A few days ago I was riding my bicycle thru the park and stopped to talk to a couple of kids playing there.
“Are you setting up a shop to sell stuff?” I inquired. They had groups of stones arranged on a rock.
“No, we’re playing Minecraft.”
“What?”
“Minecraft.”
“Oh. You’re using stones for Minecraft?”
“They’re not stones.”
“Oh. They’re acorns. They came out of the tree.”
One of the kids immediately went over to the tree which was kind of leaning over where they were playing and started climbing it, the other kid started shaking it, trying to shake loose the acorns I guess but it didn’t shake much. It’s a skinny tree, not hard to climb but hard to shake.
“You have to go all the way out to the end of the branch” I tell the kid in the tree jokingly. “Oh boy your mom is going to kill me.” I have no idea who the mom is or where.
“There’s a big storm coming”, says the shaking kid. “It’ll be here tomorrow or the next day.”
“I love big storms”, I tell the kids. The one standing next to the tree holding the trunk and the other one up the tree about 6 or 8 feet.
At that point I figured I better move on before the mom catches me talking to unsupervised kids in the park so I roll off and down the hill and remark to myself about how cold it is and that a big storm is coming. That’s what the kid said.
When I get home I check the weather and sure enough, 70% chance of thunderstorms two days out. And 74% chance of thunderstorms the following day. I feel a rising elation. Pounding rain and thunder. Lightening and wind. The gods are angry and all that. Time to be brave and withstand the onslaught of inclement weather.
There are little birds out there, sparrows and wrens and blue jays and cardinals and mockingbirds. I know them. Where do they find shelter in the storm? Tucked away somewhere. They certainly aren’t flying around in a heavy downpour with gusty winds. I guess we’re about to find out. 74% chance is pretty good odds. That’s what the weatherman said anyway.
I also checked out Minecraft. Wow.
Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, instead the player builds things and manipulates objects thru a wide assortment of terrains and scenarios. Essentially the Minecraft universe is infinite being a procedurally generated, three-dimensional world which allows players the freedom of choosing what kind of a world they are in and how to play the game. You can play it alone or with a friend or interactively with anyone else anywhere in the world. It’s the most popular video game ever, having sold over 300 million copies. The movie comes out in April.
I got that much from skimming Wikipedia but I still don’t really know what it is because I’ve never actually played it. The kids were playing it without a computer. That’s pretty advanced.
So anyways I’m still waiting for the big storm. Just a little light rain so far. That’s about all we get around here. It’s an extended drought. Unfair. Everyone gets their own extreme weather these days, that’s what I think. Ours is a long slow drawn out drought. Tsux.
So, and here’s the point of my tirade, what if the kids aren’t wrong and there is a big storm coming? A different kind of storm, not wind and rain but the turbulence of divisiveness, the chaos of confusion and confusion is the rule of the day along with delay and denial. It’s a storm alright and where will we find shelter and how will that change us?
Storms always change things. Hurricanes spread seeds and create space for new growth and reset earth’s thermostat. I really have no idea what kind of a storm this might be but somehow after watching the kids playing Minecraft with acorns under the tree I feel like we’re going to be ok. We’ll figure it out and the game will go on.
From the ‘End Poem’ that scrolls down on the final screen of Minecraft. It’s a conversation with two voices, two entities and they’re talking to the player - you.
I will tell the player a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.
Give it a body, again.
Yes. Player…
(insert your name here). Player of games.
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a player.
The player was you, (insert your name here).
podcast music :: Piano & Saxophone Jazz 1920s-1950s
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