipped across his rump, looked back.  The boy could not tell if the look was one of anger, embarrassment or sorrow.  This dragon turned his head and flew off to his lair among the mountain caves in the far distance.

The boy watched until the dragon had become a speck.  The pond’s surface was calm with the wind’s leaving.  The boy walked back into his house.  He was shaken by this encounter.  Not from the peril he had been in but by the curious behavior of that one dragon.  Sitting down at his little table, he tried to recreate the note with his crayons.  But every time he tried, his memory of it changed.  The lines, all squiggly, never met the representation he thought he remembered.  Finally, he gave up.  Dragon was not a thing he was to understand.

M. Haygood

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December 24, 2010

Christmas Eve … Again

By moses' blog

Another Christmas Eve and still no one claims me.  Alone?  Not exactly.  I do have my pet spider and gecko Milo and Sheila, but no human other than myself.  No relations to partake of the festivities with me.  Friends have invited me to their celebrations but this year, it’s not right.  I feel the need to keep vigil on a solitude I cannot fathom.  So, eggnog and crickets, mango and cookies as I welcome in the season wondering if I will find answers soon.

Tomorrow I will be Jewish … and go to the movies.

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December 23, 2010

I Dream Of Dragons

By moses' blog

 

There be beasties in the basement of my subconscious.  Yes, dragons, monsters, fiends of grisly portent.  In my dreams that is.  Important piece of information I have yet to divulge … I’m not the only mysterious being to cross swords with my particular piece of desert.

I suppose I should call it our slice of desert.  Two years prior to my appearance a young boy disappeared.  Same spot.  Never found.  The relevance?  When I dream, sometimes it is of this boy.  Long before I became familiar with his story, I witnessed his battles with all sorts of dragons while I slept.

 There is a desert plain.  The boy lives in a tree near a small pond.  Ten dragons live in caves in the far mountains.  And every day, the beasts come down to do battle.

Why should I dream of a child I have never met?  Saw his picture years later when I found newspaper stories on his disappearance.  Could this be synchronous?  Our misfortunes tied by shared sand?

Oliver Williams left his mother’s side while stopped along the same stretch of road.  He never returned.  Where did he go?  I ask because maybe the answer correlates with where I came from.  And why does he battle dragons?  Why, in my dreams, is it not me fighting reptilian villains with lance and sword?

This is where all research leads, a perplexing crossroads where there are more questions than answers.  Each dream seems familiar, with meaning that I should be able to grasp.  Yet, I am left awake in my bed without the book of ciphers to break this nocturnal code.

So, I witness the monster battles only to wake up hoping I am not somehow aligned with the dragons fighting fragments of a lost child.  A child who represents what to me?

M. Haygood

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December 20, 2010

Grandfather

By moses' blog

Most people have teachers important to their lives.  In the Jewish culture, a teacher is called Rabbi.  People like this are also called mentors.  And some cultures call these teachers Grandfather or Grandmother.  That is who I would like to write about today.

As stated, I have no family.  That is, none that I am aware of.  I did have a teacher, mentor, Rabbi, a Grandfather when I first began my career.  After two years in the loony bin, I was classified sane.  A relative term but one that allowed me to leave.  At an estimate age of thirty-two with no training the reality of what was I to do in the world struck home.

Again, my Cherokee friend pointed the way.  All that time in the hospital, I had been researching.  Looking for clues to who I might have been was my first demonstrable skill.  My second skill was logging that research and journalizing it.  Rough though it was, I could write.  How I acquired this skill I have no idea but it was mine.  My friend’s mother had divorced and remarried a white man.  That marriage produced his half-brother who later grew up, moved to New York and became a television producer.

He worked on television documentaries dealing with the bizarre; Big Foot, UFOs, Ghosts and the Bermuda Triangle.  Because of my “beginnings” and the research I followed looking for answers, my friend thought his brother might be a good starting place for me.

And so he was.  Got me my start.  I worked hard willing to learn anything because I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.  His brother, though, is not who I wish to tell you about.  No, as illustrated by my prose, I tend towards the poetic and the rhythmically challenged.  Writing documentary narration is straight forward.  I was sent to Jules Morrow.

Jules was in his seventies when I first met him.  A dapper man, he never left the house without a smile or coat and tie.  He grew up in the age of radio and knew how to pull the nuance from every word committed to paper in the most economic of fashions.  A skill I never truly became proficient in but tools that helped me craft succinct descriptions of Flying Saucers appearing near British Airbases, large hairy creatures seen in the wilds of America and Nepal or a long dead child refusing to leave their light house home off Groton, Connecticut.

I did learn discipline from Jules.  Since our first meeting until recently, he wrote every day.  He would get his coffee and newspaper from the deli below his apartment, say hello to friends on the street and then go back to an office immaculately maintained and write for a minimum of two hours.  What did he write?  Stories, essays, journals, poems and letters, format was unimportant.  Sitting in the chair was important.

“So many people, Moses, say they write.  I ask them about their work and more times than naught, they’re between projects.  Or researching.  I like research, too, but craft is not about getting ready.  It’s doing.  Imagine a great tenor who never practices.  His ability, one of nature, no more.”

I read very little of his work.  Publishing wasn’t his interest.  Writing was.  Once he spent a week working on word precision and specificity.  The essay on world peace began as a ten page draft.  By week’s end, he had everything he needed to say wrapped in three paragraphs.

He taught me timing, valuable for television writing because time is a box each project of image and word is assigned.  The story must be told in 47 minutes.

“Tell me about yourself?” was his first lesson.

“Well …” and fifteen minutes later I had finished.

He looked at me before speaking.  “Now, tell me the same thing in ten seconds.”

I tried, but could never squeeze the pertinent information in under five minutes.

“You are Moses, from the desert with no memory and after two years in the hospital, you want to find out who you are, where you came from and why.”

“Yes, but I also …”

“Moses.  What else is there to say?”

What else indeed but the log line of my life.

Jules passed away yesterday.   Had he written this it would have been condensed into a paragraph with all the necessary but unwritten passion and fact.  I am no Jules Morrow.  But I will always love the who, where and why that was Jules Morrow.

M. Haygood in memory of a friend.

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December 16, 2010

Desert Time

By moses' blog

Why do we worry about the mundane? What is this interest in some starlet’s revealing gown or the fact that a more than beautiful actor and far too gorgeous actress are splitting up after 3 months? I certainly will never know any of these people so why care? As you might guess, I spent too much time last night surfing the web. All the news that should not find its way to print.

The rest of the evening was spent meditating. Not the religious experience all folded up into the lotus position, but contemplation. I sit in my “man” chair in my office, steeple my fingers and let my mind drift. My twilight vigil brewed up reminiscences of the desert. My desert, actually. I have gone back many times to where I first appeared. Looking for clues only to find brush and heat.

My friend once suggested I do a Vision Quest. Skepticism must have radiated from me because he just laughed.

“Man, I’m not a Shaman or any crap like that. You’re so intense looking for your answers. Might help just sitting out there all night.”

And so I did. Drove out in the afternoon as the sun cooled. Took a tarp and two large jugs of water and sat. The sand crunched under my butt every time I moved. Buzzards circled in the distance as the sun fell below the far mountains. Cold. You don’t know cold till you’ve felt the chill of a desert’s night. Stars. What we can’t see in the northeast is astounding. Millions and millions of pin spots yet with all that light, the darkness descends like a blanket of dry oil.

I waited there with my tarp strung from car to ground. Waiting for what, I had no idea. The heavens to open up and Morgan Freeman announcing who I was with full instructions on how to get my old life back.

That didn’t happen. Time … that is what happened. A couple of hours would pass. Then I’d look at my watch to see it had only been 5 minutes not hours. You have to give in to time to completely experience it. I took my watch off and threw it as hard as I could. It landed in some bush with a rustle and a thump. Then I was swallowed up by the intense quiet again. I didn’t sleep but entered a state of meditative slumber. Thoughts were like liquid turned to gas, sieving through my brain. And finally, that too ceased.

For a brief moment, I existed without thought just the up and down motion of breath as the sun crested the mountains behind me. And then without noticing, ten hours had passed. I had no idea what happened during that time. It was like anesthesia. The doctor makes the injection. You say something you think is funny and brave and the next moment you wake up in recovery. I had thrown my watch into the bushes and then, a nighttime later, it was time to leave.

Answers, I did not receive. Clarity, in concept maybe. Time moves in curious circles we refuse to notice and hardly comprehend. It is easier, I suppose, to care about how high a skirt slit is rather than the turning of the universal clock that marches to the orders of Morgan Freeman’s voice.

M. Haygood

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December 14, 2010

Nothing To Say

By moses' blog

This medium, not sure why or how to use. That is, to best accomplish the purpose stated in my first post. I had thought I would be very haughty and all science like, rhapsodizing about dimensional time and the resonance of the soul. Attempts at this come out shallow, flawed or just plain crackers.

More productive is this stream of conscious posted thus far. The journey rather than the mechanics. The vibrational frequency of an atom is meaningless without context and my context is tissue thin like the veil separating dimensions.

So, I post what’s on my mind at the time in hope that it suffices.

By the way, I had nothing to say today but a terrible itch to post. Addiction takes many forms.

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December 13, 2010

Chess

By moses' blog

Chess, the game, was introduced to me by my friend in the mental hospital, the one who found me and got me into the place. I am not now nor was I ever any good at it. But he insisted. Said it would train my mind and in training it, might help me remember. Twenty years later, no results on the memory count.

What I do appreciate is the strategy, intellectually and from a distance. One must think many moves ahead, be able to reason in parallel and be able to adjust to the attacks of one’s opponent. Like life. We’d play every night. Or more correctly, he’d beat me every time. I never could get my mind around the many facets of the game even though its true nature was something significant.

One night, he came into the rec room with the board. I started getting my pieces in order but he stopped me. He held out eight Queens and asked that I set them up on the board in such a way that they could not attack one another. Wondering what he was up to I took the Queens and tried. Every set-up I attempted led to a blood bath.

My whole time in the hospital, he hammered me on the game’s intricacies. But as I said, my mind’s not wired that way. After fifteen fumbling minutes of trial and error, he asked, “Do you want to see how it’s done?”

“Sure.”

He then set up all eight Queens on the board in such a way that not one could attack.

“Peaceful Queens Conundrum.”

I looked at the board from all angles and he was right. They were at peace.

“Move one and they all devour each other.”

“Warrior Queens?”

“No. They’re set up out of sync. One board, one Queen. Here we have eight. Their world doesn’t work with eight. So, their new paradigm is tenuous. A stand-off. The first to move may be the first taken out. They have achieved balance but not their end goal.”

“And the end goal?”

“Win the game by taking the King.”

“But you didn’t set up a King.”

“Now you’re learning.”

He then set up the pieces and proceeded to beat me. We never spoke of that mental exercise again but it has stuck with me through the years.

M. Haygood

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