[ previous: "the road to" ] [ return to the present ] [ next: "c'mon, make me think" ]

14 January 2003 (Tuesday): projection games

We sometimes play this game, Soren and I: describe a day in the life some prescribed number of years from now, one of an infinite set of possible futures. Say, for instance, that you're now a staff writer for National Geographic. That we live in Burlington, Vermont. That I've been waiting for weeks for a package that arrived in the mail today. They get rather involved sometimes, and it's not always idyllic. Sometimes there are near-fatal diseases. Or problematic children. You can only play this game once you've reached a certain understanding in the relationship -- namely when the prospect of these things, of sharing these experiences together, doesn't freak the shit out of one of you.

A recent session involved one of those cozy professor's cottages, the kind that sit on the outskirts of campus, with enormous bookshelves cluttered with tomes that the owners have actually read, cover to cover, sometimes more than once, sometimes with a pencil in hand. Five guys sitting around the kitchen table, plenty of good beer all around, and the conversation veers from soccer to the New Media to election politics. Pasta just reaching al dente in a big copper-bottomed pot on the stove. A happy kind of tired, the kind that makes you want to just listen to the conversation for a change, that makes you look forward to sleep but also to eating a bowlful of capellini pomodoro in the company of friends, and it doesn't really matter which one happens first.

Funny thing. I used to play this game alone, all through childhood, and frequently the scenario was this: I'm living in an apartment of my own in a city, with big windows that let the sunlight flood my bedroom in the afternoon. I go out to the neighborhood grocery store, and the wind kicks my hair around, makes whirlpools out of fallen leaves. Later my boyfriend calls: do I want to go to the show tonight? Or meet up with the gang at the new Thai restaurant? Or we could just go down to the harbor and walk around, people-watch. I smile, the receiver pressed to my ear.

And that's how it is, now. Reality has come to fit the blueprint, at times down to the last detail. Wish fulfillment. And also a cautionary message: careful what you dream.

posted by enjelani @ 11:48 PM PST

Replies: 2 comments

heh. there's a quiet (quiet from the outside, anyway) snow-covered house in a grove of aspens somewhere in Colorado in which i will never live. and this is as it should be.

but it was a nice thought. ;)

posted by zach @ 15 01 2003 12:54 AM PST

I played the game, too, and the other person did freak out. She said, you're making me impatient, you make me want something of the future. She played the game with me; she pushed the game further and further along. Then one day, she said, I don't want to do this anymore.

There is an empty apartment in Brooklyn. No one will live in it. There are dinners that will never be eaten. No cats to look after. No children to be named. The only game to play is the present, with no origin and and no slippery end.

posted by PS @ 19 01 2003 06:50 AM PST