Solitaire as a Sacred Act

Solitaire as a Sacred Act

2/19/22

As a method of destressing, I often like to sit down and play solitaire. I don’t know the name of this actual version of solitaire if it differs from just solitaire (I have heard the idea of spider solitaire, details blur), but as I understand it all solo card games fall under the umbrella term “solitaire”. The way I play is I think the classic – 7 columns set up in a cascading way, black meets red, draw three from the deck, etc. The goal is to order the cards from a distinct chaos; you win once all the cards are cleared on the aces. If you can’t make the connection you lose. This is a very straightforward game.

There is a beauty in the structure of the game, I feel. The sacred order of things, the columns of possibilities, the act of creating chaos and then reordering everything into neat categories. The physicality of the cards too makes sense, the up and the down, the revealed and the unrevealed, the underground, the possibilities. And the way the cards feel in my hands as I plop the three cards from my deck, hoping that I am able to make some red to black connection from these series of cards, waiting to reveal something unknown. While cards may seem and feel like some of the most trivial mundane objects of social life, I think there can be something sacred about this.

Sometimes I do perform my act of solitaire while listening to an audiobook or podcast, as a thoughtless activity to pass the time while I “consume knowledge” via my ears. But for the most part, I play it in quiet mindfulness, a form of meditative practice. Each action – the shuffling, the laying out of the cards, the automatic movements of red to black, black to red, red to black, drawing three cards from the deck, all elements of this ritual performance. I medicate on the concept of choice – if both the §6 and ª6 are available to move onto ¨7 – then there that introduces the idea of choice, whereas one movement results in a win and the other in a loss. When there are two separate kings on unrevealed stacks, which one do you move to the open space? These moments result in some type of crossroads of destiny – whatever action you choose could affect the end of the game. But at the same time these choices might be irrelevant, in both situations the layout of the cards might result in a loss or a win, and your choice may be irrelevant, revealing only an illusion of choice. Like in all games, there is a deep sense of destiny, things being pre-shuffled and unavoidable.

It was my grandmother who taught me solitaire when I was young, and every time I do play solitaire I think of my grandmother in some way or another. The game is almost like an embodied ritual act of remembrance, my millennial Italian-American way of praying to an ancestral shrine. I was young and she was old, I think of the caramel hard candy she ate as she played, navigating those 7 columns in contemplation, instinctually looking for the connections of the right cards and implementing those micro strategies only an advanced solitairists could possibly cultivate – like when to clear a card to the ace pile when to wait to move a king, the practices of pure patience. She always had cards at the ready, even in the deepest recesses of my memory. I never knew how she developed this passion. When or why. She played cards with other Italian-American grandmothers in the upstate NY lodges she and my grandfather vacationed to. She went to las vegas once with my grandfather as well. Again these details are lost amongst generations, but she always had some relationship with a deck of cards. And then there was this, in her long island house I would understand as a second home, I regarded her, looking up, as I was a small person, looking at the way she shuffled in her wrinkled hands and dealt the cards with daft precision, an automatic response for a game she has played so many times by herself as a way to simply pass the time, a way to meditate. Even as Alzheimer’s affected her brain and memory, the act of solitaire is something that persisted, an element of her consciousness that could not be eroded by the pernicious illness. My memories of her in the last years of her life are memories of her playing the game, oxygen tubes hooked up to her nose, sitting in a chair, playing solitaire, making the connections of red and black, a ritual act that could not be forgotten.

Now, The metaphysics of solitaire come up often when I have separate choices, if I make one move the rest of the game can be totally fucked, whereas the other move results in victory. Thinking that each card can only connect to two other cards, and likewise, only two other cards can connect to this particular card. It’s a series of connections, building those connections, and then deconstructing the connections, the universe wrapped into one simple game of two columns. And I think this is the connection my grandmother share, the act of playing cards, even by yourself, is linked to a greater sense of community, some grand universe understood by four distinct suits and numbers.

It does suck when you get stuck in a game of solitaire. And I think this is the most important thing my grandmother taught me: that if you get stuck, it is okay to break the order of the solitaire universe. It’s okay to undo, it’s okay to select a covered card from the deck. It’s a game, you can make your own rules. And when I do break the rules during a bad hand, I always am reminded of her over my shoulder saying, “that’s good now”.

So, while solitaire is by definition a game of individualism, of isolation, it’s also a game of connection, a game of choices, a generational practice, a form of shared memory. When I play solitaire it’s not because I feel lonely, rather it’s a way to meditate, a way to feel connected to a larger sense of myself, a way to feel connected to my family.