Using this post to chart out a vivid description I once came across. Time to be the adjunct descriptive teller. Can’t promise it’ll stay vivid — let’s see.
It described stages in a life. And so in each stage of one’s life you have a large room you’re plopped in. Somewhere in the middle. Within such a large room there are several paths, landmarks and opportunities. Villages and side quests wherever you decide to go. So it begins.
And while you are on your journey the room starts shrinking. Because there’s actually a thin exit within one of the four walls — onto the next room of living. A long chain of rooms — well, I hope it’s a long chain. You can’t stay in this room. You can leave earlier, but you can’t postpone it forever. One day you’ll be in a shrunken room, a 3 by 3 containing everything you harvested or nothing at all, and the exit leering at you. You’ll have to pass through.
I can’t remember if there was a moral attached, if there was a larger purpose, but don’t you think it’s accurate?
Have you ever had a fragment of life you can’t help but find as fate? All the paths & opportunities led to this next room which opens a whole bunch of new possibilities that, only in retrospect, did you notice. You can’t force such chapters though. But it’ll start, it’ll come. Some activities are barred until a later date, something like that. You need to go to the next room to activate. And when you look back, you realize that was the door. When you trace the memory, you can barely feel the door closing behind you as this new expansive field careens around.
So I ended up thinking about this again: do you have more juice left in this current room, are you walking onto the next room, or are you pacing around a 3 by 3? I can’t help but wonder which mode of choice I’m in.
But it’s a neat way to put things. To be a chain of rooms. I almost want to add an asterisk, where the next room does not exist until you get to it — that there are a thousand possible rooms ahead, and only when you get to the exit, only when you enter through the door, does that particular fated room solidify. That your properties create your trajectory, and the arc morphs depending on your actions. A dance between your own influence and your previous experience. Where the current room’s experience sets a mold of personality, preference — converging toward predetermined choice, a predetermined room. Maybe there’s some relief to be found in the next room, where the mold will break down a bit. And every room can’t help but make you wonder what immutable parts of your personality led you to it. Flowing down and condensing into a story.
Will you make a neat web? How will you unfold?
But it’ll be worth it.