amusings

So a friend I first met on Facebook has close friends who happen to live in one of the next towns over from me. Every yet for like 20 years they host a celebration of Buddha’s birthday, and I was invited to go.

So not only did I get to meet a couple of Facebook friends in real life for the first time, but in general, it was a wonderful night. I felt actually, genuinely happy for the first time in 5 years.

That ought to be a good thing. But the more time passes by, I’ve started to feel worse and worse.

The two Facebook friends are brothers, and the one who invited me, we message on a pretty regular basis, but I’d never had a personal chat with the older brother and didn’t know very much of what to expect.

And this strange thing happened where looking at him, speaking with him, listening to him: it felt something like looking in a mirror, but the person staring back was the adult I might’ve been if not for all the terrible things that happened, had I’d ever had any degree of control in setting the course for my life.

He’s the person that I’ve always wanted to be.

There ought to be something inspiring, in that, maybe like a role model or mentor, someone I could learn from. At least that was how I felt at first.

So here I am, once more and for, like, the fourth time in a decade, making an yet another attempt at being the person I want to be, a person I can live with, who can tolerate living through their waking moments. And near as I can tell, there are really only two possible futures:

1) this last effort works, or

2) there are no more waking moments.

It doesn’t look like there’s any moving forward without accepting that.

It feels like I should know what it is, like something important I’ve long forgotten.

It’s almost like there’s something I am meant to do and time is running out.

This makes me feel more lonely than I’ve ever felt, and yet I’m supposed to remember that I’m not alone. But it’s like the whole point of this is that I take these last steps alone, no matter how scared I am.

The world was still spinning, of course. No matter how still the moment, the clockwork of the universe remains unceasing: stars plummeting around black holes, planets falling towards their suns, the decay of atoms and turns of worlds. Everything feels frozen but it still moves.

I was stuck again, sitting on the floor against the wall, my knees tucked into my chest and my arms tight around my torso. The veil of context fell away from my eyes, showing me an empty, a cage. I began to feel what it means, living in this world. We build are own cages: borders, walls, windows and doors, all meant to protect us, keep us comfortable. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Language is one of my “special interests”, to some degree I’ve been studying it all my life, picking up the endeavor as conscious investigation and scrutiny. Part of that work led to recognizing how false our sense of the world is, how no one really knows what they’re doing, less still lack even this knowledge. Worse yet, we’ve accepted these prisons we’ve built for ourselves. The obligation we feel to maintaining these boundaries, valuing property, building walls, comes from assumptions we accept as truth, unmitigated facts of our circumstances.

All this data came rushing in at once, and suddenly I felt abandoned, as if my family had left me at a rest stop. I started to feel lost, as if I’d never make it back. I realized I was trapped, that I would always be surrounded by walls. And worse yet, I knew the feeling was there to stay, that I would have to find a way to move myself in spite of it.

I had to let myself feel the terror, let it pass. It must’ve taken at least ten minutes to realize I had stopped crying.

Later that week, I had resolved to moving back home. But slowly, I got back in the groove of talking to strangers and wearing that public persona. The feeling still sits with me, I never forget it. I try to accept it and move on. I let it play out as long as I could so I could feel it. And then let the rest of the world flood in.

At every iteration, Link is portrayed as the brave hero, answering the call without question. As a video game, this is sensible, otherwise from where else would the motivation arise? Even when depicted as a child, the player inhabits the persona of one who sees no problem with tackling the dangerous and unforeseen obstacles most often represented by Ganon and the forces of “darkness”. The antagonists are clearly defined and so the plot of the game finds its unquestioned motivation.

In looking to tell this tale, my first obstacle was to identify the protagonist.

Like any other fan, I’ve wanted to see a Zelda movie or show, but I’ve never really had a clear picture of what a good portrayal might look like. Of course I want it to faithfully represent the source material, maybe include some popular set pieces and themes, but still I had trouble visualizing the ideal adaptation. Eventually it occurred to me the problem was with Link, himself.

Realistically, there’s no authentic motivation. He does what he’s told because it’s a game: there’s no game if he refuses. And so the call to adventure is, ultimately, hollow. Sure, the fate of the world is at stake, but you’re a kid, it’s not exactly the sort of call you jump up to answer, at least not without question. Then when you consider the lack of dialogue, you find that Link is a character with whom very little is understood. There is no personality. The hero is a literal Link between the player and the fantasy: he is tabula rasa, for us to implant our own sense of self, to inhabit his persona.

This raised further complications: every player has their own idea of Link. Like the faceless Master Chief, we are left to our own imaginations to identify his personality or mindset. The games hardly leave us any objective evidence to the nature of Link, the Hero. Sometimes romance is implied between him and one or more of the female characters, otherwise, Link has no authentic personhood. (Later games have given us facial expressions and some attitude during cutscenes, but otherwise, this is still mostly true.)

So before I made up my mind about whether or not I’d tackle the task of adapting any story, I asked myself the obvious question: who is Link?

Immediately, I had some decisions to make, namely, should Link talk? In analyzing the nature of his character in-game and the function of his mutism (to facilitate player agency), I decided he should. Video games are meant for us to possess and inhabit. More traditional stories are meant to be related. The characters are meant to have their own sense of agency, so we might wonder as to their feelings and motivations and struggles. It seemed impossible to me to present a character in such a way who couldn’t communicate with the other characters—I began investing more time finding ways to manipulate the narrative to make Link mute instead of breaking down the story. So instead I began to think about the story again, the essence behind the Legend of Zelda.

The template for Zelda is, itself, almost its own genre: an evil rises, a nameless hero answers the call, tests his courage and rises up against the forces of darkness. It’s archetypal—it’s Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. We already know that story, and intimately so. But Zelda is something special, isn’t it? Isn’t it more than just the same old thing we’ve experienced in other popular stories? I wanted to get specific, I wanted to find something in this story and its protagonist that would set it apart from the archetype. To me, Zelda offers something singular, and I wanted my story to focus on that singularity.

Zelda is about the Triforce. It’s about balance and the meaning of Power. It’s about the Courage to act, and the Wisdom to understand one’s actions. The plot might be the Hero’s Journey, but the meat of the story is a meditation of a different sort. Link is always brave, unflinching, stalwart, the definition of heroic. So what is heroism? What is courage? As a character, how can Link embody those aspects?

Imagine each Zelda game a variation of the same tale, told throughout the ages, changing and adapting with the times but each featuring the same archetypal hero: almost nameless, faceless, provincial. His deeds marked for their courage and steadfastness. In this iteration, we strip away the assumed sense of courage and bravery. This Link is different: hesitant, unsure—he knows what Courage is, he knows he doesn’t have it.

Beneath the Deku Tree was the first real segment of story I wrote because it’s when that character came to life for me. I put pen to paper and let him breathe, made him experience something frightful. I shared it because I wanted to show Link’s vulnerability. He doesn’t know how to be a hero. He’s thrust into circumstances out of his control, yet he is the only option. Finally, I understood who Link is. He’s the arbiter for the chief message of the tale. We are meant to learn about the true nature of Courage by his example.

(a companion piece)

There is no path. You walk it, and yet, you find no deviation: no lies, no truth. There is only you, locked in a tunnel.

You find fear, in this place. It grips you, holds tightly. You forget how to breathe and yet, you struggle still. It’s not like before, the life you lived. It’s different, yet the trappings all the same.

This place is new, but you know it still. Something reminds you, but you can’t place it. There is no choice, you are simply compelled. Fear keeps you, curiosity drives you.

What is this place? Where is the light? What stares back at you?

It is the darkness: unceasing, unflinching. You don’t know it, and yet it calls to you, knows the name you were given. Tempts you, pulls you forward, each step feels not your own.

Who are you? How did you get here? How do you leave? Questions you assume, answers you can’t find. You think you know yourself: who you are, what’s to come. But you learn of fabrication, the fault of language, your thoughts.

You don’t know when you began. Everything you are was given to you, an unrequited gift. You never asked, but it’s there, guiding you, lighting your way, telling you that things end and others begin.

You accept this truth, but never questioned it. But in time, your mind begins to wander with you, through the darkness, down this path.

And then you feel it, eternity: just a glimpse. It never left you, it was always a part of you, the darkness within and without. And so, with tentative steps, you pursue it, you question it, you accept it.

The fear never leaves you, but now it guides you, it doesn’t drive you away. As you come to accept it, your eyes adjust. And then your eyes begin to see.

There are stars, all around you. They paint the sky, they draw the eye. You know less of where you are, how this place came to be.

What came first: the path, or the one who walks it?

Is there an end, a beginning: a question, an answer?

This is the fault of your self, who you’ve come to be, how you’ve come to know. And now you see it, the truth in the lie.

There is no path. There is no tunnel. No forwards, no back. No past or future. There is only you. And that voice, the fear that holds you, the call ahead of you: it is the echo of your steps. It is who you used to be, what you think you are. Truth is its guise but not its truth.

And now you see, the sole fact of this place: you are who you choose to be, despite the name given you, the life chosen for you. You don’t walk a path, you are the path. Darkness is all you know because you are the light that shines, and the black is your reflection.

Nothing here can hurt you. You are free. So who do you choose to be? What path do you wrought? What promise do you make? What do you choose?

Comfort? Truth? What good is value in the dark?

I can tell you what I chose, but I don’t want to choose for you. My fear is that you don’t know, but my curiosity, the engine that drives me, still wants to know you: how you came to be here, how you came to find me.

Am I a reflection of you? Which of us came here first?

The only truth: there is none. It doesn’t matter. Now is when we meet. Now we are one, the path and the wanderer. And only we know the truth, who we are, the name we chose. It is our secret, because there is no truth: only understanding.

Through fear, we found each other. And now we know, what we are, what’s to come. No matter how lost, how far we fall, how deep the wound, we are a part: one and whole.

I don’t like to be touched, I don’t like people expecting me to do one thing or another. I go to sleep one night and wake up the next day. I desperately want this electrician apprenticeship. I’m almost thirty, I’m bipolar, living with PTSD and repressed memories of something I can’t even remember.

The only thing I want is to know what happened to me. I want to know if I did something awful to the first, best friend I ever had, or if we did something innocent and got punished for it. I can’t even remember his face or the sound of his voice anymore, and that breaks my heart more than being alone.