The Velvet Touch
For she is like an Ubermenschean, Kierkegaardian ballerina.
It’s a wisdom as old as time, that your queen is your most powerful asset, your most powerful weapon; your shield and sword; in your whole armory, armature, and army. If a weapon be so powerful, it deemed to be worthy, it be worthy, once only in a position so mighty. Tautly. Succinctly. Her feminine grace bequeathed upon her king as if some royal emissary from a foreign, long lost country something akin to Atlantis or Hyperborea or the synthesis thereof touched down upon barren, sepulchre and novel land and upon first entry, she outstretches her long supine feline hand. The velvet touch of doom. The first act of seduction.
Here in these outer flank regions. The Queen’s side. By her side, merely one noble steed, merely one envoy of doom, and the envoy of the beginning of the end. It is doomsday, and the doomsday clock is only minutes to midnight. For this is the Eleventh hour. And the bell tolls and tolls … it tolls.
But back home, at home, at ease; in repose; in power; the king sits and sits, and does absolutely nothing. He sits back. And watches his most powerful weapon dance. For she is like an Ubermenschean, Kierkegaardian ballerina. In full swing. In full play. And she coyfully, toys with her nemesis. Your move, she coos, like some bewildered banshee in the misty dark forest. She lulls her enemies into a seductive slumber, just amping to deliver the coup de grace like a rapier snugly slipping and sliding into that dreadful chink in the armor, that entry of doom.
The king sits. He does nothing. He doesn’t have to. For he already did everything. He made the choice, to choose his queen, to choose the moves, the positions, the play. As if on the flip of a coin, flip-flop, on the turn of it; or rather, on its edge. His edge. For he is the coin, he is gravity, he is the choice itself. There is no either, or. For he is the man, once he chooses himself. And that is all. The choice has been cast.
Further Chess Recitals:
