StandingWater Creations

Erin goes to Westminster College studying for a Master's in Communications. As a result, I drive her to school and class and then go and set up at Barnes and Noble. At least, that's what I did the last couple of nights. Last night not excepted. Well, Tuesday night (she was going through an orientation) I went and bought The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor and started reading it, but, since then I have taken computer and homework and gone to town.

Which, truthfully, has been rather a good opportunity for me to get some stuff done, mainly homework, that is being shoved into a term (8 weeks) rather than a semester (16 weeks) and requires me to get really good grades.

As I was completing the reading for Deductive Logic last night a group of (mostly) men swarmed the area where I was sitting. This was the point I was thinking of extracting my computer and starting Scrivener to work through some ideas I've had on a story. Anyway, I ignored most of these men because, well, they were physically unnattractive, loud, had opinions on everything from the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles to the lasting negative legacy an Obama presidency would have on the country that, coupled with noise along the lines of people who just talk to talk and not to be heard, and who are intentionally, vocally, and loudly offensive and want to be that way, I'd decided to ignore whatever was happening around me.

And then I saw it.

The covered Go stone bowls I've been coveting. Well, not really coveting since I rarely look for them. I did want a pair of ceramic bowls for the black and white stones; but never actually got around to finding what I thought would work and so, have my Go stones sitting on a shelf, in the boxes they came in, in the front room when Erin would prefer them to be in the office on a shelf with the "other" games.

Regardless of my reasons, the stones remain where they are.

I asked the man about his bowls and he was polite in telling me where he got them... and his Go board, and after several minutes of discussion, decided to ask if I wanted to play, with him, a game of Go.

You have to understand, I've played, MAYBE, a handful of games of Go. I generally, when the technology exists, have a version running on my PDA or computer, computer being the more likely home, but otherwise, and other than, playing with Andy or one of my nephews, and then only playing a variant called First Capture, I've never really played and never gotten to the point where I felt I knew a lot about the game.

So I agreed.

We sat down and started to play. I was offered, and accepted, a handicap and then the older gentleman started to teach me the basic strategy of Go.

It was interesting because I knew that Go is a game of territory. The objective for YOU is to gather as much uncontested territory as possible. However, that is the same objective for the opponent. To gain territory you want your areas to be as black or as white, depending on which stone you are playing, as possible. The outcome is that if you don't create defenses internally, then it is possible for the other stones to capture all of yours and you will lose.

I did lose. But not without having a pretty good education on how the game is supposed to be played and some strategy, as well as a whole slew of Chinese (not sure which independent dialect) words that mean my piece is in jeopardy or that something else is likely to happen. Regardless, the outcome was pretty fun and I got to meet a few new people (even though there were a couple of dozen sitting and playing) at least one of whom decided that the next time I am there we should play a game.

One piece of advice, from someone I'd intended to ignore, was to, as quickly as I can, lose 100 games so I have an idea of what strategy means in the game of Go. I wonder, honestly, whether or not I should start that counting last night or if that counting started some years ago when I got my first PDA with Go on it and I started losing soundly and unknowingly. Truth told, I think it starts with the basic understanding of strategy and moves forward from there.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

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