A Grain of Sand

“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”

-William Blake

Quite an amazing thing, a grain of sand; how many ages has it been buffeted by the wind and how many oceans has it seen? How many feet have walked on it and how many rivers have swept it away? I first heard this excerpt from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence in a movie and at the time I didn’t really understand it. But if you really think about the journey of a grain of sand, you can truly see eternity. Where did that grain come from? An eternity ago, was it a great mountain, a rock, a wonder of the world? The Pyramid of Giza, built over 4500 years ago still stands in all its glory, how then can you fathom how long that grain of sand has been traveling? So you see, to be captivated by this grain of sand is perfectly understandable. How can it not fascinate the most intellectual minds?

However I must caution, to be taken in by the sands can destroy what is held most dear. For if you spend all your time studying that grain of sand and forget about the ocean at your feet, you forget beauty itself; for it is the ocean that has formed that grain of sand and it’s the ocean that’s brought it for you to study. The ocean, in all its formless beauty capable of the most devastating destruction and yet so peaceful. To hear the waves lapping on the shore and to see the sun as it sparkles on its surface, the glare hurts your eyes but you don’t mind, since it’s the sun that gives you its warmth. It warms your insides, it gives you life and love; it protects you. And so the two work in tandem, they help guide you when you are lost and they pick you up when you have fallen down.

Do not forget what is the most important, which is love. For without love all hope is lost and faith is meaningless. To turn your back on love is to give up everything that gives this life meaning. Why would you spend your whole life looking for purpose in a grain of sand, when all you need to do is look up and you see all this time the ocean has been right there, waiting for you to realise what is truly important. And she is still waiting for you to see that all this time all you had to do was look at her and find your purpose there, for she does not ask for anything in return but that you love her and that you love her unconditionally, with no exceptions and no secret clauses. But remember, because this is unquestionably important, if you keep searching in that grain of sand, the tide will soon take the ocean away and then there will be nothing, nothing but a great expanse of sand and no ocean.

“Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars---points of light and reason... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no reason for anything.”

This quote might seem corny but I think it holds a great truth. Just like our atmosphere will shatter a shooting star, so the moon will take away the ocean with the tide, and how long will it take and how far are you willing to walk to get it back? Because once they are gone, there really is no reason for anything. All you are left with is a blind shadow of how it used to be and no hope of ever getting it back.

30 Days of Video Games

Well, I noticed I've skipped all of April. Guess I was so busy ignoring the world to finally catch up on some  selfish gamers dream I forgot about the rest of the world. Although I did accomplish the task, with the help of my most AMAZING friends, to make 89 wedding invitations. I also went to Potters and bought some supplies so I can grow stuff on my balcony this summer and I have managed to keep my herbs alive for 3 weeks now (that's a big accomplishment for me).

So the month of April was dedicated to a daily facebook post entitled "30 days of video games". Every day asked a different question, some of them quite difficult to answer and some of which I just had no answer. But it also brought back the age old desire because I haven't gotten to play any video games since the new year. I guess you could call this a belated new years resolution, but I decided to sort through all my games. I separated all the ones I haven't finished in one pile and all the ones I haven't played in another and the rest got filed back in the tv cupboard. And speaking of unfinished games, I'm currently in the market for someone who can beat Fatal Frame, since there was 3 of us playing and we are stuck, how can one beat a game where you die in 3 shots (we are one hit kill right now) and they don't give you any healing items?!?! In any case, moving on... New years resolution, play and finish all the games in those two piles. After I sorted through them, I locked myself in. I spent 3 straight days playing video games. Even my mom ended up asking me where I had gone for 3 days. It was pretty great though, I ended up beating a couple games that I hadn't had a chance to play in a long time.

30 days of video games asked me, what my first game was, what game I thought had the best art style, who my favorite character was, a game that disappointed me, lots of hard questions and that had me going through my game collection, thinking back to games I hadn't seen since the dawn of time; questions that really made me think and had me searching, google, youtube, anywhere and everywhere to jog my memory from all the games I used to know and still have today. But ultimately what it showed me is how much I love video games. My brother and I weren't always into video games. My mom is the one that got us into them. I remember faintly playing pac man on the commodore 64, but the first game I really remember is Alone in the Dark (1992). I remember my mom playing it with us, we would play a bit in the morning before school and we would play for a bit after school. I remember Lemmings, Nikolai's Train, and Galaxy Ball. I remember cheating so we could beat Prince of Persia 2 and I remember the first time Adam made it to the last level of Prince of Persia 1 with 30 seconds left, and I remember when he FINALLY beat Jafar! I remember when we got the Sega Genesis from Grandma for Christmas, and I remember playing Sonic ALL the time! I remember when we got Spider-man for easter, I remember where we found some of the clues, and how it felt when we opened the chest (Just like Link) and there it was, in all its glory! A VIDEO GAME for Easter!! I remember staying up all night playing Lemmings on the SNES and Ren and Stimpy on the Sega with my best friend.

I remember buying our first console, the N64! And we only had enough money for one game so we got a 2 player game. Mario Kart 64. It was the only game we had for A VERY LONG TIME!
My whole childhood was video games. And I wonder when exactly the transition happened. When did I go from video game nut, to video games are for boys? Like 13 year old me was too cool for video games, or I was so wrapped up in trying to fit in and having friends for the first time I kind of forgot about playing video games. Because I remember when we bought the Playstation for my brother for his birthday and I remember when he got Final Fantasy VIII & IX for Christmas, and I made fun of them. How hypocritical of me. Me who spent my whole childhood surrounded by everything gaming, who played video games before school, after school, in the middle of the night, all night. I remember when I picked up that game, FFVIII a year later and thought "this looks kinda cool". I remember getting stuck A LOT. 16 year old me had become a video game noob, how disgraceful. Adam would get so mad at me because I would get stuck a lot and I would ask him for help. I remember getting upset a lot, because I didn't want to "cheat" (and I wasn't very familiar with Game Faqs at the time) so asking my brother was the easiest solution, obviously and he always begrudgingly helped or yelled at me to figure it out myself.

This re-started my gaming journey. I played FFIX (and also got stuck a lot). I remember borrowing my brothers Playstation (which was easier after he got his Playstation 2). When I met my first boyfriend he bought me FFVII, he went on vacation for a week, I set myself up in my room and played it. I lived on ice tea and would eat dinner when my mom called, but from about 11am-5am I was in my room playing, and then I would sleep and start over. I did this for 4 days. That was my first real "gamer" moment. It expanded from there and I had a nice little collection. When I moved out I had to part with some of it (my brother and I had a lot of shared stuff), but the great thing about my husband is that when we moved in together we completed each other's collection. Where I lost the N64, he had one, and where he didn't have the PS2, I had one, etc. And now our gaming collection takes up half our tv stand, and our consoles take up the other half :) Life is good! So thank you 30 days of video games for reminding me where I came from and where I'm going.

Here's to my continued journey on this gaming path! Cheers!