Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Add a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia...and we are firmly in my post-holiday terrain.

I think I might assume that I am not alone in the aftermath of the holidays (whatever you need to call them), surrounded by yet unchucked gift wrappings, batteries; maybe your tree is still in the living room aging as fine kindling, and one or more of your kids has been locked away in his or her room entranced by the novelty of a new video game. My son (and flatmate) Jason has been at this same one for years now, and he has reached level whatever-it-is and has all the refinements, upgrades, and whistles. Your offspring may seem to lock themselves away, to emerge for meals, maybe a job or school (if they can be forced away from the screen), and speak a foreign -- alien, really -- language invented by brilliant, likely neurotic, young, likely pimpled online role-playing designers to cement whatever barricades may already exist between parents and their son/daughter players. I'm betting enough can relate here. But kick this Other-World/Alienation factor up a few notches, well into the red-marked obsessive/compulsive/addiction, add a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia and schiz-affect disorder, and we are firmly in my post-holiday terrain. Oh, minus the job or school.

When I asked him last night, as I have several times with some decent results, what I should write about for my column, his first suggestion was the high surf along the coast. This surprised me and pleased me because I immediately saw the poetic imagery, the Jungian backdrop for tumultuous emotions of unimaginable force gathering them upright, poising them for a brief moment before dashing themselves where they may onto the shores of consciousness. And I might still do it if the surf's up, but I don't want to get waylaid by tracking down actual facts from the Weather Bureau, the Coast Guard, what have you.

His second suggestion was to write about video games, "You know, the culture of video gamers. But I guess you've done that."

Sponsored
Sponsored

Yeah, I have, but that's not really what he meant, anyway. This was an invitation to the world he inhabits, where he knows the language, the imaginary people or creatures, the wild geography, and surreal furniture. "Well," I said, "give me some ideas. What's interesting? How does this relate to your life? Your world? Or does it?" This last question seemed almost cruel, though I did not mean it to be. Jason's world can be triangulated with his bedroom, Sav-On a block away, and Big Lots farther down University. In that area is a fast-food Mexican joint he'll frequent, but expeditions outside the apartment are not even daily some weeks.

While encouraging him to wax on about this cyber fantasy realm he inhabits, I found myself taking notes on the back of Tobias Wolff's Old School. This morning, I see I have written, "...downloading a patch, one hour, slow. The New Year's patch has Santa gone, but you can click [quoting Jason] on these Christmas gifts he left behind, and inside there'll be, like, a little bell, and when you ring it, a reindeer comes and does certain things for you. 'I was selling enchantments at an auction house, and I let someone overpay 40 gold and 40 silver. I kept it for a whole day before I gave him back his money.'" Jason was talking about game currency, but there was a real-life player on the other end of this transaction, and Jason seemed troubled by this moral lapse on his part. I suppose that was a good thing.

Other notes I had jotted were: "...servers, PVP (Player vs. Player), P.K. (Player Killer) -- when you kill a character you own them? Own? Jason in Illuminati Guild. Korean player recently kicked out by consensus for reckless attacks on others. Thinks she is Korean; thinks she was a girl but talked like a guy. This allegedly Korean berserker is a real player (in Korea) and seems incoherent, giggly, and insane in her e-messages. Maybe language thing."

Like an auxiliary travel guidebook, I referred to the bible, that is, The World of WarCraft Player's Guide. This is daunting. Here were over 200 pages with chapters on Corpse Retrieval, Resurrection Spells, Resurrection Sickness, What it Means to Level, Weapons Availability, Betrayer Ascendant, and so much more. As we spoke, me listening mostly, gaping, I was put in mind of a book popular in the 1950s and early '60s called The Fifty Minute Hour, a collection of true psychoanalytic tales, by Robert Lindner. One section of the book, "The Jet-Propelled Couch," was concerned with a patient of Lindner's, a physicist in an important government project, who had, over many years, constructed this vast web of trans-galactic, science-fictional reality over which he, in some capacity or other, either ruled or wielded great influence. Lindner, the shrink, was an old sci-fi fan and found the delusion fascinating. He attempted to enter the delusion and was so successful he alarmed himself at points when he discovered flaws in the delusional logic. I wondered if this sort of thing might be a hazard with me. I think I can rely on the fact that games, in most of their forms (beside trivia question games), bore me senseless.

But here was a conversation. Can I somehow use this world as an entrée into some very important stuff that otherwise Jason will not discuss: dangerous weight gain from psych meds, a two- or three-year-long inability to read much of anything outside of the world of WarCraft that I am convinced is linked somehow to myself and am now finding contagious? Some sort of rudimentary job threatening his state disability checks needs to be broached; and simple matters of laundry, hygiene, his agoraphobia all need to be addressed with no way in.

In the end, he senses my lack of interest and retreats again into his room. "Goodnight, Buddy," I say and tell him that I love him

"Okay," he says through the closed door. Schiz-affect. And while I know that isn't contagious, I am left flailing in the living room with my Wolff novel trying to access and download my capacity for tears.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego Reader 2024 Music & Arts Issue

Favorite fakers: Baby Bushka, Fleetwood Max, Electric Waste Band, Oceans, Geezer – plus upcoming tribute schedule
Next Article

2024 continues to impress with yellowfin much closer to San Diego than they should be

New rockfish regulations coming this week as opener approaches

I think I might assume that I am not alone in the aftermath of the holidays (whatever you need to call them), surrounded by yet unchucked gift wrappings, batteries; maybe your tree is still in the living room aging as fine kindling, and one or more of your kids has been locked away in his or her room entranced by the novelty of a new video game. My son (and flatmate) Jason has been at this same one for years now, and he has reached level whatever-it-is and has all the refinements, upgrades, and whistles. Your offspring may seem to lock themselves away, to emerge for meals, maybe a job or school (if they can be forced away from the screen), and speak a foreign -- alien, really -- language invented by brilliant, likely neurotic, young, likely pimpled online role-playing designers to cement whatever barricades may already exist between parents and their son/daughter players. I'm betting enough can relate here. But kick this Other-World/Alienation factor up a few notches, well into the red-marked obsessive/compulsive/addiction, add a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia and schiz-affect disorder, and we are firmly in my post-holiday terrain. Oh, minus the job or school.

When I asked him last night, as I have several times with some decent results, what I should write about for my column, his first suggestion was the high surf along the coast. This surprised me and pleased me because I immediately saw the poetic imagery, the Jungian backdrop for tumultuous emotions of unimaginable force gathering them upright, poising them for a brief moment before dashing themselves where they may onto the shores of consciousness. And I might still do it if the surf's up, but I don't want to get waylaid by tracking down actual facts from the Weather Bureau, the Coast Guard, what have you.

His second suggestion was to write about video games, "You know, the culture of video gamers. But I guess you've done that."

Sponsored
Sponsored

Yeah, I have, but that's not really what he meant, anyway. This was an invitation to the world he inhabits, where he knows the language, the imaginary people or creatures, the wild geography, and surreal furniture. "Well," I said, "give me some ideas. What's interesting? How does this relate to your life? Your world? Or does it?" This last question seemed almost cruel, though I did not mean it to be. Jason's world can be triangulated with his bedroom, Sav-On a block away, and Big Lots farther down University. In that area is a fast-food Mexican joint he'll frequent, but expeditions outside the apartment are not even daily some weeks.

While encouraging him to wax on about this cyber fantasy realm he inhabits, I found myself taking notes on the back of Tobias Wolff's Old School. This morning, I see I have written, "...downloading a patch, one hour, slow. The New Year's patch has Santa gone, but you can click [quoting Jason] on these Christmas gifts he left behind, and inside there'll be, like, a little bell, and when you ring it, a reindeer comes and does certain things for you. 'I was selling enchantments at an auction house, and I let someone overpay 40 gold and 40 silver. I kept it for a whole day before I gave him back his money.'" Jason was talking about game currency, but there was a real-life player on the other end of this transaction, and Jason seemed troubled by this moral lapse on his part. I suppose that was a good thing.

Other notes I had jotted were: "...servers, PVP (Player vs. Player), P.K. (Player Killer) -- when you kill a character you own them? Own? Jason in Illuminati Guild. Korean player recently kicked out by consensus for reckless attacks on others. Thinks she is Korean; thinks she was a girl but talked like a guy. This allegedly Korean berserker is a real player (in Korea) and seems incoherent, giggly, and insane in her e-messages. Maybe language thing."

Like an auxiliary travel guidebook, I referred to the bible, that is, The World of WarCraft Player's Guide. This is daunting. Here were over 200 pages with chapters on Corpse Retrieval, Resurrection Spells, Resurrection Sickness, What it Means to Level, Weapons Availability, Betrayer Ascendant, and so much more. As we spoke, me listening mostly, gaping, I was put in mind of a book popular in the 1950s and early '60s called The Fifty Minute Hour, a collection of true psychoanalytic tales, by Robert Lindner. One section of the book, "The Jet-Propelled Couch," was concerned with a patient of Lindner's, a physicist in an important government project, who had, over many years, constructed this vast web of trans-galactic, science-fictional reality over which he, in some capacity or other, either ruled or wielded great influence. Lindner, the shrink, was an old sci-fi fan and found the delusion fascinating. He attempted to enter the delusion and was so successful he alarmed himself at points when he discovered flaws in the delusional logic. I wondered if this sort of thing might be a hazard with me. I think I can rely on the fact that games, in most of their forms (beside trivia question games), bore me senseless.

But here was a conversation. Can I somehow use this world as an entrée into some very important stuff that otherwise Jason will not discuss: dangerous weight gain from psych meds, a two- or three-year-long inability to read much of anything outside of the world of WarCraft that I am convinced is linked somehow to myself and am now finding contagious? Some sort of rudimentary job threatening his state disability checks needs to be broached; and simple matters of laundry, hygiene, his agoraphobia all need to be addressed with no way in.

In the end, he senses my lack of interest and retreats again into his room. "Goodnight, Buddy," I say and tell him that I love him

"Okay," he says through the closed door. Schiz-affect. And while I know that isn't contagious, I am left flailing in the living room with my Wolff novel trying to access and download my capacity for tears.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

March is typically windy, Sage scents in the foothills

Butterflies may cross the county
Next Article

Best Kratom Capsules: Top Brands, Benefits & Where To Buy

Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.