Once again, I find myself playing Final Fantasy VII.

And once again, I’m ill at ease with my blatantly sexist choice of party members—Cloud, Barret and Red XIII—if for no other reason than I am bending to a system that presupposes their superiority—which is, in fact, a pretty damning argument against me.

Cloud is the protagonist, so he’s obviously a guy and the de facto party leader for (almost) the entire game. I couldn’t swap him out of my core party if I wanted to, but even if I could, I doubt that I would. He’s the only character with a weapon that has three, triple-growth materia slots, where two of those slots are linked. Also, his limit breaks kick ass.

If you don’t know the game, all you need to know about that nonsense is that it’s good.

Cloud’s basically like the Ryu (or Ken) of Midgar.

That analogy did not help my case, did it?

Fuck.

Barret is like Mr. T, except that instead of wearing a hilarious amount of gold he has a minigun for an arm. Which is to say he’s an awesomer version of Mr. T. Practically speaking, the gun gives him range. He takes less damage while dealing just as much. Impractically speaking, it’s totally fucking badass.

Mr. T.

No gold.

Gun arm.

Did I mention that he’s also a single dad with a heart of gold?

He’s that, too.

Plus, he’s a hugely central character. In the initial stages of the game he does more to drive the plot than anyone. Cloud is only willing to play for pay at that point, and Barret’s the one that pays him. Without really diving into the narrative, in a very real sense the game and its heroes never stray from Barret’s original mission to save the planet. They merely adjust the strategy for achieving his goal, admittedly out of necessity.

Barret is a lock.

Red XIII is a dark horse. I’ve never been entirely certain if he’s supposed to be canine or feline. I guess he’s kind of both, making him an enigmatic, wolfpanther™ shaman. Apart from limit breaks that don’t suck, Red doesn’t have any specific tangible advantage over many of the other characters. He relies solely on his superficial coolness to make the cut.

His tail is constantly on fire.

And, as I am about to illustrate, most of the other characters have some pretty glaring flaws, especially the ladies.

I don’t point this out because I’m trying to be a chauvinistic asshole. Honestly, I’m sick of pretending like everything’s cool, and that somewhere along the way the game’s creators didn’t sabotage the female characters.

When I began this piece, I planned to argue that I would select Aeris as a permanent member of my core party if it weren’t for, you know, that thing that happens. But this is just me twisting tragedy to my own nefarious ends.

Plainly, Aeris is a terrible choice.

Her physical attacks are almost useless, and maintaining a good stock of items is as strategically effectively as relying on her limit breaks, if not more so.

The fact that the materia system turns any player into a competent healer does not work in her favour. If this were not the case, she would have been invaluable—which would have made the game considerably more interesting, and considerably more difficult.

But such is the case.

From a functional standpoint, Yuffie is fine. But she’s also optional. You can play the entire game without her, and her story is not all that relevant to the main one. She also jacks all your shit, forcing you on a somewhat annoying sidequest to retrieve it.

In her own way, Yuffie is pretty punk rock. And I would much rather have her on my team than Vincent Valentine.

Obviously, I do not have the hard on for Vincent that everyone else seems to have. His limit breaks are purely temperamental, and turn your own party members into potential targets for his random, but not particularly powerful, attacks. I guess he has range, and scores the odd critical hit, but otherwise he’s a throwaway character.

Oooh! He’s a broody, tortured badass.

So am I.

And, for that matter, so is every other character in the game.

It’s nothing to write home about.

Or is it?

Dear Mom & Dad,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am living in the basement of an abandoned corporate mansion in the quaintly rustic village of Nibelheim.

All I feel is pain.

Oh, yeah. I started wearing a cape.

Give my love to Gran,

VV

Now, where was I?

The more time I’ve had to ruminate on FFVII as a literary masterpiece, the more I’ve come to realize that Tifa might be the best character in the game. She runs her own bar, which doubles as a hideout for a group of militant environmentalists. She’s consistently sensitive and empathetic, and arguably the only person who holds the entire team together throughout the adventure, even when Cloud is trying to two time her.

Oh, and she’s a brass-knuckle brawler who, on occasion, punches enemies with a goddamned dolphin.

My only practical complaint is with her random limit breaks. At what point is she established as a happy-go-lucky gambler? Why are we fucking around with this slot machine bullshit?

Leave it for Cait Sith.

Motherfucking Cait Sith.

Can we all just agree that Cait Sith is the worst character in the game?

If you’re the kind of person who thinks Cait Sith is a great character, obviously you and I should be friends.

But not best friends.

Finally, we have Cid, who is the only character other than Cloud to have a weapon—I believe it’s the Dragoon Lance—with three, triple growth materia slots. Despite none of them being linked, I often swap him into my party later in the game while grinding.

Basically, he’s a dude who functions like the other dudes. Which is to say that he generally functions better than any of the women.

There’s definitely a demand for a remake of Final Fantasy VII, ostensibly because the game was made in 1997. But maybe the best reason to remake it is that some of its sensibilities feel dated to 1957.

Until that happens, my apologies to Red XIII, but I’ll take my chances with Tifa.

If there’s one thing of which I am certain, it’s that August is mine. The glorious heat has made me stupidly, disconnectedly content. Right now, things are good. I don’t even want to think about how I’m going to clean up all the shit in my life.

I feel like all of us deserve that latitude every once and a while. Don’t give a fuck about not giving a fuck.

Maybe that notion set in my mind when I decided not to send a handwritten letter, in which I expressed no remorse for trying to talk to someone hiding inside a tent at a music festival. I did, however, express some remorse for being pretty fuckin’ mangled.

At the time, the incident really bummed me out, and almost convinced me to give up on the evening. But after filling myself full of poutine and other fuel, I decided to give the party one more chance. It was this decision that led to a brief dancefloor encounter with Scott Kirkland, one half of The Crystal Method.

He thanked me for coming out.

I thanked him for playing.

However, my clearest memory of that moment is of an almost-out-of-body awareness of how astonishingly smashed I was. Taken in the context of my earlier, slurred attempts to strike up a conversation through a rain fly, I found myself with serious reason to consider my inclination toward intoxication.

It seemed unnecessary.

But that was in a rather idyllic environment.

After a few weeks back in the real world, reasons to drink are unyieldingly innumerable.

Social.

Cultural.

Psychological.

Economic.

Interpersonal.

Et al.

No. I don’t want to elaborate on them. The idea of anything even approaching reasonable discourse on the matters seems laughable at a magnitude of totality hitherto unknown to the quantitative arts.

I just wanna get drunk.

I’m sure this equation fails to balance somewhere, but I’m confident I would love living in the American south. Eating deep-fried fat and fire-grilled flesh all day. Freebasing crystal meth all night.

I wanna go fast.

And, as I am so fond of crediting Mark Knopfler with observing, “If you wanna run cool, you got to run on heavy, heavy fuel.”

This, it genuinely feels, is the most appropriate strategy for making the best of an almost-assuredly shorter life in an incomprehensibly-mercurial world.

Motivate.

Adapt.

Recycle.

Ours is a climate of chemically-induced hyperthermia.

Out at Possum Lodge, Red Green once opined on the fast and furious attitude of my generation. “The way I see it, we’re all headed for a wall,” he professed. “How hard do you want to hit it?”

Well, Red, we’ve decided the only way to hit it is as hard as we possibly can.

Do you want to be holding it up when that happens?

Everything green a slightly different shade. Everything blue fading into infinity.

Moist earthen paths carve through the breathing forest like wormholes, uniting different dimensions. Trees climb towards the sky until the naked rock can no longer hold them, blazing in the daylight.

unpossessable

Apollo’s unabashed arrogance makes it impossible to chill beer in the enveloping mud banks flanking the determined glacial runoff. But our neighbours enjoy the gifts all the same.

The water, overly-excited ice, is too cold for soap, and so crisp it’s unnecessary.

It’s clothing optional, as we enjoy sun-melted cheese slathered over garlic sausage dipped in regular yellow mustard. I recall a beautiful story of a man riding his bicycle home through the Swiss countryside following a minor lab accident.

Sometimes mistakes are the stuff of genius.

Things don’t feel different. They just feel right.

For that fleeting moment, suspended somewhere forever, everything makes sense.

I know it won’t once our reflection, incompletely captured and then further distorted, warps off through that vacuum and we return to our lives. But it hardly seems to matter then. And maybe it doesn’t now.

The day was really good.

But you made it perfect.

It’s out there.

Somewhere along that sinewy, ashen metaphor. Dissecting our world. Connecting us. Moving us further apart.

Forever encouraging the pulse of desire.

“She needs to be chased,” I was told, which hardly made her special, but I was comforted by the fact that I finally had some direction.

I ruminated on this prospect for a few more scenes that evening. Then, during a lull in the conversation, I casually stated, “Maybe you could mention to her that I kinda need to be chased, too.”

“Not gonna happen.”

I reluctantly accepted this reality, and thought about how I would work around it.

What I should have done was just agreed with the truth of that statement. It wasn’t going to happen.

I almost want to say that I don’t even know what’s involved in chasing someone, but the fact is that I do. And I don’t fucking like it.

Capture.

Contain.

Control.

We’re convinced that our own will to self-determination enables us with these capabilities to such a degree that we lose sight of obvious limitations.

Try breathing underwater. Let alone in outer space.

Most of us have trouble being in one place at one time. Let alone everywhere always.

I’m after my own limits.

I don’t want to put any on you.

She was from Alabama. As such, our group of friends called her ‘Bama.

It probably wasn’t my single favourite thing about her, but I really enjoyed that she got to Burning Man by convincing her mom she needed money for Christian Camp. As such, I have come to refer to Burning Man as Christian Camp.

Along the road onto the playa, beside a crawling chain of cars and trucks and vans and campers and campervans, there was one guy waving a homemade sign that read:

JESUS DIED SO YOU WON’T BE BURNIN’, MAN

It didn’t sit well with the three other people in our vehicle, and I would guess most of the other people along the road weren’t crazy about it either. Unless it was the intent of the sign’s author to almost literally preach to the choir, his creation was an unmitigated communications disaster. Although it probably resonated with however many people there were out there who, like me, have the benefit of a fairly robust Christain education. A failed indoctrination, one might say.

In turn, this group of us could then explain to our now somewhat-defensive travelling companions that the intent of this sign was probably not to condemn us for our week of desert idol worship. Instead, it was to remind us that what Christains actually believe is that Jesus sacrificed himself—really somewhat reluctantly—to save us from our own sins. So that, even if we happen to make some questionable choices at Burning Man, we’re not also eternally damned to the fires of hell. We are, in this view, only saved by grace.

That’s the narrow interpretation of it.

More broadly, and (much to the chagrin of my grandmother) arguably secularly, I found it to be a wonderfully generous reminder that compassion and forgiveness are infinite. Ever open to our acceptance, and ours to offer freely.

Sure, it’s a debatable assertion.

But not in my heart.

When the last car had passed, I’m sure my friend packed up his sign, hopped into his RV, and drove through the gate to join the party.

Seasonal affective disorder really sucks.

About half of the time.

The other half is flippin’ fan-fucking-tastic.

From about mid-May to—optimistically—early October, you feel like you’re continually freebasing crystal meth.

Not that you’ve ever done that, but next time January rolls around maybe give it a whirl.

Even while getting eaten alive and infected with West Nile Virus, a night in the park drinking beers beneath random fireworks and light rain while periodically riding a stationary bicycle to help power a screening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is time damn well spent. And who doesn’t love watching lithe, body-painted young women get slathered in a blackish substance by an awkward kid in a business suit as part of a guerilla and artistic environmental protest staged amidst an open dance party throbbing in the heart of the metropolis?

Despite the fact that moving away from winter would be functionally identical to doubling the remainder of your life expectancy, the true north, strong and free, knows a little something about taking advantage of good weather while it can.

This consistently magical time of year is tainted only by the nagging feeling that it is impossible to experience all of the best of everything.

Yet, we can try.

I find myself once again on the cusp of Astral Harvest, an electronic music festival that—for better or worse—has influenced my life in some fairly significant ways. I still don’t have a ticket for this year’s gathering, and I must sheepishly admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about getting one.

I am not so naive as to venture a criticism of the festival itself, but rather the way I fear I will interact with it. I am worried that, like so many things in my life, I will simply end up going through similar motions in anticipation of similar results. I am worried I will follow a recipe for the status quo.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and expecting different results. So, I guess I’m preoccupied with how I might go about doing a few things a differently this year, despite the fact that previous results have generally been good.

Maybe I need a different result, even if it’s a bad one.

Even if I don’t have a specific plan for achieving that in mind—which I rarely do—I’ll almost definitely fail unless I heed HST’s advice.

Buy the ticket.

Take the ride.

January’s just around the corner.

Monday morning, and I’m sitting in my psychiatrist’s office—talking about Jurassic Park. He draws my attention to the window.

“There’s a mugging going on outside.”

Sometimes I think my problems are pretty trivial.

We spend a minute or two watching a baby robin, fallen from its nest and unable to fly, get pecked to death by a crow.

“Look how it eats,” says another doctor, Alan Grant, in that scene where the T-Rex savages that Gallimimus. “Bet you never look at birds the same way again.”

My doctor was more hung up about the incident than I was. Still, I couldn’t help thinking it was an omen. Or a metaphor. Or some other bullshit.

The thing is, that robin, with its ancestry and instinct, would have grown up to be a ruthless predator in its own right.

And the crow’s gotta eat.

Look how much blood.

It seemed like a story, but it lacked…

And I’m foreshadowing…

substance

Plus, like I said, I’m not really dwelling on it.

Instead, I spent the week kicking around potential blog topics, each safer than the last. Hoping to come up with something poetic. Gnawing at everything argumentatively.

Maybe walking into a demilitarized minefield.

Bath Salts

Also sometimes known as plant food, designer drugs, or more commonly and broadly, research chemicals. Their variety is vast and, in fact, undiscovered.

It is, in essence, a quasi-legal classification. Although this could certainly be debated, it simply refers to any druggish substance that can be sold in accordance with the law. As long as it’s labelled as something not generally intended for human consumption.

Sometimes I ignore labels.

In my psychiatrist’s waiting room, while that tiny heart was still beating impossibly fast inside that robin’s chest, I happened across an article about some aphrodisiac poachers in Nepal who were viciously beaten to death by a posse of sixty-five, otherwise-normal dudes.

Drug murders, it seems, are a fact of life.

Even devoid of cannibalism, they are compelling.

Prepare to be bored to death.

Last September, I was entering the endgame of getting impossibly close to a universally-unique woman.

To be honest, I’m not entirely certain which one of us had the desire to experiment with neurochemical experience. Maybe we were both just willing to go along for a ride that neither one of us particularly cared to take.

It saw us hanging around outside the amphitheatre in the park. Listening to the symphony’s final movements as the moon chilled the atmosphere. We sat apart, on separate rocks.

Experiencing disconnection and 5-Methoxy-diisopropyltryptamine.

AKA Foxy Methoxy

It’s neither completely legal nor specifically illegal. And it’s got a cult following.

Although it could potentially be twisted to compromise the central consideration of this piece, my inimitable bro, Bat Country, once confided in me, “On MDMA I just love everybody. On Foxy, I feel like I could fight.”

If I needed to.

From the park, my companion and I made our way through the city. Stopping for ice cream. Then Indian food.

Eventually making our way to the bridge.

A lonesome thread of weathered concrete and black steel, tenuously strung across the top of the river valley.

I had walked across it two days previous, dwelling on our strained relationship. And everything else in my life that wasn’t working. Trying not to look out at the calming, idyllic landscape below. Wondering if this was how it was going to happen.

But that night, I just wanted to get us past it all.

We ventured out across the true height of the expanse, the sky below us the colour of a crow. A hooded figured flew past us on a bike.

Stopped abruptly.

Leaned on the railing.

Perched on the bike frame.

Rocked back and forth.

Teetered.

I maintained my pace. Thinking mostly just about us.

Until we entered the space that demanded I consider the extended definition of that concept. So I talked with him.

I needed to.

“How’s it goin’?”

Shane.

He immediately stepped down. Left his bike.

He had kids. They probably couldn’t fly any better than he could.

He wasn’t going to jump.

“I didn’t think you were.” I lied.

There was an awkward silence. We all smiled and nodded.

He backed away. She and I took a few steps as he returned to his bike.

Foxy falls into a loosely-defined class of substances sometimes referred to as entactogens. Although I don’t discount the other members of its posse that night—environment, experience, character, straight-up adrenaline, and probably most importantly, company—I have no doubt in my mind that it played a crucial role in allowing me to reach within so I could reach out.

I turned back.

“You know, if you need to talk about something—”

Again, Shane closed the gap between us. Fast.

Convinced me he didn’t want to jump. Even if he hadn’t completely convinced himself.

But we had to let him sort it out.

Walked away.

Both of us wanted to take the other’s hand.

But didn’t.

And wouldn’t again.

We carried on, silently and separately. Shane whipped past us on his bike once more, almost angrily, then vanished as he turned up the corner of the other side.

Even if we didn’t make it across, I’m glad we were on that bridge.

Let’s call him Paul.

“Have you ever had your face smashed with a claw hammer?” He queries in earnest.

It’s maybe a pretty standard experience for him, so there’s no reason for me to get all judgemental. After all, I don’t see a claw hammer anywhere close at hand. And even if these incidents had been immediately recent, I’m not a doctor.

For whatever reason, Paul feels he can tell my friend, Bat Country, and I his story. There aren’t enough safe spaces for honesty, so I like to do what little I can to foster them wherever and whenever they arise.

Even if it’s while I’m drinking high-quality malt liquor on a park bench. Watching the sun caress the skyline.

Rinsing down the day.

Bleaching out the past.

Paul’s debts are all settled. Notorized. He shows us the ink.

Figuring it was done with a fork, a random electric motor and some copy toner, it’s disappointingly good.

But it should be, since it’s the costliest tattoo I’ve ever seen.

I wonder if the ghost of that price lives inside the empty eyes of the stoic face scarred on Paul’s shoulder. Wonder if any of his story’s true. Wonder if it matters either way.

Take another swig. Give it another glance. Probably shrug.

Hope Paul managed to get something off his chest.