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The Bible says, and I tell the kids: what you say changes who you are. If you control everything you say, you'll never say anything you don't already know; if you don't, you make something of yourself without knowing what you're making. So writing stories is either dull or scary.
I work on chess problems to get out of my own head. I'll play a game, find the point where things went wrong, and try to figure out what I should have done. The idea isn't to find some magic sequence of moves, you don't have time for that in a game. But you can use rules, so once I've found the right line I try to extract some general rule that would find that line when time is short.
posted by Impelled at 9:28 PM
2 Comments:
And here I thought that Sartre was being at least a little bit new when he wrote, "To change words is to change being." Where is that in the Bible? I don't remember it.
I do believe it, though. And I like the comment on writing stories. It takes a certain amount of risk, a lot of letting go, to create something truly good, I think, but at the same time there needs to be a base level of self-awareness and control. Like everything else in life, it requires a tightrope walk of balance.
I can't hold chess boards in my mind. Instead, I make anagrams from scrabble hands that I've had recently, or obsess about crossword puzzle clues, or memorize poetry. Thinking about others' words is the only way I know to escape my own.
4:33 PM
Well, James compares the tongue to a rudder -- tiny items that steer the larger whole. (He goes on about how the tongue is full of evil and malice; maybe he was having a bad day?) Anyway, see James 3:4-5. (No, I don't know the Bible that well, I had to google for the reference.)
And Proverbs is full of references to the importance of watching what you say, with occasional suggestions that it will change you. I think Christ's exhortations about taking care to provide good fruit can be read as an expansion of the idea.
I won a tricky game just last night. Boy, that's satisfying.
4:52 PM
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