Tuesday, June 26, 2007

For want of a nail

Sometimes, we can't see the forest for the trees. And sometimes, we can't see the trees either.

I think, that we lose track of the whole because we get lost in the details. For example, I'm dropping you readers into the middle of this after a week's absence from posting... So give me a minute to back up and explain.

I was sitting here tonight trying to figure out what to write. Checking over the blog, I realized it had been a week since the last update. I do feel some obligation to keep putting stuff up while I'm writing. Both for any unfortunate soul that visits and for my sake, to keep me actively writing instead of being distracted by daily life.

As I sat staring at the blank post screen, I realized I could write about why I didn't have anything to write about. I was going to ramble on about the importance of having an idea, drafting it, editing it and then posting. Even the lack of having a title was going to make a good point, despite the fact that it was obviously going to have one by the time I posted.

That lead into a large discussion (or monologue) about what it meant to have details. Examples and counterpoints about how we can see the whole of a book but not understand what went into making it. That we had to have it broken down into parts like letters and words so that we could understand it, without breaking it down into authors, publishers, printers.

Then I got to thinking about how it applies to people.

I think that we get accustomed to being able to put things in their place. We break things down by defining them, making parts a whole entity themselves and then breaking those entities down into smaller parts and repeating the process. The Greeks once thought that the smallest thing that existed was an atom. And we held onto that idea in physics until we found a way to break it down into smaller and smaller parts.

Kids don't have that hang-up. When a child moves, they're usually able to make new friends and eventually adapt to their new home. Maybe it's because they like to play tag, and find a game that's the same or similar enough at their new home. Or maybe the new kids are outgoing enough to draw them in (or the child herself is outgoing enough to engage the new kids). The point is that they are usually far more flexible than adults to deal with changes in their life. They haven't broken themselves down into tiny pieces that have to be defined so that they are the same person that they were. They were at their old home, now they're at the new home. It doesn't affect that they like to play tag (or whatever game is preferred), it's just that they appreciate the individual segments of themselves without needing it to broken down to atoms.

As we get older, we get used to playing tag "our way." We start to lock down details and define them beyond being fuzzy concepts. We make parts of parts, so that we can better understand them. Teenagers are a prime example. They're busy trying to establish their own cultural view, appearance, even knowledge and general demeanor. They try to say who they are, while figuring out how catalogue their details like a score card. It helps them to find others when they have similar score cards, and perhaps gives them a path to follow to be more like the people they idolize. Except that some things are exceedingly hard to define.

When we finish the transition from those years, we're told it's a good time to "find ourselves." And a few years after that, you're expected to have finished logging your values and virtues and be that kind of person.

But people aren't permanent like stone; they're far more like water. While we're far more fluid as kids and kind of freeze up into ice as we become adults, we're still able to alter and change. The characteristics that compose us are both internally defined and externally given. But they aren't permanent.

We can get lost just trying to define ourselves and wonder why that is. I think it's because we can change. Our parts don't stay the same; they wear out and get replaced or improved. The details that make us "us", aren't things that you can continuously break down until you find their atoms and understand them.

You can be a generous person your whole life, and but not for the same reasons all the time. It could be because you had a good day, or because someone had a bad one, or maybe just because you had a lot and felt like sharing. Even breaking a person down into parts to say that they're generous or stingy might be going too far. But it's as far as we can go before we stop seeing the forest because of the atoms in the trees.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The (g)reefs of community

Reading over a fellow blogger's post last night, and I was struck by a thought. Human communities are kind of like coral. Seems odd, doesn't it? But bear with me.We kind of form communities by aggregate. A couple of like minded people meet, bond, and start to develop something. They invest work, time and energy into making that something grow. Meanwhile others stumble across and decide to join in or make their own.

This holds true for muds and even for this blog. Because of the Karinthadillo, I'm here posting originally and even now on this post. Others followed his example and started up a few blogs of their own. Perhaps eventually, a community of semi-linked individuals will gather. But like coral, these communities can be fragile.

Environmental changes can have a dramatic effect. We don't have a formal link, one blog is independant of another. I can think of three others that are linked in this fragile web and no single blog relies on the others in order to post or create. I don't necessarily know all those who keep their blogs or posts, but because of the activity and survival of those blogs I am familiar with, I'm inspired to maintain my own. If something were to happen to reduce the blogs or perhaps a prolonged period of inactivity, then this early reef would die.

This applies to muds as well. The coders create that first all important base. Next come the dedicated players and developers that try to make the fledging community grow. So long as the players do their part to build up the mud, it grows. But when they allow their portion to wither away and die, it makes it harder for the next person to find a place to grow.

*shrug* A thought, one I thought might be worthwhile to post in the currents.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Lessons for me

So, it's been a few days again and people are bound to get a bit touchy wondering what's happened. Yeah, for those that are regular readers they're bound to be aware of the delays that happen. Just not able to be around to post. Nor do I feel it's fair to post a blurb to the effect of "I'm here." I could do that if people were anxious, but it doesn't really give them any reward beyond that. No knowledge, nothing really to think about, yet...

Meh, anyways, the point of this post. Yeah, this is one that has more of a point than a "I'm here." Lessons. It's amazing what a person can learn when they try.

First, I've learned that it's hard for me to get into a proper habit. I've had a few days since the last post, and technically a few days before that one as well. A few days? For what? To think, to contemplate, all those bits that I normally do. Yeah, I'm a self-meditator.

Anyways, I created this blog as a sort of way to jot things down. To express things that I haven't yet finished thinking about, but at least had enough of a grip on to say something. That it may incidentally provoke others to think and respond with their insights, was the bonus and reason why it's up here on the net instead of quietly existing as one of the myriad of text files I have on the computer. (Which I realize, might serve as future posting material or "Filler"... hmm, this bears thinking about).

I can not keep on topic tonight! This was created to post ideas, so that they didn't slip away. Well, I've had a few ideas that came to me, that I intended to address and maybe even post here and most of them escaped over the period of time since the last post. The story was one idea that came to me and had to go out. But the others, save one, escaped. That rather irks me. I'll probably conjour them anew later, and then have to again go through them and re-establish what I was able to achieve before, without having a chance to get further or get more.

Alright, second lesson. (Those of you who have kept pace with tonights various feints and outright misdirection earn a point) I learned that you can edit posts without disrupting their place in the blog! I can practically hear some of you groaning, and others wondering why I didn't already know that. Point there is, I hadn't tried and I'm not familiar with it. I thought to myself that perhaps by editing the post, it might consider itself to have new material (which in a way, it does) and then try to hit the top of the blog as a "new" post instead of remaining stoically where it should at its original post point.

I have, this should come as no surprise, made typing mistakes before and undoubtedly will again. But one typo in particular was annoying. I used the wrong word entirely. Pronounced the same, spelled quite differently and of course, meaning something else entirely. I guess this means I'm an audio thinker? I found it when I was trying to pick up the threads of thought to try to find the escapees, and decided that it was worth the risk of changing the post's spot, to edit it and correct the typo.

Now, onto something else yet again!

Thought. Where do thoughts come from? What are they supposed to represent? Stay with me here. Why are thoughts necessary? We know memories exist without being concious of them all the time. You can dredge up memories of last week or years ago without needing to have kept them as a concious thought from last week or years ago. Now, to actually remember them you need to think of them. But when you don't think of them, it isn't as though the memory is lost forever or ceases to exist. It just, disappears effectively from your conciousness.

As for the flip side, why is there a concious need for thought? Could you not achieve the same without needing to conciously express the idea? For instance, when you can't understand something that somone is trying to explain to you, you're working to put their words together and derive an understanding. Sometimes, you just get it. It's there, without a thought or process to have arrived at it. Other times, you have to follow them premise by premise until you reach the conclusion they were trying to express.

Something I'll continue to think about, now that I remember it.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Story for a grandma

Someone else told me to post a story. A second somebody posted up stories of their own. My muse gave me this one at lunch, and I've spent a little while working on it. Different vein then I normally intend to write, but you don't get to control what your muse tells you. Could do with more editing and all that, but I have to get to sleep. Since this blog was to help me to release some creativity, I figured it would be a good spot for it.

With that, enjoy...

I sit at my grandmother's bedside, holding her hand and uttering the soothing phrases needed when she's conscious. Sometimes I'm me and she's herself and I am reminded of why I am here. But other times I am my mother, no matter how often I gently remind her otherwise. There are worse times, when she mistakes me for people who have moved on ahead of her a decade ago or longer.

It's only when she's fully lucid that she even realizes roughly what year it is. Other times I try, it seems like she's simply agreeing with me without understanding what I'm saying. As though by giving her assent, she might dispel the terrible voids forming in her mind. But I don't push it either. We can not change what time we have left or the form it will take, so we talk when the chance comes.

So here I am like the guardian of a light house, keeping the light lit so that everyone can make it back safe to harbor. Here, in this room I remember from childhood as being filled with the scent of lilac, the feel of fabrics and the bright colors of the cloth. The work that she filled her life with as she made things of beauty for her friends and family.

It's darker now, and cleaner. The nurse that comes once a week chastises me if it smells different. The fabrics have been folded and put away; grandmother won't be working on them again. I keep the room tidy, so that she doesn't worry when she rejoins us in the present. I feel that sometimes, that she's concerned about what has happened in her absence, while she was in a by-gone day.

I wonder what it will be like when I get older. The doctors say it is inheritable. Will I be laid up like this, and taken care of by one of my children or grandchildren? Will they cry tears into the comforter beside my arm. Tears I won't notice or understand while I am busy revisiting these days or even the days that I haven't yet lived?

I wipe away damp salty tracks which run across my cheeks and open the window curtains. It is midmorning and the army base across the bay has all three of their white domes visible today. When I was visiting her house as a child, my grandmother and I would eat our breakfast downstairs and watch the base. The domes looked like giant mounds of snow from her place, the only snow I'd see in our climate. We'd joke that it was too warm a day if we couldn't see them or that it was going to be cold outside when they were uncovered.

As an adult, that illusion was dispelled. I was too young to know of the cold war, and what it meant when they tried to hide the base. It wasn't something that you could explain to a child, so she found another way to let it exist without having it hang over my head.

She was always like that, finding ways to let me live my life without worrying about what was beyond my control. She had a cookie when I was sad, a shoulder when I needed to cry, and an ear when I had to talk. Wisdom when I was lost, a hand when I needed help. All the parts of herself that she could, she used to help me.

She did so much for me and loved me so dearly, that I could not stay away now. Not when she was in her hour of need and not when there was so much that I wanted to thank her for. But it is hard to sit here and hold her hand, to speak the comfort that she needs to hear when she doesn't know who I am, or why I am here. Or even that I love her.

But there are moments though, in those precious few moments that I am me and she is grandma, we squeeze each other's hands and smile. They may not be long or often, but they are moments that live in a time of their own, the moments when she knows my love and returns it.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

So where does the mind go?

It's kind of interesting to play a character when it's RP that's in mind. I'm not talking about single player RPGs or the grind and pay MMORPGs. The latter doesn't really have any aspect of RP to it, so I kind of take issue to it claiming RPG... but meh, a topic for another time (or place).

When playing a true RPG, it's fun making the character and trying to live true to what their life would be. Sure, you can get up and quit any time you want. Yes, their world is incomplete. People that your character knows might not even exist at a given moment. But when you are there the world is given a chance to live a little. When you meet others, it's not a scripted event designed to further a story line but instead something that's actually happening.

Of course, it's fair to argue that they are a form of escapism. Leaving your life behind to enter a world of magic. A world of certainties about the gods. One where you do not need to be afraid of dying, yet can be a great warrior instead of that person who does that lousy job. Being something other than what you are. A valued hero instead of a nameless person.

But, a true RPG is more than an escape. It's an adventure, exploration of a world and its people. In this case, you as a player also count as someone. Your character is an extension of yourself. Intrinsic in some ways, and external in others. You make the decisions that guides your character, even as you try to base those decisions on what it is that the character would intend. You practice your empathy by trying to be someone else. You learn about your own self when you make choices for them that you would avoid if it were your life.

Yet, there are other people in the world that are trying to do the same thing. You can learn from watching them and interacting what their values are. What they think of as evil, what things they cannot see that you can and what you may have missed in your own way. What you learn here, you can try to use in your own life. You might find an interest in a vocation that you never really thought about. Or discover a talent for the arts.

It's a world of inspiration, when you have to truly imagine another person and their life. An artist might see things in their head that have not yet been depicted in the physical world. Writers find stories that need telling. Musicians find the pulse of music in the delicate dances and tense exchanges.

But it also serves to broaden the mind itself. Atheists can play in a world of gods. Theists can explore what it means to have faith in a world without gods. You can explore your values of good and evil, and perhaps find better ways to live your life.

Finally, it is about what it means to be you and what it means to be someone else. Some prefer to not have to reach far, and instead play the world as themselves. Others try to explore their polar opposites. Some try just to be someone new, even if they wind up becoming more like one another.

Regardless of the type of character that is played, we carry the knowledge of the consequences of our choices. Those that empathize with their characters fully might gain joy from the lives led, or sorrow for the inevitable losses. Humour might be found that can be shared with others. Finally, you learn more about what choices are really before you when you face challenging situations in the world. You learn how to interact with others, perhaps finding self confidence that you might have otherwise lacked.

After all, you can't choose to do things that you are ignorant about. These games give us a way to explore life without having spent our lives. Loss, gains, prestige, friends, family, and ethos. In the end they are still just games. But aren't games something you can gain from? Even if it's just enjoyment? It winds up being your choice if you're using them to escape or using them to explore.

For those interested in rpgs, who don't mind a bit of reading (hah, you made it this far didn't you? You can surely make it a little farther), explore muds. I'm rather partial to one named Legends of Karinth at the moment, you can backtrack to it via the Karinthadillo's page. But there are many out there. Some are crowded, some are quiet. Some have no bounds on imagination, others have defined worlds and roles. Pick your poison and pick your character. Give the worlds and players a fair shot, and if it ceases to be fun, move on.