Sometime in the drab days of last winter, when these heartbreakingly beautiful days of late summer felt like a dream, some friends and I went to a large combination arcade and bowling alley. We had a great time bowling—I think you have more fun at bowling the worse you are at it—and the beer card system was broken so I got some slightly free beer. But what left a lasting impression upon me was the arcade.
Downstairs, strewn across the cement floor, was a large assortment of arcade games chosen with care but not with taste. Most interesting among them were the games that originated as other games—a Nerf arcade game (to complement the laser tag arena), a multicolored slot-machine-like Monopoly, Mario as arcade game. There’s a growing trend of arcade games based on phone games—there’s an Angry Birds game, for example, with a real slingshot. There’s some fascination to making something that was purely digital into a real, physical experience—no matter how imaginative an iPhone game gets, somehow putting coins into an arcade game and engaging with the flashing lights and buttons feels more real. It’s grounding, like yoga or bowling.
Another lifeline in the winter months was my houseplants, now languishing in a back window as they get burned by the August sun. I keep seeing those houseplants with a guilty start—they show the symptoms a certain dissoluteness to my late summer life, a few too many trips out of town, insufficient attention. As the fall winds start to blow and my attention dials back in, the houseplants are pulling out of their rut.
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