The Game of Reasons: A Fable

 

There was once a woman who lived at the outermost edge of a crowded city. She wasn't wealthy. She wasn't particularly powerful, either. But she had something in abundance that was rarer than either of those things – time. And because her time was precious, many came knocking at her door.

At first, they asked for what they wanted gently and with prudence. “Walk with me,” said one. “Write me a letter,” said another. And the woman, being kind and mindful of the feelings of others, often said yes. But when she said no, they demanded to know why.

So she gave them reasons. “I am tired.” “I have work to do.” “I must tend my garden and feed my animals.”

And each time, the petitioner smiled, tied a little rope around her wrist, and said, “Then I will wait until you are rested.” Or, “Then I will walk with you while you work.” Or, “Then I will help in your garden, and you will owe me your company.”

Soon, both of the woman's wrists were completely bound by great quantities of rope woven from her own words.

Then one day, a stranger came, not to ask, but simply to watch. He noticed the woman tugging at her bindings and rubbing her red, raw wrists. He saw the neighbors tightening the bindings and adding more of them with every new reason she offered. Finally, he asked her, “Why do you keep handing them more rope to bind you with?”

The woman was weary. “If I do not give a reason, they will think me cruel,” she said.

The stranger shook his head. “No. If you give them rope, they will only bind you tighter. The cruelty is theirs, not yours. Why not simply stop playing the game?”

So the next time someone asked, “Why will you not give me your time?” the woman answered only, “Because I do not want to and simply will not.”

And this time, when they reached for the rope, there was none to take.

Some grew angry. They shouted. They called her cold, selfish, and unkind. But their hands remained empty all the same, and so their games ended there because they had to. Others, seeing she would not be bound, stopped asking for reasons at all. They learned to ask for less and accept her answers as they came (if they came).

The woman, though lonelier at first, eventually grew lighter day by day. Her wrists healed, and the raw redness went away. Her garden flourished. She forgot what it felt like to be bound. She also found that the ones who stayed were those who loved her without proof. Those who could cherish the yes while retaining the ability to hear no.

So it is told. The ones who demand reasons seek only control. The rope you hand them is woven from your own excuses, and the only way to win the game of reasons is never to play.

The Art of Doing Nothing (With a Little Help from Slacker)

Slacker - Richard Linklater (1990) Courtesy of Orion Classics

It's really no secret that most of us are taught to fear doing nothing. Idleness is suspicious. Productivity is the religion of the day. So, if you’re not grinding, optimizing, or “getting ahead” every second of every day, then what are you even doing with your life?

Me? I’ve always been on the other side of that equation. If ambition meant taking a straight shot across the field with a touchdown in mind, I would have been the person wandering around the edges, looking at dandelions and clouds instead. And for most of my life, I was told that made me a failure. A slacker.

Which is probably why finally getting a chance to sit down and check out Richard Linklater’s Slacker a couple of weeks ago – decades after it came out – felt like such a strange kind of homecoming.

Doing Nothing, Cinematically

If you’ve never seen it, here’s the gist. Slacker doesn’t really have a plot or any big, hairy point it's trying to make. There's no main character, no grand growth arc, no traditional payoff. It just drifts through a day in Austin, Texas, following one character until another wanders into frame a few minutes later, then shifting focus.

Most of the characters (if you can call them that) are, by conventional standards, “doing nothing.” They’re rambling about conspiracies, fiddling with art projects, spontaneously philosophizing, waiting for God only knows what, hanging out, talking about whatever. None of them are rushing to work or thinking about how they're going to reach that next rung on the corporate ladder.

And yet... it’s alive. Very much so. The whole film hums with this strange electricity, like the air between two people at 2 AM when you’ve both wandered way too far off the map of ordinary conversation.

It’s a movie that says, maybe nothing is something... if you look closely enough.

The Swedish Inn That Doesn’t Exist

 

Last night I went to Sweden. Not on a plane with my passport in hand, and not with my bank account weeping at the cost of airfare. I just… slipped there. Outside of time and space, while I was sleeping.

I stayed in a little inn with a big dining room full of travelers. I ate potatoes and fish, simple but perfect, alongside flatbread with an herb-cheese spread that might honestly have been the best thing I’ve ever tasted, even though it only existed in a dream.

It felt real enough that when I woke up, my hands and feet were buzzing, as though I’d crossed some hidden border and only just re-entered my body. Real enough that the memory stayed with me all day, even while I was chewing my way through all my "get it done before the weekend" tasks. 

I thought about it while answering emails, while juggling client deadlines, while doing all the mundane things that make up real life. I even made a couple of quick renders of the meal, just to hold on to it and remember how it looked, smelled, and tasted before I forget forever. Looking at it now, I almost believe it was a memory.

The Travel I Never Had

I’ve never really been able to afford to travel. At least not in the sweeping, glamorous sense of hopping on planes and visiting countries whenever wanderlust strikes. I dreamed of it when I was younger and fully took it for granted that I'd do it one day. I thought my adulthood would be full of stamps on passports and photographs of me grinning like a demon with a secret in front of landmarks.

But adulthood didn’t go that way. At all. Adulthood has been a never-ending parade of bills, financial worries, and the grind of survival. Trips abroad were always out of reach, filed under “someday” and then quietly filed away again.

So maybe it makes sense that when my subconscious wants to give me the gift of travel, it does it in the most magical way possible. 

Portals, liminal spaces, places you can only get to by stepping outside of ordinary time. When I dream of London, I arrive through a strange terminal full of glowing doors. When I dream of islands, they appear where no reasonable map would place them. When I dream of Sweden, I don’t book a flight. I just arrive.

The Iron Heart of Heaven: A Parable

The first time it fell, no one noticed.

It struck the earth in the night, a streak of fire breaking across the crooked sky. By morning, only a shallow crater marked the spot where it had landed. The farmers who found it thought it was a piece of machinery, an engine torn from some plane that must have somehow passed unseen. 

They tried to lift it, but the weight pulled their arms down as though the thing were rooted to the ground. It made no sound, no hum. It gave off no shiver of heat. It was just iron, so its only language was silence.

They called it the Heart, because that was the only shape everyone who saw it could agree upon. It wasn't a wheel, or a blade, or a stone. It was a heart. But it was also too heavy, too perfect, and too empty to be alive. 

Some claimed it pulsed faintly at night, though no two watchers could agree on the rhythm. Others swore that when they leaned close, they heard their own name whispered from inside.

And then the rulers came, of course. They always do.

They declared the Heart an object of study, property of the crooked crown. Men in uniforms tried to chain it, winch it, drag it out of the crater. But every chain mysteriously rusted through before breaking. Every machine groaned and died. And the Heart remained, unmoved. At last, the rulers agreed to place a veil over it, and they called it holy. 

"Do not touch," they said. "Do not question. It is the will of heaven." 

But in the crooked world, nothing is ever straight.

The fields began to wither, rivers bent away from their banks, and afternoon shadows lengthened at wrong angles. Sleepwalkers carried on their errands without noticing, but those with sparks inside felt the slant of things. They laughed or wept without knowing why. They dreamed of iron teeth gnashing through the sky. And always, the Heart waited.

Unilt one among them was chosen.

He was no priest, no scholar, no soldier. He was simply one whose laughter had split the silence. He alone saw the Heart not as a blessing or a curse, but as a burden. 

The dream came to him first. A world that would fold like paper and collapse into silence if the Heart were not returned. And he woke with his hands aching as though he had carried a weight through the night.

Escaping the Sea of Tears (and Other Lessons in Making Stuff)

This morning is the kind I would bottle if I could. Before Sunrise playing softly in the background, a grocery delivery on its way, a stick of chamomile incense making my office space smell amazing. I’m in that gentle in-between state where the world hasn’t yet demanded anything of me. 

And I’ve been thinking about part of last night’s conversation with Seth, the kind that runs past dinner and into the hours after the sun goes down. The air cooling around us and filling with drizzle as we sit at our little bistro table, comparing notes on the internet, creativity, and why we’re still here doing this whole “posting things online” dance after all these years.

The short version?

We’re obviously both still doing it, but it’s different now. Very different.

Back in My LiveJournal Days...

When Seth and I first met (over 20 years ago now) we were both living in the wild frontier days of LiveJournal. Back then, blogging didn't have much to do with clout or follower counts yet. You posted because you wanted to make a connection with other people. You wrote something heartfelt, and maybe a stranger in another time zone commented back with something equally heartfelt. 

You built friendships on words alone.

Fast forward to now, and it’s like everyone’s been replaced by a marketing department in human form. So many people seem to be here purely to acquire – followers, customers, attention, anything that can be converted into currency. 

I actually can't believe I know other writers, bloggers, and creators who are “successful” in the modern sense, but have also openly (shamelessly!) admitted they don’t actually enjoy writing. That blows my mind every time. Imagine hating something as magical as personal writing from the heart can be, but still doing it daily because the machine demands it.

I already had a job I hated when I first got online and started writing. The last thing I needed was another one.