Imagine dungeons.
Examining The Art of Social.
Is your “thankful posture” this year convened in a real barrier to authentic social exchanges?
What happens when social convention is observed, or drawn at nought? Is that a test of social pivot timing? Are three generations of the polite gentry enough, now that the royals have grown up, and succumbed to less confining means of conveying meaning, in what used to be loosely named tradition?
Sitting down to a meal, is pleasant and always stirs our humanity - both in the cadence of itstable setting, as well as the intangible fun, and somewhat strange comfort we feel in the slight elegance of the menu.
The playlist that extends to post-dinner, and turns sit-down dinner chatter into a clinking acoustic of drinks and yesteryear turntables. Thoughtful attire becomes a conversation piece, and a shy piece of lamb chop into a legitimate ice breaker. A carving turkey of slice after slice of roast becomes the centrepiece that an orchid blossoming above with its long purple and white branches extending forever like the hanging gardens into the walls of each one’s memory in a definitive subliminal decoupage takeaway for the evening. And the tantalising smell of duck-and-slivered-green-scallions-in-plum pancakes bring the fresh mowed lawn garden of the outdoors inside the double doors of teeming nervousness of laughter and cigar smoke in the anxiousness of thanking the host, in an array of roundtable speeches.
What is: (Thanksgiving.)
The Science of Social.
In freshman year, i donned the hat of wizard in that board game everyone seemed to get so ohsessed playing. It didn’t quite feel right declining the invitation, so it seemed alright to go ahead and dodecahede once or twice before the next period rang.
I donned the wizard hat since i always played monopoly with the hat. And mostly it felt like role-playing as an eleven year old elf was too Twink, than it was to being a twelve-year old wizard, and that was a bit less daunting, (i did revert to elf, when i was thirteen after i read the Hobbit).
A parting of five around the game board succeeded in taking my imagination of that world rather than the world of Goonies, and Pretty in Pink, and even before Lord of the Rings came alive in the age of Harry Potter sixteen years later, the Gandalf imagery hadn’t really exacted wizardry in an old man to cancel my ability to roll my own choices with a fixed number of moves and spells from a rule book.
Dragons and dungeons were imagined in our little hopeful brains, collapsing all social norms into “no one finds this weird” when the whole freshman year actually played it. It was like a barrier dysfunction to create social grids to differentiate the olympiad (like, mathletes) nerds from the football varsity jocks, and the dean’s listers from the dungeon masters. It became, in our little sophomore to junior science labs, actually became a great democratiser. we were all subject to all levels of spells casted as far as the imagination had taken us.
What is: (Dungeons & Dragons.)
ArtPlusScience Equals Jam.
It wasn’t long before the amount of our shared knowledge was neither a stretch to imagine a camaraderie in our social after-class social gaming connectivity as well as being primarily competitive people for academic rankings for available scholarships every year. After all, high school was just four years, and friendships are more, forever.
Fortunately, that chaos theory solution i formulated had been proven well in college, as well as way after: that, Despite everything, and my record at winning, or not winning, would survive the rigidity of rules and game hawking.
As far as i know, we are considered respectfully equals.
And yet, we are still, despite all the mutual hostility in accomplishing things in our given limited time or resources, or under tight-rope deadlines amidst the untidiness of post-academic grant competition, — just like that well-remembered rainy afternoon decades ago playing on that square board, all dear friends today.
What is: (Convocations, Cap ‘n Gowns, & Dothing that Feather ye rightly.)
Happy thanksgiving everyone.
