To share the wonders of his big brain, chess grandmaster Timur Gareyev played 47 simultaneous games against 47 different opponents at UNLV last week. He did this while blindfolded and riding a stationary Schwinn bicycle in the middle of a multipurpose room. Really. Each opponent would call out their move—“Rook to G3”—and Gareyev would think for a minute, behind his dark blindfold, pedal a few spins and announce his move. Then on to the next game. For more than 20 hours.
I was thoroughly impressed by his gray matter. Hell, I was impressed by his brainy opponents, one of whom was a little girl reading a thick hardback novel and eating handfuls of trail mix between moves. But I was also struck by Gareyev’s black blindfold. A flier in the lobby advertised the “Mindfold” for sale online: “Total darkness with your eyes open!”
For weeks, since November 8 to be exact, I’d been searching under mental rocks and in the ghosts of ideologies past for a way to sum up this moment in cultural zeitgeist, and there it was, pedaling on a Schwinn Spinner but going nowhere right in front of me: the American system blindly testing its mettle in the midst of a harrowing number of complicated, simultaneous challenges.
Total darkness with my eyes open. It also spoke to my personal sense of sociopolitical disorientation, and I wanted Gareyev, a nice guy with mindful goals, to win. I wanted the thoughtful system he was honing inside his head to outlast the attacks against it.
*****
The following day I watched battles of a different sort. About 25 people gathered on a crisp, sunny morning at a northwest Valley park to pair off and arm wrestle. I wandered among some burly men—one more than 6 feet tall and wearing a kilt—as they politely waited their turn to be called up to the wrestling stand.
Before each match, the World Armwrestling League facilitator read the rules and carefully aligned each man’s elbow, grip and wrist angle. These would be fair fights—no trickery, no cheating, no bias. The men shook hands before setting up, then leaned in, eye to eye, and ferociously tried to slam their opponent’s arm into the table. It was physical, grueling and tense. Some of the competitors threw their entire bodies into the struggle, many grimaced and some groaned and at least one hurt his wrist. And yet it partially restored my faith in civility—standards observed, sport respected. “Good job, man,” one told the other. “You too.”
Our political and propaganda battles are rarely so genteel.
*****
Shortly into Gareyev’s chess games, a fire alarm began blaring in the UNLV Foundations building. I watched as players covered their ears or stepped out of the structure, and I waited to see what Gareyev would do. Would this egregious circumstance warrant calling it all off? Quitting the fight? No. He stayed calm and kept slowly pedaling until someone escorted him out of the building. He did not remove the blindfold.
In addition to intensifying chess matches, blindfolds are used for numerous reasons: to heighten the other senses, to perform magic tricks, to kidnap an entire society and take it somewhere it doesn’t recognize or to dole out justice. For centuries, Lady Justice has been depicted with scales in hand and blindfolded, because justice—and opportunity, and civil rights—should be delivered without bias. Some of us think of that not only as law, but as a universal truth—even in a time when other truths are ridiculously hard to pin down.
When no fire was found and the alarm was turned off, Gareyev returned, still blindfolded, to continue his mission, which is to eventually set a world’s record by playing 50 opponents. His endurance is enviable. As I wander through a new era with eyes open in total darkness, I’m not sure that my ability to stay focused, or civil, will be anywhere near the same.
