Art of Fencing & Life

How can you tell when the stockmarket is in a state of lullaby?

1. When there are one too many sightings of boiler rooms full of bored traders pounding ferociously on their keyboards… engaging in verbal battles via IM.

2. When you keep getting a Network Error message because the server is overloaded with ennui-induced overuse of social media- official or otherwise. Abject ennui has been known to quell firewalls.

This being one of those days, a fellow primate from another off-shore capitalist jungle chatted me up. Our occupational obsession with investment themes dictated the need for a casual thème du jour.

We settled on Games.

Several thousand puns, phrases, parries and ripostes about Nash Equilibrium, Greater Fool Theory, Risk, Waterloo and Where’s Wally later, we arrived at the heart of our passion: Art, Fencing and Poker.

Well, scratch the third for me. I’m adverse to gambling. The Irony, I know.

In Fencing, Foilists  and Sabreurs are all too familiar with the hair-ripping rule of Right of Way. When two fencers score simultaneously, Monsieur Directeur decides who has the right of way or who earns the point.

In a nutshell, the fencer who initiates an offensive action first will prevail over her opponent’s hit, unless the action of the former fails. (More at Wikipedia)

In Singlish : Hoot first, talk later. The antithesis to this is: N.A.T.O or No Action Talk Only.

We see this mantra in action everywhere and everyday in the games of life that Fencing and other combat sports parody. When in doubt and when dealing with potential manifestations of an unknown threat, what do politicians do? Launch pre-emptive strikes. The boss is about to get into trouble. What does she do? First, find a scape goat to blame, then repair the damages.

But we drifted off course once again, into the Karate Kid and Neil Gaiman domains.

No visible correlation you might think, at first glance. But read this dialogue from Gaiman’s Sandman, where Dream plays against the demon Choronzon, in The Oldest Game of All, and see if you can detect some Mr. Miyagi-type combat and life strategies:

Choronzon: Ssso, You know the rules, dreamlord? If you win, I will return your helmet. If you lose, you will ssserve as plaything of hell, for eternity. Our ssslave.Very well. I have the first move. I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.

Dream: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.And I feel the grass beneath my hooves, the flanks between my legs.

All is real. Nothing is real. Choronzon’s move.

Choronzon: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.

Dream: There are many ways to lose the oldest game. Failure of nerve, hesitation… Being unable to shift into a defensive shape. Lack of imagination.I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.

Choronzon: I am a snake, spider-devouring, poison-toothed.

Dream: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.

I feel the snake writhe beneath my hoof, its spine crushed.

Choronzon: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.

Dream: A change in direction, but still an old gambit. I think…I think I understand how Choronzon plays. How I can turn it against him.

I think I will abandon the offensive.

I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.

Choronzon: I am a nova, all-exploding… planet-cremating.

Dream: I am the Universe—all things encompassing, all life embracing.

Choronzon: I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds… of everything.Sss. And what will you be then dreamlord?

Dream: I am hope.

While my intellect understands Dream’s enlightened revelations, my DNA is unfortunately rife with several millenia worth of survival instincts that still refuse to be voluntarily re-engineered.

Perhaps, in life we should all strive to be a Sai Baba or a Gary Zukav. But on the Piste, my Maestro would balk at the thought of mass dilution of his students’ killer instincts.

Nonetheless, thanks to our innate fight or flight programming that seems to have evolved only marginally over the past few decades after World War II, he still has a higher chance of finding his Olympic Gold medallist than I do of finding the Seat of the Soul.

Meanwhile, I should continue exploiting my existential rights and hope that I will not fall prey to the seductive entrapment of the unbearable lightness of being.

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 thangdynasty is a work-in-progress maintained by an accidental equity trader whose brief foray into the world of investments turned out… not so brief. Although unmotivated by the senseless pursuit of money in and for itself, she remains sadistically intrigued by the complex anatomy stealthily at work behind the whole spectrum of Markets – Fine Art, Financial, Fish and Fools. A budding art collector and supporter of emerging artists, she slogs to prevent collateral damage to her bank account resulting from occasional manic art buying sprees.

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