Back to the Beginning

I had a weird Minecraft experience today.  It won't make sense to anyone who doesn't play Minecraft, so if you're one of those folks, just kind of skip ahead a few paragraphs. Though if you play other video games, you might understand.

I built myself a nice wooden house in the forest. I put down a bed and slept so the house could be my new spawn point. I did some farming and mining.  Then, somewhere along the line, I stopped playing with plans to return to my house later.

Later I turned on the game and I was not in the forest. I was in the extreme hills, at my original spawn point. All my stuff was gone. It's like I died and lost my bed, but I don't remember dying and losing my bed. I don't remember anything going wrong.

The thing is, though, I don't remember quitting the game at all.

But that's not unusual. I play almost every day, multiple times a day. Start and stop. It's not like I'd remember a stopping point...unless something really unusual happened.

I really don't know what happened. I'm wondering if it's ever happened to other Minecraft players. Is there some kind of glitch that mysteriously sends people back to their original spawning point?  Or did I have some kind of bizarre memory lapse. Maybe a Creeper spawned in my house. I died. My bed blew up. And I don't remember any of it.

No matter what the explanation, its' weird.

And boring to those of you who don't play Minecraft. Probably.

But you know I'm seeing it as some kind of message.

I feel I'm getting this go-back-to-the-beginning motif in my life.

I've been having dreams that remind me of the dreams I had before my whole Australia obsession began.

But if there really is some kind of spiritual message—Go back to the beginning. Well, go back to the beginning of what?

I don't know.

Maybe one day I'll understand.

But thinking of going back to the beginning reminded me of the song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  I thought it would be fun to watch the video because now I think of Jason Donovan as Scott Robinson on Ramsey Street.





Okay. Well, now I'm thinking the whole point of the message was for me to watch that video, because it has made me so emotional.

Not emotional...like crying.  More weird. Like I've stepped into the nostalgia Twilight Zone.

I was pretty obsessed with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat during my college days.  We had a family vacation in London and saw the musical. I'm pretty sure we saw Jason Donovan.

If not, I'm pretty sure the soundtrack I bought had Jason Donovan. So here I was listening to this guy sing all the time, not knowing that about fifteen years years later I'd be obsessed with his country and that obsession would lead me to watching him on Neighbours.

A year or so after our trip to London, an Australian actor (not Jason Donovan) appeared on my American soap opera.  I didn't pay him much attention at the time. But many years later I would.

Back to the song, though....

I love the lyrics. May I return to the beginning? The light is dimming and the dream is too....

Maybe those are my all time favorite song lyrics. I don't know.

It reminds me of what someone said in the episode of Freaks and Geeks we watched tonight.  These teens talked about wishing they could go back to before they had ever heard a Grateful Dead album. They wanted to hear it for the first time again.

I felt that way about Harry Potter. I think a LOT of people felt that way about Harry Potter. How wonderful it would be to go back to the very beginning when it was all new.

I'd also like to go back to the beginning of Ugly Betty.

At the end of our vacations, I often wish we could go back to the beginning.

There are things about my life, from not too long ago, that I miss. A part of me wants to go back, but I also understand it's important to go forward.

And then there's Minecraft. Going back to the very beginning isn't so fun. I had a lot of goodies with me—diamonds, emeralds, a nice stack of omelets, a ton of iron, an enchantment table....

Now it's all gone.

Well, it's maybe out there somewhere.

I'm going to have to find it. Or gather up new stuff.

I'm still trying to figure out the message in all this.

Going back to the beginning. Nostalgia. It's fun sometimes. It's nice to reminisce.  But in a way it's not, because it often makes me sad. It's about longing for things you no longer have.

What's nice is when you can bring back the old and mix it with the new.

Like Jason Donovan is back in my life in the form of Scott Robinson.

And Bradford Meade from Ugly Betty is back in my life in the form of Jim Robinson.

You know, I think this is one of those posts that feels deep to me. But everyone besides me is going to read this and think, Holy Crap. This is all so dumb!

And they'll probably think I'm on drugs.

I'm not.

Or at least I don't think I am.

Maybe I'm just going a bit nuts.



No comments:

Post a Comment