{queen to... something}

Vandana started teaching me to play chess last night. and I wasn't awful! I think it's a good game, and good practice for me, in that it requires my seven-places-at-once brain to be focused on one thing, and that it indulges my love for contingency plans. Roger's thrilled that I'll have a new outlet for my "but what if" and "and what if" and "then what if" tendencies.

of course my poetry-obsessed brain immediately leaps to the writing implications for learning chess; once I have the basics down, I want to learn all the fancy terminology. then we'll see if it's an individual poem or a series (please let it be a series. that would be great.) Rita Dove has ballroom dancing, Brenda Hillman has alchemy and gnosticism, I've got chess. sure.

in any case, it's a relatively inexpensive hobby, and moved around sections of my brain that haven't been exercised in a while. excellent.