by William Cobb
“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” is a film that is hard to forget, though that may be because I was a Cross Country runner in college. Since moving to a very small town in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas I am discovering another kind of loneliness: that of the go player living where there are no other players within less than a full hour’s drive away. I play lots of games on DragonGo, but it is definitely not the same. There is something important about sitting across the board from another player and placing actual stones on a hard piece of grid-marked wood. Go is a lot more than a fascinating intellectual activity of analyzing tactical and strategic possibilities in a very complicated situation. There is an intimacy of contact and involvement with another human being and real objects that is impossible over the internet. Insofar as go can function as a path to enlightenment it doesn’t happen with an internet connection. The online involvement of the players is just not as real or engrossing, nor is the handling of the stones when it is replaced by clicking a mouse. I really miss these physical and psychological feelings that make playing with another person on an actual set such an enjoyable and enlightening experience. I may have to start making that harrowing drive across the most harrowing roads I have ever encountered.
photo by Phil Straus; photo art by Chris Garlock and Karoline Li
