Starting a new computer game … with sand

  • In the past 24 hours Phoenix has thrown at me:

    1. A sand­storm
    2. Some spritz­ing mist in a doorway
    3. Temp­ta­tion at the gro­cery store

    The last two were cer­tainly much more wel­come than the first, but I’ve got to admit that it’s all part of the adven­ture. I just want to be quick about fig­ur­ing out the rules.

    Ever since my har­row­ing start to our stay here, I’ve been being ver­rrry car­rrreful. I’ve directed all my atten­tion to notic­ing what the heat is like that minute and how I’m han­dling it. And I’ve started mak­ing ten­ta­tive lit­tle for­ays out, usu­ally with my planned stop all mapped out exactly, and I give myself lit­tle pats on the back as if I’m doing some­thing quite extra­or­di­nary, like learn­ing to walk on the sur­face of Mars.

    So how funny is it that what I might need to count as Arizona’s sec­ond attempt to kill me came when I was all sealed up tight in my comfy lit­tle apart­ment. Greg’s old school friend told us to look out the win­dow, and there were the kind of clouds that in Mis­souri mean tor­nado action. Well, I didn’t see how I would have THAT to worry about, but about 10 min­utes later, the wind started blow­ing vio­lently and the entire area was filled with whirling dust.

    It wasn’t painful to go out in — actu­ally, it was pretty cool. Greg and I might be the weirdos that we were intrigued enough to go out in it when we could’ve stayed indoors, but it was just whisper-soft and bil­low­ing every­where. For a lit­tle while, there was enough rain mixed in to make it a tad gunky, and that’s what got on all the cars in the park­ing lot (the poor Jag!).

    But here’s what I’ve been think­ing: These times when you move to some­place new are really unique. As many times as I’ve done it, there is some­thing there that might not always be appre­ci­ated. It’s like being plunked down at the begin­ning of a new com­puter game, if it were one of those really good ones with fan­tas­tic CGI and a killer back­story. There’s some­thing that has hap­pened, there’s a whole nar­ra­tive that you’ve just been set down in the mid­dle of … but you don’t know how things work yet. You don’t know the story, you don’t know the rules. Does that make any sense? Any­one who got hooked on clas­sic games like Myst or Sybe­ria or Obliv­ion prob­a­bly knows what I mean. You’re a com­plete stranger there, but you begin to make out how things hap­pened the way they did.

    That’s the part of com­ing to a new place that’s both unset­tling and excit­ing. It’s not really the sur­face of Mars, and so I have a basic idea of how to get around. But it has a dif­fer­ent story, and it requires dif­fer­ent skills, knowl­edge and vocab­u­lary. Some­times it’s just the fun of get­ting sprayed down with mist in the out­door cafes, just a lit­tle cool­ness to encour­age you to stay. It might be some­thing that’s only new to me, like the great food every­where. Even the gro­cery stores are more than I can han­dle — an olive bar, a cof­feeshop AND lumps of pizza dough for me to take home? Amazing!

    So I just wanted to say that, for what it’s worth. A lot of peo­ple think that leav­ing home must be some­thing to avoid. I hope I don’t under­es­ti­mate the risk of lone­li­ness in a new place, or home­sick­ness for the old.

    But there are so many inter­est­ing sto­ries to find out about, and some of the best ones are the ones no one can tell you; you have to expe­ri­ence them for your­self. I’m going to keep try­ing to give it a go, as long as I don’t melt or blow away. I’ve only got a few more days this time, but I’ll come back later and see what I’ve learned.


    Related posts:

    1. And the win­ner of the blame game is …
    2. Churches and com­puter games
    3. Wildlife sight­ing for an August afternoon
    4. Back “out­side”
    5. So Ari­zona tried to kill me — part 1

    July 7th, 2011 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Word­mama 07.07.2011

    What an awe­some way to han­dle the cul­ture shock side of it! I’ll have to try to remem­ber it for the next time I move. Let me know if you find a way to load in a saved game in real life, BTW; would be very help­ful sometimes.

  • Grace

    Well, I thought you’d under­stand what I mean about those really good com­puter games. You start with the story already going on and you’re a stranger. Part of the really fun dis­cov­ery is fig­ur­ing out what the game is — what your place is in all of it. I always thought that was some of the best take­away from those games. Real life often has just as much beauty in it as those game back­grounds — you just get so used to it, you don’t even see it any­more. And your place in every­thing is so estab­lished that you’re not “the stranger” anymore.

    I won­der if peo­ple that haven’t played those games know what I’m get­ting at. I have a feel­ing I’m invok­ing a kind of expe­ri­en­tial vocab­u­lary that won’t make sense apart from that. But oh well.

    Load a saved game: LOL. Yeah, that *would* be a help in real life.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required