When chess becomes an imitation of life

To build 

You live

You die

These are 

Consequences

Paloma was at a dinner party when her sister’s father in law stars talking about Chinese Chess, Go and the rules and objective, he had it all wrong. 

In chess, you have to to kill to win. In go, you have to build to live.

This kept me thinking. Wars happen all the time, people are born an then killed and so on, its a vicious cycle. Why is it that people think like that? In order to succeed you must crush the others, instead of focusing on your own life. Competition is dehumanizing the world. The necessity of progress, the need to be better, to earn money, a materialistic world. 

Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built.

You can not blame someone for the fact that you are unsuccessful, you built that, you worked to get there, it is your responsibility.

We live in a world where everything must be effective. People live to work, not work to live. 

Life goes by in no time at all, yet they’re always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn’t think about tomorrow. 

What is the point of living in such a wonderful world if we can’t make the time to enjoy it. 

That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people

Games are an imitation of life. We create things to be able to cope with reality, we create an objective in order to live, we must have a mission, otherwise life would be pointless. Games, like art are a way of expression and a reflection of society. Therefore, traditional chess has airs of Imperialism, monarchies, the reflection of the thirst of power. 

I don’t know you, but I have been eager to know, why the title. It made no sense to me. What does a hedgehog have to do with a suicidal eleven-year-old girl and a frustrated concierge?

A new neighbor has moved into the building. He is a Japanese very famous movie director, Monsieur Ozu, Kakuro Ozu. Paloma really enjoys talking to him to practice her Japanese. She is talking to him when suddenly Madame Michel, another neighbor walks by. Paloma is astonished by the intelligence she irradiates. 

Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary–and terribly elegant. 

I believe there is more to it, but for now I guess is a good example. I had never thought of a hedgehog as an elegant creature, but it might be true, but it is a fact that they are special animals. 

I do not have much to say about the sentence that I’m about to quote, but I loved it. I feel like it is true, and really moving.

Because art is life, playing to other rhythms.