In the aether

Someone’s posted a link to the blog. They are discussing many games I’ve not heard of. What is this world of games? I may have to look into it more.

http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=14969

Threads

One winter, Uncle George and Aunt Bear started a game of knitted
stories. Everyone cast off together and began a tale. Talking in
turn, they interwove their characters lives, moving outward to
different parts of the world and events, the different patterns
teaching different lessons and involving new elements.

When the tale came to a close, one was chosen to tell both what the fate of the characters would be, as well as what the garment made would be used for, with so many hands at the wheel.

Sakura

A Springtime game was Sakura. In the late winter chill we would cut
branches of cherry blossom, the pink brilliant against the snow or
dull brown of the thawing mud. We were each samurai, young beautiful
men, Bishonen, born to live and die in transient splendor. Our lord
would send us on missions, scaling cliffs of fire, rescuing frost
maidens.

When we accomplished our task, we would strike the branch to
see how many blossoms would fall. If many, our fame would exceed the
glory of the sun, and the cost to our hearts would be as great: our
lover lost in the fire, our Daimyo cursed by the crystal Queen. If
few petals fell, our lives and our comrades were safe, and our task
become mundane, unbeautiful. A peasant sweeps his hut, a dog barks, no one is there.

Starlight

One game called for a litre of starlight. This frustrated me as a
child. I would complain to my Uncle George, how could such a thing be
done? He just scratched his head and said he knew there was a jar of
it somewhere. I would stomp away in a huff, accusing him of lying to
me.

Then, one day, when I was closing up the house after his death, in
a dusty cupboard I found a jar with luminescence inside. I picked it
up and opened the lid, and could see all around me, limned with
silver. Then nothing. I still have the jar. I leave it out under the
moonless sky some nights, hoping.

Dandelion Puffs

There was a game we played in the meadows using dandelion puffs. Once when we played I became the king of the world and lost my heart to a child of the sun.

The Littlest Fairy

Uncle George taught me a game for traveling. If the youngest was
crying, they were the littlest fairy. We would each in turn tell the
story of how the littlest fairy ventured out on the great quest it had
been given. Each storyteller in turn acting out the twists and turns
of the road and playing with the baby, each bringing the fairy closer
to the goal. When the youngest stopped crying, the person who was
telling the tale would tell how the fairy had achieved the prize.

Shang Ti

In the octagonal attic room at Uncle George and Aunt Bear’s house, the dragon of Shang Ti lived. Never did I visit without going to this room.

It was what I always considered a life size model of a dragon. Built of wood and bamboo, it rested on a wire frame with neatly articulated legs, face and claws. Horns and plumes streamed behind it. The body was covered with scales, each a small blank shield the width of the two first joints of my index finger and the length of my nine-year-old thumb. Each waiting to be filled with the mark of time.

Uncle George and Aunt Bear had begun the game before I was born. In it they explored the history of China, back to the time of the Yellow Emperor and beyond. Through the lives of the people and their dealings with the dragons of the earth. After each juncture, a scale would be painted for the people, spirits, the love or devastation visited. The scales near the dragon’s head had characters in grass letters grading forward in time to the slogans of the Great Leap Forward and on. I would skip along these stepping stones of history with my fingers, asking Aunt Bear what this character meant, asking Uncle George to remind me what had happened here where this golden eye gazed.

I joined the story during the Tang Dynasty. We told the tale of Li Bai and Du Fu dueling the Emperor’s youngest daughter over a poem about a cooking pot. I fell in love with a river dragon’s daughter who helped us found a postal service during the Song. I left home when the Cultural Revolution had just begun. They were a part of my life. When I later forced my way through the press to see Along the River, the transposition of time and space gave me chills. I felt rather than remembered the touch of the rough bark on the broom in my hands, the tombs cold beneath me. Reflexively I reached down again for the missing hand of my aqueous love.

My hands, empty.

Coin Spinner

In part of the great game room, Uncle George kept a special table he’d
had made for this game. In the center was a well, with long sloping
sides leading to a central hole. The well had lines spiraling round
and through it, with symbols, letters and words between them.

To play, we threw a coin into the well, spinning it so that it crept it’s
way down and around, and around, slowly making its way to the hole at
the center. Everyone spoke their story at the same time, following
the words and symbols that the coin crossed.

When two coins came close together, these people would bring their characters together, coming physically close as well themselves to allow their voices to comingle and be heard by eachother over the background din. Then, when the coins parted the characters would pass on into new realms as propelled by the other coin. Or, if knocked flat, the tale would end for them.

Horse Race

Looking forward to the impending change of 2009 sends my mind back to one of Uncle George’s political themed games.  We called it the Horse Race game, since that was the central conceit, but I have this nagging recollection that that was not its official title.  It harkens back to 1976 when the field was wide open during the primaries and 27 coursers took their places at the starting gates.  The cacophony of voices resembles the recent past of the Republican contenders and the  interminable though now bygoned, bitter contest between Obama and Clinton.   Joining the spirit of the times back in ’76, Uncle George acquired a game inspired by the general oppugnancy.

It offended my dignity at the time, mocking the serious business of governance which I had just gained the privilege of influencing with my humble vote. Fielding caricature candidates was one thing, but to have them represented by pegs running down a track like some Merry Go Round of money and scandal… I clearly had a lot to learn.

Despite myself, my favorite part of the game was the Albatrosses. We selected our candidates from the stack, chose issues for their platforms, squared off against one another and jockeyed for the approval of constituencies who fell on a given side. Our fight for the over 60 vote on the issue of public nudity was epic. Then came the Albatross, someone in the would-be-president’s entourage becomes their Achilles heel. In the last game I played, my aide turned out to be running cocaine from Columbia in her spare time. But that was due to our hack, of course. The game came with the staid set of drunken spouses and embezzling campaign directors. And of course, the most popular card was the one making the putative commander-in-chief their own worst enemy, drawn with reel after reel of tape. Our house rules let the other players come up with greater and greater sins, tying them in with Aunt Bear’s innovation of using the daily news to start us off with an event with which the candidates had to deal. Now, we’d call it spin.

The game needed a battle map. Watching the countdown on CNN, the states lining up neatly behind the candidates framed as leaders by the self-reinforcing media, I realized this. But at that time, it was only Jimmy Carter’s team who saw the real field of action, and took the candidacy through strategy from that insight. Today that seems it is all we have left. Though at least that seems to have awarded us with a glimmer of hope, for once, this time.