LXXXV - oh take me back to the start

song of the week: coldplay, the scientist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWLpTKBFcU

it's sobering to know that i am not immune to regretting my mistakes. it sucks to know, actually. it sucks to know.

"... the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

life is different in this light. i'm not sure if i'm good or bad, if i'm the cure or the disease. i'm not sure if i'm doing the right thing, by other people, by me, by whatever.

this is a season of, of all things, regret. it becomes harder to ask, what is the meaning of all this? as if i had lost the right to do so, to live as if i were finding it out.

i was playing this song driving home last night. and i know, you know, i know they say that life is incomparable to the hereafter, life now is like pigs in mud, etc. but whatever happens, at least we were once alive, i think for goodness' sake that everyone deserves to say that with dignity.

and i was driving home and i wished that you were around, dl. i wish that i could share a bit of the world with you. it's not that bad in the right places. it's not even that bad in the wrong places.

i'll try not to screw it up abit more.

LXXXIV

elton john, daniel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFJ2YrztYUg

tell me, dl, is God all that they say he is?

LXXXIII - bible thoughts

song of the week: black sabbath, war pigs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqy4DTHGqg
the energy in these old videos is incredible. absolutely untouchable today.

anyway, this is my favourite bit of pure irony in the bible. it's arguably a pretty important bit, too.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

of course, there was the famous donkey talking bit, the fire on sodom bit, the after-flood rainbow bit... the list goes on. but that first one was pure irony.

anyway i was wondering a little bit about the bible lately. firstly, that Jesus was called to lose his godliness (in taking on sin), which is clearly the most difficult thing conceivable, god-or-man-wise. how can Jesus still be God after that? well, he went on the cross, and the rest is history, as they say. anyway, i guess my calling is to lose my humanity, in a fashion.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

also,

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?"

interestingly, this last verse seems to contradict my point. but i'll leave it at that for now. let's just say it has to do with whose interpretation of "self" is to be believed.

secondly, does the holy spirit give us faith (or materially enable us to have faith) or do we need faith to have the holy spirit? this is a very tricky question, and quite easily answered in circular fashion. apart from any bible-derived answer, my intuition is that it happens simultaneously, but that's terribly illogical. without going any further, and i don't really care for the answer, to be quite honest,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

thirdly, imagine telling your son not to steal. ideally, he'd listen to you, but the time will come when he has to make that decision for himself, and not merely because you once told him not to steal. now, isn't that a far more meaningful decision than when you tell him not to steal and he doesn't? similarly, God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit. you see, the thing i don't get is, why is choice so beautifully enshrined in Christ, and yet we have the law so full of legal moralism*? what kind of liberty and choice do we retain if the law is so incredibly prohibitive and inhuman? and how are we to choose to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength if we must deny ourselves to follow Christ?

*generally, the four bases for criminalisation are harm (harm to others), offence (e.g. racist propaganda), legal moralism (e.g. pornography, private homosexualism) and paternalism (e.g. drugs).

i'm going to have a lot of hard questions for that day. until then, i really don't know why i'm still alive. i often wonder, what is the meaning of all this. and i feel more human because of it. i feel, neo-human.

LXXXII - i am not denial

song of the week: pearl jam, yellow bedletter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs8y3kneqrs

going through my old stuff, there were at least four things which weighed heavily with me. one was for love past. one was for a mistreated friend. i'll carry those a bit longer.

one was for an old photo of me, as a little boy. i knew it, but i hardly recognised it. i had no doubt that it was me, in fact, i was convinced that it was me. you could pull out any photo of me as a boy and i'd know it was me. but i didn't recognise the look in my eyes; a look of utter vulnerability. i felt like hugging the little boy there. but i'm old now. maybe my mum still sees me like that.

the other was my old journal stuff. some of it was angsty, some of it was about what the younger me thought were really cool dreams, or memorable encounters. but what made more of an impression on me was the idealist, purist christian stuff i wrote. and i didn't reject it, even though i know more clearly the kind of christian i am now, i.e. not so naively purist. i know that i am purist at one level, but i've come to be kinder to the world, for the most part.

and that's been at the back of my mind for awhile. what is the standard i hold myself to? i do think it's a Godly standard at one level, but it's more humanly now, to be precise, it's my standard. i hold myself to a standard which allows me to be fully who i am - an alive human being, trying to do something for this world.

and that contradicts the word. it says, if anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily. and the purist me believes in this denying. whoever seeks his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. i believe it, yes i do. but here's this: how can you deny that which you don't know?

and that's the whammy of it. the more fully i know what life is, the more fully i can choose what to believe in and what to do. and nevermind my inherent interest in freedom and self-fulfilment, i don't think that denying what i don't know is worth more than denying what i do know about life and what i love about it. and i do believe i can do it, that i can lead a Godly life in my own image. the sentence sounds awful, but accept it on the reasons i've given. i do believe i can be my own man, a Godly one at that.

the first and greatest commandment is this: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with  all your soul and with all your strength. nevermind the second commandment, i got that down pat. back to the first, observe this, only the soul is not of this realm. and that tells me - i must know what my heart and mind and strength is before i can love God with them. and now is the only chance i have. and for the record, only my soul fully loves God right now, i can't explain it besides saying that it's how my soul feels to me.

this is too confounded. let's just say that i believe in the good of many things right now.

LXXXI - clearing space

song of the week: barenaked ladies, call and answer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8XLMxeWLk

there are so many things in life that we carry with us. and so many things besides which slip out of our fingers.

i was doing today what i always wondered why people do, when they burn their old letters, old things. i was just doing it, and i eventually realised it. it had to do with mental classifications - obviously, most of those things i'd kept were stuff i'd once decided to keep. but i'd shifted the mental classifications, or to be more precise, i'd shifted. those were things a younger me would have kept. but i wasn't young anymore.

and it didn't really matter what those things meant, because i wasn't young anymore. it's just, the finality of it is quite sad.

and i realised that i regretted some of the things the younger me did. and i wished that i could go back and be in those moments, saving myself, saving those moments, fixing them, doing right, doing right by people.

if this is what it means to grow old, i'm not sure it's very fun at all.

LXXX - an exposition on play

what is play?

i didn't start thinking about play with a question like this. i do read the philosophers, but no, i don't like to ask, much less answer, questions that begin like this. what is law? eesh, legal theory. what is property? now that was interesting. but let me tell you how i got started - it began with a warped, a detached, a meta-play sort of pride. and i love the word "meta". metaphysics, metaheuristics, metarealism. metta world peace. let me copy out the first line in its wiki article: Meta ... is a prefix ... used to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. now that is beautiful.

i felt proud that i've never truly been addicted to any game. games were, in the past, distractions for me, and not serious ones. i never dota-ed that hard, partly because i knew that it cost too much, and partly because i got tired of it at its highest. well, i never reached its highest, but i knew that the micro (by micro, i refer to the skill) i needed to get there was not worth the effort, nor would it give me satisfaction. i played dota for its teamwork. dota is only one example, the other large one being cs, but eventually i thought that cs too was individualistic. anyway, my point is that computer games were never more than hobbies for me. yes, i did play them a lot, but they were never a lifestyle.

so, what is play? play to me is activity which is chiefly fun. however, i think that true play tends also to be in large parts both educational and enlightening, with regards to the self and with regards to reality. if there is a commonly held view that work is the opposite of play, i would say rather that work is income earning activity, and therefore play is neither necessarily nor sufficiently definitionally excluded from work. woo, big words.

so why did i think about play? this essay began with a feeling that i knew play, that i knew both the very attraction and detraction of games, that i knew the time-efficiency of play, that i could break down into distinct sequences the relationship that i had with play. and i knew that i often went into crusty play very quickly. but before i explain that word, crusty, let me show you my play development observations.

Pagan

Skeptic

Noobie play

Experienced play

Pro play

Appreciative play

Crusty play

Jaded play

Reawakened play

Retro play

as a Pagan, you think play is rubbish. you think games are for kids, a waste of time, unimportant to the self. you think kids play too much computer (which i actually agree with) and would have yours do crosswords to unwind.

a Skeptic thinks that most games are silly, basically allure only through flash and gimmickry, and teach bad values. he thinks Poker is cheating but Snakes and Ladders is safe. he is basically not a Pagan but not a Believer either.

a Newbie is one of those short lived personas who don't know how lucky they are. as robbie williams sings, youth is wasted on the young. noobie fun is the most innocent of fun - the world is brand new after a rain, the birds are singing and every click and spin brings treasure and new, unexplored possibilities. mistakes do not exist in a noobie's consciousness. if a noobie wonders if he is one, he instantly ceases to be a noobie.

an Experienced player is one who decides not to be a noobie. he understands that the game wants to teach him things, and he in turn wants to learn them, although he does not yet necessarily know whether these are good or bad things. he knows only that he is improving at the game. this is fun if the player likes to get better, and thinks that as a pro he will derive utmost satisfaction from the game - this latter point is especially important. if not, he will at this point realise that he never wants to be a pro, and simply becomes a sometime gamer. where the game is not a good game, it is also possible that the gamer sees it for what it is, and decides that pro play of that game is not desirable. but this scenario is uninteresting.

it is not impossible for an experienced gamer to skip pro play and still become an appreciative gamer or a crusty gamer, but in truth i believe that he cannot truly judge a game without being pro at it at one point or another.

a Pro gamer is simply one who owns Experienced gamers. pro gamers only desire to play balanced instances of games, i.e. against other pro gamers. it is hard, lonely work becoming a pro gamer. it is harder, lonelier, staying there. 

an Appreciative player is something that i wish more of us would become - yes, the graphics are nice, the levels are well designed, the gameplay and timing is rhythmic and symphonious, but more importantly, that the creative design, art direction and cultural standard of the game are good at both high and regular levels of abstraction. an appreciative player is both a gamer's gamer and a game-designer's gamer. he sees things that developers want him to see, laughs at the inane things that make designers laugh, and cries when little tragedies occur in a game. he knows that the game teaches good things, that it acts as a mirror of life, and that in each player's gameplay much can be observed about their belief systems and lifestyles. in other words, he is a Believer.

Crusty - now we're getting warm. merriam-webster.com gives crusty as being of surly incivility in address or disposition. and i do believe that many gamers are crusty in the broader sense of being bad-mannered to other gamers, because of the isolated gaming environment we find ourselves in, but possibly also (if less likely) in the narrower sense of seeing ourselves as having grown past the game. we've learnt all that we wanted from a game, or it has taught us all that it could teach us. we play like old uncles play checkers - cynically, sarcastically and insensitively. we shrug when we win and chuckle blithely when we lose. we're like old sea dogs - crusty.

a man may or may not become crusty, and he may or may not become appreciative. in other words, these are optional, advanced phases. many men are happy to be noobs all their lives, many are happy to be hobbyists, enthusiasts, avids, fanatics, sharks, or facilitators. many don't care, it's true. but these things you say about gaming, you could also say about life.

Jaded players have a common understanding - that they have spent way too long playing something. maybe they were too ignorant. maybe they were too weak. maybe they were having a rough time elsewhere. they're not unlike ex-alcoholics; they're bitter. there is a way not to feel jaded - and that is to understand gaming relationships better.

Reawakened play is a sweeping term used to refer to gamers who rediscover the joys of a certain game after a hiatus. few games have true replay value, in that new things can be learnt (or new fun had) after the third or fourth play through, and that includes after having read walkthroughs and guides. few games indeed. but many a time gamers link up and play through stuff together, if only to walk again through their old corridors of power, and revisit their old haunts. a shining example would be MUD, text-based games. these are also old enough to be Retro, but a game (or indeed, anything) has to meet another requirement to be retro. Reawakened play is often closely linked to appreciative play, but it does of course require a good game to encourage appreciation.

Retro play has a requirement written in solid, typeface, bold and underlined font, which is that it must be of a game which was well played in the gamer's past. that's what retro is - that once upon a time your daddy played this game, although to you it would only be old school; that is, only your dad can claim that it is retro. a retro game (following this classification) would be FF7. retro play is fun if and only if it is the kind of game that is fun fifteen years into the future, when it can barely run, requiring 16-bit greek that requires emulators. oh shit i just thought of a truly retro game i will never have back - strike commander. if there is a god, he would someday deign to let me play that game. c:/. cd/sc. sccd.

something intrinsically important is left to be explained, something which underlies and resonates through everything i have just mentioned, a single question - what is a good game? and here i hesitate, this i find inherently difficult to answer. what is good is subjective but can also be rationally and reasonably discovered; of what is good, i do not fear to answer. but what is a good game? for i feel that games are often misunderstood, being children of their times (and we live in strange, fluid times). they are badly understood by both gamers and non-gamers, and do not always stand to gain from their attractive characteristics.

but let me nonetheless begin to answer what i think is a good game. i believe that a good game is intuitive and logical, and if it is a unique, even warped type of logic, provided it is strictly coherent in itself, then it is that much better for it. it is intuitive in that its reward systems make sense to a gamer who is willing to delve into the fictions and artificial constructs of the game. i believe that a good game teaches both micro and macro, with micro being technical skills and macro being strategic thinking both inside the game and outside the game. in this regard, i think that a game should reward the highest micro skills, but not place a premium on them. a game should not penalise gamers who do not use the best systems. the glitz and glamour of a game should be icing, nothing more or less. a good game should be fun for noobies, it should be fun for experienceds, and it should be fun for pros. the learning curve of a good game should be realistic at each level; it should be balanced in that it rewards each level of proficiency accordingly, and not merely with a handicap system. a good game should ideally produce an immersible experience, but not create one so overwhelmingly saturated that a gamer's imagination cannot be properly applied to his gaming experience. obviously, the difference in this regard between a computer game and a board game can be startling; a proper comparison may be implausible. but no less, i believe that a good game cultivates the imagination, and does not inhibit it. a good game teaches a gamer adaptive skills, tactical efficiency and exposure to various schools of thought. a good game teaches a gamer to anticipate and pre-empt other gamers. i firmly believe that a good game should teach life lessons, both in single player and multi-player mode. i believe that a truly good game is fun even the third or fourth time through. i believe that a truly good game spans generations. finally, i believe that a good game is like art in that it reflects humanity.

so my hope is that play is not something we think of lightly, not something we do not often ask ourselves the importance of with regards to our maturity, and not something we eventually dismiss and relegate from our lives. as nietzsche once said, men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play. and i think chesterton is both right and wrong when he says, it is only we who play badly who love the game itself.

----------

oh my god...

Title: The Perfect Game
Author: G. K. Chesterton

We have all met the man who says that some odd things have happened to him, but that he does not really believe that they were supernatural. My own position is the opposite of this. I believe in the supernatural as a matter of intellect and reason, not as a matter of personal experience. I do not see ghosts; I only see their inherent probability. But it is entirely a matter of the mere intelligence, not even of the motions; my nerves and body are altogether of this earth, very earthy. But upon people of this temperament one weird incident will often leave a peculiar impression. And the weirdest circumstance that ever occurred to me occurred a little while ago. It consisted in nothing less than my playing a game, and playing it quite well for some seventeen consecutive minutes. The ghost of my grandfather would have astonished me less. 

On one of these blue and burning afternoons I found myself, to my inexpressible astonishment, playing a game called croquet. I had imagined that it belonged to the epoch of Leach and Anthony Trollope, and I had neglected to provide myself with those very long and luxuriant side whiskers which are really essential to such a scene. I played it with a man whom we will call Parkinson, and with whom I had a semi-philosophical argument which lasted through the entire contest. It is deeply implanted in my mind that I had the best of the argument; but it is certain and beyond dispute that I had the worst of the game. 

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure love of the sport--you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick." 

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety. 

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm. "I shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more a man likes a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that the pleasure in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure of success come naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I never yet heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when he was there." 

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking, the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the love of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not true that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger will be the game. It is logically possible--(follow me closely here, Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would not put it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your hand; it would not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you would not play at all. The moment the game is perfect the game disappears." 

"I do not think, however," said Parkinson, "that you are in any immediate danger of effecting that sort of destruction. I do not think your croquet will vanish through its own faultless excellence. You are safe for the present." 

I again caressed him with the mallet, knocked a ball about, wired myself, and resumed the thread of my discourse. 

The long, warm evening had been gradually closing in, and by this time it was almost twilight. By the time I had delivered four more fundamental principles, and my companion had gone through five more hoops, the dusk was verging upon dark. 

"We shall have to give this up," said Parkinson, as he missed a ball almost for the first time, "I can't see a thing." 

"Nor can I," I answered, "and it is a comfort to reflect that I could not hit anything if I saw it." 

With that I struck a ball smartly, and sent it away into the darkness towards where the shadowy figure of Parkinson moved in the hot haze. Parkinson immediately uttered a loud and dramatic cry. The situation, indeed, called for it. I had hit the right ball. 

Stunned with astonishment, I crossed the gloomy ground, and hit my ball again. It went through a hoop. I could not see the hoop; but it was the right hoop. I shuddered from head to foot. 

Words were wholly inadequate, so I slouched heavily after that impossible ball. Again I hit it away into the night, in what I supposed was the vague direction of the quite invisible stick. And in the dead silence I heard the stick rattle as the ball struck it heavily. 

I threw down my mallet. "I can't stand this," I said. "My ball has gone right three times. These things are not of this world." 

"Pick your mallet up ," said Parkinson, "have another go." 

"I tell you I daren't. If I made another hoop like that I should see all the devils dancing there on the blessed grass." 

"Why devils?" asked Parkinson; "they may be only fairies making fun of you. They are sending you the 'Perfect Game,' which is no game." 

I looked about me. The garden was full of a burning darkness, in which the faint glimmers had the look of fire. I stepped across the grass as if it burnt me, picked up the mallet, and hit the ball somewhere--somewhere where another ball might be. I heard the dull click of the balls touching, and ran into the house like one pursued.

LXXIX - universalising the particular and particularising the universal

song of the week: ff7, ahead on our way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afZPyBvuXPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bG0JLyzzmI

i realise that i don't like to blog as much as i like to post on facebook, which is kinda like a more serious tweet. which is really kinda dumb in retrospect. but i guess it's alright because i don't need to record everything.

anyway, i've had a lot of thoughts lately, but nothing really poetic or lyrical, nothing much to write about. but there's been a lot of soul searching, well, not my soul per se, but i mean, deep thinking. i think i can remember most of it without writing it all down, and that's the point, i guess.

i don't like to toot my horn, but i often find it strange that i'm so god damn charming. it is bemusing, to say the least. if i weren't so self-aware i'd quite likely still be a playboy sort. ah, the smaller mysteries of life.

where is my god damn coffee.

i've been wandering around a lot lately, on foot, with different bunches, and in my mind. i think, i think... i think that to write it down would somehow... fail to capture the ephemeral, the mysterious, the ineffable charm of the past few weeks. i'm just, living in the present, the middle of now, to be precise. making it up as i go along, living like every day is special. i feel happy. i feel solid. i feel as if i've come out of a deep place and i'm walking on a road that goes somewhere i know is good. the road could have potholes but i couldn't give a flying fuck. i'm not cheerful. i'm just, really, alright. i almost couldn't be better. and i believe it more than when i thought that i couldn't be better. i could say it again just to enjoy the feeling of saying it, i almost couldn't be better. and that's a good life, isn't it?

i'm sorry that i didn't see this girl off, but, i mean, whatever, right? it was the insidiousness of it, just the insidiousness of it. like i said, fuck this, i'm not afraid of Anything.

i realise that the only mask i have left on, of all the very openness and directness and transparency that i wish to be known for, is that i want to wear the mask of the Anti-Hero. i covet it, i treasure it, i revel in it. i love the Anti-Hero idea, i dig it, i wish to symbolise it, i want to bring it to the next level. it's so fucking cool. and speaking of masks... i think to a large extent we are the masks that we wear. we create ourselves, or at least, the external person that we want to be. and very often a mask becomes a character. but i don't believe in wearing masks. i did when i was younger, but i've slowly seen the good of not wearing a mask. i think there's nothing to be afraid of, that needs to be hidden behind a mask. whether or not the world accepts me, or anyone, is something i don't want to find out from behind a mask.

when i was jogging home just now, well i was walking, to rest my slightly injured leg, i found myself praying to God to give every man, woman and child on the face of this earth just one happy day this year. just one goddamned unblemished, unadulterated, unqualified Happy Day. One Day Of Happiness. and i realised that between God and the devil, it was more likely the latter who would grant me this wish, assuming either had the power to do so. i mean, that is the biblical perspective. but i found myself no less wishing for God to give every human being alive ODOH. we live three hundred and sixty odd days a year, i don't think it's too much for the Almighty to give one bloody day of happiness to everyone, right? but it made me wonder whether living for such a cause was right, whether i subconsciously wanted everyone to be happy, something fleeting, but no less human, no less important in life, Life. i mean, why is it so much to ask? why must it always be, the eternal, salvation of souls, etc. so annoying. but those... are the rules, like it or not, those are the rules i somehow... believe in. my soul belongs to God, but i don't know if i love him all the time with all my strength and mind and heart. my heart firmly belongs to this world, and i'd be the first to say so... even though i figure it's ultimately otherwise. but i believe... in the good of ODOH. it's human, it's compassion, it's something to live for, something worthy.

there's too much tension out there.