Chess and Bobby Fischer

I have sort of retreated even deeper into myself lately, even from a lot of my reading, aside from the book I still always like to have going. I don't even care much for movies and TV shows at this point - watching pretty people with money have fun and adventures in life. Bah, who needs it?! It is as though I am feeling a little revolted over the human condition, or at least over my life, in general and wish to distract myself from it as much as is practicable.

Filling the time, the void, my enthusiasm for chess is reawakened. The joke is that I suck at chess. A friend in high school introduced me to the game, but I have never really graduated beyond a beginner's floundering on the board, which is why I have grown cold on the game for decades at a time. This time around, I am focused less on my own playing and more on just watching the great games of history, reading about them and fooling around with them. Unsurprisingly, Bobby Fischer is on the top of the list of fascinations. I want to pin down a couple of quotations from him here.

The first one comes from a new movie, "Pawn Sacrifice" starring and produced by Tobey Maguire about the rise and triumph of Fischer. This is one movie I have enjoyed. Over my meals, I often just watch YouTube videos of chess games and chess lessons. The universe as a chess board.

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"Chess is basically a search for truth, right? So, I'm searching for the truth."

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"Genius. It's a word. What does it really mean? If I win I'm a genius. If I don't, I'm not."

-- Bobby Fischer

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