For The Win

When winning is all that matters -

what - do we ultimately - win?

Moreover - is winning worth it -

when what we lose in the trade off -

is worth far more?

But winning is everything.

Everything that's promised and more.

In exchange - our very souls -

that - as ephemera - are worth no gleam of gold.

*

For The Win

Once upon a time, there were two rocks. Unglamorous indeed, these rocks were no different than other rocks. Utterly ordinary in every way, these rocks pined for more.

Glum and bitter with life that promised nothing, they yearned desperately for a gift from a power greater than they. They pleaded beseechingly for a promise from a power darker than they. Something more than the humble miser of rocks, they begged.

So their dreams were answered.

So they found themselves alive anew.

With a catch.

This life anew was a game and to the winner the spoils.

*

So she plotted. Mindfully. Meticulously. Vices private perpetually masqued to eliminate any risk to her myth of epic fabrication. Desperate to win the game, she stopped at nothing.

So he plotted. Recklessly. Ruthlessly. Vices public endlessly paraded as testaments of his vapid meaningless transparency. Desperate to win the game, he stopped at nothing.

Of course.

What's a game with only two players?

Other players flexed their influence to tip the odds, this way and that. Cashing in bets and nursing losses, with each turn of the wheel of artifice. The game extraordinarily entertaining and immeasurably profitable, to gamblers and rakers and bystanders, alike.

While she planned, every point and counterpoint, to the letter.

While he anticipated, every action and counteraction, to the tee.

In a dance woven by complicit greed and tacit collusion and intricate steps of forged integrity.

*

Until.

They were reminded.

Of the little matter of details.

For their prayers were not answered with a gift from a power greater than they.

Nor with a promise from a power darker than they.

Rather, their dreams were answered with a game.

*

While they exerted and toiled within the game that swore spoils untold more glorious than the tallest tales of suns who were rocks once, eons ago -

The real game was engaged like the first step of a long journey that one inexorably forgets, miles into aching effort and torturous endeavor.

Thus the real game paused the ungame. The illusion of authentic pursuit. To remind the rocks and the players. Of the little matter of the real game.

The rules.

The price.

The prize.

The win.

*

Though the ungame roiled and broiled with boisterously vivacious vigor. Captivating in every way. Compelling in every measure. Enthralling with every dizzying spinning reality.

The real game advanced like the implacable pendulum of a grandfather clock whose every intonation reverberates through the bare foundation of modesty. Like the relentless clank and whir of a paternoster whose perpetual circulation echoes the predictability of circus ever.

For in the end. No one escapes the real game.

For in the end. There is only one game.

Author's Note

Beware the game.

That in the enticing thrill of diversion, the real game is not lost.

- the author (a m)

*

Addendum

What if -

We who believe we are bystanders -

- are gamblers and rakers?

That as side choosers, we gamble. That as mud slingers, we rake.

What if -

We eschewed the game we've bought into -

- and embraced the real game?

That epic fabrication peddlers sell myths of pretension that we buy. That vapid transparency hucksters sell masques of illusion that we buy.

Will you - 

- with me -

- unplug from the fever of war-

- and choose indeed - truth and peace?

- M.

*

Further

Echo and Narcissus (from Ovid's Metamorphoses) (readable summary @ Shmoop; Kline's translation here, from the library @ The University of Virginia)