do you realize just when you are young the things you take so seriously mean nothing at all?
Somewhere in northern California there's a young boy about to experience Japanese curry for the first time. His grandma brings it out on a plate and gives it to the boy like it's nothing. He doesn't know anything about critical thought, or even what he likes as an individual. His constant desire for something new kept urging him to sit and focus on every novelty that passed his way, and as a child, that's essentially all you need to do in order to grasp a new experience: sit there. He was branded forever with a temper, a check for the balance of wanton exploration. Within the eyes of that hereditary meal lies the secret key that unlocks our primal urge for comfort. Not much attention was paid to family. They were always there, and people can always be studied. This is unimportant. What is important? The fresh, the ephemeral, exotic, prone to change. But on that plate was something I'd never want to leave.
I'm making it for dinner tonight, curry. Served with rice, it's one of the finest and simplest meals available. But what brings people together like food? Perhaps it's that same desire for comfort that Freud was talking about; the universal urge to return to the womb, to get that same feeling that you gradually had less and less of as you grew older. It's one of the only activities that we can trace all the way back to our very first days of living, and even before that, really. We can trace it all the way back to that pre-jurassic era wherein the evolutionary development we like to call a mouth was breaking ground. It's something we've always done and it's something we'll continue to do. So we're brought together by this, this sapient plate full of life and change, and we eat of it to paradoxically spiral out while retreating back home.
I remember the first time I actually wanted sex and love. A large part of me even now pursues things like that just for the sheer novelty of it, but there is absolutely some gestalt involved whenever two people make even the remotest of observations of one another. Every picture tells a story, so next time you look at a person, take a step back. It's easy to guess what happens between people. I say this now, but at the beginning of my romantic experiences I hadn't the faintest idea of what was what. In fact I'd hardly used my emotions at all before then. Humans are full of paradoxes, checks, and balances. I experienced the rapture of love, the seething jealousy, the manic worry, the soft darkness of denial and the utter confusion that invariably occurs when two people share more than they ever have with another. I was bumbling, budding, burgeoning. But I was happy.
In Tim Rogers' Mother 2 article, he writes about Shigesato Itoi's viewpoint on videogames. Itoi opines about videogames being like prostitutes, they pander to your whims for a price, and requires no emotional input in order to receive emotional output. The prostitute does not complain. This is all part of the deal. Even strangling a prostitute to death (which is generally regarded as somewhat out of the scope of a prostitute's services) takes a level of emotional involvement that too is above and beyond the scope of the original contract. So, in videogames, in prostitutes, in dinner, it is all at cost.
There are two distinct phases of my life that revolve around videogames. One of them is the pre Year Seventeen mental breakdown phase, where my enjoyment of videogames was puerile, natch, very superficial and ghostly.At that point in my life no one had actually told me that what I was supposed to do was engage the world by comparison, use MY perceptions and do things on my own terms instead of on everything else's. I was supposed to use my head, my heart, not someone else's, to feel the world. I was the closest thing to lacking an ego that you can get, way back when. Whenever I did anything in that phase of my life, it was a lot like a science experiment. What will happen to subject X if stimulus Y is applied during time Z? And this level of objectivity created a highly empty world to live in. I broke down and cried, one dusky autumn day and when I woke up I knew with everything I had that a clear demarcation had been drawn: Then and now. It's always been there, I suppose, I just had missed it all those years, somehow.
After that, I was born again, in a sense, though decidedly more secularly resurrected than most Jewish superheroes. I was forced to look at the world through a pair of glasses. It's not unlike, I imagine, the sensation a flower gets after it's done germinating, sprouting, and then finally gets to serve its full purpose: to bloom and receive the sun's bountiful rays. Before this I was animalistic, simple. eating food out of sheer necessity, driving myself into books, videogames, tinkering with household electronics. I had very little regard for social propriety, generally choosing to use the restroom when and where I felt. A fond spot was in front of the TV. I can remember on more than one occasion playing until I couldn't hold it anymore, not caring, and still playing. That was a novel experience for me then, as well. And for the record, I never was able to beat the fucking last boss of Zelda 2, pissed pants or no pissed pants. I kind of have to go right now and I'm getting flashbacks about shadow Link.
I don't happen to think that the idea behind videogames is that of a prostitute, though. I think the idea behind videogames is that of a lover. You come home from a hard day at the office, get your back and feet rubbed, and even have dinner with her, or play videogames with her (how meta!) but eventually you'll find a new one to rub your feet, or a new game to play, or a new dinner to have. And I think that's just a reflection of Freud's psychology. You want love? Tough shit, you won't find it underneath your thumbs, or on a plate, or audible in the weary "Honey, I'm home!" that comes after every day's hard work. You, the poor sap that you are, have to go ALL the way back to the womb for that. Freud needs to lay off the coke. Or maybe not! Like so many other Saturday morning cartoon specials over the years, maybe the message here is "You were actually sweet all along, you didn't need the magic ring to begin with!" So stop whatever ridiculous crusade you're on, play a videogame, and have some fucking dinner.
Master Picasso opined that the urge to destroy is also a creative urge. He means that you can't destroy anything without having an idea of what you want it to end up like. This is very true, and if quantum physics teaches us anything, we can't DO ANYTHING without making some kind of disturbance in the world around us. So, when you eat that dinner, know what you're doing it for. When you beat that videogame, you know why. And when you love another person, you do it with purpose.
This isn't particularly about anything, I suppose. I just wanted to write.
I'm making it for dinner tonight, curry. Served with rice, it's one of the finest and simplest meals available. But what brings people together like food? Perhaps it's that same desire for comfort that Freud was talking about; the universal urge to return to the womb, to get that same feeling that you gradually had less and less of as you grew older. It's one of the only activities that we can trace all the way back to our very first days of living, and even before that, really. We can trace it all the way back to that pre-jurassic era wherein the evolutionary development we like to call a mouth was breaking ground. It's something we've always done and it's something we'll continue to do. So we're brought together by this, this sapient plate full of life and change, and we eat of it to paradoxically spiral out while retreating back home.
I remember the first time I actually wanted sex and love. A large part of me even now pursues things like that just for the sheer novelty of it, but there is absolutely some gestalt involved whenever two people make even the remotest of observations of one another. Every picture tells a story, so next time you look at a person, take a step back. It's easy to guess what happens between people. I say this now, but at the beginning of my romantic experiences I hadn't the faintest idea of what was what. In fact I'd hardly used my emotions at all before then. Humans are full of paradoxes, checks, and balances. I experienced the rapture of love, the seething jealousy, the manic worry, the soft darkness of denial and the utter confusion that invariably occurs when two people share more than they ever have with another. I was bumbling, budding, burgeoning. But I was happy.
In Tim Rogers' Mother 2 article, he writes about Shigesato Itoi's viewpoint on videogames. Itoi opines about videogames being like prostitutes, they pander to your whims for a price, and requires no emotional input in order to receive emotional output. The prostitute does not complain. This is all part of the deal. Even strangling a prostitute to death (which is generally regarded as somewhat out of the scope of a prostitute's services) takes a level of emotional involvement that too is above and beyond the scope of the original contract. So, in videogames, in prostitutes, in dinner, it is all at cost.
There are two distinct phases of my life that revolve around videogames. One of them is the pre Year Seventeen mental breakdown phase, where my enjoyment of videogames was puerile, natch, very superficial and ghostly.At that point in my life no one had actually told me that what I was supposed to do was engage the world by comparison, use MY perceptions and do things on my own terms instead of on everything else's. I was supposed to use my head, my heart, not someone else's, to feel the world. I was the closest thing to lacking an ego that you can get, way back when. Whenever I did anything in that phase of my life, it was a lot like a science experiment. What will happen to subject X if stimulus Y is applied during time Z? And this level of objectivity created a highly empty world to live in. I broke down and cried, one dusky autumn day and when I woke up I knew with everything I had that a clear demarcation had been drawn: Then and now. It's always been there, I suppose, I just had missed it all those years, somehow.
After that, I was born again, in a sense, though decidedly more secularly resurrected than most Jewish superheroes. I was forced to look at the world through a pair of glasses. It's not unlike, I imagine, the sensation a flower gets after it's done germinating, sprouting, and then finally gets to serve its full purpose: to bloom and receive the sun's bountiful rays. Before this I was animalistic, simple. eating food out of sheer necessity, driving myself into books, videogames, tinkering with household electronics. I had very little regard for social propriety, generally choosing to use the restroom when and where I felt. A fond spot was in front of the TV. I can remember on more than one occasion playing until I couldn't hold it anymore, not caring, and still playing. That was a novel experience for me then, as well. And for the record, I never was able to beat the fucking last boss of Zelda 2, pissed pants or no pissed pants. I kind of have to go right now and I'm getting flashbacks about shadow Link.
I don't happen to think that the idea behind videogames is that of a prostitute, though. I think the idea behind videogames is that of a lover. You come home from a hard day at the office, get your back and feet rubbed, and even have dinner with her, or play videogames with her (how meta!) but eventually you'll find a new one to rub your feet, or a new game to play, or a new dinner to have. And I think that's just a reflection of Freud's psychology. You want love? Tough shit, you won't find it underneath your thumbs, or on a plate, or audible in the weary "Honey, I'm home!" that comes after every day's hard work. You, the poor sap that you are, have to go ALL the way back to the womb for that. Freud needs to lay off the coke. Or maybe not! Like so many other Saturday morning cartoon specials over the years, maybe the message here is "You were actually sweet all along, you didn't need the magic ring to begin with!" So stop whatever ridiculous crusade you're on, play a videogame, and have some fucking dinner.
Master Picasso opined that the urge to destroy is also a creative urge. He means that you can't destroy anything without having an idea of what you want it to end up like. This is very true, and if quantum physics teaches us anything, we can't DO ANYTHING without making some kind of disturbance in the world around us. So, when you eat that dinner, know what you're doing it for. When you beat that videogame, you know why. And when you love another person, you do it with purpose.
This isn't particularly about anything, I suppose. I just wanted to write.