speed run

And so what I’m supposed to be doing is writing this assignment which is due in on the 21st – which is what I’ve been supposed to be doing for the past several months now – and I’m sure I’ll start it soon – but what I’ve actually been doing – apart from organising this squash tournament in preparation for the Varsity match against the Met – which we played on Wednesday; kicked right royal ass; my first taste of university sports at the age of thirty-six! – is playing Head Over Heels and reading about the beats and wondering about the world and life and stuff. The thing is –

Head Over Heels! Wow: what a game! And though it was three or four weeks back that I completed it, which generally signifies being over something like that, I then got it in my head that what I really needed to do was speed run it from beginning to end – via the shortest route – and without losing a life. Ie, play the perfect game. And then record it. And then upload it so the world can stand gape-mouthed and awed praising Jah and glorifying my name to the highest forever and ever amen. Who wouldn’t be impressed? And so I –

The perfect game. Easier said than done. It took hours. Days. Hours each day. What with that and the squash there wasn’t time for anything else. I guess I got obsessed. But in a good way. No longer the sad loser man lying in bed playing some gormless eighties computer game but – yes! – the hero on a quest and joyfully giggling revelation at the knowledge that EVERYTHING we do with our time is basically the same: has the same value: none of it matters. So what? Some people work in offices; some people go shopping; some people stand at cash registers; and some people write books. It’s all the same. Everything. Just time and the filling of it. I pilot a small cartoon pussycat around a screen and try not to let him fall onto spikes. Isn’t the world wonderful?

But I got more than that too…

The thing is, I learned greatly much and loads too. I started out trepidacious. I tiptoed into rooms when no need. I charged in and died. I didn’t know what was coming next. So then I started to tell myself, ok, ok, it’s the dalek room after this one; then the corridor; then after that the fish room; and go left here; and got to hit that one sooner. I noticed markings on the backgrounds that I could use to judge my jumps and runs. I figured out the patterns of the robots that had bamboozled me since I was thirteen. I found shortcut after shortcut till I reckoned I’d found them all. And everything started to come together: no longer being surprised by rooms, and no longer even needing to tell myself what was coming next: I simply KNEW. All on automatic. Conscious brain strived and repeated and soon enough it became unconscious, habitual behaviour that leaked into the fingers and the fingers knew what to do without thought. Like learning to walk, I guess. And I marvelled at the smoothness and the speed of the cat, the way I raced through puzzles. The way I went from stumbling like a baby to becoming the master of the universe.

Useful. You say it was just a silly game, that there are better things I could be doing with my time. I say, what things? And, even if you’re right, I still have time anyway. And, more than that, what I got to see and experience and realise was this: that my mind can be trained: that I can take on difficult tasks and with perseverance and repetition and determination and focus make them with conscious effort, and then make them effortlessly. Not only this, but anything. It’s obvious, I suppose, but now I know it in my experience. Never give up. I was lame in the beginning and it seemed impossible – but I made it, and I made it good. Squash, football, writing – and even something useful like meditation. I think I will always remember the days I spent conquering Head Over Heels – forcing my mind to become expert – whenever I try something new and see myself struggle yet know the possibility of at some point getting it, and seeing it sink into my bones, and grow as natural as putting one step in front of the other and journeying this body through space.

Did I ever tell you, by the way, that I’m a time traveller? Yes! I travel through time at exactly sixty minutes per hour. Yesterday I travelled from nine-fifteen to nine-twenty-two with the minimum of effort. Though so far I can only do it one direction – at least physically: if I want to go back in time I have to do it absent of the body. And I can go forward that way too: which is what I may have to do sometime soon if I’m to complete this assignment. It’s not cheating, right, if you plagiarise your future self and copy the words you haven’t yet written?

So that is me: referee; squash nut; computer game geek; madman. My girlfriend, I think, is the most tolerant woman in the world. How could a man not love her? When she comes home tired from work and all I’ve done is play games of one sort or another – and then I fart, and it really stinks, and all I can do is giggle and she giggles too? I shake my head: I have no idea how lucky I am. It’s a one-in-a-million that could put up with me.