How I Learn

Learning the New Game of Daisen

Some mornings in Cambridge MA I have the chance to play Go with the young woman of the house that I visit when I am here. Well not Go really, she is only six, so instead we play Gomoku, the open version of tic-tac-toe played on a Go board. In Gomoku one tries to place five of one’s own black or white stones in a line of five. Some surprising and beautiful patterns can arise in Gomoku, more linear than Go of course, which is the spatial strategy game par excellence, but more intimate as well. This gave us the idea for a new ‘game’ to play on the Go board.

We call the game Daisen from the first three letters of her name and three letters from my own name. There is at least some inspiration from the old Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse and also of playing duets on the piano where one person plays the white keys the other plays the black (yes, I have seen people do this, and it is easier to do when not drunk).

The rules are simple. One player plays white, the other black. Each player takes a turn placing a stone on the intersections of the grid (as is normal with games played on a Go board). No conversation is allowed, Daisen is to be played in silence, or with some friends improvising music in the background. The idea is to work together to create an image.

The first game of Daisen near its end.

There are several strategies. In our first game we riffed off each other playing beside each other’s’ stone. There was a real feeling of give and take here, but also a pushing as each player tried to guide the emerging pattern.

Our second game was quite different.

Here we played away from each other, only gradually making an approach. We both knew, I think, that we were working towards an impression of a dragon. This is not surprising. The year of the dragon was approaching (it is here now) and my partner is closely related to the famous dragon trainer Ysiad.

One can imagine other strategies. Each player could play in a quarter of the board, developing patterns independently until they began to infiltrate the other. Or one could play in much more repetitive patterns, stitching across the board together a is the case with some of the common Joseki. There may even be Joseki for Daisen, though I have no idea yet what these might be.

Could one build sequences of Ko in Daisen? Would the result be a living and changing board, some simple version of the Game of Life? Could the Game of Life be played as a game of Daisen? I don’t know, but Ysiad may.

One can learn more about the Game of Life on Wolfram Alpha.

Some Books I Was Reading the Month My Father Died

My father died on the afternoon of June 9, 2011. His passing will change how I live in the world, though I am not sure how, and may not really know for certain until I approach my own death. I wanted to pause this summer morning to remember him by remembering the books I was reading in June 2011. My father loved to read and always had a book nearby (the same is even more true of my mother) and he read widely. My own library has many books that he passed on to me, from teen adventure books from the time of WW2 - The Sacred Scimitar by William Dixon Bell (1938) and The Haunted Hanger by Van Powell (1922), to religious texts (last year I read the copy of Thomas a Kempis The Imitation of Christ that was given to him by a teacher in 1947), to many books on sailing and seamanship.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and the
古今和歌集 Kokinwakashu edited by 紀 貫之 Ki no Tsurauki

These are two of four major reading projects this year (the other two being a renewed study of renga and a deep dive into The Psalms). Both were begun early in the year (January for Dickinson and March for the Kokinshu) and are likely to continue through the end of the summer. Both are helping me to think about my father, his life, and his passing.

769 (Johnson Numbering)

One and One – are One –

Two – be finished using –

Well enough for schools –

But for minor choosing –

 

Life – just – Or Death

Or the everlasting –

More – would be too vast

For the Soul’s comprising

 

Mothertalk by Mary and Roy Kiyooka edited by Daphne Marlatt

Roy Kiyooka has shaped my imagination from the late 70s when I first read Stoned Gloves and then The Fountainebleau Dream Machine. He was a trickster and elder when I moved to Vancouver in the late 1980s. This book of his mother’s memoirs was one of his last projects, and was in fact completed after his death by Daphne Marlatt (another Vancouver poet worth reading and rereading). I am looking for more copies as I would each of my kids to have this in their own libraries. My Amazon review is here.

Disavowals (Aveux non Avenues) by Claude Cahun translated by Susan de Muth & Agnes Lhermitte

I found this in the damaged section of the MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge MA in May. A fascinating book on the construction and deconstruction of self and gender from the late 1920s. This book was being written in the years just before my father was born. One can lose oneself in Cahun’s photomontages.

Split Image by Robert Parker

When I am in Boston I like to unwind by reading a Robert Parker novel. At this best in the 1990s these books are easy to read, like drinking a glass of water, and take you into the city. Parker started to write his Spenser novels about the time I entered university, so reading them in chronological order has reminded me of many parts of my own life. This one is a Jesse Stone novel, and not Parker’s best, but at least it has some sailboats in it.

Gifts by Ursula K. LeGuin

I have read the Earthsea Books many times. The Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices, Powers) is a slower and more meditative work but shares the theme of life choices. In Gifts the protagonists have to understand what their gifts are and how to use them. It sometimes seems to me that a big part of the work of one’s life is to understand what work one is meant to do and to have the courage to do it.

Jeff Wall – Picture for Women by David Campney and Gordon Matta-Clark – Conical Intersect by Bruce Jenkins

I am a big fan of Afterall’s One Work series and living in Vancouver Jeff Wall’s shadow is large. The Campney book gives some good entry points to think about the work, especially its self reference and construction. Matta-Clark’s Paris project Conical Intersect is haunting. The world opens in cracks that close again. Sometimes we can help to open them. Sometimes we can remember them. See …

The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine by Charles Kenny

Another reading theme for 2011 is healthcare and healthcare reform, especially in the US. This has nothing to do with the care given to my father, his palliative care was extraordinary. He died at home, holding my mother’s hand, with three of his children and one of his grandchildren beside him. This was possible because of who he was as himself and how he had lived his life, and the years of support he and my mother have given their extended family. This book tells the story of how the ideas from quality management have come into the healthcare system. There is a lot to learn here.

How Round Is Your Circle? Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet by John Bryant and Chris Sangwin

My father was an engineer all his life and was good at making things – bridges of course, but he once said that anyone who can build a bridge should be able to figure out how to make a dress, and indeed, he did make dresses for my parents. He also taught me how to use a slide rule (I have forgotten) and how to do quick calculations of course and drift while sailing. This book is an enchanting exploration of where math, the physical world, and building stuff come together. In the real world, lines are thick, it is not easy to draw a straight line, and sometimes we need to have circles and squares with equivalent areas. This book opens up all sorts of interesting math by making physical models of mathematical ‘objects’. And it has a great chapter on slide rules.

Icefields by Thomas Wharton

Shortly after my father’s funeral Yoshie and I together with her sister and a close friend visited Banff and went up the Icefield Parkway and walked on the Athabasca Glacier. This revelatory novel is set here. The language captures the beauty and fear of the ice, its changes, and how Jasper itself has changed over the years. My parents had their honeymoon in this area back in 1958.

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Thank  you Dad, for the books, the love of reading, and the passion to connect reading to life and action.

Value Choice Identity

Some time ago a friend asked me “How much is your day worth?” I didn’t have a good answer at hand. I could have mumbled something about how much I charge for a day of consulting, and there are some companies that even pay me this, but I am not primarily a consultant. I could have done a back calculation from my pay, but I make a lot of choices about how to spend my time that have no obvious financial measure. So I thought I would spend some time thinking about the choices I make each day. It is our choices, more than what we do for a living, what we consume, or where we live, that really say who we are, what we value and what our time is worth. And it comes down to time, as that is my scarcest resource.

A typical working day in Cambridge, MA

I spend a lot of time in Cambridge MA where LeveragePoint is based, so I thought I would start by looking at the kinds of choices I make in a typical working day. In Cambridge I actually stay in a room in the house of a very generous young family in Somerville MA: husband a musician and writer, wife a business leader, 5-year-old daughter, new baby.

Wake up between 4:30 and 5:30. First choices: stretch out or just get on with it; what to read first. I decide to spend half an hour stretching and doing core excercises about half the time. I know I should stretch every morning and that I feel better the rest of the day when I do. Why don’t I always stretch? Perhaps just too lazy or too distracted, or sometimes too rushed. I almost always begin the day by reading a few poems from whatever book of poetry I happen to be reading. At the moment, mid-October 2010, I am rereading Louis Zukofsky’s Complete Short Poetry (as Kenneth Rexroth said,  “crystal  cabinets full of air and angels.”

I go down to the kitchen between 5:30 and 6:00, make tea, read for a while. These days I generally eat plain yogurt with honey and read non-fiction. Most mornings I choose to wait until the five-year old shows up and we play a game (Goblet Gobblers usually, or Hang Man, and I have started to teach her Go Moku, which she beat me at this morning).

Around 7:30 I head out to work. I almost always cycle, so the main choice is whether I take the direct route (4 km) or the scenic route (15 km).  This is about a 50/50 split and the main driver is how nervous I am feeling about work – when I am worried I want to get to work right away. Thinking about this, I should probably take the long way in when I am worried, as the ride settles me and gives me time to think. I never listen to music on the bike.

At work, I shower, change and wake up my laptop. I check e-mail, tweet for my corporate and personal accounts, check my priorities for the week and organize my day. Work is pretty much meetings or calls, interlaced with e-mail, solid through to 5:30. Lunch, when eaten, is eaten at the desk. From 5:30 to 7:30 I read up on work-related themes, sometimes on-line, but if the thing I need to read is more than five pages I usually print it out (bad for my carbon footprint) and try to get some writing done. A couple of times a week I will go out for a drink (alone or with a colleague) or a dinner out. Those nights, or when it is raining, I take the direct route home (rain does not impact my morning choice). Some evenings, especially when the weather is fine, I will do a long looping ride up the Charles River, maybe 20 to 30 km and get home around 9:00. I have a snack – fruit usually – and read until I need to go to sleep. In the evening I usually go back to poetry or pick up whatever novel I am working through (at the moment it is Oe Kenzaburo’s The Changeling). Sometimes I read about art, history or philosophy instead of a novel. And recently, I have been addicted to Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels (He started to write them about when I had just started university and he passed away this year. So by reading them in chronological order I get to relive the arc of my life to date.)

A typical weekend day in Vancouver, BC

I spend most of my time in our old house in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver. The house and garden always need work – fixing or cleaning, planting or weeding, but there is a lot happening these days in Vancouver so we like to get out as well.

Most weekends I am up by 6:00 AM. I think about stretching and by the time I finish thinking about it I am already doing something else.: usually deep in a book or listening to music. I will read or write from 6:00 to 9:00 and then at 9:00 AM I listen to the CBC’s programme on Canadian politics The House. I make breakfast for whoever is up while The House is on, usually some type of omelet with what ever we have in the fridge.

At 10:00 it is off for a bike ride and I have to choose a route and a bike. Most of the time I will take my Brodie, which has gears, and head out to UBC then on around to Sea Island for a ride of about 65 km. Once in a while I will venture up one of the local mountains, Cypress or Seymour, to test myself. Or if I am going to meet someone downtown I will take my Viva fixed gear, a present from my wife. The Viva has a track geometry and is edgy to ride.

In the afternoon it is either into the garden for a few hours or off for a walk or gallery stroll with my wife (depends in part on if it is raining or not, I don’t mind biking in the rain, but we seldom work too much in the garden or go for long walks if it is pouring). At some point we will need to do the daily shopping (we shop for food most days, and I have been known to sneak into a bookstore).

Around 6:00 I will generally start to cook. Slowly at first, putting in anything that needs time, and doing some prep while I drink wine and read a few more pages of a book. Around 7:00 people begin arriving and organizing for dinner (we generally have dinner guests, usually friends of our kids, but often a variety).  By 8:00 we are usually eating and drinking, by 10:00 the people who did not help cook are washing dishes, and most people are either heading out for their Saturday evening, or crashing in the living room to watch a movie and to watch me fall asleep on the floor. Around 2:00 AM someone usually sends me up to sleep in my bed.

So what do I value?

Looking at my choices, I wonder how many are due to habit and how many are based on necessity. The choice to cycle every day while in Cambridge has become a habit, but it took some effort to make it a habit. I believe I work because it is the right thing to do, “a day of no working is a day of no eating,” I enjoy it, and I owe it to my family, but why I work and why I have chosen to work is a topic for another day.

My days have value to me in that I am

• Working with people
• Being with family, friends and kids
• Reading and writing, sharing what I read and write
• Spending time on the bike, in the garden, out on walks
• Cooking for people

And I hope these have value for others.