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Another insomniac blog
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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Up far too late once again. Having given up smoking of all kinds, have focused all need for vice on chocolate and chess. Am breaking out and feel smart. I have written little for a month or so, and keep thinking of Rimbaud, who, I believe, gave up poetry for chess. In fantasy, he thus ennobles my avoidance. This story may be apocryphal. I can find no mention of Rimbaud's chess playing on the internet. Perhaps I have gotten him mixed up with DuChamp, who was a genuine master.

Bobby Fischer died recently. He reminds me very much of Ezra Pound: both were charged with treason, and both made use of foreign radio to accomplish it. The internet informs me that this is certainly apocryphal: Bobby Fischer was never charged, was merely treasonous. The greatest genius in the history of chess, and the loneliest.

Perhaps I have mistaken Rimbaud for a chess player because he was a prodigy. One of our favorite narratives. Boys like this have dark eyes and sensitive, long fingers, a pianist's build.