When I submit to mind games
Life is feeling more to me like a puzzle I have been spending my whole life solving that seems to have no reward for completion, besides the completed image of the puzzle itself. This puzzle plays less like a single transaction purchase from your local game store where you go home on a quiet night and dump out the whole box, spend time building up the borders, flipping all the puzzle bits right side up, filling in the "easy" pictures, and then moving on to the tougher, more indistinguishable parts. No, this puzzle plays like a collectible card game or a scavenger hunt because you are never allowed anywhere close to all the pieces. This is one of those puzzles that are a whodunnit mystery at the same time, and only by completing the picture do you get all the clues to the murder. Those puzzles that are designed to be hard, where the pieces are all cut to fit together very similarly, or have pictures on both sides, repeating patterns, or are mostly all the same color. Pieces to this puzzle cost you indeterminate random values from pennies or one moment of quiet contemplation to weeks or years of study or thousands of dollars, before you get to see the image on the piece. You don't know how many pieces you get or what part of this seemingly massive and endless puzzle they go to, and there's absolutely no semblance of a border with which to frame the rest of the image. Ever.
But still, I spend a lot of time flipping pieces over. There's images on both sides so there is no right side up. The pictures that form never seem easy until the last piece goes in, when you see you've had a lot of the parts all along, but you just needed that certain set of pieces to be put together first. Then, you're challenged to continue by the partial images on the border of that small, once difficult and incomplete completed image that lead to the next completed part of the image. Flipping over a completed part reveals some new clue, herring or otherwise, that makes me want to go out and buy another booster pack. These new clues, if they are even clues, start my processes in my mind to look back on other pieces I've flipped to see if there's some connection between them. A very frustrating process. A seemingly mistake ridden process, but are they mistakes? If you think to connect the wrong things, was that really time wasted? Moving a piece around borders from sections of patchy completions to test the fit brings you back to those old completions at least, refreshes your memory to them and the clues they hold, clues that once were actively attempting to solve that have fallen from memory or have become drowned out in a larger patch of completed pictures.
Sometimes, on days like today, I bridge the "islands" of completed images with tiny paths of connected pieces. In some ways like completing a normal puzzle's border first, these bridges form voids between completed images. Voids that call to me, calling for more pieces, calling with the lure of a fresh, juicy hint, something that will lead me to connecting more pieces that form more bridges between images that form more voids that call again for completion.
It is a truly beautiful feeling to me to have those last pieces go in, when everything seems easy right before some small part is complete. Even when there's those little empty spots that remain incomplete right nearby, there's something joy inducing, relaxing even, about having clues or pieces that once seemed like a wild goose chase getting to fit, sitting naturally as ever in the network of completed images that come together to form the current state of puzzle completion. You pull your gaze back from that miserably uncomfortable but desperately required nose-table distance of deep scrutiny and pause to admire how "seamlessly" everything you've worked so far for appears to lock together perfectly like they've been connected the whole time. Because they have been. Before I ever saw a single piece of the puzzle it had already been designed, printed, cut, packed, and shipped. Was the _whole_ puzzle complete before production and distribution? Of course not, though there's no way to know which parts were produced by the manufacturer in whatever order. Think of the plot to any TV Series at the Season Finale - did they leave the plot hanging open intentionally? Well sure, but did they have every episode of the next season written? Or was there just a basic story arc for season 3 by the end of production for season 2? Fuck, was every pause, breath and laugh of the dialog written for season 6 before the filming of season 1 ever began? Gotta say that's impossible to know for sure unless you're the show's writer the entire time, and then if you aren't as the majority of us are, it's only manageable to try and make those kinds of guesses when you've seen every season right through enough times to be able to know everything that's happening as you see it happening along with what's going to happen and what already has taken place.
What the flip side of the coin here shows is that while there are these great questions that get asked, and what looks to be plenty of satisfying answers are given, there are those points where you've seen partial images and clues in the vast puzzle and drawn conclusions about the contents of voids, and these conclusions might feel like they fit the picture you have formed so far, only to be shown to be wrong, or worse, unlikely, by the introduction of new pieces. There's nothing bad about finding out the truth, knowing for sure, but that's rare to happen. There is no 100%, what you learn may not be the reality or even a good estimation. I torture myself endlessly wondering if what I know is true, but what ends up feeling best in the long run is to let go of this analog of paranoia in knowledge, and spend time picking up more pieces to the puzzle, flipping them to see both sides, and trying them out next to completed parts to test fitness. When a picture fits seamlessly there is little confusion as to its reality, but there's always that nagging feeling, did I force an incorrect piece in there to make the image look complete, even though the knobs and tabs look compatible? If so, was the correct piece needed to glean some clue from the completed image? The protection from such an event is to not try and force something that doesn't seem to fit, get up close and scrutinize the design as it travels from one piece to the next.. are they really cut from the same part of the total picture?
But still, I spend a lot of time flipping pieces over. There's images on both sides so there is no right side up. The pictures that form never seem easy until the last piece goes in, when you see you've had a lot of the parts all along, but you just needed that certain set of pieces to be put together first. Then, you're challenged to continue by the partial images on the border of that small, once difficult and incomplete completed image that lead to the next completed part of the image. Flipping over a completed part reveals some new clue, herring or otherwise, that makes me want to go out and buy another booster pack. These new clues, if they are even clues, start my processes in my mind to look back on other pieces I've flipped to see if there's some connection between them. A very frustrating process. A seemingly mistake ridden process, but are they mistakes? If you think to connect the wrong things, was that really time wasted? Moving a piece around borders from sections of patchy completions to test the fit brings you back to those old completions at least, refreshes your memory to them and the clues they hold, clues that once were actively attempting to solve that have fallen from memory or have become drowned out in a larger patch of completed pictures.
Sometimes, on days like today, I bridge the "islands" of completed images with tiny paths of connected pieces. In some ways like completing a normal puzzle's border first, these bridges form voids between completed images. Voids that call to me, calling for more pieces, calling with the lure of a fresh, juicy hint, something that will lead me to connecting more pieces that form more bridges between images that form more voids that call again for completion.
It is a truly beautiful feeling to me to have those last pieces go in, when everything seems easy right before some small part is complete. Even when there's those little empty spots that remain incomplete right nearby, there's something joy inducing, relaxing even, about having clues or pieces that once seemed like a wild goose chase getting to fit, sitting naturally as ever in the network of completed images that come together to form the current state of puzzle completion. You pull your gaze back from that miserably uncomfortable but desperately required nose-table distance of deep scrutiny and pause to admire how "seamlessly" everything you've worked so far for appears to lock together perfectly like they've been connected the whole time. Because they have been. Before I ever saw a single piece of the puzzle it had already been designed, printed, cut, packed, and shipped. Was the _whole_ puzzle complete before production and distribution? Of course not, though there's no way to know which parts were produced by the manufacturer in whatever order. Think of the plot to any TV Series at the Season Finale - did they leave the plot hanging open intentionally? Well sure, but did they have every episode of the next season written? Or was there just a basic story arc for season 3 by the end of production for season 2? Fuck, was every pause, breath and laugh of the dialog written for season 6 before the filming of season 1 ever began? Gotta say that's impossible to know for sure unless you're the show's writer the entire time, and then if you aren't as the majority of us are, it's only manageable to try and make those kinds of guesses when you've seen every season right through enough times to be able to know everything that's happening as you see it happening along with what's going to happen and what already has taken place.
What the flip side of the coin here shows is that while there are these great questions that get asked, and what looks to be plenty of satisfying answers are given, there are those points where you've seen partial images and clues in the vast puzzle and drawn conclusions about the contents of voids, and these conclusions might feel like they fit the picture you have formed so far, only to be shown to be wrong, or worse, unlikely, by the introduction of new pieces. There's nothing bad about finding out the truth, knowing for sure, but that's rare to happen. There is no 100%, what you learn may not be the reality or even a good estimation. I torture myself endlessly wondering if what I know is true, but what ends up feeling best in the long run is to let go of this analog of paranoia in knowledge, and spend time picking up more pieces to the puzzle, flipping them to see both sides, and trying them out next to completed parts to test fitness. When a picture fits seamlessly there is little confusion as to its reality, but there's always that nagging feeling, did I force an incorrect piece in there to make the image look complete, even though the knobs and tabs look compatible? If so, was the correct piece needed to glean some clue from the completed image? The protection from such an event is to not try and force something that doesn't seem to fit, get up close and scrutinize the design as it travels from one piece to the next.. are they really cut from the same part of the total picture?