{"id":15714,"date":"2011-08-05T16:20:59","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T16:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/313.1"},"modified":"2011-08-05T16:20:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T16:20:59","slug":"origin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/2011\/08\/05\/origin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rook: Origin Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

He was my cousin and at the time, my best friend. Almost a year older than me, and infinitely more confident, I looked up to and admired him. We differed greatly in many ways.\u00a0 He was militant, where I was more of a pacifist. We were both interested in the martial arts, however.\u00a0 He was much more skilled than I was, having achieved a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do by the time we were thirteen. We were both conversant with comics, but not as interested in them as many of our friends.\u00a0 He was more interested in science fiction movies and I was a fan of mystery novels.
\nNonetheless, like many adolescents, we decided to adopt superhero personas.\u00a0 An avid–though not very skilled–chess player, I always had a chessboard set up in my room to take on anyone willing to play a game.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t many chess aficionados in my social circle with the exception of my father, which may account for my mediocre abilities.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the board maintained a prominent position in my room\u2014if only as mostly d\u00e9cor.
\nIt was the chessboard that provided the initial structure for our superselves.\u00a0 He took a seat behind the white side of the board and picked up a horse-shaped piece.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll be The Knight<\/em>.\u201d
\n\u201cMan,\u201d I grumbled.\u00a0 \u201cYou got the cool-sounding one.\u201d
\n\u201cNo problem,\u201d he grinned.\u00a0 \u201cyou can always be the Queen.\u201d
\nI made a face, a rude comment unfit for this blog and muttered \u201cNot likely.\u201d\u00a0 Though fairly liberal in my attitudes of that day and place, there was no way I–as a barely teenaged heterosexual boy–was going to allow myself to be saddled with that moniker.
\nIt did<\/em> get me thinking, however.\u00a0 Although the Knight was probably the most \u201csuper\u201d sounding chess piece, it wasn\u2019t my favorite.\u00a0 I picked up the rook from my side of the board and considered it.
\nMore advanced players than I had critiqued my over reliance on this piece, though I found it terribly useful.\u00a0 Also, the general shape made it easy to use in various super-devices.\u00a0 The hilt of a sword and the handlebars of the motorcycle could easily be fashioned into the shape of the rook.\u00a0 It was also an easy figure to draw.
\nI placed the black rook next to the white knight on the board.\u00a0 \u201cThis one\u2019s me.\u201d
\nOver the next several months, we drew pictures and designed fantasy weapons and vehicles incorporating our symbols.\u00a0 All the while the Knight told stories of the adventures he had with his faithful sidekick, the Rook.\u00a0 Though cast as a sort of assistant, these stories didn\u2019t keep Rook in the shadows dependent on the Knight.\u00a0 Rook was quick, strong, and powerful, often taking adventures on his own.\u00a0 Although I was none of these, I found the stories liberating and empowering.
\nEventually,\u00a0my family\u00a0moved and the Knight and I fell out of touch.\u00a0 I understand that he joined the military as I went off to college.\u00a0 The Rook paced nervously, penned up on the back burner of my psyche, while I found myself busily earning a Ph.D., raising a family, and eventually securing a job as a research scientist.
\nThe Rook ground his teeth in frustration as my career waxed, waned, and turned while I became a professor and then left the lab to work in a small clinical practice. The Rook experienced some reprieve as I managed a bit of free time to resume my pursuit in the study of martial arts, the occult, private investigation, and other fields of study that struck my fancy.\u00a0 My family was growing, my career was developing nicely, and I was developing personally.\u00a0 Things seemed to be going rather well and the Rook stood alone and almost forgotten, occasionally practicing katas.
\nThat\u2019s when I was diagnosed.
\nIt started out innocently enough\u2026a large lymph node in a non-smoking, non-drinking, relatively youthful and otherwise healthy individual.\u00a0 None of my doctors could believe that it was anything other than a node that was reacting to some otherwise minor infection.
\nNo one expected me to have stage 4 cancer.\u00a0 Least of all, myself.
\nRadiation and chemotherapy have a relatively similar objective.\u00a0 Try to kill the patient, hope they survive and that the cancer cells die instead.\u00a0 As such, a cancer patient undergoing such treatment has three adversaries attempting to kill him:\u00a0 Chemicals, Radiation, and Disease.
\nI often told my students \u201cWe\u2019re all terminal.\u00a0 We all have an expiration date, we just don\u2019t think much about it. The big difference is that those who have an identified terminal illness know \u2018how\u2019 and have a better idea than most of us as to \u2018when\u2019.\u00a0 Having the illusions of immortality stripped from us in this fashion leaves a person with a distinct existential crisis:\u00a0 \u2018What does my life–and death–mean?\u201d
\nWhat I failed to tell them is that your disease need not necessarily be terminal to have this effect.\u00a0 While I attempted to recover and heal from the onslaught of cancer treatment, on the hope that I will survive the disease, the fact that I may easily die became increasingly evident.
\nWhat, really, had I done with my life?
\nI managed to carve out a pretty decent career and my family seemed happy and well cared for.\u00a0 These were pretty much the end of my goals.\u00a0 However, was the world really that much better off for my having been here or was my existence as consequential as a wisp of smoke?
\nSomeone pointed out my wife, children, students and clientele in an answer to that question and, although I value each of them very highly, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder if it was enough.
\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d a familiar voice echoed in the back of my mind.\u00a0 \u201cBut you could do more.\u201d
\nThe Rook was waiting, ever-vigilant, in the dark recesses for his opening. \u00a0He is now the symbol of my attempts to improve the world, bit by bit, beyond the confines of my immediate sphere of influence (family, career, etc) with the time that I have left.
\nHowever long that may be.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blog by the Rook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,24],"tags":[205,350,431,501,936,1440,1927,1985,2142,2262,2693],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}