These games are fun,
Real fun.
But I would
rather not play them.

Very, very, very bad metaphor: The kernel has changed. A reboot is necessary.

* Pause *

Reboot done.

Slippery Slope:
Slipped
And fell
On face.
Hurts much.

The gates were open,
For a few days.
I had opened them.

To let you people in.

I was
Apprehensive,
I swear.
But I did it anyway.

To let you people in.

You came in,
And I could not
Entertain you.

You were troubled
By what you saw,
And I was troubled
By what you saw.

It was different,
Me seeing it,
And me seeing
You seeing it.

So,
When you left
For the night yesterday,
I locked the gates again.

And now,
You’ll be happy to know,
You won’t have to come in.

We have to set this up carefully, so let’s take it slowly. Think of a pointless activity. Let’s say walking. You can stick to your thing if you thought of something else. So our hero: he’s walking pointlessly. That’s good, I guess. Thanks.

So, he’s walking pointlessly. People ask him why he’s walking. They frown when he passes by. He says he doesn’t know himself, but he likes it when really, he’s not sure of that either. He just keeps walking, not knowing what’s happening, why he’s walking or why he’s not stopping. While walking, he comes across these thorns, and he walks right through them. Some scratch his hand and some stick to his jeans, but he doesn’t stop.

He’s still wondering about this thing: why he’s walking and what his mind is up to, when suddenly he realizes he must stop. So he stops and….let’s say he catches the bus back home.

And even though he stopped because he thought the whole walking thing was pointless, he realizes – with what would be called a smile if only it made it to his face – that even though it was pointless, it was still better than not walking, which would have been even more pointless, if there could be such a thing.

I have been confronting my laziness again and again these days, and one of the ways to deal with this is to revel in past glory – even if it was only slightly more glorious than today. The rain makes this process easier, with the sound of the water , the reflections of the cars in the wet road. Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and Leonard Cohen sing songs on youtube and I can’t help but sit here in my chair, in 327J, Talbot Lab while also kicking a football in the rain.

The game plays out in my head again after a long time – the one in which I played really well. Also the one that I screwed up in. I am playing in both simultaneously.

5-1 down and shouting at my wingmates to get their act together.

0-0 in the first round and our hostel has not lost a first round match in five years.

A long pass from the goalie…It’s a small field, the hostel “footer field” and I simultaneously stop the ball from it’s long trajectory and flick it slightly to the left of a defender who normally plays much better than me. But not today.

I’m defending and the guy with the ball – I don’t know him – doesn’t even know to dribble. And yet, somehow the ball slips through between my legs and he’s gone. What the fuck just happened? I think to myself before starting to run behind him.

In about one and a half seconds since the ball landed on the ground, it’s flicked and then shot into the goal – perfectly placed. I’m running around madly. We’re 5-2 down and I’m happy.

He’s running and I can’t catch up. There’s only him and the goalkeeper now. And then it’s a goal.

The rest of the game is a dream. I do things I never knew I could do. I think the referee extends the time just because we’re playing with so much enthusiasm. We end up 5-5.

The rest of the game is a dream. I defend well – or whatever. We lose 1-0. For the first time in 5 years.

“It was your game man”, my friend tells me while I drink lime juice at the canteen.

“It’s okay dude, it wasn’t your fault”, my friend tells me as I walk back to the hostel, feeling funny that I’m feeling bad.

Two years later, I’m sitting in the hostel goal, flanked on either side by people who love the game just as much as I do. We are all looking at the other goal. And smiling.

“Suck on this”, I said as I gave the kid a lollypop. It was called something else here, but I couldn’t remember.

The kid looked up from his broken sand castle with tearful eyes, first at me and then at the lollypop. Back at me. Then at the castle. Then back at me again. He stood up and slowly extended his hands towards the treat, but then went back again. He sat back down on the beach and started gathering sand. I think he was trying to rebuild the castle.

“Oh come on,  dude,” I said cheerfully, “You can finish this, recoup your energy and try again”.

He seemed to think for a moment, and then took the lollipop as I forgot what I was trying to do and what the kid reminded me of.

He picked up the pen and almost instantaneously, all these metaphors were standing in front of him, listening with rapt attention to his thoughts. Once in a while, a hand would come up, signalling that his thought was understood by one of them. He ignored them however, and tried to focus on what he was actually thinking.

His pen moved in rhythm to his thoughts that moved in time with a highly syncopated beat, like those drum solos where he could feel the rhythm, but not know it. As he wrote, he realized that this wasn’t solving anything. He didn’t want to write, he wanted someone to talk to. So, he put the pen aside, said a curt goodbye to the metaphors and talked. He talked to his girlfriend and his friends. He told them this and he told them that.

But that didn’t solve anything either. So he said goodbye to his friends, put on his headphones and listened to music

He felt a little better, but knew that he wasn’t really solving anything yet. So he put aside his headphones and went for a walk. The songs still played in his head, though. His friends were there too, saying interesting things. Funnily, the metaphors were playing games and he was writing a blog entry in his head.

While walking, he realized he had known the solution to his problem all along. So he went back to his computer, took up his pen and listened to the metaphors.

“You’re an idiot if you care”, she said plucking a blade of grass as a red leaf fell to the ground beside her. He knew she was right, but he didn’t know how to stop being an idiot. “No wait, that’s not correct. You’re an idiot because you care,” she said and plucked another blade of grass.

He didn’t say anything. He knew he didn’t have to. It was better this way, lying on the grass and looking at the leaves and the sky. He remembered the words of that crazy philosopher Daft: The only way to do more is to care less, and he smiled at how she seemed to have hit upon the same thing. Though the philosopher’s way of saying it was of course, more elegant.

Shit, you copycat, he said to himself as he realized what he’d done. So long for some time, he then said to you and the two things, though they might be connected, were not.