five years since I set foot on this land.
six years since I’ve seen the village.
I burned bridges for love.
I demolished blood and howled in the damp valleys full of dark sense and sadness.
but here and back now and
my grandmother is dead.
I stand at the foot of her grave and break, drown in the pink light of a setting sun.
so this is how it goes, huh?
you carve yourself into the souls of others and
and?
and silence. cups become caverns.
warmth becomes monument.
death is survival.
I visit my grandmother’s grave three times.
she is buried next to my grandfather. I never met him.
he has kind eyes in the photographs. he was a kind person they tell me.
I stare at their white rock markers jutting out of the ground.
I pass my eyes over the black Arabic engraving.
this is it huh?
each time and it’s deeper than numb.
it’s the indifferent efficiency of non-existence.
the void lingers beyond the veil: stalking. wet. cold.
sometimes we brush against it. sometimes we embrace it.
sometimes it sends us spiraling into the hells of our memory.
the last time I spoke to her: New Years Day.
I said I was coming in summer.
she couldn’t wait.
the last time I saw her: 2011.
one billion mistakes in a lifetime and very few have the capacity to annihilate our own reflection.
who am I now? another anchor severed.
I don’t want to go home. my brother and I drive around.
night. we pick up my cousins. we put the top down.
we descend into the mountains.
I am detached. distant. full of anxiety.
I stare up at the stars. I
remember laying my head on my grandmother’s lap when we sat on the roof at night. little light in the village then. stars blazed.
‘when was the last time we were all together?’, Maen asks.
I think about it.
he spent three years working in the Congo.
his brother, Mahmoud working in France.
building my family in the US.
my brother studying in Wisconsin.
the four of us spent every summer together.
then we grew up.
‘six? seven years?’
shit.
we stop off in one of the Christian villages to buy alcohol.
we get back on the road. we crawl higher.
we pull over near a cliff.
we keep drinking. I stare into the night.
I feel it. this toxic abyss wrenching my stomach.
what have I done?
I watch the lights of distant villages sparkle across the back of this darkness.
each light a pocket of lives. each life a pocket of thought and feeling not easily understood.
this is too complicated, even for God. for any god.
it’s time to go.
I turn around. my brother turns on the car.
I get in the front seat.
Maen sits up on the back.
I can’t help it, I think about Noctis.
this is all we’ve ever known.
our existence trapped on the shores of our reintroduction surrounded by manufactured monstrosities.
no steps forward.
nowhere to return to.
we have each other, but also
we don’t.
my last night in Beirut. I sit alone on the balcony. 2 AM.
I can’t sleep yet. I am looking for something.
I watch the red lights flow across the rooftops.
I watch a Berserk AMV. Requiem for a Dream music. it ends
a profound emptiness swallows me.
bad luck to talk
I listen
on these rides
mind on the road
who am I now? this year, it’s been hard. I
your dilated eyes
watch the clouds float
I stare at my hands and I
white ferrari
had a good time
want to feel different than this for once. is this self-hate? regret?
16: how was I supposed to know anything?
when does hope walk out of our lives?
I let you out at central
I didn’t care to state the plain
remember when we used to scream through the cities? all the cities, when there was
kept my mouth closed
energy and power in these veins? where are you? or maybe
we’re both so familiar
where did you go?
white ferrari
I put my head between my knees. I am a father now, but
I’m sure we’re taller in another dimension
what does that mean in these shadows? 11 months in and
you say we’re smaller and not worth the mention
I am still terrified and how good of a job could I be doing when
you’re tired of moving, your body’s aching
my grandmother never held my children. they will never understand her touch. what have I done?
we could vacay, there’s places to go
clearly this isn’t all that there is
I slam my fist against the side of my head. again. again. again.
can’t take what’s been given
but we’re so okay here, we’re doing fine
I haven’t done anything, amounted to anything. where have I been?
I’m up and naked
you dream of walls that hold us in prison
I press my head against the cold railing and cry. I have no answer.
it’s just a scar, at least that’s what they call it
I lift my head up. I breathe heavily into my wrist. I stare at the blazing red UNESCO sign on the horizon.
and we’re free to fall
I stand up. I look up. can’t see the stars here.
I look down at my feet. I don’t know what I am anymore.
I exhale.
maybe tomorrow will be better.
is that hope?
I don’t know.
I go back inside.
I lay down next to my wife and children.
I listen to their breathing. the hum of the AC in the dark.
I close my eyes.
let go.
let it go.
no. it’s too soon.
maybe one day. but not now.
I exhale and slip away.
tomorrow though?
we’ll see.
we will see.
‘I don’t want to make a game, I want to make future entertainment…’
– Tetsuya Mizuguchi
a fire by the road.
curled smoke opens into dark blue air.
my uncle grabs dry, dead grass from his pile. pours it onto the fire.
I watch him poke around with his stick.
everything is quiet. a strange time, I
am not usually into this: watching fires is for my brother.
why am I here this time? the only time?
my uncle doesn’t speak. he sweats. huffs.
a master electrician, a school teacher.
he built his house himself. his hands are thick.
his heavy body. mind wide.
I stare at the flame chewing through the new grass.
a black ring born out.
I sweat. squeeze the Stretch Armstrong doll in my hand.
he’s become loose. he doesn’t contract like before.
light left on the horizon. distant villages sparkle.
mountains swallowed.
I look at the toy in my hand.
I pull his right arm one last time.
I watch it collapse slow.
I throw it into the fire.
minutes pass.
he is charred, bubbling.
his body opens to the sky.
his confident grin engulfed in flame.
my uncle laughs.
it’s all so stupid.
I walk away.
PAX East 2014.
I wait in line for Oculus.
called over. I sit down.
the rep explains I will be competing against the person next to me.
she helps me adjust the headset.
a controller in my hand.
the world comes on. I am in a bright living room.
I am a person sitting in a chair.
I control a small knight standing on a coffee table.
I don’t focus. I turn my head around.
this is the pristine living rooms of internet pornography.
the daytime horror of Sarah Palmer’s staircase.
there is a body in the room with me. sitting on a couch.
frozen. solid. I fixate on it.
I lose the fight.
I take the headset off.
I feel something but
not what they wanted.
I nod.
I smile at my wife.
I walk over.
I watch the lake.
Friday afternoon. skip class.
I need warmth.
I grab the Kratom in my pocket.
I put much of it in my mouth and chew.
swallow its bitterness.
I wait. my sense of the world begins to turn.
I walk up to the center of campus.
awe accelerating I stumble across a celebration.
Native Americans in traditional garb dance.
I am elated and sick. my skin buzzing.
my teeth bent back by the light.
echoes of divinity pulse out through my fingers.
I laugh and crash home.
I fall into bed. spin.
I am terrified. I cannot rest.
I go back outside.
I lay down sick by the dumpster behind my apartment.
I watch the trains pass above me, alone
through the night.
I have tears in my eyes, I
explain Child of Eden to someone I love.
someone who knows nothing about video games.
an urban cafe. I look around.
have I lost it? how did I get here? I look at my hands
‘anyway, this probably doesn’t mean much to you…’
I remember buying Final Fantasy Legend III for the Game Boy more than a decade earlier.
I step out of Software Etc.
into the mall cafeteria.
I open the box. carefully spread its contents on the table.
comes with a map. I get excited.
one table over a group of people watch and mock me.
they all laugh. I pack everything up.
I walk away.
I look across
‘I don’t know, it’s so beautiful, it’s transcendent, it feels holy almost…’
she nods, she’s trying to understand. I appreciate that.
I stop talking.
I take her hand in mine.
I listen to the cars passing behind her.
the last arcade near my home.
my last visit before moving across the country.
my initials scroll in every high score slot.
House of the Dead is mine.
the cabinet barely alive. in and out of order.
2p gun taped in its holster.
1p trigger getting loose.
I remember when it was new.
I remember the first time I saw it.
I touch its side.
I don’t care about anything else here.
Mario Kart. DDR. bumper cars. virtual roller coaster. classics shoved in the corner.
this machine is mine.
my constant pilgrimage into warm focus.
unemployed. I know nothing about where I am moving.
a hard time. I exhale.
slide my quarters in
and say goodbye.
morning after.
get dressed.
in the kitchen. stare down the grey trees at the bottom of the hill.
little sleep. broken shuffling. ambivalent shock.
my work shoes on. in my car
I drive. I think about us.
about a study from Princeton: America is an oligarchy.
when hasn’t this been true?
what happened?
we lost.
America is dead.
11 9 2016.
in the office people panic about their jobs.
people call. panic about their healthcare.
executives send out a communication of reassurance.
no one knows.
I smile and congratulate the faithful and faithless.
I tumble through their prism of white light losing
sight of my own spine but oh their teeth are raw stunning.
I sit in my office with the lights off.
so this is fascism huh? the undying, wretched face of the obliterated
released from the heart of this grotesque machine.
I suppose we are due.
Blue Lives Matter
White Genocide
bloodied brown and black
gasps from the gutter.
that’s how it must look huh?
through the shimmering light of blue-eyed victory
the uncertain march toward national self-immolation.
the Fourth Reich has and will always be self-sustaining
like greed. envy. horror.
like some bloated failure of a man becoming President
while our institutions bow into their graves with no words spoken and
no love lost.
The Great Experiment is shuttered.
this lab is quarantined.
the core of America is founded on the defense and ascension of the weak.
Hollywood is built on biblical illusions of the underdog.
like the tech industry.
like the resurgent plague of male chauvinism.
power processes and mirrors the weak to shroud an indifferent system with false morality.
this is the final truth.
I think about games in the aftermath.
what devours this void besides escapism?
I trudge through FFXV and its World of Ruin laughing.
I glide into the inorganic decay of Abzu.
I cry in the afternoon dark alone in my living room.
how many universes have I kissed?
how many windows transform into mirrors under the right kind of light?
I lean back in my chair.
I keep a sealed copy of Rez on my desk.
the dream of the virtual body.
the boundlessness of digital space.
2014: GamerGate.
2016: the founder of modern VR caught bankrolling alt-right trolls.
2017: fashwave enters mainstream awareness.
in between: unironic talk of Muslim internment camps.
the American Dream.
I hold my infant daughters close now.
I worry about their world.
it should have been better than this.
we should have been better than this.
we should have been the actual execution of our mythological assumptions.
now all we are – a choice:
fight or burn quietly.
become a memory or
vanish into forgotten dust twisting in the light of nightmares.
I carry my daughter into the world.
there is a field across the road in front of our home.
there is no unnatural obstruction between our living room and this space.
early fall. the summer forgetful, simmering near the ground.
my wife and I are uncertain. are
are the babies getting enough light? a few months old.
they live their lives inside and
I carry my daughter into the world. my wife carries the other.
the wind picks up. I point to the sun deep inside the sky.
I speak the name of everything. I know she doesn’t know.
I know she can’t see the clouds. the trees. the tall grass.
but maybe she feels warmth
maybe she understands my intent.
the wind flutters, stops. my wife wants us to go back inside
‘I think it’s too cold for the babies…’
I don’t want to. inside is work.
inside is screaming. feeding. bathing.
collapse. an endless loop devouring intent on the carpet
I am draining. distant.
I can’t write. play. think. love. rest. work.
my wife even more ragged, breaking up and down.
I don’t want to go back
inside I don’t remember myself
at all and
nothing prepares you for this nonsense
for this empty upending of the self:
what strange insects live in the damp silence of the soul?
impossible to know until you recreate and manifest.
at first, I keep things going. I have writing ideas. I buy games.
I play those games in twenty minute bursts twice a week.
it isn’t like it was. I can’t do this.
I give up.
who do you become when everything you love is frozen?
when memory is clearer than the present?
when you are removed from yourself?
when through new flesh you are reforged into raw, disgusting entropy?
when home is no longer sanctuary, but void
the parameters of your lived momentum change.
persistent readjustment in seeking the old, quiet love is necessary.
the realization:
I don’t have time for Steam.
I don’t have space to process Final Fantasy XV.
I cannot hone Guilty Gear or VIDEOBALL or Tetris.
I reduce. simplify in a painful, lumbering daze
‘What’s left? What am I chasing?’
I need intimacy. depth. beauty.
my veins are dry. bones cracked.
eyes hollow
I turn back: GBA. iPhone.
The Pinball of the Dead. Dandy Dungeon.
I alternate between them. they fulfill each other.
they are equal in skill and chance.
TPotD reimagines The House of the Dead as a series of virtual pinball tables.
the animation is fluid. the colors are dense.
the GBA helps it breathe. the screen is bright, but not washed out.
it’s the greasy arcade machine in the back of a 7-Eleven at sunset.
Dandy Dungeon is a dungeon crawling RPG love story created by Yoshiro Kimura.
Dandy Dungeon pulls my heart back into my mouth.
I can taste its closeness.
the splash screen: the hero, Yamada, dancing drunk in front of his apartment at night with his friend.
most of the game takes place in Yamada’s apartment.
I watch him sit alone, typing on his computer in front of the window.
I imagine the solitude of that life.
I miss the ability to focus on one act for hours.
I envy Yamada in his big underwear.
the core game takes place inside his game.
the player chooses a dungeon to work through. to clear all floors.
Each dungeon has different treasure. Each floor is cleared by drawing a line from the start to the ‘Goal’ door.
the player is only allowed to carry a few items.
special dungeons are shared via social media.
the music is infectious.
the environments are warm.
the writing is lighthearted and kind.
Dandy Dungeon is the first mobile game I’ve fallen in love with.
it feels what I used to feel
before children. marriage. debt.
summer nights with the window open, listening to distant trains and trees and crickets alone with nothing but my laptop on.
it is compelling in the same way a daydream is
full and loving and incoherent:
the type of father I’d like to be someday.
I am 32 years old.
born in California 1983.
born to immigrant parents. Arab. Muslim. escaping war.
32 years as an American.
32 years of that honor and distinction.
of dancing around the world with the most valuable passport in human history.
32 years of watching this experiment fail and collapse into itself.
I remember the Berlin Wall. watching it fall on television. Peter Jennings reporting.
I remember joy wrapping the world so tight no one could breathe.
we won. love won. unity won. openness won. democracy won.
the narrative was convenient.
America spent its century both freeing and dominating the world.
freeing. torturing. humiliating its own.
what was the civil rights movement if not a fight for basic dignity?
what was Vietnam if not abuse?
and America survived both with minimal adaptation.
an empire of systems. always acting to preserve those systems.
whether breeding right-wing assassins to destroy civil rights leaders or to pretend that you, as a citizen, are heard.
the collapse of the Berlin Wall, of the USSR, became propaganda to keep this network functioning.
we won. we’re still here. we run the world.
and three years later Rodney King is beaten mercilessly by police. it’s recorded. the police are tried and found Not Guilty.
and LA burns. and I am too young to understand why. to understand what it means.
and nothing changes. the systems function through it all as they always do.
America’s platinum respirator.
over 20 years since then.
people that look like me, talk like me, have parents like mine are ripped apart halfway across the world by America’s nihilistic shadow.
over 20 years since and Americans darker than me are exterminated en masse by a system that has become too efficient at maintaining the status quo.
that’s probably its only fault: it works too well.
when the extremist right disproportionately controls America’s governments…
when the choice of President comes down to a hawkish neoliberal willing to endorse the extermination of Arabs on behalf of Israel and a megalomaniacal tyrant that cannot discuss anything beyond a second-grade reading level…
when black Americans can be gunned down, broken, stomped on, have it all recorded, broadcast, and have nothing change…
that is America’s empire of systems working too well.
and that’s the sick genius of it.
this kind of oppression has no symbol. no joints.
no center.
it is a titanic sea of ghost limbs heaving in the dark.
you might be able to see it with the right kind of eyes, but it’s not like before.
it’s careful. quiet. thick. flaccid.
it’s not black students blasted with a fire hose in small-town America.
it’s not Kent State.
it’s not police tanks.
it’s rhetoric.
it’s Fox News, casual racism, microaggressions, the necessity to listen to what the Nazis have to say in pursuit of some theoretical objectivity.
America can handle a riot or 10.
it’s done it before when it was much less sophisticated.
and I don’t know what the solution is.
I don’t know what I can even say that other, better, people haven’t already and I don’t need to add commentary to the overwhelming body of recorded, state-sanctioned violence.
I can only say that America is the most complex mask ever invented.
the face you see depends on who you are, where you’re from, who you know, how you look, how you got here.
and in 2016 all I can be sure of is the glistening furnace staring down the end of us, sweating with anticipation like so many cops stuck in their fearful fever dreams of violent heroism.
welcome to the land of Don Quixote.
happy shooting.
loud sun. old pavement.
in the parking lot alone. smoking.
Amityville Horror at the cheap theater. I am broke.
I have no job. stuck in an endless summer night, time lost rural diner sunsets.
this dying mall. a theater and a skate park.
everything closed. quiet collapse.
2005. the first enclosed mall in the U.S., five decades of celebration and here we are.
Valley Fair. Appleton, WI.
I imagine the optimism. the hope of its birth.
a hope that defined the physical space of consumer culture for half a century.
silent sky-cut sweat and I remember California.
I remember Brea Mall. two floors. glass elevators. wide and open. high ceilings.
the greatest cathedral I know. a space of lanes and sublime and light.
all water and glistening tile.
at peace there. wandering the expanse.
pulled back by a bobbing weed. I shake the dream off. a warm wind.
I walk to the ruin.
demolished. 2007.
2006. I am in Poland. Gdansk.
I stay with my girlfriend in her mother’s house.
cold and ethereal. dense space.
walk through downtown. clean air. soft light.
its pulse slow and heavy. buildings tall enough to shout, but never roar.
I float through its dreams of history. a sequence of wide cobble roads, small cafes.
night clubs hidden in the corners.
we exit its ancient gates.
we ride a trolley to a different part.
I watch two drunks argue.
we get off. walk a bit. down stairs.
a crowded underground mall. small tent shops and store fronts.
a gentle swirling blend of noise, clothes, food, echoes off the concrete.
no heat. the cold penetrates my touch of this place.
is this what Kowloon was like? a hard intimacy of transaction?
nothing to revel at or in here. only a rushed mass to be a part of.
to be nimble with. to become engaged to.
monotone low ceilings. bad lighting. coffee steam.
I float in murmuring tongues I cannot understand.
this is anti-American. there is instinct to this.
imperfect. improvised. humanist.
we are all beautiful insects. all eager.
all of us fragile.
all of us sharp.
we walk out.
we ride to the Baltic Sea.
I walk onto the shore. a suffocating grey hangs.
I listen to the water. I walk to the end of the very long pier.
no one is around. my breath is slow.
I watch the fog bend and float. I imagine the endlessness behind it.
this is one ligament of the world. cloaked and infinite.
my heart slams against my ribs.
I open in awe.
how is this real? how is this not a dream?
my body rejects it. I can’t breathe.
I turn back.
we break up that summer.
text messages in an empty hotel.
bombs off in the distance. I look up at the high ceiling.
I imagine all the glass breaking.
and I wonder how much of it my eyes can swallow.
six years later. I lay in the sun.
I smell the Mediterranean. I stare into the face of Buddha.
a giant stone monument in the middle of the pool.
the water weaves between crafted rock formations. hidden grottoes.
waterfalls. some modern Arab translation of nirvana.
a muscled lifeguard spends hours hitting on a girl.
black helicopters fly above the shore.
the pope is here. touring Lebanon for peace.
I am full of anxiety. I am uncertain.
I want to evaporate. to become the cold face of some false prophet.
to wilt content in the polluted water of an over-engineered pool.
I walk through it all. I stand in one of the alleys.
I look at the sky framed.
I am not impressed by its gleaming oblivion.
I am not lucky.
I dive.
1999. choke diesel in the heart of Beirut.
a giant banner for The Matrix whips near the entry to Concorde Square.
stairs from the street down to an open air food court. concrete decayed.
behind it is the cinema. scuffed white floors. stained glass entrance.
I enjoy its shape.
a giant square depressed in the middle of the city as if a Reboot Game Cube tumbled down from the sky.
there are stores here. none important enough to remember.
I stare up at The Matrix. I don’t know.
this looks like the end.
the end of the 90s.
it’s all so serious now. engorged on grit.
the pretext for the post-9/11 world.
the end of joy. the end of secrecy.
the end of blue skies.
December 2014. I am on a plane.
Vegas. headphones on.
I look out the window. the sun piling up the night.
cool and dark and raw blood orange.
Macintosh Plus oozes into my ears.
it all makes too much sense. my spine shivers.
I press my head against the seat in front of me. look at the floor.
there’s something here. Vaporwave has resonance.
there was a decadent optimism to the 90s.
joy and greed. world peace and capitalism.
A Computer in Every Home. pastoral interface.
family and Furby.
the peak of mall culture.
an era of warning shots that go unanswered.
LA riots. Gulf war. Kosovo. Al-Qaeda bombings. Soviet Union collapse. the first Palestinian Intifada. Columbine.
prologues of the end of the American Century.
90s consumerism was never pure.
only blind.
Vaporwave explores its facade and its reality.
through Nokia ringtones. Windows 95 chimes. department store jazz. proto-synth voices. slow, synthetic beats.
through its gaudy, bulk aesthetic. everything big. everything sparkling. everything thick. everything amplified.
everything a clean, loud edge cutting through the dirt.
1987. The Beautiful You: Celebrating The Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ’87 begins in New Jersey.
Tiffany added at the last second.
a mall tour organized by the Shopping Center Network. sponsored by Clairol and Toyota.
‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ hits #1 on Billboard.
a cover rediscovered. the perfect pop song.
about intimacy and isolation. youth. desire. ideal.
its pinnacle success dependent on the inherent hope of the consumer space.
a song fueled by brands turning malls into spectacle.
into experiences.
there is an illusion of limitless joy to it.
an implication The Good Life cannot end.
that the American Way is righteous celebration.
that our malls are as much a part of entertainment as television or Hollywood.
they magnify our communal happiness the same way they illuminate sound.
they shine like Brea shines.
like California tide pools glimmering in the grey morning.
full of small, dense life.
ignoring fear the water will dry up some day.
2016. Toronto.
apartments and black liquid streaks down the front.
Chinatown. looking up.
I think of Chungking Express. of Wong Kar-wai’s visions of Hong Kong.
I look down. another depressed space. something like Concorde.
old men playing board games.
I walk inside the building.
an Asian mall. somewhere between Gdansk and Brea.
small shops. kiosks.
imported clothes. dried fish. expired food.
cash transactions.
a multi-story operation. low ceilings. tight halls.
I look over the edge of the second floor: a giant television on an empty stage.
no one around. a wide space that extends to the ceiling.
an implication of verticality.
I walk by glass elevators.
a jewelry store going out of business offers tax advice.
a schizophrenic market.
the intersection of the exotic and the practical.
of the American mall’s penchant for minimalist awe and a world that can no longer tolerate it.
I overpay for imported Japanese candies.
the shopkeeper irritated I pay in USD.
I walk out. I look over the edge.
I watch the janitor watch the old men play their games.
I look up at the sun.
I think of the end of Fallen Angels.
my wife takes my hand.
we push deeper into the hot city.
the road home isn’t very long…
and I know I’ll be getting off soon…
but…
I am alone on a Friday. 2015.
I attach a Kinect to my 360 for the first time.
I wait for Child of Eden to load. the cursor pops up.
I move my hand around. the cursor moves.
I spend minutes in the menu realizing control.
this isn’t the first time I’ve played this.
but it feels like the first time.
I select the opening level.
I let it drag me through neon tunnels.
one lane into and through an interpretation of a higher will.
my body is an awkward machine rolling through space.
my hands have significance. they are warm.
the music is light dredging the soul.
I feel detached and intimate.
significant and small.
I feel a raw kind love.
I sit down. I am soft again.
haven’t felt like this in a long time. I want to cry.
or scream.
or run outside and beg the universe to understand that I understand.
but it knows I don’t.
none of us do. this is not our era.
not our time.
the world is dark now.
the mask of multiculturalism, of cooperation, of false equity could only be sustained by pure belief in the optimism of the late 80s/90s and the bright, solid, dynamic worlds it polished.
Star Fox and its neo-pastoral galaxy.
malls as spectacle.
Sonic and its joy of speed and space.
Tiffany and the perfect pop song.
manufactured experience of success and holiness.
of hope.
this mask was too heavy. too slow.
it cost too much to maintain.
and when it crashed into the earth, the dust was suffocating.
and here we are: staring down the self-deprecating subconscious of a cackling truth…
Sonic gets pregnant. malls die. Tiffany a D-list actress.
guns are the new worlds’ embrace.
and Star Fox revels in mockery of the era of its birth.
Welcome to New Lux Plaza.
Remember Meat?
1993.
the forum shops at Caesar’s Palace.
domed, painted ceiling sky. lights shift with time of day.
fountains. luxury. wide, organic walkways. bustling cafes.
towering Roman replicas of Italian decadence.
surrounded by desert.
ahead of its time.
a separation of consumerism from a higher morality.
a space of empty theater akin to the future of airport security.
a real-world walking simulator of The Good Life.
The Beautiful You translated into everything You want.
1993.
the year of Doom and Myst.
of Sim City 2000 and Star Fox.
Sonic CD and Cool Spot.
of the World Trade Center bombing.
a vast coming to terms of the structure of our worlds.
of the intersection between space. simulation. technology. money.
a time that will only be understood through nostalgia and a memification of its symbols: ads. music. style.
its crumbled peak and frayed, blunt edge mined for content.
and now 2016 and VR is here. and Amazon is here. and the App Store. and Steam. Ebay. Origin. Oculus.
amoral liquid purgatory.
crafted. optimized.
detached and pure.
2018. find me by the virtual Dippin’ Dots cart.
bring that algorithm you’re sleeping with.
we will wash our feet in the fountains.
we will be clean for the new glass sun.
you can find me abandoned in the bookstore, crumbling into carpet.
or steeping in white tile beneath the palm trees.
slick and branded.
tranquil glistening chrome.
dead. silent and smiling into the screen.
builds up slow.
advertisement – a man in an idiot hat at four am.
12-foot screen in Boston.
boxes. cords. concrete.
first time I can’t be at PAX.
first time I can’t touch Videoball.
and I am slow. and I am unfocused.
this is a pilgrimage now.
and I am unable to be a part of it.
cuts deeper than I expect. I stare at my phone.
pictures cascade. I know that convention hall.
I know that ceiling.
I’ve wondered beneath it too many times to ever forget, eyes up drowned exhausted in noise.
in so much boredom. in so much peace.
I grind my fingers on my desk my brown skin yellow in this awful place.
I put my head down on the edge. flex my toes.
whisper – it meant everything…
tears well up.
deep breath.
Videoball and Tim and Action Button and it means something.
the first time.
that first time
Videoball is a spine transplant.
the second time
Videoball is a transference of will.
creative aggression crafted in the eyes of Ichijoji Temple.
unwavering. sharp. full of vision.
Videoball and Action Button.
I pull my face up. I squint. oblivion sunlight blares down outside.
I am terrified of blue sky. I am afraid of its indifference.
there is no comfort in it. no joy or gentleness.
and in this moment I am no better. I am the worst version of myself.
I dig back into my phone. I can’t work.
I keep checking bent over in strained prayer.
hot pain shrieking down my neck.
Iron Galaxy posts a stream link.
I go in.
people shuffling around. bland electronic music.
Videoball neon colors flash one of the screens.
I imagine myself glowing in it.
deep breath.
stream schedule. Videoball next.
I smile for the first time. I watch the chat.
everyone asks about Killer Instinct.
played the original in a greasy casino arcade in Vegas.
an intricate grime machine of a game.
that KI made it to 2016 is a miracle.
I drift to Primal Rage, playing Mortal Kombat on my game gear in fourth grade.
mics pop. hiss.
wake up.
Videoball.
eyes wide I want to cry or scream I don’t know.
a luxury sorbet shop of colors.
brighter. colder. darker.
player triangles streak across the screen in hard fury.
balls bounce around the courts.
I go back to the chat. still Killer Instinct.
they are angry missing the morning KI stream.
some attack Iron Galaxy. some call for Videoball to be cut off.
no respect or decency here.
I love fighting games. I love the community.
this is the FGC at its worst.
this is games at their worst.
I send off some comments. I go back to the video.
what’s changed?
balls have decals now. identities.
completed their evolution into targets.
courts have lines and panels now.
soft texture unraveled and meticulous.
the game is in bloom. it’s grown again.
people score. it pops still.
goal ‘freeze’ has been extended.
first year – the raw elegance of its design.
second year – the cohesive extension of its bones.
third year – building spires of starlight around its mind.
Friday. Saturday. I stay near it.
I seep inside it. my dread dissipates for awhile.
Sunday I run errands with my wife.
we shop for baby clothes.
I check my Twitter feed.
Videoball is the final game of PAX Omegathon.
it deserves this.
Action Button deserves this.
from Tim standing alone yelling three days straight about his game with a now-defunct publisher to Videoball being projected all over the world in fierce competition.
this is important.
Videoball is important
imbued with the ultimate apathy of a sleeping god:
unconstrained. overwhelming. introspective. dense.
it knows what it is.
its confidence is infectious.
I have grown with the game.
I have grown because of it.
in an industry that still falls so short in all respects, Videoball eclipses the constant, bloated rot swaying around it.
futile to ignore.
impossible to walk away from.
it releases this year.
try it.
try to know yourself through it.
you will emerge whole and simple and clean.
the best anyone can ask for anymore.
Build.
There is a road in Beirut.
It cuts into, wraps, the heart of the city.
It’s elevated. The Mediterranean shimmers in front of it.
It melts downtown. Chokes on smog.
This city is proud, broken, laid out in front of it.
A sunbather in boiling light.
The circular theater still hollow concrete.
The unfinished tower too large to destroy.
The curve by the shore where the Prime Minister was assassinated.
The Virgin Megastore. The rotten parliament.
Hezbollah slums. Refugee camps.
Bullet-riddled.
Vibrant.
A place that never recovers, but always comes back.
More resilient than NYC.
Wilder than LA.
More expensive than Paris.
The birthplace of the modern suicide bomb.
Scarred by the most complicated, brutal civil war in modern history.
Thousands of refugees massacred in camps.
Families incinerated at checkpoints.
Hundreds of US Marines ripped apart.
A war of 18 religions.
A war of psychopaths.
In a city that remains broken to survive, people break.
Become husks of selfish ideology.
Hollow ghosts haunting screens.
Not singular.
Not identifiable.
Unrelatable to the first world.
A sheared mass getting its picture taken.
A generation of Manhunt executions devoured by technological and spiritual adolescence.
Everyone prey.
Everyone consumed.
Everyone The Plague.
But beauty endures in this hole.
The world doesn’t forget.
Tracers at sunset.
Old men at backgammon beneath street lights.
Silhouette ships stoic on the horizon.
Throwing food to the gutter cats.
Coffee and hookah by the shore.
This dread is compelling.
A resigned immediacy focuses the landscape.
On the precipice of every frayed nerve, the heart unravels.
This is where The Division functions.
It rips NYC open, exposes it to the developing world.
It is a reimagining of DMZ with less character and more violence.
The Division’s NYC doesn’t feel apocalyptic.
It is not a wasteland.
It is frozen and lush.
A thorough contemplation of adorned repulsion.
Garbage stacked high on every street.
Holographic memories of people burned alive.
Civilians fighting over food in the cold.
But there’s the sunlight. The fog. The snow. The night.
Piss Christ reconstructed as a city.
And the days seep into each other.
NYC via Beirut.
Sarajevo.
Belfast.
Chernobyl.
Extremist ideology in rational abandonment.
The Division is criticized for espousing a fascist world view.
The player is a federal agent assisting in the violent restoration of this city.
The player’s main interaction is shooting at those who hinder this restoration.
The Division is one gang among many.
The player exists in this world like the Cleaners and the Rikers.
Living weapons moving through the world.
Explosive noise echoing down.
Violence is the coalescing force.
The shared experience.
To say The Division is fascist is to never live through conflict.
To never witness a complex, living system unravel around you.
To never hear a car bomb detonate a block away.
To never have a relative gunned down at an arbitrary checkpoint in the middle of the night.
Labeling it as fascist is to misunderstand the mechanics of prolonged, uncontrolled conflict.
Everyone seeks to exert their order, but no one succeeds.
Wills stagnate. Violence drones on.
It becomes ‘the way it is’.
The Division is absurd hyper-realism.
In the Dark Zone, the game takes the equanimity of its violence to its logical extreme: everyone can kill and steal from everyone.
There is a constant immediacy.
This is the fiction.
Conflict isn’t bound by self-preservation and stagnation, but a rapid calculus of greed.
The Division can be interpreted as a companion to This War of Mine.
Where TWoM is a personal view of surviving conflict, The Division is about exploring the raw, ridiculous heart of it.
About examining failure through density.
About the futility of will filtered through factional violence.
About watching the sun light up bodies by the shore.
Kanabō 