Page 36 - The Irony Board

Into the Body

When gambling
Instinct takes
You over
House limits
To the sky.

Against the conservatism bestowed by knowledge of unwanted
consequences, experience also teaches us the value of risk-taking:
nothing ventured, nothing gained. Gambling is a process of
consciously determining odds and betting accordingly—or is it? The
problem is not in overly-optimistic expectations of gain, but in
unrealistic assessment of the consequences of loss.
In this piece Gluckman play idioms off against each other to
portray the inner life of a gambler gone out of control. The first
three lines read without pause indicate the nature of the disease:
“gambling” is an adjective here, pointing to an overriding
subconscious inherent need to wager. However, placing an
imaginary comma after “gambling” changes it to a verb, and changes
the sense of the last two lines: now “takes you over” represents a
more literal involuntary ascension. House limits are imposed by the
context of gambling, but “sky’s the limit” means absence of all
constraint. In the gambler’s mind the latter replaces the former,
elevating him from a tangible arena of reasonable stakes and antes to
a fantasy world of boundless gain.

34