Pointlessness

The founder of Wham-O died. Anyone responsible for both the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee should be canonised. But the Frisbee has by now spawned the competitive sport of Ultimate Frisbee, which we can expect to be an Olympic event within a generation, and I am sure that Hula Hoops are already part of some integrated fitness and weight-loss program. Play gets professionalized, or turned into work, or made subservient to some goal other than the sheer joy of play itself.

The caption to a photograph of a girl with a Hula Hoop in the NY Times: 'Sometimes, pointlessness is the point.' No. Pointlessness is always the point. What other point could there be? To spend a life doing pointless things, all the while knowing that they are pointless: that is what it is to be human. People who believe that what they do has a point and a purpose - I regard them as dumber than the brutes. The meerkats of Meerkat Manor don't have any convictions about the point and purpose of their lives; they merely live them. Their lives are pointless, just as ours are (and interesting, just as ours are). But we have been given the gift of knowing that our lives are pointless, and should live with that pointlessness always in the foreground. For what would be the point of living otherwise?

Bobby Fischer died too. A perfect life. Would I wish one moment to have been different? No. I assume the mad ravings against the international Jewish conspiracy, the ludicrous self-importance, the paranoia, the uber-kvetching could have been excised from his character only by damaging some other internal system. Who knows what the effect on his play would have been? Obituaries express sadness at the 'lost games' - all the play that Fischer might have engaged in had he not run off the rails so early and so spectacularly. I am just glad for what we have; most likely, we would not have even the games that we do have had he not been the sort to go bonkers.

It is hard to do anything well while believing it to be pointless, but prowess at the chessboard or with the Hula Hoop are exceptions. Music and fucking are others. Fucking is gloriously pointless, combining something of the Hula Hoop, something of the chessboard, and much from music. Bumping, grinding, plotting, predicting, singing, dancing, losing, winning.