In December of last year, for reasons private and familiar, universal and mysterious, I fell into a depression. Unable to ride the wave buried under bedsheets these days—I take the task of projecting stability and comfort, as a father, extremely seriously—I began fumbling around in the dark for a distraction from my middle-aged malaise. I started playing, and studying, chess. With no visual memory, or special aptitudes of any kind, I quickly understood I would be, and remain, no matter how many hours I poured into studying openings, an astonishingly poor player. My ineptitude at moving pieces around the board would sow a new source of frustration and anger within me, and in so doing serve as another reminder of all that I lack.

 

When my thoughts were unsafe or unkind, I started playing chess. Chess is very difficult. You have to think about it really hard while you are playing. Your thoughts should not wander.

 

P-Q4…The Queen’s pawn moves to the center. It stakes its claim, announces its intent to battle. She is a messenger of the king’s court. When White moves her, and begins the game, a slight advantage is seized, being the attacker. When Black moves to the center, in reply, it defends, it refuses to give up ground, it joins the fight. White will lead. White will need to come up with some ideas. Before these two pieces meet in the middle there is no conflict, nothing to fight over, nothing to defend, and, thus, no game. It’s an object in a room or a picture on a screen. Nothing is happening on it. It is pure symbol. Pent up energy; possibility. The messengers of the court, pushed toward the center by the Queen, meet and announce their intention. Space is claimed, staked. The game begins.

 

“Which move is better? Which should you play? The answer is: play the move that you like, the one that best suits your style and temperament.” (Chernev, 1957).

 

Chess is a three act structure. The opening consists of principles and positioning. When we claw back the curtain on all those wonderfully arcane names, gambits, and maneuvers, we see the opening for what it is – preparation for an attack, and foundations for a defense. We set ourselves up in the opening act for success in the middle and end games. We do this by getting our pieces off the back rank, controlling the center by way of either the Queen’s Pawn or King’s Pawn, castling our king for safety, protecting each piece, and practicing sound pawn structures.

 

Kt-KB3… I’ll need a scout to survey the land, evade, jump over landmines and pawns to gather information on the opposing force and reinforce my center, which I’ve just staked claim to, and I call on my king’s knight to activate and defend. The saying goes a knight on the rim is dim. How much sense does it make to scout from the sidelines? The game is in the center. The flanks should never be ignored, god no. And occasionally a scout on the edges of the board may find a clever move, sitting there likely for so long idle. Chess is a solved game. The computers know how to play perfect chess. We never will. This opens up a wide array of possibilities and beautiful, surprising moves. Creativity is born out of our limitation.

 

In the beginning, there were tricks. You can come out extremely quick with your Queen and assault, hoping to frustrate the opponent and bewilder them. It will seem, at first, for a few movements even, to be winning as you watch your materials fly off the board. Patience. Watch it fall. Let what is to come, come. And there, she’s exhausted herself and is trapped, behind enemy lines, unprotected, and alone. She falls. Your enemy knows no attack without her and white flags burst like confetti in the evening air.

 

The middle game is act two. The middle game is about chances, clever combinations, and creativity. When a master talks of “getting out of theory,” he speaks of entering the middle game. In the middle game the pieces move in surprising, unforeseen ways, and we find ourselves facing new threats and, hopefully, unlocking novel opportunities. Our positional soundness in the opening allows for this burst of creativity in the middle game. The game can be won or lost in any phase, depending on the quality of play and player, but, generally speaking, how the game will be played is decided in the opening and who this play will favor is decided in the middle game.

 

Chess is hell on the paranoiacs. It demands a steady, patient, logical mind to endure. The paranoid androids will spin their wheels replying to diversions and miss the real threats. They find their pieces on the far edge of the board, dangerously removed from their king, when the enemy reveals their plans through clever play. The paranoid android is stunned. He never saw it coming, he cries! He was tricked, he shouts! But it is too late. Our age breeds these paranoiacs, giving rise to an ever-increasing sickness: the troubled hive mind. Our internal systems and emotional registers are poorly tuned for the times, and a flood of inputs and information startle and then paralyze us to our delusions. We seek shelter in increasingly myopic bubble-tribes and batch all of the world into comforting categories of nebulous good and cartoonishly evil, like a baby playing with soft blocks. This is the age of idealogues, no matter that the ideas they peddle have been thoroughly run through, ravaged by time, left outside for decades to dry, and spoilt by the taint of tender human touch.

 

Life is hell on the paranoiacs. It demands a steady, patient, logical mind to endure…

 

P-KKt3…The most beautiful maneuver in chess is also blessed with a beautiful name: the fianchetto. The fianchetto begins as a quiet operation. It looks to novices like we are simply moving pieces to move them. The knight’s pawn steps up one unheralded step. It’s not the move our enemy should be keen to, it’s what the move opens up. The bishop prepares to fianchetto, with a gorgeous sight line to an enemy rook. B-KKt2…

 

Chess exposes our weaknesses, on the board and off. I learn I am impulsive and careless, too quick to panic during mild attacks and too slow to develop my own.

 

At the end of the day, over tea, to ward off the bad thoughts, in the study with only a quiet reading lamp for company, I study various positions and possibilities on the board. I play through the games of the masters, to briefly inhabit the illusion of divine power. That force of will to castrate an opponent with smart tactics, misdirection, patient study which is inaccessible to me in Chess and in life, and seems a terrible headache to maintain. I am preferring, these days, to get maddeningly lost in the maze of all of which I am unable, and to sink my attention into those pursuits with a clarity of consciousness I am resigned to feeling nowhere else.

 

I am trying to be content in playing the game and just that. If I am impulsive and careless, then I am impulsive and careless. If I panic during mild attacks or react harshly to misdirection. If I am slow to develop, if I am unable to remember. If I cannot see things in my mind or keep them there for very long. If I am watching my children grow up. If I am counting years that went by unaccompanied by joy. If I am somewhat certain a nothingness awaits. If I am afraid. If my love and your love creates suffering. If my porch light is left on. If the woods behind my house come alive and eat us all. If the tanks at the door are let in. If my love and your love only creates suffering. If my love and your love only exists to create suffering. If my love and your love only exists to create more suffering. If creation is the fruits of our love. If suffering is the fruits of our creations. I am trying to be content and just that, but there is simply too much of it, these days, besides. If the oceans rise. If the tiny voices whimper. If the men at their battle stations dance for the men in their ties in their command centers. If the truckers refuse to move goods. If the workers refuse to provide services. If the collapse is all that is left to suffer. If being born is involuntary. If I have been called to duty. If you and I find ourselves alone, together, on some certain night. If the curtains are drawn. If the wax on the candle wanes, if the moon complies, if the moment passes unmolested, if I am going insane, if I forget to protect my pieces, if I move incautiously through time and you, oblivious to the conditions on the board. If none of this ever happened. If all of it is happening, instead, all at once. Would you find me and wrap your arms around me? Could you? If we have reached a stalemate. If the desire of our desires is to desire, like Joyce’s thought of thought. If I do not move we will be stuck here, like this, forever.

 

R x Ktch !… The endgame, of course, is act three. Precision and calculation.

 

In the opening, never look the king in the eye. Punish his subjects. In the middle game point towards their king and hide your own. In the endgame find the enemy king and bring your own to the center to witness your capture and your opponent’s capitulation. To teach not to threat, that is the result of fine play.

 

Parry all enemies, real and imagined.

 

I realize, in many ways, I crave a soft male voice telling me the knight should go to E5 and to say it with a lovely pretentious tilt and I wish this wasn’t true, for so many reasons, but it is instead. In past depressions I have distracted myself with all manner of aural intrusions – the young man who’d cast Age of Empires II (a game I neither understand or play), countless hours of grown men arguing about boxing, poker theory (go all-in), the History of Rome, Ancient Warfare, Maritime History – anything to replace the sound of my harmful intrusive thoughts with the sound of someone else’s benign ones. I pull some kind of strength from absorbing other people’s obsessions. In today’s Depression Chess I listen to grandmasters on YouTube, on Twitch, on Chess.com carefully, slowly go over openings. I refuse to soak any of the knowledge in. I refuse to pay close enough attention. I hear them to not hear my self. I refuse to get better at chess. I have a life to attend to once this passes, a book to write; I cannot be calculating all these moves ahead of time. I won’t let it disappoint me. I can just play. It’s a game. A lot of stuff isn’t. Chess is a great metaphor for war or life or love but it is only a metaphor. And a fine distraction. I needed that very badly this Winter, for reasons private and familiar, universal and mysterious. 

 

Tonight, in fact, in celebration of a day spent living & making lunches & snacks & dropping off & picking up & sitting in the carpool line & not hurting myself & being overall fucking solid & giving them that, at least, I treat myself to Capablanca (W) Mattison (B) from 1929 in Carlsbad, in a Queen’s Pawn Game featuring the Nimzo-Indian Defense from Irving Chernov’s fine book, Logical Chess Move by Move, I am hanging on to things by a thread, believe me I can feel it. 

 

Resigns.