Topical Guide 638
Mark Dorset
Building Techniques: Triangular Bracing
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 35:
RASKOL AND MARVIN AND I put to use the lessons we had learned from our earlier failure. When we were finished building Watchtower II, we had a solid base from which a dozen long uprights rose, tapering inward to support a smaller platform at the top. We made a ladder by nailing crosspieces to two of the uprights, and when, after climbing the ladder to the top, we found that the structure exhibited familiar tendencies toward collapse, we broke down and sought Guppa’s advice. He taught us the technique of triangular bracing.
Transformation
Metamorphosis
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 35:
While we were building and bracing the tower, we developed the game. I had never imagined that any game would be played in the lighthouse that I had originally designed. I just expected to sit up there and keep the light turning, letting my mind wander, and alerting any ships that might otherwise have blundered the five miles inland to my neighborhood, but it wasn’t a lighthouse any longer. Now it was a watchtower, and a watchtower was something else.
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph:
No art without transformation.
Games and Puzzles
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 35:
In the game that we came to call Night Watchman, […] there was no time limit. The game wasn’t over until the last crawler had been caught or made it into the tower.
[to be continued]
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