pareidolia: imposing a recognisable framework on random phenomena
‘people and computers are trained in visual clues towards “seeing” faces and other images.’
finding patterns in chaos to deduce and mitigate risk
risk/reward, The Game Of Life
archetypal quest shit
games as the desire lines through chaos
a bead on a maze, a card on a table, the promise of a structured journey
games as the liminal venn arena of nature and artifice
diorama trialling the order of things, aligning behaviours with outcomes
there is free will cushioned with limits
a game has its roots in fantasy, the parodical,
the concentrated arc of a simulated life, scaled down
a grid over a greenhouse:
the natural world has parallel gamified quests for growth
organelle bureaucracies organise paths
desire lines spiral, shortcuts, longcuts
sequence error, health ebbs
this is body truth
we are avatars with a set destiny
if you indicate this destiny early in the quest
meditations of order are a salve transfigured
into a game of hoop after hoop to jump through
relief on a string pulled away over a manila folder horizon
if you unfocus your eyes on the letters of a page they may swirl around and you may find patterns
you may find a face or a tower or a vase
honed instinct means you are able to detect whether the pattern is friend or foe
maybe you could see the face of a god who is neither
if you could only catch it in the light one day
throw a prayer to insure you from any potential consequences of a false deduction
from the written realities of biological danger
count the beads on the rosary and the beads of labour salted sweat
tears all look different under a microscope
one, two, three, four, five
there is one original wellspring but nobody knows where it is
when you kneel, if your joints allow you to,
do you look at the floor or the sky?
Paradoelia, Ella Howells, 2020