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! 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" 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.

i made a way to dance all alone for jack's avoidance jam which i believe was inspired by an angel dances in the sparks of a bonfire and perhaps brlka's subsequent blog post, designing avoiders.

my participation in this jam followed a personal experience with striving to get a very high score in gameplay (forever), which i could discuss in great detail and yet never enough detail: the way that i passed hours in deep meditation on seemingly infinite and yet deeply finite variations of block placement:

narrow chimneys like those in blood perforated by gaps, climbable by tumbling up alternating left-then-right walls when the gaps are small enough.

wide open spaces only momentarily as free as those in summer, faint aspirations of flight cut short by the reality of obstacles.

awkward trails of fruit like the coins in camp games -- curves i could follow were i only more perfect.

tiny little gaps to struggle to squeeze into like on the first screen of snow or in contribution or in other levels, but never quite in the designed ways of gameplay (killing), there's no time for such difficult impossible elaborate jump sequences, and no need when you can just brute-force your way through.

cleverly wrapping around again like in blood, spotting something impossible and moving through the slip.

endlessly climbing through narrow then open then narrow spaces again like in tower, tower, tower.

and pressure, like in digested.

Quotep52
     In [George] Brecht's puzzles, that moment of hesitation and nonknowledge is
extended indefinitely. He layers minor paradoxes one atop the next to
keep the obvious impossibility at bay. Indeed, Brecht experiences his
own puzzles as temporal extensions. They are difficult, he writes, "for me
too. For one of them it took me several years to figure it out. . . . I have
enough experience to know that when an idea like that comes to me it
has to have a solution. I have confidence in myself. In spite of every-
thing."⁵²
[Note 52 for the chapter reads: Leeber, "Interview," 88.]

i read brkla's "designing avoiders"

after spending a large amount of time with my own gameplay (forever), in a sibling sort of genre.

brlka's writing belongs to a very common canon of game design writing that focuses on something i will tentatively call 'player experience'.

excerpts from "designing avoiders" will follow, accompanied by commentary.

i started to play gameplay (forever) to get a high score.
sometimes when i play an arcade game, i think, i could get a high score.
this happened some months ago with adamatomic's KOLYDR
where i scored 90900 points and satisfied myself with "dethroning adam".
he had said (see above linked bleet) "100K was in reach"
and to me that felt like an impossibility made possible.
having previously played KOLYDR i thought, there's some upper bound, and i don't feel like getting there.
but suddenly when that upper bound was brought into focus i felt drawn to get there. it was within reach.

there are now significantly higher scores. even at the time that i posted my 90900 score (though i did not know it at the time of posting), derek yu had already scored 100200, and now the high score sits at an impossible 236800, by none other than my good friend pancelor (link to itch page, with many various games to play including make ten deluxe).

at some point with a game like this i start to feel an internal sense that either, or both, the peak is unreachable, or i'm not willing to put in the effort to reach it. in the case of adam's prophecied 100K, i felt that it was possible for me to achieve. in the case of pancelor's 200K+, i felt, and feel now, that it is unreachable, at least given the techniques that i have and know now.

sometimes i don't like these sensations. other times i like them. sometimes i am inspired to knock over one or the other or both. in that last bleet pancelor writes, "learned a couple bizarre new techniques for this one, it's wild how much depth this game has :)" -- if i was so motivated, i am sure i could ask pancelor to teach me of these techniques, seek to master them, and then submit myself to the process necessary to extract a high score from skillful application of these techniques.

"player's doing and being
     everything and everywhere
 placing hand on stovetop
 leaping and standing still and running
 screaming and not screaming
 crawling while screaming and not screaming
 wearing own clothes and another player's clothes
 touching wall
 touching ceiling
 touching sky"

"player's
 infinite
 hands

this morning late at night i imagined being with you nobody in the dark room, wondering

could i be nobody with you without you or with anyone?

tomorrow after a sleep insufficient through noon and after i walk under a burning sun and before i reach out for my lost pride

i thought i don't want to write anything except in the dark room with you but what or who are you? only darkness? like sleep and dream your shadows

in the bright room my dark room anywhere, even here where the suns glow creeps, even tomorrow where the suns fledged and scorches cartops

my dark room even at night when everything is already dark and already room, my dark room on purpose, my dark room with everybody.

neon yellow. flash!
my little body flies like a breeze.
my quick movements flow
     less and less clumsy.
i live and i die in a tomb,
who am i?

i collect coins
     on my way to the summit
i'm given a wallet
     and gratitude for it
i'm given no choice
     and sweet simplicity it is
     being a fish on a hook baited
     with my favourite treat!
who am i?

the philosopher's book in my city
(in bright blue, white circles,
     the sky made simple,
     for simple skygazers, cloudwatchers, moonlookers, sunbathers)
says the beauty
is the oubliette itself
we choose our prisons
who am i?

entomb me in the last stone that you bury underground
and when the final red key locks the magic door
     give me no score thing and ask no more.
who am i?

to kill gameplay,
say "kill gameplay."

no thing of yours
no stranger movements in the wind
no blood in the river and no blood on the pebbles
no eddies disrupt the flow

there was a time the spring
ran clear but it is over now
and springtime runs grey
and

to kill gameplay,
say "kill gameplay."

a magical phrase, that, i once understood
but answering your questions
and celebrating a tragedy
and yet mourning the stream's turning grey
still

to kill gameplay,
say "kill gameplay."

power is never lost if the words are there
and not only the words but a miracle
 that i can always find my way
 that the enemies can't hurt me
 that every path is clear
     and all the traffic lights are green
     and all the hits are critical
     and all the magic doors are open
     and all the walls are breakable and all the walls are broken and all the walls are gone
and

to kill gameplay,
say "kill gameplay."

i remedied the knowledge
that i would lose this clear sight
by entrapping a part of me
     who says kill gameplay for me
     who knew what i knew
at the end
at the end of all paths
at the end of all gameplay
and in the end

to kill gameplay,
say "kill gameplay."

close your eyes remain submerged stay
 memories and predictions familiar faces
 go dismissed unsummoned black
 takes them leaving nothing something

quiet catch breath in a red silence
 waiting nothings freedom
 reach don't reach reaching
 death and peace and stay

underwater you can not breathe
 in dreams i cut through sluggish water
 sing without bubbles aaa aaa aaaaa
 your movements will effortless cutting too
 So the legend goes.

"



 "

"when the worms detect rain,
 they do not move.

 a game for one or more players
   instructions for each player:
      you are pinned at a specific point
      in the sky.
      you can see all things, even the worm,
          even the rain.
      you can see all players, even yourself.
      when you see a player
          (which is always)
          you gain no points.
   players have 0 points.
   the game has no beginning and no end.

 for the purposes of this game,
 the moon does not move
 like the worms."

"a game that slots into a game-shaped hole in your life
  but wonder, why is the hole game-shaped?
  where did the hole come from?
  what is life
  without the hole?"

"look!
 heavens vault over
 and over the sundog billionaires
 high scores under violet skies
 violet sky tables
 
 remember red and ultramarine
 weather changes
 lightning heather skies
 glow and praise the vault eternal
 but not its shining face."

"awaiting my skies
 arresting blue
 blue with cloud white
 clouds you

 intoxicate
 and arrest blue
 and cloud

 that skies grey
 over and static
 black and white
 withdrawal silence."

"labour in
 labour out day after
 ██████████ after year
 of play work and sleep
 real."

"a nothing memory could take
 the place of nothings a memory
 replaces with fire
       and life sweet
 nothing that memories
 kill hideous
 nothing too put to death
 by memorys
 advent and always memory
 kills cuckoo
 like and like water fills
 the massive vessel empty with nothing
 who dies like a nothing memory
 to blame."

"do you think
 we only play at being alive
 with each other pretend
 moving makes us greater than
 believing that
 believing in each other
 having ends without ends
 our meaning?"

"turning
 always turning grace
 and smooth thinking
 how slipping serpentine between snakes
 scales and forgetting school
 just swimming as one

 washing water with water and always forever
 turn."
 

"i made a practice of saying no instead
 closing my eyes and heart too and doors
 the hundred fish i did not catch because."

"ten months of this and a large bird
 waited to look at me like a shining stone
 lost humanity for the better
 the passages remained quietly shut."

"how long i wondered must i leave
 these silences sustained forever
 in white hoping for something grey
 on black horizons."