As seems to be usual for me, I'm having difficulty getting this started. As usual, this isn't because of a dearth of things to talk about -- instead, as usual, I find myself reluctant to tell the truth (or, at least, certain truths), which reluctance is really just another impediment to managing a successful launch into the wonderful world of words on something like a page.
I've been at home a lot recently -- not, maybe, more than usual, but feeling more... trapped, pehaps? The house is being painted -- it's the first time I've ever lived in a house while this process goes on -- and because all the doors and most of the windows have to be left open, for the painters to have access, I need to be here as they wind up their day's work. Which happens sometime around dusk, on most days. Which means (due to my lack of imagination, I suppose) lots of sitting around, playing my 'Bookworm' game for hours on end...
It used to be that I spent equal amounts of time -- or more -- on Facebook, but a couple of weeks ago I had what I think amounts to a kind of psychotic break with that system. I'd suddenly reached the saturation level with all the cheery little 'How You Can Be The Happiest Person In The Known Universe In Six Easy Steps That If You Don't Take Them, There's Something Deeply Wrong With You' messages, complete with flowers and chirpy birds, or beaches at dusk. It was like being trapped in the cheery section of some grocery store greeting card department, when all I wanted was cards of condolence. At the time, of course, I didn't know that the medicine I was taking for my infected elbow was cancelling out the medicines I take for my depression -- I just thought I was a sour jerk who needed to practice being dead for a while. So, that's what I did. I do get the occasional nudge from Facebook, on my email account, saying I've got 'notifications pending'. But I don't fall for this. One of the main benefits of being dead, it seems to me, is the freedom from having to pay attention to things like this anymore.
The 'Bookworm' project isn't completely perfect, but it does prove sufficiently engaging, and even, from time to time, emotionally satisfying. Of course, ultimately, it's a complete waste of time, but I like the exercise of 'seeing' the words splayed out across the scrabble-like board, reading in all sorts of directions -- it's especially gratifying to find a word all curled in and twisted around on itself, like a tender little larva. (Hence, perhaps, the 'Bookworm' part?) I generally don't pay much attention to the cumulative scoring, until it has reached what, for me, feels like an empyrean level -- in the early millions of meaningless points. But then, infallibly, one of the little burning death tiles -- a Z or a V or sometimes even an I -- slithers its way down the screen, without my being able to find a use for it in any word in English. And when the burning tile reaches the bottom of the playing field, it sits there, jumbling about a bit in a threatening way, until I make another word (knowing that I'm defeated, I usually try to find either an extraordinarily simple work, like 'the', or something rude, like 'poop') and then the whole screen goes up in smoke, leaving ash traces of the last array of letters I had to work with. I always play with the sound turned off; I imagine that, at this stage, there are screams of derisive glee.
Of course, I take this all personally. When I gather splendid words (I really should be keeping a kind of journal, I suppose), I feel as though the game 'knows' who's playing, and it's cooperating with me. Sometimes those flaming squares seem hopeless, but then an easy solution reveals itself just moments before I would be facing defeat, and I feel that I have a beaming accomplice on my side. When I've been sliding the cursor around, in one particular game, for a couple of days on end, and then the treacherous burning tiles pop up before I can do anything to counter them (how many English words do you know that feature five 'i's and one red 'a'? Me neither), and the carefully-built tower of valuable points comes tumbling down, I feel hurt and betrayed. Oh sure, there's a list of the games I've played, an accounting of the high totals I've achieved, but those are also defeats as well, and they only show up when the curtain of fire has done its dance. I feel all sour and bitter. I vow I'll never play again. Which works for entire blocks of, say, fifteen minutes to half an hour at a time.
So, it seems that the only things I feel that I can claim, as assets that may make me valuable as a human being, are my intelligence, and my physical strength. This is why my recent bout with that staph infection was such a blow -- not being able to touch my own face with my own hand, which had blown up to twice its normal size, was a terrible threat. I imagined amputation. And even now, with nothing left of the illness except what the doctor called Post Infection Hyper Pigmentation, or PIHP (can I get a parking sticker?), or a dark spot that will go away over time, I'm still richly aware that I'm long beyond the physical prime of which I was unconscious even as it was slipping past me. I've devised, for now, a regular routine of physical training that, I hope, will forestall, as long as possible, the inevitable fracture or twist or dislocation that will spell the end of my independence. How will I value myself then? How will I summon the psychic strength to undertake the equivalent of getting out of bed?
Likewise, I use the word games -- cross word puzzles, acrostics, the Bookworm addiction -- as touchstones, as reassurances that I've still 'got it', mentally. The daily Times challenge is, for me, about half pleasure, and half obligation, depending on the day of the week. I wish I hadn't learned that the Saturday puzzles really are the hardest ones, because it makes me even more nervous when the Thursday offering keeps me successfully at bay for far too long. And all those Bookworm points, and the vanishing lines of strung-together letters -- they're really only the equivalent, I think, of being able to doggy-paddle, successfully, for one more day, far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Day in, day out, managing to stay afloat for another solar rotation. Day in, day out, proving to myself that I'm smart, even though there's really nothing for me to use my smartness on -- no particular problem or challenge, just a meaningless jumble of programmed letters that, come to think of it, won't let me make a word longer than 'governess' -- even though any simpleton could think of words like illegitimacy, or hallucination, or senescence -- and I somehow stay afloat out in that endless, temporarily benign body of water, the depths of which have never been successfully charted. What will I do with myself when, say, a Wednesday puzzle leaves me stumped? How long can I convince myself to keep treading water?
I was about to suggest that these admittedly silly and pointless occupations may be all that keep me on this side of sanity's porous borders, but honestly, I'm not completely sure that's true.
© 2012 Walter Zimmerman
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