MICHAEL SHIRZADIAN en passant "I am the old artillerist. I tell ofmy fort's bombardment. I am there again ..." Walt Whitman, Song ofMyself Mary ~een of Scots hid a dog under her dress on the morn– ing of February 8, 1S87. After paying the executioner for precision, Mary climbed the steps of the scaffold and laid her head upon the wooden block. It took three blows. Moments after her eyes stopped seeing, the small dog sprinted out from under her dress and was lost in the city. The people cheered. While covering the Second World War, my 11th-grade history teacher showed the class a particularly brutal scene from a particularly brutal war movie. I had seen the clip before, so, instead of the film, I watched the class. They chuckled at the dying soldiers. Laughed when one man caught fire. Mocked a maimed man as he searched hopelessly for his missing arm. Why, I wondered, did we find such brutality so humorous? Perhaps because the battle is so distant. Perhaps because the scene is overdone. The most persuasive explanation, I concluded, stems from a desire to control. The scene put brutality on a DVD, subjecting it to theatrical criticism. I may not have experience in battle, but I have experience at the movie theatre. And if I choose to make these environ– ments the same, then they are the same. That's why I started playing chess. Control. I was six when I watched, one Thanksgiving morning, as my father and uncle did com– bat on a chessboard. They moved marble pieces as they slapped an old wooden clock, exchanging time and soldiers. Bishop to A2. ~een to H7. Knight to CS. Pawn captures CS. I attended my first tournament at age 16. I remember sitting before a checkered battleground, fiddling with the clock and waiting 30
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