Bardo - (in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.

McDonalds - Fast food company founded in 1940.

McDeath was a bardo where angels and demons met for cheap hamburgers and fries. It was one of the few Mcdonalds in the United States where gunshots had killed more people than heart disease. Back in the death days, McDeath was a pressure pot where West Philadelphia gangs brought in tensions and rivalries that couldn’t be assuaged over a Big Mac. Gun violence, gang disputes and plain old fear linger in the air like the halo of fluorescent lighting.

Nowadays, McDeath found itself in the shadow of an Ivy League campus which had extended its vines deeper into West Philadelphia. These days the only thing that dies at 39^th and Walnut are college kids’ sense of sobriety and the hopes of the homeless.

As you enter the golden arches, the smell of salt situates you into the bardo, a purgatory where time stills and stalls within the promise of ‘fast food’. The smell of salt sits thick amongst the sweat of stale coats and furtive winter jackets. The sizzle of deep fryers hungry for the flesh of potatoes choruses with the chimes and jingles of welcoming cash registers.

After midnight, McDeath bustles with listlessness. Through the middle, the tiled floor remains empty like a chess board. White college students and Black Philadelphians pack like pawns on opposite sides. On the right, college kids chatter, drunk on a night of red solo cups and murky bong hits. Through the far-left aisles the locals overlook in relative silence, seemingly ghoulish and un-spirited. Perhaps some are drunk on spirits. Others spiritless.

Apart from the souls that vie the centre, there is a motley few playing chess in the corner of the restaurant. In these booths, time in the bardo is spent playing.

I would sojourn McDeath during midnight with the chess players. I too was floating like a ghost in the bardo, hungry for a game.

---

I played two games at McDeath. The first game was with a man who had one normal eye. And one googly eye.

A gentle older man named Harold let us use his board and clock. He wore a graying sweater and a chimney sweeper hat. A tamed moustache over round lips completed a warm grandfather look. He stood encouragingly over Googly-Eye’s shoulders.

As I pinched the pawns to start playing, I felt an odd sense of belonging. I was playing a familiar game in an unfamiliar world. I had come to America for university yet here I sat in McDonalds at midnight. Playing chess surrounded by the reified American Dream.

My eyes hovered above the board as Googly-Eyes made major theoretical errors in his pawn structure. Like his centre pawn, and many in McDeath’s purgatory, I too was lost. I had dropped out in the middle of the semester and now played chess against people who probably hadn’t the opportunity to contemplate college. Homelessness and privilege all mixed with ketchup.

Googly-Eyes’ pieces started to take shape. There was a point in the game that he looked like he was winning. Harold and the other players grew excited as they watched. For a moment, it seemed as if Googly-Eyes’ googly eye looked straight at me: a grotesque wink befitting the bardo of McDeath.

There is a strange calm that descends when you reacquaint yourself with a familiar identity. I was not going to let the McDonald’s dweller beat me. I was in the Ivy League. Or at least I had been. I was no longer gazing above the boards. I was locked in. The game had turned into a war.

I played the game, and I won the war. What had I won? Perhaps a moment. A mere moment flitting like a falling grain in an hourglass. I had won a moment of pride in the timeless bardo where I felt lost.

---

The second game was against Mr. Penn.

Blonde and smiling, Mr. Penn had the flowing hair of a lacrosse player and the squinty grin of a computer programmer. Mr. Penn and his University of Pennsylvania quarter-zip looked out of place in the plastic McDonald’s furniture. Yet he did not at all seem lost. He seemed like he was familiar to odd pop-up chess games and very much delighted in winning them.

He offered me a game with a kind gesture. Behind his gaze, I could tell he was sizing me up.

We started the game. I was nervous. Since I had decided to take the term off university, I thought I had left behind the competitive urge to stake my identity and self-worth in a gambit of intellectual jousting. But habits are more than urges. Suddenly, Mr. Penn was the reason I had come to America: to show the Ivy League that a shy boy from an immigrant family in New Zealand, had the chops.

Mr. Penn followed chess theory to a tee. I could barely recall the remnants of chess theory I learned a decade ago in primary school during dusty morning chess class that functioned mostly as a day care. Mr. Penn held both of his arms straight, his palms rested on the table behind the board. As he slowly wore down the defense of my pawns he sat comfortably. As if I was a loyal subject at the foot of his throne.

There are two ways to losing. The most mature and perhaps effective way is to be patient, manouevre carefully out of difficult positions and remain level-headed. The other way - which sometimes works – is to, like a young despot, rage an all-out attack.

I tried to shake Mr. Penn with some extremely aggressive moves. To remind his calculated brain that humans are still playthings for surprise and uncertainty.

My queen starting marching across the board with no support. I started exchanges pieces where I had no right to. My quick hands seemed inspired by my encounter with Googly Eyes unorthodox, yet effective, style.

Mr. Penn went from a relaxed smirk to a raised eyebrow. As Mr. Penn plucked my pieces off the board he remained somewhat confused. My aggression soon turned into apathy and then a prompt resignation.

As I sat back again in the plastic chairs watching the board reassemble, I became extremely grateful for fast food and board games. It had given me a necessary relief from my current state of listlessness and showed me that I had a few gambits up my sleeve. I was in a period of my life in which my past identity, expectations and pace had been put on pause and it felt futile to restart the engine because first I had to decide where to go.

I didn’t know it then but my games against Googly-Eyes and Mr. Penn were important STOP signs. I saw my wayward selves in the reflection of their eyes and crooked smirks. Pride, privilege, competition, community, race, wealth, to win or lose were all things I would have to consider and confront in the months and years ahead.

I was beginning to learn what it means to have pride in oneself. Pride that is different to the intoxicating pride of competition that seeks the solace of comparative value. Instead, pride as an expression of acceptance towards the different parts of myself. I could begin to accept privileges as gifts, with the temperance of gratitude. Although I was far from it, I began to sense the stability and solidity of humility, which at times feels slow and lethargic but is truly a form of grace in the face of uncertainty. These seeds of self were lingering in the bardo, patiently waiting to return to the soil.

Perhaps McDeath is the perfect name for the McDonalds on 39^th and Walnut. Where identities and selves dissolve, die and reconnect.