Beginning Backgammon

In a far-away land, in a seedy, smoke-ridden establishment filled to the rafter with the seedy underbelly of the world's lowest classes, I learned how to play backgammon.

I learned from a fat sheik, from the lands far to the east, where the sands spread out like oceans and the noon-day sun boils a man's brains.I sipped watered-down beer and he smoked from a some sort of device made from hoses and bottles. His eyelids dropped behind shaded, half-moon spectacles. He smelled of salt and chamomile and sand. I could not tell if The rough tears in my eyes could have been from his noisome turban, or the sooty atmosphere.

I had met the sheik earlier in the evening,. I do not remember exactly how, and in all frankness I do not wish to. Some details are best left forgotten. But we had spoken of many things together, of loves lost and wars won; and, our conversation had led us into the game. The sheik carried a backgammon set with him, and as I had never played before, he kindly offered to teach me the game. I acquiesced.
He chuckled as he moved the ivory pieces across the inlaid board of his Backgammon set.

"Long ago", he told me. "In the lands of my great fathers there was a beautiful city. This was the most beautiful city in all of the world, filled with poets and scholars and artists. It was a peaceful city, for the people abhorred violence. They much preferred to sing, or to dance, or to ponder the inexplicable mysteries of the universe. Nowhere in the city was there anything more than a polite disagreement. It was a tranquil city, and because of this it was also happy."

I moved two of my pieces into a scoring position as he drew a long haul from his strange smoking apparatus.

"Then on day, "he continued. "There came to the city a messenger. The messenger wore strange clothes made from the hides of beasts, the messenger spoke with a strange accent, and the messenger carried a sword. This last was the most odd, for the peaceful people of this city never carried swords through their streets, as they had no need to. The messenger came to the lords of this city and he spoke thus:

'I come bearing word to you, the Lords of this city, from the great Kha Khan, which is Great King. The Kha Khan sends word that he is coming westward. He sends word that he is coming here. The Kha Khan has conquered many cities: cities of warriors and cities of sages. All of these have fallen before his mighty sword. But my Kha Khan is merciful and he makes you an offer. In the east, my Kha Khan has learned many games of strategy and skill. He has learned of the game chess, and his scholars tell him it is the game that most captures the true glory of battle. And so, the Great King has spread the knowledge of this game, and with it he test his generals and captains. The Kha Khan's scholars says that chess is most like life, of all games. As you are men of wisdom and learning, the Kha Khan makes you this offer: If you can create a game more like life than chess, then he shall be merciful, else wise he shall burn your city to ash, and salt the earth upon which it stand.' "

The sheik captured one of my unguarded pieces. I had taken a chance in my position, relying on luck. This time it had failed me.

"The messenger left, saying that he would return in five days for their answer. The Lords of the City considered his words. For many days they pondered, reflecting on the nature of life. They considered justice, mercy, honour, love, and duty. The things that sages try for, the things that young men die for, and the things that maidens sigh for, They thought in silence, they spoke in hast, and they debated in heat."

I considere my next move.

"Time passed." I rolled a double, releasing my captured piece.

"The messenger returned for the pious men's answer; and, they gave it to him. The messenger was bemused, and he returned ot his Khan. The khan looked at the game the scholars had sent him. He played it deep into the night, considering it's aspects, its strategies, it's nuances." The sheik moved two more pieces, scoring once and positioning himself well for the next gambit.

"In the morning he summoned his general's and advisers. 'Look,' he told them. "What do you think of this game?' This scholars considered. 'My great lord,' they said. 'This game is surely inferior to chess, the game of our generals. Chess requires constant strategy, a manipulative mind that sees far into the future. This game depends as much on the luck of dice as it does the sharpness of a man's wits.For this reason, Chess is the greater game, more mirroring the needs of life and battle' The khan nodded. 'Is this your answer, then,' he asked. 'Surely it is, great lord.' And the Kha Khan nodded."

I rolled again. A four and a six. A lucky roll, allowing me to move two pieces in unison.

" 'Indeed,' spoke the Great Khan from his high throne. 'Chess, the game of our generals and wise men, is a game of pure strategy. But in the heat of battle, victory often hinges upon the luck of a single man. A single misplaced step, a fortunate sword thrust, or a stray arrow can lead to defeat with but a moments notice. Truly, the greatest strategist will know only failure without the blessing of Fortune. Thus, it is this game that truly captures the essence of battle. Of life.'' The Khan's advisers bowed their heads at this, for the knew the wisdom of the Kha Khan's words and the folly of their own. The Kha Khan moved his armies, and spared the city. And this is how the game of Backgammon came to be." The sheik finished his story, moving his final piece into position. His strategy was perfect, leaving me no openings.

I rolled the dice.

Great American Beer

The Great American Beer Festival is held every year at the Denver city convention center.

The line wrapped entirely around the Denver Convention center, pressing steadily forward, unwinding in a spiral towards the center. A young, harried-looking young woman checked my ticket and my age before ushering me up a staircase. As I passed through the wide sets of double-doors, I was passed a plastic, half-pint cup and shuffled along into a seething mass of humanity.

The great hall was packed with every sort of person imaginable, all united in their love of good beer. Booths were arranged in an easily navigable grid, with large signs indicating sections and strategically placed caches of pretzels and water.

My cup in hand, I wound my way through the stands, collecting samples and snifters as I went. The hall smelled of salt and copper and sweat. The yellow lights left us all wandering through a dim, half-lidded, alcoholic wonderland. Periodically, there would be the loud bell-like clang of a sampling cup hitting the concrete floor, followed by a concerted outcry from the hoppy collective. The crowd would part to reveal the luckless fellow as he stooped to retrieve his mug, before being swallowed again by the drunkard leviathan.

The small drink sizes proved increasingly deceptive as the night wore on. The breweries presented beer with a wide variety of ABV's, and the small portions made it impossible to keep any accurate account of how much I'd had to drink. I simply had to rely on the speed at which the hall began to spin to gauge my drunkenness.

But eventually I was able to stumble back to my hotel room, and sleep for the next fourteen hours in order to repeat the experience the next night.

The Steps to Rome

The city of Rome is many things, but short is certainly not one of them.

I had heard of the Seven Hills of Rome long before I reached the ancient city, but it really wasn't until I set foot on the banks of the Tiber that I fully comprehended exactly how many stairs accompanied those hills. Almost every inch of the city comprises a staircase or gradient. I ended up walking not so much around the city, and far more up and down through the city. Combining this with a puerile obsession to reach the top of almost every site I came across and we achieve a recipe for idiotic exhaustion.

View from the Top of the Palatine

Every building in Rome offers the "unique" opportunity to climb to it's top for "spectacular views". That's the phrase bandied about: "spectacular views". The phrase has become some code-word, or mantra used to ensnare tourists.

"Come," they call. "See the Eternal City from *our* vantage point! Not that this view is in any way different to the view you would get from the house next door! But Com! Trust Us! The view is Spectacular!"

Lying Bastards!

 *Citation Needed*

And like lams to the slaughter, we follow, following blindly up tight spiral staircases to the top of basilicas, up wide marble steps to beautiful gardens of long-forgotten cardinals, up stairs carved into the hills itself.  There are stairs of polished marble, that echo in vaulted reliquaries. There are stairs of antiquated granites that have been worn down over a thousand years worth of mendicant footfalls. There are shining, aluminum steps that old men slip on during rain storms. The are old steps with industrial mats placed over them, to protect them from metal detectors and X-ray machines. The are Spanish steps that go to French Embassies, and French steps that go to Spanish brothels. They wind backwards, forwards, through, around, betwixt, crouching down , turning sideways.

I can't say Rome is not a beautiful city. While walking through Rome, I can't help but feel as if I am walking through a fairy tale. It's a place of ancient history and culture, and as one ambles through the streets it's nearly impossible not to the feel the weight of those years bearing down upon you; on the other hand, that burning in my calves might have less to do with the history of Rome, and more to do with the Goddamned Stairs!

Inadvertant Movie Stars

A good friend and I were traveling through Rome; and as always, our navigational skills are finely tuned, so that we never get where we want to go in a timely manner, but often we arrive where we need to be.

We were making our circuitous way towards the Vatican, attempting to decipher the ancient, indecipherable script of the Roman Bus Plans, I think, in our over-eagerness, we perhaps stepped of our bus one, or perhaps seven stops too early. I'm not entirely sure how wrong we were, but I am sure that we were wrong, because the place wen ended up was certainly not the Vatican but rather a small side street to the South of the Ponte Sant'Angelo.

The Ponte Sant'Angelo is a beautiful piece of architecture, where the medieval Romans held their executions, and a lovingly cared-for mixture of Roman engineering and Renaissance elegance. We two marveled at it's subtly wonder, but also at our own stupidity, because as beautiful as former Aelian Bridge is, it is certainly not the Vatican. So we had a bit of a walk ahead of us.

As we made our way across the bridge, I noticed the Romans on the bridge were especially well-dressed. The men sported vintage coats and hats that you would see in 1920's gangster movie. The women's dresses were conservative, with a hidden refinement, matching the 1920's ambiance of the men they were with. Even the cars parked on the side of the streets displayed this mastery of style. Old BMWs and vintage Mercedes. All of it lent itself to the feeling of having stepped into the roaring twenties, age of vice and gambling and jazz.

And then as we continued walking we passed a young man in jeans and t-shirt, holding aloft a boom microphone, as if he was filing the 1920's movie we had just stepped into. It occurred to me that the ambiance we felt was very deliberate., almost a goal. Looking around, I noticed the other tell-tale signs of movie production: a woman with a portable make-up kit, several men in folding chairs with scripts, a man with a megaphone, and the collected exasperated expression of the Italian crew at having a pair of tourists walk into the middle of their shot.

Having already committed to being anachronistic movie-extras, there wasn't much else to do but go along with it.

So the next time you take your boyfriend or girlfriend to the next hit, Italian period drama, look closely in the background of the Ponte Sant'Angelo for two Americans, in bluejeans and baseball caps.

Closing Times

The closing of a bar is an odd thing.

Regardless of the region, every local bar seem to subscribe to some collective agreement on closing times. As soon as that first bar decides to close its doors, those around it quickly follow suit, one by one in a most profoundly sad domino effect.

The deserted streets are then flooded with the human dregs of the evening. Men and women either unable or unwilling to go home, thrust themselves onto a black asphalt river that carries them to their respective harbors of safety, if not rest. They're like water, flowing through the gutter, carried out and away to the far-off sea. How strange a phenom.

A young man looks desperately for a woman to warm his bed during the night. A group of maenads, released form the Dionysian trance, slowly slip away leaving behind a shop-girl, a seamstress, a secretary. A bachelor party, still drnk on their companion's upcoming nuptials, sings a bawdy song, meandering through the crowd. A stoic police officer wants to go home to a tolerant wife and blue-collar children.

The streets smell of salt and copper. Shoes splash through the low points, where water has inevitably pooled into oily puddles, even though its has not rained in several weeks. Pale yellow street lights reflect in the windows of shops that closed hours ago, catching reflections of sad, weary faces.

I'm always saddened by such scenes. By the people who've stopped laughing. The people who are left to wander god-knows-where under the neon street lamps.

Do they also have no home to return to?

Horse Play

I had spent a long night drinking, making friends and enemies of the various people around me. As usual, I was by far the most boisterous person around. Hoover, the closing of the bar was about to bring my tom-foolery to a premature end. I was not yet ready to go home. I still had buckets of energy and the enthusiasm and foolhardy will to apply it. I followed the ebb-and-flow of wavering humanity into the gloomy night, in search of some new and greater mischief. Such mischief materialized in the four-footed form of an equestrian nature.

The horse stood three hands taller than me, brown fur and dark eyes staring mutely amidst a crowd of half-bent and stumbling louts. It stood firm like a butte of sea stone upon which morning waves would break and split themselves. I immediately recognized an opportunity to make, if not a true friend, than at least an amicable acquaintance. The question of why exactly a horse should be standing in the middle of a New York street at three in the morning did not seem all too important to me at the time. I stumbled forward and introduced myself to the beast.

I explained that as I was from Texas, I was familiar with how to properly handle horses, and that the fellow need not be worried about being lost in the large city, as I would gladly see it home. The horse whinnied in acknowledgement.

My comments sparked the interest of several passers by. One fellow exclaimed that he, too, was from Texas. He quickly joined in the discussion and the three of us amicably reminisced about Texas, ranches and the open prairie sky. All in all, we had a most enjoyable conversation.

Our talking was brought up sharply by a gruff cough. I looked around, but could see no one other than myself and my two companions. A second cough drew my gaze upward to the man, who had presumably been sitting astride the friendly horse this entire time. A man, I might add, who looked eerily similar to a a police officer.

The man frowned down at us. He seemed incensed that two drunkards had spent the last ten minutes talking with his mount. A can't imagine exactly why he would find this frustrating. Realizing that I had, technically,, just assaulted a police officer, I sheepishly retreated, chased by the glowers of one of New York's finest.

So, it would behoove one to remember that horses that wander around city neighborhoods at night tend to be attached to people who might not be amused by your attempts at befriending their steeds.