The Never-Ending End of the World

Just finished reading this. It’s one of those novels that when I turn the last page, I sit in silent wonder for a bit.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy Ann Christy’s writing. Unexpected plot developments, characters you come to love, the imagery evoked, and the sheer quality of her writing style. That last bit is a reason I love reading Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg.

There’s always a danger of overselling something you’ve enjoyed. All I can say is that about 40 years ago, Martian Time Slip left me feeling fascinatingly out of synch with time for about two weeks. This is the first time I’ve felt about time this way since that time.

Today & Maslow’s Yardstick

Chances are you’ve seen this graphic before. I believe it’s a pretty clear picture of why poverty hurts the entirety of human civilization, stunting potential contributions to our advancement as a species.

But that’s beside the point for this post. For me, today, it’s a personal yardstick. And this post is a journaling. Because (a) there’s no way I can manage an actual journal on paper, I’m apparently incapable of such privacy, and (b) my blog and Facebook history have proved to be effective tools for long-term self evaluation.

If you want to come along for the ride, that’s cool, I can use the companionship. But if not, that’s cool too, you should probably get out of the car here.

So, Maslow’s Hierarchy, starting from the bottom:

  • My physiological needs are fine, always have been, one of the perks of having been born a Middle Class white guy in 21st Century USA. Same with safety needs; same reasons.
  • Belongingness and love needs, I’m happy to say, are better than I feel I deserve. I use the word “feel” intentionally, because I’m intellectually aware that relationships are give-and-take, and I “think” I’m doing okay with the give part. But emotionally I feel like a drain on those relationships.
  • Esteem needs and self-actualization have been in a decline for a couple of decades, with a pretty steep nosedive over the past dozen years.

Those last few years of employment in educational publishing were brutal, taking me from heading up creation of an e-publishing department to bottom of the editing totem pole. From glowing praise from upper management (I recently found an old annual review letter in my records), to suspecting the only reason I still had a job was unwillingness to fire a long-term employee. All I can say is that I didn’t change; something else did. Call me unadaptable; I don’t think a history of success from factory to medic to LPN to teaching to game design back to teaching would agree.

Having left gaming as an occupation, by family necessity, a few years before taking that job, was its own hammer blow, with one attempt after another to revive that career thwarted. Maybe some other time I’ll explore the topic more in-depth, but for now, I can only say that whatever the creative field, it seems apparent that people follow properties more than they do the creators, something I’ve heard often from even some very big names. It’s worse with work-for-hire.

Even retired and self-publishing, as much as I’ve accomplished, in retrospect I see the nosedive increasingly apparent. I used to power through deadlines; now the very thought of a deadline is crippling. I believed it was the result of a focal seizure disorder; now I’m starting to think the disorder itself may be a manifestation of long-quashed anxiety.

Drawing this post to a close, I remind myself that its original intention was simply to record several weeks of ongoing, devastating “What does anything matter?” depression, and gratitude for a couple of hours when it lifted: Once with surprised smiles while viewing a video link Abraham Limpo Martinez shared, 30 minutes of calculating dice odds, the math involved, and how physically modeling them with dice glued together in shells goes from 2D to 3D to increasing dimensions of hypercubes; and once a Thursday night role-playing session with Steve Sullivan, Kifflie Scott, David Annandale, and my oldest friend, Jim Cotton. (I hope you lot don’t mind my mentioning you by name.) That session was mainly combat demonstrations, starting with Dracula’s three brides, then 20 of his gypsy minions, and then Dracula himself! The last with a perfectly Hammer film style conclusion, Sully apportating a stake for Dracula’s heart, on the same turn the Count summoned a cauldron of bats to drive the heroes away, allowing both sides to escape to fight another day. I better understood my own game design from that session, and learned a great recording trick from Sully!

That last paragraph is the m0st important for this record. The others are just prelude. If you’ve read through it all, here’s the point where I say “Thanks.” You’re one of the folks who help give my life meaning.

The Both

Photo by Nihal Demirci Erenay on Unsplash

To hear someone say, “I never listen to the words of a song, only the music,” is nearly as disconcerting as if they had said, “I never pay attention to both ballroom dancers, only the one.”

Words and music are more than just two companions on the same sidewalk.

They are a dance. Even if the one is foreign, or seems to be (Massive Attack’s “Silent Spring”), or is simply so poetic that all it conveys is mood.

Some music comes to a party stag. But if music comes with lyrics, they are more than its “plus one.” The song is a couple, a marriage of two souls, mutually complete.

But I could have told you, Vincent . . .

One of our species wrote this amazing song, someone built the gorgeous instrument, someone else the percussion instruments, someone the recording equipment, someone made the clothing, all of it coming together in such a transcendent work of art.

Somewhere else, another member of our species gave an order to drop more bombs on a city in Ukraine.

I can’t wrap my head around how the same species can achieve such beauty and such destruction, such joy and such hatred. That horrible conundrum keeps me up at night.