19052019-A Link to the Past .moji
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A few people have been phlogging about board games lately. Strange
timing: I'm five weeks into a new job (more on that later) and in my
fourth week I found myself joining the Friday lunchtime board game
group. A couple of the people are very much 'board game people' and
gaming people more generally, it seems, and very into some of the
indie or niche titles and games that are out there. Myself, I've
missed this whole wave towards board games that seems to have taken
off in the past 15-or-so years (at least it looks that way from my
perspective; am I right in thinking there's very much a wave/trend,
right?). But as an RPG gamer back in my teens, and someone who went
through a bit of a chess phase in my 20s, as well as a love of pen n'
paper RPGs and the occasional table-top game (I play Warhammer 40k or
Necromunda sometimes with a friend who has all the kit/knows all the
rules) I really appreciate well-designed games and my interest has
been sparked lately. I'll report back if I come across any cool games.
I think what I'm starting to realise I may like about games as a
social activity is how it departs from just 'natural language stuff',
like literally just words. Word-stuff is all fine and good from time
to time, but I really appreciate systems, puzzles, concepts and also
things like collaboration or tests, development, variation, etc. All
these things seem to be much more in play in a social situation with
an activity like a game, or even a piece of tech, at the heart of it.
* * *
New job: I landed this gig just 6-weeks after my last contract ended -
a setup of around 2-years that was good both socially and
psychologically/emotionally, but not really professionally on the
tracks I wanted to be on. I gotta admit I do feel like I've landed a
good new gig; it's exactly the type of work I was looking for and for
a decent organisation too. Without going into details: it's a
non-profit working on projects focusing on sustainable ecologies, and
from what I've seen so far there are on-the-ground results rather than
just pat-on-the-back celebratory fanfare that you can come across
elsewhere in the non-profit world, especially in larger organisations.
I'm living quite far out so the commute is a bit heavy-going, but I'm
trying to readjust my focus and use this time on trains and public
transport constructively where possible. Either through
reading/learning or listening to audiobooks and decent podcasts - or
maybe other learning stuff too. I get the train into town with someone
I know and he's got an app on his phone that he uses to learn Kanji on
the journey in sometimes. I thought about getting some 'learn Spanish'
audio and see whether that works on the commute. I can already get by
in Spanish - but I've wanted to brush up for a while. Right now I'm
enjoying reading the London Review of Books and catching up on both
professional and personal-interest stuff from my RSS and Reddit feeds
on the journey in, as well as some favourite podcasts. I'm really into
'Car Talk', which I first heard on a roadtrip between New York and
Detroit with some friends. I know nothing about cars (I don't even
drive) but this is a really entertaining, feel-good show. Good for a
morning commute when you're not yet ready to focus on something heavy.
* * *
Early Summer is starting to get really beautiful. It's still cold at
times but I like that, particuarly after the record-breaking Summer
heat we had last year. The light hangs much later in the sky. There's
a lava-lamp turqoise sky outside right now. Wispy grey clouds on the
horizon of this leafy suburb. Oh, I called this phlog post 'a link to
the past' purely because right now I'm back living in the suburb where
I grew up.
* * *
In the run-up to and during the writing of this post I listened to the
entirety of John Coltrane's seminal album 'A Love Supreme'. One of
those moments where you've heard something a dozen or more times
before, and no doubt been moved by it in the past, but this time it
definitely struck a chord more-so than I remember previously. What an
awesome & powerful selection of compositions. Sometimes I wish I could
live as beautifully/chaotically as these sounds.
* * *
Strange how sometimes some 'thing' circulates in your life, in a given
moment, and has a kind-of presence and recurrence. For me, lately,
that's been Thoreau. Okay not in any massively uncanny way, but there
was some talk of Thoreau on circumlunar.space in recent months, then
some discussion around the text 'Digital Minimalism' on Thoreau, and
then more recently I re-listened to some Jon Kabat-Zin audiobook* I
have in which Thoreau is cited a few times.
I've been reading Walden on my commute. It strikes a chord, but I'm
weary about how much focus on the individual can lead us. Yes to DIY,
yes to independence, yes to all this counter-culture, for sure. But
also, our problems are social. They're of social bodies and publics
made up of individuals and economic imperatives; and I don't believe
these things can be 're-wired' by individuals alone without a
seachange, at least in terms of 'comprehension' or interpretation (of
acts/politics/alternatives) rooted in a social body. I think about
this often in terms of some of the stuff we (we: folks on port-70) are
often united in having gripes with: activities/designs on
ports-80/443. The format of the Web-based social network for example,
as drawing and underscoring the individual, the personality; the
boundaries these formats draw between these personalities or
identities and their oponents or comrades (or... bots). Yeah, it's
great to be an individual, but an individual caught up in the wake of
capitalist realism as a psycho-social force and economic reality -
this makes me wonder whether movement in the direction *of*
individuality in this sense perhaps isn't the dynamic that's needed in
order to 're-wire' our society in all the ways we need to.
*Wherever You Go, There You Are (I would heartily recommend, for
anyone who has practiced meditation or may be keen to explore)
