For about the past week or so, my Mum has been back home in England, initially just for a bit of a vacation from the hectic Texas schedule, but it seems that she's become more of a caretaker for my only remaining grandparent, my Grandma Hazel. She's really not doing well, and it seems like she might not be around too much longer, as horrible as that is to say out loud. My Dad is going over there on Wednesday, and the last time he dropped everything like this, I lost my Granddad. I'm worried and sad.
One of the worse parts about moving over here when I was so little was my immediate separation from my extended family. My Mum's dad died when I was only a little boy, so I never really knew him, although from the stories I've heard he was a lot like me. My Mum's mum, my Nanna, died while I was living in Pittsburgh. From what I remember, she was a tough lady, but one of the main things I remember about her was her laugh. She used to do things that would annoy my Mum to no end, and when things boiled over and my Mum ended up in tears, Nanna would give the softest little chuckle, not because anything was funny but it was almost as if she'd promised herself to never get to that point again, but she always ended up there. I didn't know her very well.
My Dad's side of the family I know a lot better, as they were around more when I was young. My Granddad was a short man with white hair and the funniest laugh I can remember. He'd stick his tongue out and cross his eyes and I thought that that was the greatest thing ever. He'd put on horrifically bad magic productions for me and my brother, which 90% of the time would end up with all three of us rolling on the floor together, crying from laughter. He was an avid fire-builder, which explains my undying fascination with the flame, and my fondest memories of his house are of throwing foreign objects into the burning fireplace in the living room. Granddad would usually supply this contraband sneakily under the table. I loved him a lot, although I'm sure I didn't tell him that enough.
My Grandma is more of an enigma to me. She's the quintessential English Grandma. If I told you to think of what a little old English Grandma looked like, you'd think of what my Grandma looks like. She's a bit round from being the best cook ever. She's overtly nice and doesn't get up in arms about anything, even when a couple of young lads accidentally kicked a football clean through the kitchen window. I cried after I did that and she gave me a chocolate bar and laughed. I love her a lot, but I'm unsure how to tell her because it's not a word that we throw around lightly at the Trafford household.
Both of my Granddads fought in World War Two, in the Royal Air Force. My Dad's Dad was shot while rescuing soldiers and earned one of the highest honors given in Britain. They were both pilots and saw things I'm sure that I could not begin to fathom. It was a richer generation back then, and the world was not as small.
I don't know a lot about all my grandparents, except that they helped mold me into who I am today. I'd like to know everything, but I think that everything would be too much for me to handle. I hope one day I can tell stories to my Grandchildren about things that I've accomplished, and maybe put on a lousy magic show or two.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Cloud Strife
There's something to be said about the days of old, our youthful existence revolving around dragon slayings, ancient curses, and what could be lurking through the threshold of that impossibly large door down the hall. There's almost a romantic quality to the mind of a child, the way that reality has yet to be fully established and imagination can take care of the things we're yet to understand. How do cars work? Little mice on wheels. What are clouds made of? Cotton candy. Why? Why not.
I occasionally have wondered about this before, and why the world we live in doesn't seem to be as magical as it once was. Every day comes and goes as the last did, with the occasional blip in the rhythm of monotony. Where did the wonder go? Why does everything need to have a logical explanation? I used to think that there really was a Land of Giants somewhere when I was little. And that Pennsylvania was where vampires came from. And I wasn't necessarily wrong about that, but that's besides the point. I just feel like something beautiful gets lost in the translation from child to adult. I try and hold on to it, and I can see glimpses of it sometimes, but it seems to be a fleeting luxury.
There's a blog I read online that mostly deals with music called Paste. It's pretty standard stuff about indie bands and whatnot, but lately they've been doing this repeating segment on a grown man's journey through one of the greatest videogames of our generation; Final Fantasy 7 on the original Playstation. Throughout the journey, he keeps writing to a fellow journalist (who has already played the game and loves it) about his experience with the game and how he thinks it stacks up with the mighty praise that the game has gathered over the years. And he seems, through the magic of polygons and badly translated text, to have stumbled upon this mystery of youth that I've been pondering for a while. Here's a little snippet from the article:
"So when you suggest that that Final Fantasy VII could not, then or now, be made in the west, I'd say that if anything, it's less likely now. I'm afraid that fact suggests that the reason this game so captures peoples' hearts and spirits is that its developers didn't have the technology required to cut our imaginations out of the equation entirely, else they would have. I only draw that conclusion because over the last ten years, Square's (and many other developers') designers have finally gained the technology required to make their wildest concept art into a million-polygon reality, and sure enough, they have allowed their own imaginations to take center stage while pushing ours aside without a second thought. Perhaps that means that no one has "forgotten" about imagination at all; they simply no longer need to rely on it."
After reading a few of these articles, I got the itch to play the game myself, so being the ardent gamer and techno-dude that I am, I found an emulator online and threw in my copy of FFVII that I still have lying around. Yes, I still have some awesome PS1 games lying around. Hush. Anyway, I was expecting an enjoyable time, given that I've played the game to varying points throughout the years and loved every minute of it, but I wasn't really expecting a full-blown switch in the way I thought about games, and in turn, my youth.
The game, for those unlucky enough to have missed out, is an RPG (role-playing game) out of Japan about a spiky-haired kid saving the world. Standard stuff really, and the story's not that important for my argument. The graphics are supremely lacking compared to today's standards, but I think that's what makes it so intriguing. I can't really see this guy's face, so I have to make it up and give him an identity that might differ from what the developer thought I would. I don't understand what's happening here, so I invent an activity. And it somehow all works. It's like playing a book. That's the simplest way I know how to describe it.
Today's games are so photo-realistic that you're not able to flex anything in your mind, you're just pressing buttons in a pre-defined world, already planned, mapped, and fleshed out for you. But in the older games, the ones so many people hold dear to their hearts, we were forced to use our imagination to fill in the blanks made by developers due to lack of technology. Mario looks like a blue and red blob, but I knew him through and through. Link, the wordless hero from Zelda, battles countless ridiculous monsters in a desert with a sword that shoots more swords, and that wouldn't mean anything unless I made up a reason for him to be doing that. Games used to be dots on a map, milestones that the player drew the lines between. Now they're fully mapped out movies and we're just along for the ride.
And this all leads back to imagination. We loose that childlike wonder because the world explains itself after a while. We understand the rhythms and reasons for things, and we're not forced to connect and create "between the dots" like we did as children. I like to think of myself as a big kid, and I'm pretty sure I'll never fully grow up because I don't see the point of being so serious all the time. There's a certain enjoyment and undying happiness that comes from thinking that zombies might attack tomorrow. Or that, despite years of failure, somehow every time I get a new pair of shoes I can run faster and jump higher. I swear I can.... Anyway, I'm just saying that despite the perks of being on top of the real world (money, knowledge, general sanity), it's also a good thing to encourage imagination and suspended reality. Because I enjoy playing blocky games about spiky-haired kids trying to save the world rather than games about doing my taxes.
I occasionally have wondered about this before, and why the world we live in doesn't seem to be as magical as it once was. Every day comes and goes as the last did, with the occasional blip in the rhythm of monotony. Where did the wonder go? Why does everything need to have a logical explanation? I used to think that there really was a Land of Giants somewhere when I was little. And that Pennsylvania was where vampires came from. And I wasn't necessarily wrong about that, but that's besides the point. I just feel like something beautiful gets lost in the translation from child to adult. I try and hold on to it, and I can see glimpses of it sometimes, but it seems to be a fleeting luxury.
There's a blog I read online that mostly deals with music called Paste. It's pretty standard stuff about indie bands and whatnot, but lately they've been doing this repeating segment on a grown man's journey through one of the greatest videogames of our generation; Final Fantasy 7 on the original Playstation. Throughout the journey, he keeps writing to a fellow journalist (who has already played the game and loves it) about his experience with the game and how he thinks it stacks up with the mighty praise that the game has gathered over the years. And he seems, through the magic of polygons and badly translated text, to have stumbled upon this mystery of youth that I've been pondering for a while. Here's a little snippet from the article:
"So when you suggest that that Final Fantasy VII could not, then or now, be made in the west, I'd say that if anything, it's less likely now. I'm afraid that fact suggests that the reason this game so captures peoples' hearts and spirits is that its developers didn't have the technology required to cut our imaginations out of the equation entirely, else they would have. I only draw that conclusion because over the last ten years, Square's (and many other developers') designers have finally gained the technology required to make their wildest concept art into a million-polygon reality, and sure enough, they have allowed their own imaginations to take center stage while pushing ours aside without a second thought. Perhaps that means that no one has "forgotten" about imagination at all; they simply no longer need to rely on it."
After reading a few of these articles, I got the itch to play the game myself, so being the ardent gamer and techno-dude that I am, I found an emulator online and threw in my copy of FFVII that I still have lying around. Yes, I still have some awesome PS1 games lying around. Hush. Anyway, I was expecting an enjoyable time, given that I've played the game to varying points throughout the years and loved every minute of it, but I wasn't really expecting a full-blown switch in the way I thought about games, and in turn, my youth.
The game, for those unlucky enough to have missed out, is an RPG (role-playing game) out of Japan about a spiky-haired kid saving the world. Standard stuff really, and the story's not that important for my argument. The graphics are supremely lacking compared to today's standards, but I think that's what makes it so intriguing. I can't really see this guy's face, so I have to make it up and give him an identity that might differ from what the developer thought I would. I don't understand what's happening here, so I invent an activity. And it somehow all works. It's like playing a book. That's the simplest way I know how to describe it.
Today's games are so photo-realistic that you're not able to flex anything in your mind, you're just pressing buttons in a pre-defined world, already planned, mapped, and fleshed out for you. But in the older games, the ones so many people hold dear to their hearts, we were forced to use our imagination to fill in the blanks made by developers due to lack of technology. Mario looks like a blue and red blob, but I knew him through and through. Link, the wordless hero from Zelda, battles countless ridiculous monsters in a desert with a sword that shoots more swords, and that wouldn't mean anything unless I made up a reason for him to be doing that. Games used to be dots on a map, milestones that the player drew the lines between. Now they're fully mapped out movies and we're just along for the ride.
And this all leads back to imagination. We loose that childlike wonder because the world explains itself after a while. We understand the rhythms and reasons for things, and we're not forced to connect and create "between the dots" like we did as children. I like to think of myself as a big kid, and I'm pretty sure I'll never fully grow up because I don't see the point of being so serious all the time. There's a certain enjoyment and undying happiness that comes from thinking that zombies might attack tomorrow. Or that, despite years of failure, somehow every time I get a new pair of shoes I can run faster and jump higher. I swear I can.... Anyway, I'm just saying that despite the perks of being on top of the real world (money, knowledge, general sanity), it's also a good thing to encourage imagination and suspended reality. Because I enjoy playing blocky games about spiky-haired kids trying to save the world rather than games about doing my taxes.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Paper Space
I've been under the impression lately that the past 8 months or so have been a test of my endurance / patience / ambition / and general manliness. There's been highs and lows yes, but above all there's been a uncanny nonchalance about the way that I feel to everything. And I'm not sure if that's a great thing or not... I still laugh and try daily to make everyone around me feel better than they did before I arrived, but there's something almost routine about it now. I'm finding myself getting tired of the jokes I'm telling, like even they have lost their way during this troubling time, gone to some proverbial funnier place than I.
It's not to say that my emotions and feelings aren't firing, it's just that I don't feel things as passionately as I once did. Architecture remains, and will always, the one constant in my life (mortally speaking) and I do still get excited about that, but I'm finding that my relationships with people are becoming more and more stale, dull, and vanilla. There was a time in my life where I could count my friends on one hand, and I knew everything about them, from their favorite color to their greatest fears. And I truly considered them friends, and would trust them to the ends of the earth. But now, in this age of quantity and digital contest, I find that I know a lot of people, but not a lot about anyone. Work colleagues are not the same as friends. School buddies, once held in regard higher than all in my mind, have now become 3-times-a-week acquaintances. I suppose this is growing up, but it feels like more than that.
I'm not worried about a de-concentration of my friends, I'm worried that I don't care about them. A sad point in this past 8 months has been the leaving of a few of my close friends that I enjoyed hanging out with and going to movies and such with. We had a final lunch together at a nice restaurant and talked about the future and such. And at that table I thought to myself, as if I hadn't really realized it before, "I'm never going to see these people ever again." And in my mind I knew that that was sad, and that I should feel that about the situation. But I didn't feel anything. And that's the part that's worrying me. I sat there and ate and laughed and then when it came time to say goodbye, I said it. And that was that.
I don't know if I've watched too many movies to believe that every goodbye should be accompanied by stirring music and tears, but neither struck me that day, nor any of the following days. I'm becoming a rock, I suppose.
Because a rock feels no pain.
There were times when saying goodbye to someone was the end of days to me. I worried about it for weeks ahead of time and when it came time to say goodbye (to her), I'd be so nervous and scared that I'd make a fool out of myself. And I miss that. I miss being innocent and unbiased and pure. Emotion, be it bad or good, lets you know that you're doing something right in the world, you're moving ahead and living life, feeling everything as you go. I haven't felt anything for a while now, and I'm starting to wonder if I ever will again.
I miss you a lot.
It's not to say that my emotions and feelings aren't firing, it's just that I don't feel things as passionately as I once did. Architecture remains, and will always, the one constant in my life (mortally speaking) and I do still get excited about that, but I'm finding that my relationships with people are becoming more and more stale, dull, and vanilla. There was a time in my life where I could count my friends on one hand, and I knew everything about them, from their favorite color to their greatest fears. And I truly considered them friends, and would trust them to the ends of the earth. But now, in this age of quantity and digital contest, I find that I know a lot of people, but not a lot about anyone. Work colleagues are not the same as friends. School buddies, once held in regard higher than all in my mind, have now become 3-times-a-week acquaintances. I suppose this is growing up, but it feels like more than that.
I'm not worried about a de-concentration of my friends, I'm worried that I don't care about them. A sad point in this past 8 months has been the leaving of a few of my close friends that I enjoyed hanging out with and going to movies and such with. We had a final lunch together at a nice restaurant and talked about the future and such. And at that table I thought to myself, as if I hadn't really realized it before, "I'm never going to see these people ever again." And in my mind I knew that that was sad, and that I should feel that about the situation. But I didn't feel anything. And that's the part that's worrying me. I sat there and ate and laughed and then when it came time to say goodbye, I said it. And that was that.
I don't know if I've watched too many movies to believe that every goodbye should be accompanied by stirring music and tears, but neither struck me that day, nor any of the following days. I'm becoming a rock, I suppose.
Because a rock feels no pain.
There were times when saying goodbye to someone was the end of days to me. I worried about it for weeks ahead of time and when it came time to say goodbye (to her), I'd be so nervous and scared that I'd make a fool out of myself. And I miss that. I miss being innocent and unbiased and pure. Emotion, be it bad or good, lets you know that you're doing something right in the world, you're moving ahead and living life, feeling everything as you go. I haven't felt anything for a while now, and I'm starting to wonder if I ever will again.
I miss you a lot.
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