Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Christmas and Monopoly

A photo of a Monopoly game board. Used under Creative Commons.

I remember a handful of very important, impactful Christmas gifts over the course of my life. I’ve written about a few of them here. As the years progress, though (I’m much closer to retirement age than I’d care to admit), my interest in gifts lessens. I like opening some surprises on Christmas morning, but I’m much happier watching the kids’ eyes sparkle as they open theirs. Most importantly, though, as our celebration of Christ’s birth incarnates with people, is being with family. This is especially meaningful after a pandemic, during which we realized what it was to live without human connection over the holidays. We hosted some family from out of town this year, and a theme in the gift-giving was games. There were several board games given and received this year, which sparked some interesting conversation.

We’ve been wanting to play more games together as a family for a while. Somehow, the act of solidifying this into a practice and a routine has proven elusive. I’m not entirely certain why, but at the end of the day, the problem is one of discipline. Not at all insurmountable, especially now that the inspiration has struck.

As we discussed these games, a memory forced its way to the surface. When I was young…about the age that our kids are now, actually…my family played Monopoly. We really played Monopoly. The game would be set up on an afternoon as I arrived home from school. My father would arrive home from work and, after dinner, the game would begin. We never ended the game that night, though. We would play for hours, pause, and resume the next evening. These games could last for a week in some cases. Somehow, my father always won, except for one instance. I don’t remember anything else about that specific game, or that week, or that night, but I remember that I won the game once. Only once. That was a big deal.

I’ve always been close with my parents, and those sorts of family events were a big reason why. Who knew that games of Monopoly would prove such a cohesive event for my small family unit. Now, as my daughters have indicated that they wish we did more things together as a family, I’ve found my inspiration for a solution. While it won’t be Monopoly, it will hopefully be of the same effect. Those were better days…days that I’m sad our children won’t get to experience as the world becomes a progressively worse place in which to live…but I’m hopeful that we can at least pass down this.

My parents never knew what they were doing with those Monopoly games. Or, perhaps saying that is not giving them enough credit. I imagine that they were less than enthused about them at times. I am so glad, though, that they persisted.

Image attribution: mike_fleming under Creative Commons.

Hearing Myself from the Past

I started unobtrusive lucidity a long time ago.

I was in seminary then. I hadn’t yet met my wife. My days were primarily composed of reading and writing. Blogging was new, and I was fascinated by the outlet. I rolled up my sleeves (metaphorically) late one night in the tiny apartment in which I was living at the time, set up an account, and wrote my first post. The words just flowed out of me. And, though I wrote with a very different voice then, I could think so much more clearly. There was time. There was quiet.

I’m not sure if I categorize those days as the before times, really, but they were certainly adjacent. I chronicled a lot of my life and journey then for your, dear reader, in the hopes that it would be useful in some way. My motivation for writing here has never been one of narcissism. My life is still private. I just choose to expose parts of it with the thought that I’m likely not the only person experiencing something. I truly have always hoped that the words here help someone.

I didn’t think that, decades later, I would help myself.

You see, the thing about writing these posts for so many years is that some lodge into my memory, either because of the idea or the experience behind them, and others drift away almost as soon as I write them. I consider them all to be important, but some are less memorable.

I’ve been on an emotional roller coast for the past two years. Most recently, that roller coaster has taken me through a very difficult few months. There was a point where I felt hopeless, desperate, abandoned. Even though I logically knew this wasn’t true, the emotional impact of that mental reaction held a physical force, as though someone had punched me in the face. I was hurting. This was a dark place.

I feel very blessed to say I’m coming through the other side of it now. Toward the end, though, when I was at my lowest, I stumbled upon something I had written long ago. So long ago, in fact, that it was second post I ever wrote here. While I feel the emotional struggle in my words all of these years later, the odd thing is that I can’t remember exactly what I had been writing about. I have a guess, but can’t be certain. Interesting how time really does heal our wounds.

Whatever the problem, and however strange my voice from that time sounds to me now, I needed the advice that I had written. I needed to be reminded of what I had learned. I just needed that encouragement. I suppose that means that this space is fulfilling its purpose, hopefully to others, as well.

Hopefully to you.

May your Advent season be blessed.

Evolution of Thankfulness

Thanksgiving was quiet this year. Delayed a day by the storm that blanketed a good bit of New England with our first significant snow of the season, we celebrated with only our family and my in-laws. One afternoon of eating and good conversation, then a drive home and (I’m sad to say) some online Black Friday shopping. That was all. The weekend was really a non-event.

As I returned from meeting a friend for coffee this evening, I was thinking about Thanksgivings of years past. If I rewind a decade or so, to the early years of our marriage, I remember flying from where we lived then to where we are now. Thanksgiving was always the major holiday of the year for my wife’s side of the family, and I can recall many trips…sometimes smooth, sometimes with drama, sometimes fraught with travel delays…over the years. What I remember most, however, was that the celebration was always big when we arrived. This weekend, we sat and reminisced about those years, the family who came…some of whom we haven’t seen in far too long…the discussions that were held. The pattern over the years, seemingly ever since we moved back to New England, has been that the celebrations have been growing smaller and smaller. This year some more family moved away, and the end result was that our Thanksgiving gathering was about as small as one could imagine.

I’m sad, in a way. Having grown up in a small family, I was always amazed at how welcomed (and overwhelmed, but in a good way) I was by my wife’s much larger side of the family, many of whom I only saw during the holidays. Now, in some strange paradox, we live here, and I see them even less often. I feel as though there’s a reality distortion field at play.

This year, I’ve been going through a dark time. I hinted at this in a previous post, and it’s only gotten worse. What I hold on to, though, is the lesson learned that the relationships that we have with our family, with our friends, far transcends the issues that bring us down, that threaten to wreck havoc on our lives and upend the order that we know. When these issues happen…and they will…it’s so incredibly important to have these holiday traditions and gatherings to anchor us. They may evolve over time, but they must remain.

We need those reminders.

We need the sense of normalcy.

We need each other.

No matter how small they may appear, I will hold onto those, because they help me to stay centered. I pray, dear reader, that you have these traditions and gatherings, as well.

Why the Acolyte’s Cancellation is Good News

A model of the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars. Used under Creative Commons.

I sort of have difficulty believing that I’m writing a post about Star Wars. There’s one other that I’ve written to my knowledge, a review of the Force Awakens (spoiler: I wasn’t impressed), which I ended by affirming my stance that there had only been three Star Wars movies. When I introduced my daughter to Star Wars, I began with A New Hope, and sort of pretended that the rest hadn’t happened. The prequels were of very poor quality (you can’t have Jar Jar Binks and a good movie…they’re just mutually exclusive), and it was obvious to me with the Force Awakens that Disney was just recycling stories to squeeze more money out of the franchise.

I was perfectly content with that perspective for years.

Then, there was a pandemic, and while exceptionally bored one night, we decided to try the Mandalorian. This brought me back into the newer Star Wars programming in a positive way, because the Mandalorian is excellent. Since then, I’ve found the small screen adventures overall have been hit and miss…there are complete wastes of time like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and exceptional standouts like Andor. I’ve watched most of the Star Wars canon through the latest series at this point. I still have little room in my life for the prequels, and I’ve never seen (and don’t intend to see) the last two films. In general, though, a new series will get me in front of the television.

The first episode of the Acolyte grabbed my attention. I’m largely unfamiliar with the High Republic era, and this episode did what a good first episode should…left the viewer with so, so many questions and pondering how this fit into the larger timeline. By the halfway point, though, I was tuning in out of a determination just to finish what I had started, not because I had any interest whatsoever.

The reason for this isn’t any that I’ve encountered among blogs and podcasts of the Star Wars faithful. There are rants everywhere in that very vocal community, including the inevitable accusations of racism and intolerance being thrown at Disney leadership. Everyone has an opinion, and the Internet allows the vocalization of those opinions, but there is something deeper at play here, I think.

My issue with the direction of Star Wars in general is its departure from Lucas’ original vision in a fundamental, metaphysical way. Star Wars, at its core, is about good vs. evil, which is why it resonated with so many viewers at its debut. The Jedi and the Rebellion were good, the Empire was evil. Now, let me say that I’m not arguing that the canon should never have expanded. Lucas’ genius was dropping small references to events of the past or other people in the characters’ lives without ever digging into them, which leaves so many potential story arcs for a generation of new writers. More than perhaps any other franchise I know of, he set this up for continuation from the beginning, and that was brilliant. With these new stories will undoubtedly come new perspectives. When those perspectives depart from the original world-building at such a foundational level, though, we run into issues.

The most recent iterations of Star Wars…I would argue even going back to the prequels…have been increasingly obsessed with the fact that the Jedi can’t actually be as good as we’ve been led to believe. This isn’t unique to Star Wars, either.

For the past decade or more, it seems that most heroes are antiheroes. The dominant opinion of our cultural moment is that no one can be good, that there is actually no such thing as good. All is subjective. Postmodernism has reached its conclusion. This cynicism makes its way into the writing of our popular culture, and deconstructs fictional character groups like the Jedi. A group that originally stood for good in the universe is now revealed to have been so hopelessly flawed from the beginning that our faith in them is found to have been misplaced. That sort of good can’t exist.

So, what to do, then? If we allow this cynicism to carry us on its current, then the Rebellion must be cut of similar cloth. So, why resist the Empire? Perhaps Thrawn should be our new role model. Give in to the evil, this thought process would tell us, because the good is an illusion.

Nihlist, much?

A lot has happened in the world over the decades since Star Wars first made its impression on my generation, much of it bad. My glasses are not rose-colored. I don’t blame anyone for reaching a point of pessimism in their lives. To give up on the concept of good, however…to refuse to believe in heroes…is to give up on what makes us human.

My issue with the Acolyte is its embracing of evil. My issue with the Acolyte is its message that all attempt at good is doomed. My issue with the Acolyte is its lack of hope, that it left me feeling empty at its conclusion.

Were this to be the pattern of Star Wars moving forward, my opinion would revert to where it was prior to experiencing the Mandalorian. That is, I would be finished with the franchise in its current state. The fact that the Acolyte has not been renewed gives me hope that future stories will return to good triumphing over evil.

That is, after all, a message that we desperately need in our own universe.

Image attribution: Michael Panse under Creative Commons.

Journey Through a Back Yard

A heart composed of flowers and other items my daughters found in the back yard.

My parents still live in the house in which I grew up. They have a large back yard. I’m of the age in which I’m struck by a good deal of memories whenever I visit. As I write this, I’ve been here for the week to assist my parents with various things. I take walks through that big back yard whenever I visit of late, and there’s an odd mental thing that happens: I can visualize the arrangements and different states of the back yard…and, for that matter, the rest of their home…through the decades. With those visualizations come certain, very specific memories.

These vivid memories began some time ago, and have only grown over the years. I think that it’s easy to lapse into these memories because of how amazingly quiet it is where my parents live…it’s a very rural area, so the lack of noise is palpable when visiting. The memories that strike me so vividly have become almost formulaic by this point.

I remember playing near the apple trees in a Spider-Man mask when I was a kid.

When I was a bit older, I would step through the back door from my room to the yard and pretend that it was interior of my TARDIS.

The first time that I saw Transformers, I re-enacted scenes from that first episode in our side yard. That series, incidentally, was life-altering to a kid my age.

Perhaps the most amazing memory involves a storage shed on their property. When I was a kid, my dad built a secret club-house inside of that shed. There was a table, and I later put a map on the wall to make it a secret headquarters. It was secret…the door was hidden, a secret panel in the outside wall that opened when a small peg was pulled. My dad put so much love and attention into that clubhouse.

For the last few years, the moments that strike me about this back yard have grown in number. I remember chasing fireflies with my daughters. I remember a Father’s Day when my daughters made a heart from various found items and placed it in the back yard. They couldn’t wait to show me, and when we visit lately, they can’t wait to chase fireflies with me.

A generation has passed, and I’m watching them form memories in this same back yard that they will (I hope) always take with them, just as I have. I think a lot families in other parts of the world experience this with homes and properties that are passed down through generations, and we often aren’t able to experience it because our culture has become so nomadic. I’m glad I’ve gotten to in at least a small way, because the perception of time brings this incredible shift in perspective around your loved ones. One realizes what is important.

This week, I was thinking about how I felt guilty about not playing in that secret clubhouse enough. My dad and I talked about how much attention he put into it. He was proud of that project. Before I left, I thanked him for building that awesome gift, for giving it so much effort. He said, sincerely, “you’re welcome.”

That moment was profoundly meaningful. As meaningful as any that have happened in that amazing back yard.