Just a game

 
Some thoughts on Life as it seems to be, for us, all things considered, just a game.

Indeed it has been likened to the most advanced video game, “invented” before any silicate component was even conceived, the Mother of all games, the Game that beats them all. Yet it is rather peculiar to see us, as a supposedly sapient species, spend most of our time doing side quests for the sole reason that we have forgotten what the main quest was. Or rather, we have forgotten that figuring out what the main quest was actually is the main objective.

Every day we speak to many NPCs. Some give us particular and important quests, some help us, some hinder us, some just dailies upon the completion of which we acquire gear and perks, while our stats progress or regress, ebb and flow. As a matter of fact, we ourselves are an NPC to someone else’s quest.

When we are born we are given a set of stats that shape our ability to move about, progress and quest. Some, more fortunate, people will inherit the perks, gear and gold of their elders, greatly enhancing their capacity to access and accrete even more resources, and level up more quickly. It is like, to them, playing the Ultimate Deluxe Edition they got for free because one of their ancestors got a lifetime pass long ago, while the rest of us are playing the base game.

There are, of course, tips and tricks handed down from generations, which one chooses to acknowledge and follow (or not) in our exploration of the open-world map. Yet as “open-world” as it may be, many of us won’t discover more than 10% of the map, and won’t even know this 10% well enough to not get lost at some point, even if we have a built-in compass for both inner and outer travels.

Deciding which way to go should be our sole prerogative, and the universe is so vast that we discover new maps every day, almost, and all of these being hundreds of light years away we cannot wait for the next upgrade to be able to teleport to them. Otherwise they shall remain out of our reach…which makes us feel cramped, even though our own map is already so very vast.

Some see a Dev’s hand, Devs’ hands or the Devil’s hand intervening in this Game. While it might be true for the larger astronomic systems, our own puny lives are ruled by RNG from the very second we spawn, and we abruptly land in medias res while the character-building aspect of our life, as crucial as it is, isn’t even in our hands, at least for a few years, until we can make our own bad decisions ourselves. Because we inherit, in secret, perks and flaws from people who played the Game, aeons ago, without knowing they were playing it.

For even though this game is on permadeath mode, we tend to play it as if we had multiple lives ahead of us. As de facto subscribers we have been offered a lot of updates, but never got any news from any Dev, or devs, nor any sales representatives.

If you push the argument just a tad further, in many respects we are playing a survivor game with tinges of horror, but it is an MMORPG really, with many genres intertwined.

Our lore goes back thousands of years, and the origin of the Game is a mystery surrounded by a recalcitrant fog of war that sometimes seems to fade, only to cover the area we thought we knew back up. We can delve and absorb in it but it is so vast and complex that we will never get the full picture. So we busy ourselves with the daily grind: work and grocery dailies, the fanciful questing in other parts of the world, occasional parties and festivals for which we buy and trade mats to craft the most sumptuous cosmetics, seeking companions to quest and ally with.

Sometimes we lose connection and the servers seem to lag and stutter, and we wonder if it’s the server or our own connection.

The Game has been going on for so long that it is no wonder we have lost the point of it, because even when we log off for the night, the Game still runs in the background, and when we log back in sometimes it feels like an entirely different Game, as if someone had hacked our account, or had plugged different variables in the matrix. Yet it is the same – and at the risk of vexing some of us, the final boss is not what they think it is.

Sometimes we feel that the Game is so crappy that we would really like to reboot and start all over again, but with different stats – or play a different Game altogether. Sometimes we get a virus and we can’t play for a bit – that’s when some of us consider leaving the Game to see if there’s another layer to it, somewhere beyond the harsh reality, or another Game altogether.

In our thirst for exploration some of us take various substances which can make us feel like we have access to the code, like we can peek behind the scenes. It is still a matter of debate.

Back in the day, when the offline connections mattered because there were no online ones, the zone chat felt pretty circular and was local, regional at best, things were going slowly and it was easy not to connect. Now the chat has extended to gargantuan proportions, and encompasses the entire world. It almost feels like the chat is the Game. We can apply filters to the zone chat to try to contain the tsunami of information, but even then we fail to distinguish between what is real, invented because the game is, well, bizarre sometimes.

It can happen that some of us are caught cheating, because even though the Game has rules, exploits and glitches abound…and sometimes the Game seems unfair to us, or it seems like too good an opportunity to pass, or some people only want to wreak havoc. The moderators and community organisers then take our gear, some of our gold, and ban us from playing for a while.

We organise ourselves in guilds in which like-minded people buzz to the same hum, echo-chambering one another, because there is nothing more reassuring than hearing your own thoughts in another, allowing one to wallow in the comfort of uniformity in claimed uniqueness. After all, we are all unique.

Final thought: for a game that has lasted this long, it is going rather well, despite the numerous negative reviews spanning all those tens of thousands of years of accumulated playtime.

 

Split voice

I want to leave an indelible mark upon this world

I want to leave the earth untouched, unmarred

I want to help, I want to shape the greater good

If we can’t make it better, we should leave it alone

I want to be in the spotlight of freedom

Let me remain in the shadow of freedom

I want to be remembered, a force of change that matters 

I want to be forgotten, my name struck out if reckoned

Let my deeds not be footnotes in History 

My donations shall remain anonymous

Acclaimed even in my sleep

Please leave me alone

I matter most because I’m better than most

What matters most is that you bettered yourself

Let people follow in my trailblazing footsteps

Let people see the steps in the snow and let them fade

I am what I am and what I do 

We are drowning in ourselves in action

Let my name echo in eternity

Let my name be lost for all eternity

Daffodils

 
Fists balled in the hollow of the eyes
Sat in the old, creaky wicker chair
The scream stuck in the pharynx
Blue-overalls despair taking hold
Between the exhaustion and the chaos
The spirit, there, at odds, blooming,
Like a, like a, daffodil

The life springing from the rot
Always in need of a new pot
Always seems to thrive more
Than the one from the store
99p, bargain-of-the-day life
Just give it a poke with a knife
Not to, not to, daffodils

You care not for the ruin
You care not for the grime
As soon as you find yourself
Right on the edge of time
And running out of one
Second or minute, year or life
Time is, time is, daffodils

Then you blame all the gods
For forcing us to rely on strife
Forgetting the absolute beauty
Of a flower thriving on blights
Like a, like a, daffodils

Life is a songbird eating
The brain of a mouse
And you don’t get it, for
How could beauty do this
Eat seeds one day and the next brains
Survival dictates and hunger commands
Among the, among the, daffodils

Daffodils, it’s always daffodils they say
For lilacs are too sad and bitter for life
And hyacinths too sweet for death

Daffodils are the living, and the dead
The hot rot on a bed of mulch
The rising fruit and the fallen leaf
Green and yellow both the growth
Of moss and of mould
Of grief and of lief

The lines blurred until they burst

The body blooms and withers
Decays one season, feeds the next
Born to fester and feast

Prayers won’t get us there
But daffodils will, inevitably.

To Florence

This is my body

 

I stopped worrying one day
about how I looked
in the eyes of others

And I was able to say
“This is my body
It’s been through a lot
and it shows

It is not perfect
stretch marks and scars
but this is what I have
this is what I nurture
I keep it and treasure it

It wasn’t always like this
it was more nimble once
and its skin smoother

And even if I didn’t always
now you and I will
treat it with care

As though it may still
suffer some blows
I shan’t let it be buffeted in vain
ever again

This is my body
and if you don’t like it
I have no other”

One day I stopped worrying
and loved the soul and the vessel
my choice to keep or to change
and loved, loved, loved

 

A Study on Grief

 

Once I met a quite serious scientist

In the underground going east

On my way to a tryst in Bayleaf

They looked at me with googly eyes

And said I’d be perfect to study grief

There was a sadness in my gaze

A slowness in my hands

That’s all they needed to see the pain

Truly they were an expert

Yet said Science had much to gain

They ran all the tests they could

And long I lay and long I stood

They penned all the words I said

Elaborated many graphs and charts

About all those I loved who were dead.

In the end they had to let me leave

As they’d learnt all they could about grief

And what they found they couldn’t believe

And threw themselves under the tube to Bayleaf.

Haiku

leafblower season ablast

one path, uncleared still, invites the pace on
singing, saffron ginkgo leaves

If I love you

 
If I love you, what business is it of yours
if I love you, it is no business of anyone’s
including mine own

You cannot exact any requirement
nor any demand from my love
I do not even know myself how I do
but I do, maybe even against my will
or against any form of logic

And should you suffer from it
rest assured that I do, too

And if I love passionately, irrationally
if I love you my antithesis
you shall feel whatsoever you may
it is no business of anyone’s
and certainly not mine

And if I love with the commitment
of one circumnavigating the cosmos
if I love with the desperation
of one parched and starved and feverish
let it be just that: love for love’s sake
none can have any say in the matter

And if in the great madness of things
you happen to love me
not in return but for love’s sake
perhaps we might mind
our own business together
and be content and serene
basking in each other

like a cat in the sun, eyes half-aclose

floating specks in a sunbeam

stardust whose movement started
before anything or anyone was

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 10

 

Disclaimer – this was written in the aftermath of the pandemic, a month or so after the restrictions, and rediscovered today as I wanted to revive the series. I thought I had published it but apparently failed to do so, until today. Be ready to be teleported back...and perhaps get a new perspective on current events.

Dear grumblers and ranters,

I know the episodes have been erratically posted, subject as they were to the whims of my hatred, yet I thought that I should celebrate this tenth edition with a special number. I mean, it's not like I will run out of material anytime soon, right? So I'll approach today's rant from a slightly different angle.

Why yes, of course, this global pandemic has offered us facepalms galore, and in my opinion has accentuated the gap between facepalmers on both sides of the spectrum. Like this one douchebag on Reddit saying that AIDS didn't exist, that nobody had ever died from it, and that it was a giant hoax from the radical leftists to demean and destroy Christianity (as if this religion needed any outside help to shoot itself in the foot). And another bag of cheetos to comment that duh AIDS did exist (called the other guy a moron) but that it was a specifically homosexual disease because you could only get it from performing anal sex and doing drugs. For the sake of humanity I wish I had made this up, but not only do we see that us educators have failed worldwide – thereby implying that perhaps it’s not education that failed directly, but that moronism is too strong an antagonist – we also probably (#sarcasm) can't let people “educate” themselves via social media. Reading this alone is enough to make you contract a glaucoma, and if it doesn't, it brings you one step closer to drinking this world away. But this is not how I want to spill my bile.

I will not touch on subjects such as the US elections and its aftermath, nor will I raise issues such as the French government's response to the Covid situation. I mean, I could put it into perspective with the battle raging between the heathen people who say “LE Covid” and the heretics who say “LA Covid”, or with the astounding number of anti-vaxxers because science is wrong, but I won't. 

Instead, I will focus on more mundane, yet certainly more irritating things (because they affect us in our day-to-day life) which we have been spared because of the pandemic.

It's a world-renowned, Murphian tendency that people with halitosis must want to talk closer to you the further you move away from them. My hunch is that it might be caused by an anaesthetised nose. But thanks to masks, we no longer have to smell halitosis...and instead the perpetrators do indeed have to subject themselves to it. Now, could this be an explanation why some people wear their mask right under their nose? You could legitimately approach this differently, and ask why these people do not have better buccal hygiene, or eat a chewing-gum, or treat whatever affliction causes said halitosis. Yes, you could ask this.

The school in which I currently teach has seen some parents who refuse to wear masks when picking up their obnoxious brats (who only wear masks because they wouldn't be allowed in school otherwise). What has happened, you ask? Have the authorities stepped in to educate them on the science behind mask-wearing? Indeed not. Instead, these sombre idiots have contracted the virus which they claimed didn't exist, and along with their harebrained progeny were forced to quarantine. O, the joy of not having to see these cretinous crowds for ten days. And yes, I couldn't care less about the health of these people. They don't care about yours, why should the reverse not be true too?

Have you ever heard that some people are not sick until their doctor has told them that they are? Think reversed malade imaginaire, think hyperchondriac. Admittedly, we’re just one doctor away from this becoming the norm, and the madding crowds out there might grow to sufficient numbers that we might spot them in the wild. For the moment our GPs hold the fort and tell them for the umpteenth time that no they don't have the Covid-19 because a black guy looked at them, that no they don't have the flu either because they feel their toes are fusing, that no their backache isn't due to the local G5 tower emissions or their Wi-Fi. They probably should turn to a seamstress who can turn Faraday fabric into hats, I heard it’s the new black.

I don't think there ever was a starker reminder than what Rita Mae Brown wrote in Venus Envy, back in ‘93: “Normal is the average of deviance.” In hindsight, we may discover that the loons with phones trying to prove Earth is flat and ending up proving that it is – I’d advise to sit down because it’s chyron-worthy news – that it is fecking round. It sadly is not a sign that some then-silent minority now has access to global channels so they can now be heard. We’re discovering that though of course some tinfoiled clowns do centralise the full package of conspiracy theories, many hold some form of pet conspiracy theory, and when I write ‘many’, I should write “for their name is legion”. We’re vastly outnumbered, and their number is growing by the day, one pandemic, one earthquake or one storm at a time (bleach your eyes looking up the HAARP conspiracy).

In hindsight, some of us will have loved this part of our social history when we had a global excuse for not having to go out and behold the best of humanity. Yet even if one can remain outside of the social media echo chamber, one cannot be immune to it entirely, and the juiciest bits trickle down to us through channels imperceptible. Humanity always finds a way to make you feel it, something to remember it by. Gotta love it. or leave it, but since it’s a tad drastic a move, perhaps it’s better to suffer in silence, or rant on a blog that’s never going to be read. Akin to whether or not a falling tree makes any sound if nobody is there to listen, does the rant not count as silence if nobody reads it?

But before leaving you, hypothetical quibblers and reprovers, full of fresh vitriol and a renewed hatred for mankind (myself included), I’d like to share something I found out about poodles which isn’t as excoriating as you’d hope. I was researching the evolution of skull morphology consecutive to selective breeding (don’t ask me, it was 4am and I couldn’t sleep). I found this article which is super interesting, but then I fell into yet another rabbit hole and discovered that poodles no longer are in the top 20 worst, and top 10 dumbest, dog breeds of all time. Quite the feat, really. Perhaps people realised that poodles are like us in the sense that they put on pandemic pounds, and were the most affected by the lack of exercise and socialisation (still surprised the term “poodlepression” hasn’t come up yet for poodle depression). Not that it made me entirely sympathetic towards poodles, but I no longer see them as opportunistic pleasers, as perhaps we also engineered, or shaped rather, their bleak outlook on life. If dogs could speak.

on the wind

// on the wind // I heard your name // on the grass // a long time ago // had to be a thousand years, at least // in the night // the thought-memory of you // like a seed // like a tree // in the soil under the fingernails // your name was there too // for such a long time // the sky too overcast to notice // cacophonies of feelings and yellings // no longer drowned therein // only whispers // this unsilence for such a long time // though not the right time // the hawk ascending on the wind // on man-made moonlit mythical wings // finding time slowing down in the shade // wanting to be near // holding hands // with all those years of gestures, silences, thoughts, questions and learnings // gowpens of tragedies, love, carry-ons and acquired smiles // that was the right time // on the cairn I made on the knoll // meant the wait had been the rainbow // how I learnt to make everything I do and say // a long time ago you had been there and stayed // carefully telling everything your name to be remembered // and found // to never end // on the tip of the ear and tongue always // there // gut-feeling me through the ground // never quite lost // like a bonding of molecules with no definite centre // here but also there // now but also then // the most negligible of forces // like the faintest of rustles // on the wind //

Homemory

 

I’ll mark you in my book of memories

between sunfires at dawn and dusk

and meteor waves jolting the spheres

the memory of you will be a home to me

as the sunshafts after the rain are home to me

as the goosebumps from music are home to me

as feeling the last page of a book is home to me

you will be a home to me

in my book of memories

though the shades have darkened 

and the pages will have faded

as the storm of the century raged

home to me, home to me