i left some discord communities, shedding
silken layers. i couldn't explain why at the
time.
wondering, i played gate's SUPER FLUID
HYPER FLOW! (https://gate.itch.io/super-fluid-hyper-flow) and while navigating be-
tween orbs i recognized what it was that i
was doing:
others had achieved their high scores and (thus, i reasoned)
through such devotion expressed a sense
that the thing had meaning to them, and i
wanted to find that meaning, too, taste it
for myself. my high scores in SHHF! aren't
anything special, they're much lower, and
i thought: maybe there's something here
i'm not yet touching -- reaching -- getting
-- tasting -- meaning if meaning is a verb.
maybe everyone is searching. in any case (maybe everyone is just searching)
what i came to recognize was this habit of
looking for meaning in the same place that
others had already found it. a reliable kind
of meaning.
the term "self-effacing end (https://jzhao.xyz/thoughts/self-effacing-ends)" came into my
vocabulary recently, regarding pleasure, &
play. i think it could also describe meaning.
my pursuit fails because i am searching for
meaning based on evidence of meaning,
rather than submitting myself to whatever
sense that is actually capable of sensing
and finding that ephemeral unquality, un-
and ephemeral like beauty (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=6202).
a simpler way to say what i am trying to
say is that i am holding, returning to, re-
affirming, my belief that others' pursuits
of meaning have little to do with mine--
not because mine is special, but purely
because of some unbridgeable gap that
separates us in our different towers.
"No one ever learns except
through their own activity
and there is, strictly speak-
ing, no such art as teach-
ing, only the art of helping
people to learn. (https://tc.canada.ca/en/aviation/publications/flight-instructor-guide-helicopter-tp-4818/learning)"
i am yet to completely resolve these
conflicts in my mind, but at times i do
wish that i could be there with some-
one inside, be the same person, and
help. with this hope my mind produces
a seductive and beautiful illusion that it
is in principle even possible to do such
a thing.
it is not. we live in different towers and
must regard only the stony outsides as
shining.
i must pursue my own meaning.
edit :: ah yes, the other important thing
is that everyone is doing this all of the
time. what's meaningful to someone
else isn't unmeaningful to me because
it's unmeaningful. i think this is the mis-
understanding that underlies kill game-
play: it ceased being a useful site of ex-
ploration for me personally. gameplay
(forever) and a way to dance all alone
both served as strong evidence of that
for me.
i must kill gameplay because its essen-
tial function for me is to be devoid of
meaning.
but the larger picture is that gameplay
once meant something to me and i feel
sympathetic vibrations with whom it
still means something.
being near that makes me want to keep
searching. i cannot say that there would
be no point to continuing to search --
that's what makes it a search! i don't
know for sure what i'll find.
but each time i draw from the well of
gameplay i come up wanting. i have a
thousand invisible arms but gameplay's
wells alone number in the trillions if
they are even countable.
kill gameplay.