Imagine a little needle at the very tip of the rocket you see above (if it could survive that journey) — keep that needle in your mind as X*X

Get set!

Continuing from the last piece, we’re following a pattern which is roughly ‘fractal staircase.’ This I will define as we go, and you don’t need to worry about the name because you followed so far — first it was 52 words (BAM!) — then it was 64

Magnus Carlsen month on Chess.com. Perfect month for this, I think.

[Note: this little ‘hand’ with the interior tracking will allow everyone to kind of ‘see how fast’ everyone else is ‘getting this.’ How?

Well, some percentage of the readers here will be willing to check out that link above, and of that percentage some will favor me with this request:

Please give that video a thumb’s up. Gotham chess has 4.54 million subscribers and he does make good content.

Plus, he’s provided me the perfect squash racket off of which I can ‘ricochet’ a reference point.

^^And that was 144 words, conveniently 12*12 and even though we’re all going slowly right now, you will lose the point if you don’t just follow along it like you would a purple thread you found in a woods

when

you

saw

one

of

these:

A snowy owl is, of course, more interesting than “any old purple thread.” You’d look up, snap a picture, etc. and I don’t blame you…

Just please don’t drop the thread.

Remember way back in the day when you were looking at your first piece of music — and you couldn’t figure how to stay on the same beat as everyone else? It’s about that hard. Not harder.

Roll with it. We’re making progress. I’m leading on you a circuitous route, maybe, but by the time the next piece (“GO!”) you will be more than ready to tear off like a a wounded purple bird with the whole world chasing it with rocks and torches.

Roll with it. Listen to this for a moment, it will help:

He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand

^^that was 192, and you should be feeling something like tension. Not bad tension, but like you would before one of these:

Let’s just say “at least” 450 people I’ve met are faster than I am. At LEAST.

As with all my pieces, I wish you would please do me the respect of — if you’re going to clap — clap once and once only. If you decide you wish to respect that rule, I’ve no doubt you can also respect the rule of only clapping if you’ve placed 100 of your own words in the comments.

I feel as though others may appreciate this [i.e., this method of counting] and so — unless you have a reasonably-well-thought-out reason for clapping in a manner which doesn’t adhere to the same behavior set people silently agree to on a golf course or tennis court, please clap only once if you’re going to clap at all.