Spoiling The Game

"293. I give the rules of a game. The
other party makes a move, perfectly
in accord with the rules, whose
possibility I had not forerseen, and
which spoils the game, that is, as I
had wanted it to be. I now have to
say: 'i give bad rules; I must change
or add to my rules.'

So in this way have I a picture of the
game in advance? In a sense, Yes.

It was surely possible, for example, for me
not to have foreseen that a quadratic
equation need have no real root.

Thus the rule leads me to something
of which I say: 'I did not expect
this pattern: I expected a solution like
*this*...'"

Ludwig Wittgentstein
*Zettel*
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"I'd like to say how discouraged
and disappointed I feel, but
discreetly I don't; I'd like to say
how proud I am that nonetheless
I push on, but modestly I won't.
Then the two cancel each other
out."

from *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)
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