Intellivision

 

I saw an advertisement for Intellivision today on Facebook as a retro-offering and was instantly transported back to late elementary school in my mind.

I had a friend with an Atari 2600 which was beginning to saturate the market for home video game systems in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  It was not cheap ($199) and so despite its popularity there were not a lot of kids who owned one in our small town.  My friend lived out in the country a good ways, but that did not stop me from riding my bike out there over hill and dale on gravel roads with the sun beating down.  I had some serious envy issues considering I had to otherwise ride around town to various places to find the large standalone video games that cost a quarter a game.  You could blow through an allowance really quick in an arcade, especially if you weren’t yet very good at the game.  Some of my favorites were Missile Command, Robotron, Defender, and Q-bert.

So imagine my surprise when my dad returned home from a business trip to Chicago with an Intellivision gaming console under his arm.  It was a convention for carpet installers and he had won it in a game or raffle of some kind.  I was excited but also confused.  What exactly was an “Intellivision”?  The controllers were more complex than the Atari 2600 and the games more sophisticated.  

My favorite was called “Utopia” where you and a friend had an island each surrounded by water.  The goal was to build up a successful civilization which included the possibility of eventually invading the opponent’s island if you had enough money and resources to do it.  Every 15 minutes or so a large rotating rectangular-shaped object that represented a hurricane would appear at the top of the screen and randomly spin itself down through the two islands and whatever it touched (houses, crops, castles, soldiers, factories, hospitals, etc) would be destroyed, ie, disappear from the screen.  It took a long time to play compared to most video games and required the ability to plan and strategize about the future of your island.  I loved it!

I came to realize from the types of games available and the better graphics that the Intellivision was a bit highbrow compared to the Atari 2600.  The downside was that there were not nearly as many games available for it and as far as I knew I was the only kid in my town that had one, which meant there was no trading or borrowing of games possible.  I ran into a similar problem many years later when my job provided a Blackberry phone and I bought a Blackberry tablet as well.  I loved that tablet.  It was a beautiful piece of technology but there were so few apps for it and eventually it died out along with their phones when the iPhone and iPad took over the market.

In the 45 years or so since that time I have built some things of my own in a sort of search for a Utopia.  I am not on an island and I have not been hit by a hurricane but I’ve had to meet and overcome some significant challenges that had the potential to be catastrophic, especially early on.  And at this very moment I am wondering why there were no churches to be built in the game?  I can’t begin to imagine what my life would have been like without the Faith to sustain it.  

***

Music & Memories

 

June 18^th, 2026

This past week or two I’ve been listening to Paul McCartney’s new album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” while driving around in my car.  I didn’t realize when I initially sat down to write this that today is his birthday - 84 years old!  With each listen I’m drawn a little deeper into it and find myself surfing the memories with Paul on waves of music.  It helps that I read Ian Leslie’s “Paul & John” two months ago followed by Jonathan Gould’s “Can’t Buy Me Love”.  The first was recently published and got great reviews, so I asked for it for my birthday.  I chose to read “Can’t Buy Me Love” because of Ian Leslie’s assertion in his book that it was the best of the Beatle’s biographies.

My initial impression of the album was “Boy, Paul’s voice sounds like an old guy singing” (duh).  It is restrained, if not strained at times, and a bit warbly, but if I don’t try to compare it to his younger singing self I can appreciate it.  It helps that it is saturated with nostalgia which makes his musical narration more poignant.

My daughter has been with me on a few of these trips and she has been getting drawn into the music of The Beatles this past year.  I kind of picked up on it by some the questions she was asking and her ability to identify who was singing at any one time on a Beatles song.  She has also been able to recognize some of their influences on songs by contemporary artists that she likes.  The kicker was last week when I went to her room to ask her a question and found “Paul & John” sitting on her dresser looking a little rough around its edges.  I asked her about it and she said she’d had it in her backpack - a small price to pay for her burgeoning interest.

Yesterday I was going to pick her up from field hockey practice and my mind made an interesting connection while listening.  I was getting a familiar vibe, having listened to it a few times through already, and it hit me that it reminded me of Neil Young’s “Prairie Wind”.  That is an album I bought and listened to when I was deployed to Iraq in 2006.  Upon my return home my son was drawn to it and we had parts of it memorized with hand gestures we’d come up with to act out the lyrics.  He was 3 to 4 years old at the time.  Like “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” it is a nostalgic trip through Neil’s childhood and hits a lot of the same beats.  The main difference is that Neil’s voice was still Neil’s voice, love it or hate it (I love it).  

This connection makes me happy.  It ties together some of my own recent forays into writing stories from my youth and ties me to my children who are living out their own young lives many years yet removed from any true nostalgia.  They are looking forward and I am looking back and we are somehow meeting in the middle.

***

St. John & the Garden

 

"He who guides himself has a fool for a Spiritual Father."

I’ve read or heard that somewhere in the books, blogs, and podcasts of the Orthodox variety over the years.  It is like an ironclad spiritual principal hammered out and handed down from the earliest monastic Fathers and Mothers of the Church.

But what can it mean for someone like me “in the world” as it were?  Especially here in America where everything is so new and mostly disconnected from ancient paths that wind down through the centuries.  Here it is like bits of paper blown on the wind from another time and another place.  I grab ahold of what I can and try to piece it together.

I am not a monk.  I am not particularly wise or far-seeing.  The bits of paper in my pocket are reassuring but also disconcerting.

So I’m beginning to wade into a collection of writings by St. John Cassian (c.365 - c.435 AD) that I’ve had on my shelf for about 30 years now.  The thing about him I am most sure of is that his feast day in the Church’s calendar is February 29^th which technically only comes around every 4 years as a leap year.  I have braved the Preface and now find myself at the Introduction.

So, before I even dive in I want to try and understand something.

I do not want a fool for a Spiritual Father and I’ve thought about this quandary in this particular place and culture where Spiritual Fathers and Mothers are as rare as turtle’s teeth.  It is about obedience to someone… a binding of self-will… an opportunity to grow in humility and love.  With little to no effort we are masters at something, but that something is self-deception (a concept insightfully laid out in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, interestingly enough).

Where can I find these things?  This guide?

I think I found it where I wasn’t necessarily looking.  My wife is a mirror that reflects back those aspects of myself that I’d rather not see.  It is easier to find fault in her because I see it more clearly than what hides in me.  It’s that self-deception thing, and boy does it roil me!  The pain and anger that wells up, like a wounded beast that seems so much a part of me that I do not want it to die.  What happens when the mirroring effect becomes too unbearable because I am so feeble-spirited?  Should I discard it and choose another mirror that is a bit more dull and less reflective?  Maybe that new mirror has the beguiling effect of showing me what I want to see about myself, a kind of superficial flattery that becomes less so over time as reality slowly reasserts itself.  It is a spiritual setback, perhaps.

We are just so coarsely human in the worst sense of that word.  By our own poor choices we have been driven from the Garden and given skins of dead animals as a covering to protect us in a fallen world.  It is not ideal.  It is not the goal.  The goal is ahead, too far away it seems, and there is much suffering between us and it.

I am hoping St. John Cassian has some things to teach me.  He traveled the ancient world and sat at the feet of many a renowned Spiritual Father to learn how to live this life - how to attain this goal - a return to the Garden where we are once again truly and fully human - where Adam & Eve are naked before God and without shame.

***

Love Lost to Gravity

 

She’s a lovely cup 

that has no bottom.

I first saw her from

the side or angled, 

not from above.

And when it was 

time to pour love

it passed through,

absorbed by the ground

leaving no trace.

And years passed,

occasional attempts

to see if she’d hold,

and each time I watched

love lost to gravity.

There has been no

repairing of the cup.

The hole remains 

and my love has

no place to go

(at least not where 

the cup is concerned).

But hope springs eternal

and in spite of it all

I keep on pouring.

***

A Curbside Find

 

A curbside find,

I’m lazily reclined.

Ignoring the heat,

just dangling my feet.

Book almost read,

laid out like a bed.

Wife says “bring it in!”

Is relaxing such a sin?

***

Grand Opening!

 

Grand Opening!  For a day, then a few weeks, then a few months, and now at least a year or two.  I remember first seeing it at the end of the hall in this building where I drop in from time to time for a pickup at the pharmacy across from the ophthalmology office.  

I’m not sure how long the banner was there before I noticed it and became curious enough to walk down the hall to check it out.  To the right of the banner is a glass storefront with a glass door.  On the other side of that glass is an eatery that’s been painted and decorated with bright colors to include two carved parrots on the far wall nearest the street.  There are tables on the left side, a long counter on the right, and stacked chairs near the entrance.  I’m not exactly sure what theme they were going for but the only thing missing is the food and drinks.

Years have passed (or so it seems) and everything remains unchanged - frozen, as it were, in the run up to it opening without it ever opening.  This oddly abandoned place at the end of the long hallway is reminiscent of a liminal space where time has been arrested and human activity has failed to take hold.  It has been forgotten.  The banner is fading but still draws my eye at times and makes me think refreshment is available there, if only for a brief moment.

***

The Hum of Love

 

Trees are the hair 

that stand up 

on the head of God,

or at least that is my conjecture,

leaves of a thousand kinds 

adding variety and texture.

It’s like a lecture 

on the beauty 

of the Creator’s mind.

He is surprised 

by my obtuseness, 

an unwinding that is useless

when it does not recognize 

all that was, is, and is to come,

the finite sum 

of my boundedness to time.

In the crime of ingratitude

He gives me latitude.

The hum of love 

undergirding the sublime.

***

Sacred Saturdays

 

There is something semi-sacred about Saturday mornings.  Sure, Sunday mornings are more traditionally the thing, but the quiet time of early Saturday mornings has its own spiritual resonance with me.

On a week day my alarm goes off at 6am and I am out of the house by 7am.  Saturday mornings I sometimes imagine I will sleep in if my daughter doesn’t need to be taken somewhere for her boundless activities.  I awaken around 6 and go in and out of dream states until by 7 I imagine it’s probably at least 8:30 or 9, maybe 10, but it is just 7 and I am wide awake and must get up.

This is the time to feed Nala, gather up my reading and writing materials (books and an iPad usually), and then let her out in the front yard to do her business followed by her luxuriating in the grass watching someone else walk their dog so she can quietly woof at them.  And let’s not forget that coffee must be made for sipping on the front porch while all of this is going on.

When I finish a chapter or section of a chapter I insert my bookmark, close the book, and listen.  There are two birds with two distinct songs in two different trees singing back and forth like antiphonal singing at church.  I notice a lone firefly looking to land on the hostas which brings to mind the lovely scene last night of him and his buddies winking on and off like stars twinkling over my darkened front lawn.

Before the sun fully appears in the sky I feel like I am in a liminal space of sorts between night and day, outside of time and the cares of this world.  When the rest of the world wakes up that will be my time to re-enter the normal flow of things, but in that brief moment it is like I have touched something transcendent, free from externally imposed expectations.

***

More Than Human

 

I remember seeing a book by Theodore Sturgeon when I was young and in the throes of reading weird Science Fiction tales: “More Than Human”.  I read the blurb, possibly on a paperback at a used book store or at the town library considering there were no personal computers or internet at the time.  

I loved stories about misfits and outcasts because somewhere deep inside I identified with them.  I didn’t really have a “best friend” growing up until my junior year of high school when I somehow acquired two.  I am exceedingly grateful for them, but so many formative years of feeling alone and overlooked was… ugh.

Until I found those two friends I wondered if there was something that made me undesirable or annoying.  It took moving to another town to discover them.  They were uber smart, creatively inclined, and mostly open to my spontaneity and impulsiveness, even when it sometimes landed us           in trouble.

It was the difference between feeling less than human over and against feeling more than human, or at the very least just meeting the bar of feeling simply human.  Maybe I could write a quirky Science Fiction short story: “Simply Human”.  It would feature the three of us becoming more than the sum of our parts.

*** 

Nala & Hydrant - a study in symmetry and smells

 

The world is a vexing place

so it helps to sit and think

alongside familiar objects

that smell like neighbors

passing & pausing to pee.

I greet them with a bark 

but my overbearing owner

barks himself, “No bark!”

Dude, I’m just trying to find 

my place in a smelly world.

***