Do You Have A Nintendo Wii?

[jsnlv]

I do. I now also have Wi-fi in my apartment, so: let's exchange codes. Mine's 6581 5997 4423 3467. Post yours in the comments, and I'll add you!

Comments

[jasonlove.livejournal.com]

Adding now.

From your cousin Jamie's site.

[(Anonymous)]

Jan -- Peter and the Sundial of Human Involvement


Peter Love regards the world with what is best described as sincere honesty. He gives every situation the benefit of the doubt, whether it be a conversation or a television commercial (indeed, he will sometimes comment in all seriousness on our need to investigate the possibility of buying new carpet after witnessing with what ease red wine is lifted from a StainMaster brand rug on TV). Peter will strip away cynicism and clever marketing and regard a message in its own dumb nakedness. Sarcasm, far from being misunderstood, is simply ignored. This is illustrated no better than in the case of Peter and the Sundial of Human Involvement.

In the leafy centre of Wellington's Botanical Gardens there sits the Sundial in question. A sign invites passers by to stand in the middle, thrust one's arms into the air, and create a human sundial. Most participants who do so enjoy a laugh or a bit of self-deprecating humour. Peter, however, carefully read the instructions and stepped into the sun.

"It says you need to stand on today's date, Pete." John, Peter's brother, shouted as he read further. On the ground was a figure-eight in stone with various calendar dates. For the dial to work, the person needed to be on the correct day to take into account the tilt of the earth.

"Today's date isn't here." Peter replied, pointing to the evidence.

"Well, I guess you'll just have to get close." John replied.

"Hardly accurate." Peter shot back.

Never one to let an obstacle like the existence of a day stop him, Peter places his hands together and raised them over his head. His body was straight and motionless, for a moment you could almost see the shadow moving slyly across the number's face.

"What time is it?" Jamie asked. His question was met with silence as Peter interpreted his position.

"2:20." Peter said firmly.

Jamie looked at his watch.

"Nope. It's a quarter-to-three." He said.

"That's a shame." Peter replied, his arms flopping to his side. "It was such a good idea. This really could have caught on."

Part II

[(Anonymous)]

Some days you have life cornered. You're eating lunch with friends on a sunny afternoon, sipping beer and watching the world shuffle about. Things are simple. Everything makes sense.

Then a man walks accross the street pushing a pram carrying a dwarf with a ghetto blaster on his lap, and life gives you a reality wedgie--stuff's happening. Wake up.

Part III

[(Anonymous)]

Jamie once referred to home as "what we sacrifice." It made sense at the time--he spent 24 years growing up in Wichita, his family always near. Then one year everyone left. One sister went to Newton, one to Australia (then Canada); one brother moved to California, the other to New Zealand with his parents. Jamie flew to Ireland. And there, in a land of poets, of people so rooted to a place that generations of New Yorkers still call it the homeland, Jamie reflected on what it meant to go home.

There are the obvious cliches: a hung hat, the heart; a place you go where they can't turn you away. There are the traditionalists who, like the Irish or the pagans of ancient Rome, are tied to a region as large as a continent or as particular as one's own neighbourhood. Yet there are only two constants when referring to "home": 1. You know when you are there, and 2. You will, eventually, leave.

The first point is rather vague. It's like determining art from not art. One might describe home as a "sense of belonging," but elaborate--what is a sense of belonging? How does one know when one belongs? And then how does one quantify a sense of this? Furthermore, that sensation is different depending on to whom you're talking. A Congolese refugee may not have the same attitudes toward home as a young girl who suffered abuse there. In both of these cases the individuals were forced to sacrifice their homes--the former being physically removed, and the latter stripped of home's general warmth and comfort before she had a chance to experience it.

But we all leave home--everyone, everywhere--eventually. Whether by force or by choice, we will leave it. Home becomes a sacrifice we share, individually if not collectively. It could be likened to the womb: where we are protected; where we are important. Returning home, be it a physical structure or among a group, is in some way returning to a manifestation of maternal care: like when you were six years old and were scared of the dark, you ran to mother--your first home, your only home.