thread: 2007-01-19 : The Jungle Books
On 2007-01-22, Vincent wrote:
I've never played Go, so the other day I sat down with J and he showed me the rules. Turns out that there are all these little known patterns in Go, and when you place your piece, you're saying to your opponent "hey you know that one pattern? Let's do it over here." I go here, you go here, I go here, you go here, I go here, you go here, and I think I've set it up so at the end I'll win the pattern.
But like I say I've never played Go. So here's J, he places a piece and he looks up at me, like "hey? Hey?" And I'm like, "I guess I'll play ... here?" And he's like, "well, you could do that, but then..."
On account of how I don't know the patterns, see?
I feel exactly the same way right now! Brand, what's the pattern here?
Unguided by knowledge of the pattern, I go, "well, I don't expect Kipling (or anybody) to write from anything but his own very personal perspective - and Kipling (more than many) fulfills that expectation. Certainly I don't expect him to give me any kind of authentic experience of being Indian. Instead, I find what he says about human beings to be very compelling, and astutely observed; that he observed it in his particular context shapes its form, but it's still quite compellingly human in content."
Now I'm looking at you with my hand still over my piece and a big old question mark on my face.
