scratchings on sticky notes July 26, 2008

Welcome to the end.

I spent all day yesterday saying goodbye to everything here: the old blue chair with worn upholstery and scratched woodwork, the rather-too-large end table which doubled as a dining suite and workbench, the odds and ends on the low countertop that has been my faithful desk for so many months. Good-bye; you served me well, and now I must take my leave.

The drawers are teeming with papers. I should clean out before… but will it really matter? Who will read them after I’m gone? For all I know, they will be discarded without a second glance. And yet for some reason I did not perform my usual courtesy of cleaning up after myself. Perhaps I hope that one day someone will make sense of all the scratchings on scraps and sticky notes. Perhaps they will meet the same fate as the thousands of bundles of papers by Emily Dickinson; published posthumously and thereby scattered to the four corners of the earth. But really, they were just scratchings. I don’t even know if anybody will want to read them. And yet I left them behind. Ah, well, no sense in mulling over that. The end is here, and I must meet it head-on.

That’s right. Time to go back to college.

the parable of the mines July 17, 2008

Minesweeper. What a maddening game. Simple, yet frustrating. I have easily won the Beginner and Intermediate grids, but the Expert trophy eludes me on my desktop computer at work. Why? The sheer size of the playing area (16 by 30; 480 boxes to clear) is daunting in itself, but that never stopped me from winning before. No, I think it is an inescapable dilemma against which only chance has previously prevailed. There comes a time in almost every game at which I am faced with a situation that has no logical solution. Study the screen shot below and see if you can pinpoint with one hundred percent certainty an unmarked mine’s location. You can’t? Neither could I (until Daddy pointed it out to me).

How to proceed…?
I could choose one at random and hope that my decision is correct. But, if I am too far along in a game (i.e., if there are only ten or so mines left to find from the original one hundred) I really wish not to use this option. Wouldn’t it be nice if that little Smiley-Face at the top of the window would tell me which one to choose? But that goes against the very fundamentals of the game itself; it is I who must decide, and I alone. The Face knows where all those infuriating little explosives are, but if It told me then I would have no reason to play any longer.
The Face guides me now and then; It gasps in anticipation as I dig up a square, indicating that I should use extreme caution as a trap could lie anywhere. When I reach a dead-end in one area of the field, Its smiling countenance encourages me to search elsewhere, as far as the opposite end; oftentimes in doing so I find the solution for the original “trouble spot”. This Face has no qualms about letting me know when I’ve messed up, yet It’s illimitable patience provides me ample opportunity to learn from my mistakes and apply this knowledge to future games.
I continue playing, though at times I want to give it all up and concede the victor’s crown to Anonymous. I still press onward, and my hope lies not in venturing only to the safe squares, but in identifying the mines and marking them for those who come behind me. Once I have completed the purpose toward which the Face calls me, It grants me respite from my toils and welcomes me unto Itself in Best Times.

a hasty beginning July 15, 2008

I am definitely not a professional writer; I don’t even pretend to be a good one. I just get the urge to write now and again, especially after reading an exceptionally well-turned bit of prose from creative minds like Jimmy Sizemore and Anna Bedsole or inspirational journeys like that of Cliff Rybick. Since this is my first shot at it, I’ll just go with what’s on my mind.

Those of you who know me also know that my name is not Marie. At least, that isn’t the name I go by. I chose it as my nom de plume because of the influence of a Sunday School teacher from my senior year in high school. He always made it his business to find out your full name (first, middle, and last) and to call you by the name you did not normally use. He frequently urged us to do the same with anybody we met, because asking such a personal question as “What is your middle name?” opened the floor for other discussions heavy with eternal significance. So, I have told you my middle name. What is yours?

The most recent issue on my mind has been my utter dislike of golf. It’s funny, isn’t it, since I willingly awoke at six o’clock last Saturday morning to go sit out at the seventh hole of the Joe Wheeler course to take pictures for our church tourney. But by the end of the day I certainly was not willing to have any more to do with that game. I have attempted to explain my contrariness before, but as an INTJ I often have difficulty illuminating my thoughts for others. The best I can come up with is that I dislike missing out on hours of quality time with my loved ones while they are off hitting little white balls with sticks and then chasing them into elusive holes. Not only that, but seeing that they will keep on loving the game as I continue to avoid it…knowing that in voicing my opinion too often, I am acting like an impetuous six-year-old who wants Daddy to come away from his tool shed for a tea party.

I hope that none of you are such avid readers that you check this page every hour or so for updates. I write sporadically (or not at all) at worst, and only once or twice a week at best. As I am not satisfied with my personal work until it has undergone substantial review, a day or so may pass between inspiration and publication. So, I’ll see you when I see you. Good night.