Commentary

Where to Hold the Light?

Lester

Image by Taylor Burnett from Pixabay
There’s a quandary at the heart of entertainment, and recent events with Ed Sheeran’s concert tour of the Americas illustrate it perfectly.

Hold that thought.

A Buddhist student once asked their master, “How can I be happy in a world where so many are suffering?” And the master said, “It does the world no good for you to add one more unhappy person. Allow yourself some light, so that you can then share it with others.”

Then again, at what point does that become picnicking on the lawn of a burning house with people locked inside?

Yet without joy, we lose our humanity. Particularly now, in authoritarian times, joy is an act of resistance.

Okay, back to Ed. Recently P!nk asked Ed to drop the rapper Macklemore from the tour, after he shouted “Free Palestine!” during a performance. Sheeran’s tour promoter insisted upon it. As I’m writing this post, four other bands have dropped out in solidarity with Macklemore. Sheeran and Macklemore still speak of each other as friends (as do the rest of the bands), but there’s a critical disagreement at the heart of their artistries.

Sheeran wants to keep a safe space for attendees to escape politics and simply participate in joy. Macklemore’s music includes protest for social justice. And the bands who have dropped out clearly prize that same activism. (The motives of Sheeran’s tour promoter, billionaire Robert Kraft, are perhaps more suspect.)

So I’m brought back to the metaphorical question of light, and how and where to shine it.

I’ll be honest, the past 10 years have driven me to a point of mental unhealth. Every day is a struggle to escape the rut of heartbreak with current events, my limited ability to change their course, and frustration toward family and former friends who support them. My every bedtime requires discipline to hold onto something pleasant; my every waking requires that discipline immediately again.

Which is to say that the flame of my joy is guttering. And I still haven’t figured out how to divide its remaining light between creation and activism. Nor can my soul survive at the expense of one over the other.

This website is my 26-year journal of that struggle.

A Happy Tale from Gen Con 2027

Lester

I posted this message earlier on Kickstarter, as an update to the Children of the Elder Sign project, but it’s too good a story to not share here.

College buddy & GDW compatriot Tim Ryan, diced

Hey, gang!

Gen Con was great, but exhausting. Friends dragged me into four different Call of Cthulhu adventures—from 1920s, to cyberpunk, to the depths of space—and introduced me to several new board games. (I highly recommend For Sale.) And I picked up a few treasures in the Dealers Hall, ran into some old colleagues there, and introduced someone to the Bookmark No HP RPG in a spontaneous session while sheltering in a side room during a tornado warning. (Western setting involving cattle rustlers holed up in a farmer’s cabin during a thunderstorm.)

Saturday evening, just after the tornado warning was lifted, a friend asked me to snap a picture of them in front of a Chaosium demo room just off a main hallway. I set my bags and hoodie down at my feet in the middle of the hall to get the picture, waiting for a gap in the passing crowds, and when we were finished and I gathered my stuff, I forgot the little brown paper bag of dice sets I’d gotten at the Black Oak Workshop booth.

When I realized it a few minutes later, we were nearly at the exit, and I figured the bag was long gone. My friend convinced me to retrace our steps, but no dice. (Pun intended.) They suggested checking Lost & Found, but it was late, the halls were crowded, and I thought it was a lost cause.

The next morning, as my old college buddy and GDW compatriot Tim Ryan were on the way to an event, we stopped at Lost & Found on the off chance they’d been returned. And lo and behold, there they were. Someone in that crowd of 74,000 people had seen the unattended little bag, picked it up, and took the time to turn it in instead of taking it home with them.

The person at the counter said, “I work a lot of events, with a lot of crowds, and I have to say, gamers are by far the nicest, kindest of them all.” It’s a sentiment shared by restaurant owners and shop keepers in Indianapolis news stories every year. Gamers are the nicest, most polite of all the convention crowds they see.

I gotta admit, I was a little misty eyed to hear that said about our hobby. I’m a little misty eyed again just telling you. The dice would have been no great loss, but instead they gave me a memory to treasure.

Gamers are the best.

Laying on the Horn

Lester

As I write this, my spouse is in the hospital. (Nothing currently life-threatening, just severe systemic pain from a common localized infection.) She’s been there pretty much the whole time since three days ago. It seems likely she may get out tomorrow.

I’m holding down the fort, which mainly means keeping our dogs from stressing in her absence.

My biggest problem right now is trying to divert my autistic hyperfocus from being pissed off that, because the hospital didn’t actually admit her as an inpatient, our health insurance won’t pay for the over-the-counter painkillers they’re giving her, and as of yesterday that meant $500+ in debt for Aleve. I’m expecting about $1k by the time she’s out.

It’s infuriating, because we’re helpless under American healthcare. And when I’m furious, my brain fixates on figuring out ways to make someone responsible regret their choices.

(Example: While I was teaching Kate to drive, we came to a complicated two-way stop involving a Wisconsin state highway that makes a right turn into downtown Elkhorn. Kate’s extremely cautious. The guy behind us laid on the horn. I said, “Oh, hell no. Put this car in Park.” And I went back to explain to him, in detail, smiling politely, the facts in those two sentences. After a few minutes, he was begging me to please just go back to our car and leave. I took my own sweet time strolling the distance.)

I’ve been too tired for the past few days to distract myself with work. Here’s hoping for a little relief today, by focusing on Children of the Elder Sign Kickstarter progress.

But, good god, once Jen’s back and settled, several somebody’s are going to discover just how annoying a pissed-off, hyperfocused retiree can be.

To a House Mouse

Lester

I had to kill a tiny mouse today. Yesterday it kept scrambling across the back of my desk, peeking out from around my monitor, and I could hear it gnawing on things it shouldn’t be gnawing on.

I hate snuffing out their little lives, or adding any measure of suffering to this world. But left alone, they leave droppings all over and can gnaw through a home’s electrical wiring.

This one was too small for a quick-kill trap, so I had to set out a glue trap overnight, and this morning take the stuck, panicking little thing outside for execution. And I’m left grieving its short, innocent time on this earth.

This is not how I would make a world. If there’s an intelligent design behind it, I’m unimpressed.

As an elegy, let me borrow some words from Robert Burns:

“But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

“Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!”