https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JM143M92Y&t=148s
The Eternal Game — it’s always some form of “Capture the Flag”, whether the flag is a small transportable object or an entire country, and it goes on and on and on with or without you.
As a player, you can come and go. As a character in the game, you can’t go anywhere but where you are, and that’s the condition in which most people find themselves just after being rebirthed.
An endless parade of birth and death and rebirth or, as Yogi Berra said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”.
If you’re one of the late bloomers, you’ll be asking yourself “What in the world are you talking about???”, but if you’re ready to Hit the Road, Jack, you will heartily welcome the news that the game is still on, still running strong and the server is, as always, almost full, with just one open slot — you always get there just in time, whatever that means.
Hey, if you’re equipped with the standard model human, you’ve got a belly-full of neurosis by the time you hit 30.
At 60, you’ll be slowing down a bit, and when you’re well into your 70s and 80s, you’ll be wondering what’s taking so long.
Trips to Disney World can be agonizing even in your 20s, but try it with great-grand-kids and see where it lands you — in bed, trying to find a comfortable position, that’s where.
So what has the Eternal Game got to do with you???
Funny question, Bornless One. I was hoping YOU knew what’s going on. You are in a body, separated by consciousness and vibration from the Totality, the Unity, or Singularity.
In case you’re too dense to get it, that means “God” — not the God of the Bible, not the God of Antiquity — the ONLY God, the God of Right Now, Right Here & Everywhere.
God is a singleness. There is no other. Out of myself I made the world, and you’re welcome to it, if Trump is the best you can do.
The Eternal Game can be seen within the online video game “Team Fortress 2”, an adaptation of “Quake CTF” and “Team Fortress I” and “Team Fortress Classic”, all of which failed to achieve the popularity of Team Fortress 2, but they were the basis for the later game.
There are other online games that produce the same pathway and portal to The Eternal Game, but they all have one characteristic — they are multiplayer, sometimes generally massively so.
Team Fortress 2 is limited to a maximum of 32 players, 16 per side.
The team members may choose to be any of the available character classes — Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demo, Heavy, Medic, Spy — and each contributes differently to the gameplay and the team effort.
One side is blue, the other side is red. Quite often, a player will get automatically team-switched to rebalance the teams if two players on one side happen to both leave at the same time, somewhere in the middle of a game.
That’s what often happens in life — someone like Joe Scarborough, a Rabid Lifetime Republican, suddenly finds himself on the side of the Blues.
I’ve occasionally become confused about which side I’m on — this happens a lot when I play “Spy” — and I start blasting away at teammates, because our base is overrun with blues, if I’m blue, and reds if I happen to be red at the time.
This momentary bewilderment on coming out of respawn is what resulted in the song, “Am I Red, Am I Blue?”, which Jimmi and I recorded some decades of years ago.
Well, here we are at the obvious question: “What IS the Eternal Game, anyway???”, and I’m glad you asked it — it’s a really good question.
I just wish I knew the answer.
You see, the game changes form, but the game never changes.
The Eternal Game is the subtext to all life games. The obvious game is planetary survival, but the Eternal Game has little to do with organic life on any level.
It transcends all the actions of the world.
Underneath the visible world are many mansions, lots of worlds, many many dimensional loops and loopy-doodles.
There are worlds within sight, but they remain unseen.
I can give you clear and obvious examples from what you can see with your eyes and hear with your ears:
Doll Houses —
What do you know about doll houses? Even if you collected dolls, they aren’t the same scale — that means relative size — as doll houses.
In a doll house, you’ll collect resin cast figurines or if you collect antiques, they will be made of various materials including wood, ivory and porcelain.
Doll houses can sell for as much as an actual house, and some furnished and electrified palatial mansion doll houses have sold for millions, the Fordham Palace going for $2.4 MILLION U.S. Dollars back in 2011, and the prices are skyrocketing even more today!
There’s a whole world of dollhouse-ness out there, and if you’re not aware of it, it’s totally invisible. You wouldn’t even suspect its existence, and yet, it’s in plain sight.
Coins —
Did you know that if you handle change at all, you could easily have in your hands a valuable penny worth thousands of dollars?
Some pennies minted this very year will be valued at many thousands of dollars, just because they have a rare defect.
Yes, defect.
It turns out that the prettier the coin is — well, it just doesn’t matter much how pretty it is, unless it also has some odd characteristic to it.
I have some Perfect Pennies — MS70, which is 100% of Perfect — that wouldn’t bring more than a dollar or two, yet my funky coins can be worth thousands.
It’s not about the pennies themselves — it’s about your knowledge.
Without Knowledge, the world of NUMISMATICS is totally invisible to the ignorant eye.
I have one coin that was minted by Mad King George III, when the colonies rebelled and he went nuts over losing them, so much so that he tried to buy Greenland, and he wasn’t the first.
U.S. coins are not the only coins in collections and that bring tens of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars at public auction and private trades.
I have a very powerful and fascinating collection of Ancient Greek coins, and another one of Roman coins.
Ancient coins come in three flavors — gold, silver and bronze, which is a sort of copper alloy, meaning a mixed metal, but it generally looks like gold at first, then oxidizes to a dark brown color, then goes rusty and crusty and green, and that’s what most ancient coins look like until they’re expertly and carefully cleaned.
Wrong cleaning ruins a coin just as much as ANY repair ruins a piece of antique furniture with the singular exception of a Morris chair, which can always use a new fabric from the latest designer house.
Fine Art Prints —
Sure, you go into a frame shop and buy a cheapo $200 print, then you have the framer put it into a $2500 frame that matches your new drapes and couch, and by that you count yourself among the art collectors of your generation.
You’re not far wrong.
I have a set of Dali etchings from the Maldoror Suite, produced in 1934. Fact check me on this — go to the Museum of Modern Art site — that’s the MoMA webpage — and search for “dali etching maldoror” and you’ll see all 42 of them displayed there.
You will note that NONE of them has a pencil signature. That’s because they were not signed in 1934, none of them were.
When Lily Nova and I were having tea with Dali — which happened often enough — people would come up to him with one of these etchings and beg him to sign it, which he did, without informing them that the signature would lower the value of the print, which is no longer “as-issued”.
It’s now an autograph with a picture, and it sells as an autograph, not as fine art. The actual original is UNSIGNED.
Miro had a few of those as well, and come to think of it, Picasso’s copperplate engravings fall into the same category. If he signed it in pencil, it was years later, and it now counts only as an autograph.
Jokes & Gags —
A whole world of comedy and all you’ve ever seen of it are a few standups and a TV clown on a Saturday morning cartoon show.
There’s so much to comedy, and it’s not just jokes, gags and riddles. As a matter of fact, riddles aren’t actually considered jokes, and jokes are referred to as “gags” by professional gag-writers.
Yes, gag-writers.
You didn’t even know there was such a job, and there are tons more, like voice-overs and sound effects and costumes and makeup and so much more.
Then there’s theory of comedy — you need to develop your own act, but it’s always built on the past.
One of the first things you learn as a comic is that there are no new jokes.
All the jokes you’ve ever heard are recycled from ancient times, going back to at least the cavemen of the paleolithic.
The what?
Archeology —
Caves. Mud huts. Massive stone structures. Pyramids. Mummies.
Sure, sure, but you need to know more than just archaeology to be an archaeologist, and the first thing you need to know is how to spell it.
There are so many factors, so much to learn, to discover, to unearth, as it were.
And then there are all those digs — you do have even a clue as to how many ancient cultures have been discovered just in the past few years?
Did you know that it only began a few years ago???
You need to know something about sociology, a bit of geology, some practical political science and a sense of the daily life of the people you’re excavating at the moment.
Fashion —
You think you know something about fashion because you stay — you should pardon the expression — “abreast” of the latest fashion trends.
Movies, television, all the moving parts of the culture tell you that fashion is marching on, and that every minute a new fashion is born.
This is actually true, but totally irrelevant. Fashion is nothing without branding, and branding is worthless without promotion, and promotion is impossible without money.
Trout Fishing in America —
What’s the big deal about fishing? You put some bait on your hook and you lower it into the water and wait for a strike, then you reel the fish in and put it in a basket and bring it home and give it to someone else to scale, clean and cook.
There’s nothing else to know, right?
Have you ever been in a real sporting goods store? There’s more to know and find out than you’ll discover in a department store, because there’s all sorts of things about fishing that you don’t automatically know.
Like boats.
And there’s more — like fly-tying and casting and weights and lines and thousands of other details and streams of interest. Fishing is a big subject, but not if you don’t look.
Looking is everything.
I expect to see you at the game. Time you learned how to capture the flag and take it home, and time to learn how you can best help your teammates.
The object of the game is to play. You won’t remember the score or the game just a few minutes from now, and it won’t ever matter.
Nobody cares who wins.
Just play.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby