Sure Gamble

bodies are a game we play with our minds (5-5 @ EMEA)

by Tuno on in the Decklists series #runner #anarch
Originally posted at netrunnerdb.com

Sosteneva, fra l'altro, che le inopinate catastrofi non sono mai la conseguenza o l'effetto che dir si voglia d'un unico motivo, d'una causa al singolare: ma sono come un vortice, un punto di depressione ciclonica nella coscienza del mondo, verso cui hanno cospirato tutta una molteplicità di causali convergenti.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia sometime during 2021. I had been experiencing vague symptoms, confused in a painful alexithymic aura, for about a year and a half, making this a very quick turnaround by the statistics of the healthcare system. Efficient as it was, the system was not able to provide me with empathy, or useful insight. I was told to take warm baths and do stretching exercises, but not how to safely use a public swimming pool as a visibly trans person, or in what direction to stretch my body in my tiny, cramped 300 euro/month apartment. I was let go with reassurance that my condition was comparatively light, and with some semblance of instruction in painkillers.

In the last five years I have seen almost no doctors, and learned to manage my illness myself. I have learned that living in a tiny, cramped 300 euro/month apartment forced my legs to find their way around in unnatural manners that kept building up tension and pain. I have learned that all of my symptoms (chronic pain anywhere in the body, chronic fatigue, sensitivity to noise, depression, sleep disorders) are interrelated in a vicious circle, and that finding the right point to heal is a maddening city-and-the-city investigation, but getting to the end of it brings a wonderful sense of mind, body and world all improving at once. In this way I feel that I have properly dispelled that Cartesian error I was warned about in high school philosophy; now other people seem confused as to whether my problems are physical or mental, and I only remain puzzled at their attempts at drawing a distinction. I have painstakingly developed a passing acquaintance with a small array of pharmaceuticals (paracetamol, ketoprofene, benzodiazepines, currently learning ibuprofen), but have mostly learned about the power of the placebo effect, and how one can train oneself to benefit more from it. I have learned meditation and self-hypnosis as ways to tap into and hack the vagaries of the bodymind. I have learned that rest will often just make me weaker by giving me pain I can't control, while exertion will make it make sense.

I have been managing very well. Now that I sincerely accept pain as inevitable, I can experience it without suffering. I'm in a very happy part of my life, and my physical ability has been getting correspondingly better. Though I still cannot run, I can walk much farther than I used to, and the world has turned into an expansive, abundant place. I finally live in a bigger apartment where I can exercise on a regular basis, and feel pain that I like.

A Nottingham Illusion

I love England, especially the food. There's nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta. There are little things I learn a little more about every time I come here: the beautifully messy railway system, the wind and the way she coils around me, strangers and their ways of being very friendly and subtly distant. For reasons I personally don't understand, the country loves me back: I have deep inside my head a Slothropian map of the country, with stars in twenty-six colours from Alices to Zoes, scattered all over and connected by time tables and directions from one bed to another.

But with all my NP-hard passion for crisscrossing over the country, my bed back in Turin is the only one that my body has internalized as acceptable, as the only correct approximation of τὸ horizontality. Any other bed is a dangerous enemy constantly trying to stab me while I sleep, founded on a pea that only I seem to feel, buried for me deep down into the bowels of the earth. As much as I love traveling to see my friends, any attempt to sleep anywhere that's not my home brings back all the depression, pain, and despair that turn me into a suffering, insufferable person, threatening to destroy love and friendship.

Netrunner tournaments are a worthwhile thing to travel to, because they have a way of getting my body fully back into shape. They are the only place where that pain is revealed as an illusion, and I feel a uncontrollable urge to jump around greeting everyone excitedly, asking about their travels, their decks, their games, their weekends, their love, what have you been working on, can I have a hug please? The interconnectedness I feel when among this bunch of friends, lovers, favorites, and the way that it obliterates everything that's wrong and shows me a glimpse of something otherworldly, took me aback at Barcelona Worlds in 2023 and it still does. I've been a lifelong reclusive homebody, and yet I spent Saturday evening sitting in the middle of a loud pub, just blissfully immersed in everyone's comings and goings, games, conversations and languages.

And there's Netrunner itself. I have played few games that make me feel connected with my fellow player in mutual understanding (SpyParty, Go, Catch the Moon?) and none have done it as well as this miserable, abandoned thing we chose to not let die. Most games of Netrunner bring me joy, and once in a while you get one that makes you feel like you and your opponent just understood something that no one else ever has or will. For this tournament, that award goes to my game with Minstrel - you know what you did.

I didn't do well at all in this tournament (which, as lif3line kindly told me, in a cosmic sense I should win), my Runner list here failed me, and honestly I didn't really care. I have a great time even being washed, and that's thanks to all the TOs, the judges, the staff at HQ and at sales, my opponents, everyone I newly met and everyone I new well, the uno players, the mahjong players, all of you, thank you.

It is not the pornographer that is perverse...

don't even know how to caption this

Don Ciccio Ingravallo, Spinozian detective, clearly found the time to read Petronius and Boccaccio between murder cases, as he saw in every human thing un tanto o, direste oggi, un quanto di affettività, un certo "quanto di erotia". A lot of nerd spaces, masculinist as they usually are, bind this eroticism and restrict it to card art and other places outside of our own bodies; Netrunner tournaments are beautiful, and still unsung, in how they let it breathe. One way that my body feels better about itself is by knowing that it is for something, that it's worth moving and using, and so it really helps to not only play aggressively and physically as I do, but to also get physical between rounds.

So if you catch me tongue deep someone's throat at an organized play event, don't worry: all we're doing is telling each other that our bodies are for love today. You're welcome to watch and share our joy - you don't even have to be a white man!

So my biggest thanks go, as always, to the friends who let me play their minds with my body, and their bodies with my mind. If you know you know.

Decklist

Event (17)

Hardware (8)

Resource (11)

Icebreaker (3)

Program (6)