At Precisely This Morning
I spent the night at Eric's house last night, as I mentioned in a previous post. He has the Sims 2, so I played that for five straight hours, and somewhere in there I lost patience. I can't explain it. I just had to leave. Somewhere along the lines where my couple were trying to raise a child and their roommate (named Maddox of course) was walking around the house naked and banging everything in sight, I just felt the impulse. It was sudden; it wasn't a building feeling. I got up and left at 4:37 in the morning and walked six blocks back to my house.
My mind by instinct jumped onto the defensive. Look behind you. What's that noise over there? I walked in the middle of the street for safety. That way I figured I'd get at least a good three seconds to respond to anything. I didn't put my hands in my pockets. I kept them warm, I kept them ready. Half of the walk home consisted of this survivalist thinking. It stopped when I looked at the sky.
The sky was a beautiful purple, with light just starting to tinge in. It reminded me of a the last time I had stayed on a computer and out of reality that long, when I played Unreal Tournament until 5:30 in the morning. That day, the whole house was aglow with this deep blue. It wasn't dark, but it was so...penetrating. Everything was blue. That's what this sky was like. It made everything that I had thought subconsciously in the past five hours fly into my mind.
At that point I began to reflect upon what exactly it was I was running from. I was running, if you didn't know. Playing that game for so long...it just...disturbed me. There are obvious flaws in the Sims' thinking, but they are pretty advanced in the way they act. The longer you play it, the more you realize that you are their God. And as it gets further along, it's harder to do your job. You make mistakes. They suffer for them. It made me think about reality: Do we really have a free will? Or are we just puppets of some hand that, despite what we believe, isn't perfect? That the few times he does leave us to our own devices, we set something on fire or start a war?
Maybe I've been playing too many video games. I've been disconnected from reality so long that what little of it I may still comprehend, I link to my experience with unreality. Max Payne, the tragic character. I felt sorry for him, really sorry. I really liked him a lot, him and all the characters in that series. But Max Payne isn't real. Solid Snake isn't real. GTO isn't real. Cowboy Bebop isn't real. Grand Theft Auto isn't real. Summoner isn't real. But they all feel real on one level or another, do they not? Maybe God is an author, and we're just the midsection to a book that has yet to be finished. Maybe the book is finished, and we're just being reread. Maybe there is no God.
I had to get away from that thinking. It's romanticized and impractical. The world is far too complex for it to be nothing but a game. Nothing but a hobby. Or is it?
I sat on my roof for another hour or so, watching the sun rise. Then I went to bed and slept all this baggage off.
My mind by instinct jumped onto the defensive. Look behind you. What's that noise over there? I walked in the middle of the street for safety. That way I figured I'd get at least a good three seconds to respond to anything. I didn't put my hands in my pockets. I kept them warm, I kept them ready. Half of the walk home consisted of this survivalist thinking. It stopped when I looked at the sky.
The sky was a beautiful purple, with light just starting to tinge in. It reminded me of a the last time I had stayed on a computer and out of reality that long, when I played Unreal Tournament until 5:30 in the morning. That day, the whole house was aglow with this deep blue. It wasn't dark, but it was so...penetrating. Everything was blue. That's what this sky was like. It made everything that I had thought subconsciously in the past five hours fly into my mind.
At that point I began to reflect upon what exactly it was I was running from. I was running, if you didn't know. Playing that game for so long...it just...disturbed me. There are obvious flaws in the Sims' thinking, but they are pretty advanced in the way they act. The longer you play it, the more you realize that you are their God. And as it gets further along, it's harder to do your job. You make mistakes. They suffer for them. It made me think about reality: Do we really have a free will? Or are we just puppets of some hand that, despite what we believe, isn't perfect? That the few times he does leave us to our own devices, we set something on fire or start a war?
Maybe I've been playing too many video games. I've been disconnected from reality so long that what little of it I may still comprehend, I link to my experience with unreality. Max Payne, the tragic character. I felt sorry for him, really sorry. I really liked him a lot, him and all the characters in that series. But Max Payne isn't real. Solid Snake isn't real. GTO isn't real. Cowboy Bebop isn't real. Grand Theft Auto isn't real. Summoner isn't real. But they all feel real on one level or another, do they not? Maybe God is an author, and we're just the midsection to a book that has yet to be finished. Maybe the book is finished, and we're just being reread. Maybe there is no God.
I had to get away from that thinking. It's romanticized and impractical. The world is far too complex for it to be nothing but a game. Nothing but a hobby. Or is it?
I sat on my roof for another hour or so, watching the sun rise. Then I went to bed and slept all this baggage off.
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