I lost my fire and with it went my inspiration. Literally. I was having a euphoric morning reflection session by the light of my desktop stone fireplace and decided that I wanted to write with it. But of course I dilly-dallied, as Mr Atkins–my old dance teacher–would say, wanting to enjoy the momentary freedom of thought, and by the time I reached for my laptop and was ready to type, I found myself staring at a blank screen with motionless fingers, feeling cold and swallowed whole by darkness. At first I was confused, then I realized the fire had gone out, and with it went my inspiration.
That phenomenon is intriguing, and I am making a mental note to explore it more fully going forward. For now, I must attend to my empire, the Zulu nation. My current video game addiction is Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. I am vigorously playing it on the highly versatile & portable Nintendo Switch, the combination of which cooks up into video game crack. The precision with which this series of games has tackled the minutia of government, agriculture and economics then simplified it into a vibrant showcase of history and human experience while somehow still providing enough depth and expansion to make it believable, challenging and engaging without being redundant even after 4000 years of whining peasants…well, it’s impressive, to say the least.
So I’m gonna go shoot up because it’s my day off and I have big plans to raze a few cities then conquer a couple more and laugh as Montezuma’s ugly mug begrudges the fall of his empire. Like my boy Caleb said in one of his golden moments of spot-on comedy: it was after we beat up these country boys who tried to jump me for showing up to a beach-themed party (mostly) naked, we were back home talking about how things escalated so quickly, I thanked him for jumping in on my behalf and he just shrugged and said, “don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit.” My soul laughed at that. For every one of my best male white friends, there is a point in our relationship where they stop being a white boy to me and become my brother. It’s not always so dramatic as a front yard brawl-inspired hip-hop quote (shoutout to #YoungBloodZ), but it’s the last wall to true friendship that exists between the social tension of systemic racism. But I digress, I got a grudge needs grudging. May the world always fondly recall the soon to be departed Aztec Empire.