Category Archives: stuff i think about

The Room

Posted on by
3

I like games. I love games. I love ‘play’ as a concept, and as an activity that’s absolutely fundamental and necessarily integral to a meaningful life. There’s been an element of ‘play’ in everything I’ve ever done for as long as I can remember. I’ve never held a job that didn’t allow me to include ‘play’ in some manner. Even when the job was deadly serious, there was always the potential for ‘play’ in it somewhere.

So I love games — but I’m not really a gamer. Not in the modern sense of the term. I don’t spend much time playing video games, primarily because so many of them are goal-directed. Achieve this, attain that, increase in level, gain points, compete against your friends, maximize your scoring potential, win.

Don’t get me wrong. I can be ridiculously competitive in some things, and I like winning. But for the most part, it’s not what drives me. What drives me is being immersed in the experience of the game, deeply engaged in playing it. The outcome is secondary. Or even tertiary.

I’m talking about all this because I got an email from a friend who knows how I feel about play and games. The subject line of the email: Here, look at this. And the text of the email:

I downloaded this on my phone. I fucking hate it. It’s all about observation and thinking and logic and intuition and solving puzzles and the music totally fucking creeps me out. It’s everything that makes me nuts in a game. It made me think of you. You’ll love it.

And it included a link to this teaser:

So I downloaded the game to my new phone. I think it cost me two bucks. It’s the only game app I’ve put on my phone. And my friend was right. I love it.

There’s a narrative behind it, but I really don’t care (which in itself is odd, because I’m usually all about the narrative). I’ve not finished the game yet, and I’m in no hurry to do that (well, I’m in an absolute hurry to finish only in the sense that I want to keep playing; but I’m in no hurry in that I want it to last). The experience is satisfying in the way solving any puzzle is always satisfying. But the game designers understand that solving the pleasure of solving the puzzles is enhanced by the visually rich environment and the sweet and peculiarly creepy music. It’s so good that I’m parceling the game out, which seems awfully Protestant of me — like it’s a reward for doing the things I’m actually required to do. There’s apparently something to all that ‘delayed gratification’ business.

I have no idea if I’m almost done with the game, or if I’ve just begun, or if I’m somewhere near the middle. If it ends after I’ve solved the next puzzle, I’ll be disappointed. Not by the game itself, but only because it’s over.

Now I have to make myself some lunch, log in a couple hours in reviewing my students’ homework, and then back to The Room.

the cat vomited

Posted on by
8

You wake up. You struggle against the gravitational pull of the bed and get to your feet. You head for the coffee pot, reminding yourself that yes your damaged knees ache right now, but the pain will diminish over the next hour or so as you move about. Before you reach the coffee pot you discover the cat vomited during the night.

It’s a small thing. A truly small thing, even for the cat — who is sitting lazy-eyed in the sun by the window, completely unconcerned. It’s a small thing, but it has to be dealt with. It has to be cleaned up, which you can do as soon as the coffee has been started.

In a bit you’re sitting in front of the computer, your knees hardly ache at all, there’s a cup of Kona to one side, the cat vomit has been cleaned, the sun is shining, and you see this:

earth and moon 900 billion miles

The Earth and the moon, from nearly nine billion miles away

Fifteen years, nine months, and six days ago the Cassini-Huygens satellite was hurled into space atop a Titan IV rocket. It’s mission was to study Saturn, and it’s been in orbit around that planet since 2004. But a few days ago, the satellite turned its cameras homeward.

That’s the Earth, that sparkly bit right there in the middle. The Earth and the moon, seen from 898,410,414 miles away.

When I say That’s the Earth what I mean is That’s you and me. That’s everybody we know, and everybody we’ve ever known, and everybody we’ve ever heard about or read about. Shakespeare lived on that little sparkly bit, and Dashiell Hammett. Woody Guthrie made music on that sparkly bit, and so did Mozart and Cole Porter. Pablo Picasso noodled around that sparkly bit for more than ninety years, splashing dabs of genius all over the place. Seventy-some years ago that sparkly bit was involved in a war that spanned three of its seven continents. At least five times in its life, that sparkly bit has been largely covered with ice.

Seen from a distance of nearly nine billion miles, an ice age seems like just a passing phase. World War II, just a small thing. Mozart, a blip. Picasso? Well, he had cats. And you can be sure those cats occasionally vomited, and likely Picasso had to clean it up.

the cat, from just over five feet away

the cat, from just over five feet away

This is the cat that vomited. The photo was taken about the same time Cassini-Huygens took the photo of the Earth and the moon. This cat doesn’t care about Picasso, or world wars, or ice ages, or satellites hurled nearly nine billion miles into space. This cat doesn’t even care that she vomited, not really. She doesn’t have to clean it up.

Distance gives you perspective. Proximity gives you life. We can create marvelous technological feats, we can inflict horrific depredations on our planet — but the cat will still vomit and somebody has to clean it up.