Moved Once Again

I cannot possibly describe the experience I had today, but I will do my best. It was similar to yesterday, when we got to chat for a while with some older teenagers. Today, though, I got the incredible chance to sit down and talk to three girls ages 17 and 18 for TWO WHOLE HOURS at a township school in Phillipi. I asked them about everything: their relationships, their families, race, sex, drugs, violence. I didn't hold back, and neither did they. They opened up their lives to me, and I felt so welcomed once again. It was so hard for me to look into their eyes and listen to their stories knowing that each day they risk their lives by walking on the street. At one point during the interview, I told them how moving it was for me to talk to them and listen to the gang and gender violence they endure. I almost started to cry when I told them, and they responded with happy words: "We are so happy you told us that." For their privacy, I cannot disclose any more specifics of my interviews with them, but just know that there is no way we can possibly conceive what they go through every day. Take my word for it.

I am excited about going back to this township tomorrow, and I hope that it warms (and breaks) my heart just as much. This trip has made me more globally aware than I have ever been, and the creative flow is flooding with ideas. I have so much hope; lets make this worth it.

If you would like to check out more information, please read the UN project blog: Games Take On Violence Against Women. This same post is on there, but there are many more posts that include some amazing pictures.

Live from Cape Town

At this very moment I am watching and listening to Raymond deVilliers from Wisdom Games in Cape Town, South Africa. For the last few hours, information has poured from his brain into my own as I scrambled to translate sounds into words and into coherent thoughts on paper. After 24 hours of travel, a meager 8 hours of sleep still hasn't curbed the foggy haze in my brain, and despite spending a few nights here, I'm not quite sure my body has acclimated yet. Every experience I have had since arriving is hard for me to translate into words. Our very first moment we visited a township called Langa and were all blown away by its impact on us. We took in its pottery, dance, language, poverty, children and architecture; its community, interactions, and open arms. At a "less conservative church" (according to our tour guide), we watched the churchgoers dance and sing, shout and pray aloud. I will never forget the woman at that church who knelt on the ground and cried her eyes out as she prayed aloud to God. Hugs followed this long moment of loud prayers, and we all felt like we were welcome here. It was the best way to start our trip. 

We have done much more since then, but it is impossible for me to write all about it at this time. I have so many pictures that will be online at some point, and I'll be sure to share and explain each one. By the end of this trip, I know that I will have changed in some way. 

Nighttime Space Alien of McDonald Hall

Tonight I fell in love -- once again with the wind, once again with the sky, and finally, for the very first time, with Coldplay's new album titled "Viva La Vida and Death and All His Friends". It's been out for a while now, and I've had this album in my possession for some time too, but I haven't really given it much of a chance until tonight. The conditions were perfect: ass-freezing cold and lightly windy. The sky was cloudy, which is not generally considered good conditions for star gazing, but tonight I appreciated it. Every now and then the clouds would open up and give me a little peek at the stars; at one point I looked up and there was a perfect outline around the big dipper-- one of those images in my head that I'll always associate with the winter childhood moments with my father back in Brattleboro.

Music has this way of grabbing my heart and moving it along with it. When it speeds up, I speed up. When it slows down, I do too. Tonight this album was exactly what I needed. I sang with it, cried with it, tapped to it, and full on danced with it in the back yard of McDonald with my pink breast cancer blanket wrapped around me like a cape. I was wearing 4 layers, huge space alien headphones, and a blanket -- I must have looked nutzo. I'm still wearing all of those things right now.

~*~

The immensity of the UN project came and hit me in the face today. Dr. Lange gave a wonderful lecture on interviewing and the ethnographic process, and all of the peices came together in my head. This trip is more than an experience; it could be everything that this project needs for direction.

~*~

Today proved to me that I've gotten better at hiding the things that are bothering me. Usually my eyes tell the whole world when something is wrong, but today I mastered a technique I like to call the "mind put off". I've gotten pretty good at it over the years, but it was never really 100% solid. It reassures me that I have reached a whole new level of professionalism. When it's time to work, it's time to work, and I can't be getting lost in the messiness of life.

"The sky could be blue
I don't mind
Without you it's a waste of time"
-Coldplay: Strawberry Swing

The Creative Flow

It comes when I least expect it, at the most inconvenient times, and when I'm barely even awake. The creative flow -- a supernatural fragment of neurons (haha what?) that fire while I'm laying in bed and failing to sleep. I'm generally the type of person who puts my head on the pillow and is zonked out right away, but recently (probably due to the copious amounts of caffeine I have been ingesting recently) I am incapable of turning the brain switch off.

And I am so thankful for that. It is rare when I can come up with a gameplay idea that has the potential to be truly unique. Oop! Right as I'm sitting here I came up with another idea. Last night as I was fighting for sleep, I shot up out of bed and dug around for my notebook again. Once again I will need to carry my Moleskine around. At home the flow is nonexistent, and I have no need for carrying it around with me, but here in Burlington it thrives!

I'm wondering if a game idea can come from this idea of "supernatural neurons," but my mind just brings me to Tim Schafer's Psychonauts. That game should have gone platinum, and it is a shame that it didn't. I wonder what his creative flow is like....

A New Perspective

Yesterday was a beautiful day. As I walked back from the EMC in silence with a friend, I got lost in the subtle noises of the leaves, the cool breeze flowing through my hair, and the warming touch of the sun. I watched a woman grab the hand of a 3 year old as they crossed the bare streets nearby, and I couldn't help but think of that little girl's future. If she was in South Africa, what would her life be like? Would her mother grab her hand as they crossed the street together? Would she struggle to learn to define herself by something other than her race? I cannot know the answers to these questions, unfortunately, and I'm not sure I'll be able to answer them when I come back from the trip. I can only hope that this trip, besides being an incredible experience, will help me become a global citizen.

I've been keeping in close contact with Professor Lange throughout this endeavor. He's an anthropologist and has a lot of experience with ethnography, and I see him as an incredible asset to this project. He's a reminder of the ethical boundaries we could be stepping, and he is wonderful at compiling information and finding the deeper meaning in it all. I'm greatly looking forward to picking his brain later on in the project.

Work work work work. This weekend it's time for play! My childhood friends are in town and we're going to do things old school: sleepless nights and N64.

Small-ness

I want to make games.
I will make games.

Being back at school has helped the creative flow so much. Last night at 3am I turned my light on suddenly and dug through my room for a notebook and a pen to scratch down a design concept that I maybe/possibly could conceivably create. A large part of it may have to be left out because of scope (and my current inability to implement design into something visual... but that will change with time). This idea will motivate me to do the extra mile -- aside from the UN project and school work, which will take many many miles of effort next year.

But the stress is secondary. It's the experience. It's being wrapped up in something that is so beyond -me-. Something that is more than just the singular; it is the plural, the entirety of man.


Staring at the cloudy meteor shower (sounds like that worked out well, right?) reminded me of how small I am, and this feeling has permeated into my brain ever since last night. That's the wonder of space, I suppose. It never fails to remind me of how small we all are, despite how large we can seem.

More than the Singular

I have to keep my eyes on the bigger picture today, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. Work got me down in the dumps today; I was researching about South Africa, like normal, but I came across this documentary on Suicide in South Africa, specifically in a town called Kimberley. I watched a family grieve over the loss of their child; I watched friends cry and cry, explaining how they, too, had attempted suicide and were feeling numb because of anti-depressants. Their best friend had hung herself, and the girl's father told us how he found her, her jump rope around her neck. 10 teenagers attempt suicide a week in this town, and that number makes me choke. I watch these families cry, and I think about Amber. I think about how her mother found her, and about the song they played at her funeral.

South Africa needs more help than I can give it, I'm afraid. I feel lucky to be a part of helping any change at all, but I wonder if it will make much of a difference for these people. They have so much tragedy in their lives.

My research got me in a funk today, and even at 9pm, after the completion of Super Mario Galaxy, I can't quite shake it off. It makes me fall back into that hole in my heart where Serge is missing. It makes me miss him.

I'm hoping that this weekend will be filled with more rain and relaxation. More video games, reading, and empty-headedness.

The Trip is Over

I'm back in Burlington. 2 days of travel is more than enough for me, and I don't know how I'll survive the travel involved with going to Africa.

I woke up after my "nap" at around 9am yesterday and felt a little better about Serge leaving. By 1pm I felt almost 100% better, and by the time I arrived at the airport (5 hours early) the adventure of travel made me feel just fine. On the bus ride back to Burlington, I sat next to a girl who was from Kennebunk, Maine, where Peter lives, and is in the same year as me. She told me she was exhausted from a concert last night. I asked her which one, and she replied, "Coldplay." I cringed. I smiled and said "Oh I'm so jealous!" and she had no idea just how jealous I was. But then I thought to myself, "I'd rather see Serge than go to a concert anyday," and that made me feel a lot better. She was really nice and we had a nice chat on our 5 hour trip up.

I feel pretty exhausted now, but I'm doing OK. I'm feeling a little moody, but I'm holding my mental tongue.

Parting Once More

I'm laying in Oak Grove, Kentucky, just outside of Fort Campbell, in the most comfortable hotel bed by myself. It's almost 5am and Serge left a little over an hour ago. I'm waiting for the day when not seeing him will be almost painless, but I doubt this day will ever come. We spent the last three nights tangled up in each other, drunk with love and passion and kisses. These visits never last long enough.

Each time I see him he says to me, "I wish that we lived together." "I know. Me too," I reply each time. There is nothing I want more than that, in all honesty, and I have juggled with the fantasy of dropping out of school and him coming home to me every night -- even though I know that would never work. I love school too much, and doing nothing with my life would make me miserable. He knows this too, which is why he would never let me do it. There are times, though, where I would do it in a heartbeat. He always reminds me of how lucky I am to be going to college-- something that he wasn't able to do. I am lucky.

Whenever it is that I fall back asleep, I'll be waking up to a long day of travel. I'm to take an hour shuttle to Nashville International Airport where I will proceed to wait around for my flight back to Providence. My dad will luckily pick me up from there, and I'll come back to my house at around 11pm to sleep and wake up at 6am. My bus back to Burlington is at 8am on Tuesday.

I hope this sadness lifts by then. Usually the adventure of traveling alone keeps my mind off things.

I should sleep for my long day.