When Hachi gets crushed by a boulder…

In Nethack, they always start you off with a pet dog or cat (or in the case of a Knight, a saddled pony). If you play as a samurai, it’s always a dog, and its name is Hachi. Maintaining a pet on your journey can be difficult, but rewarding. Their needs must be tended to; meals invariably must be split with them, 50/50, to keep them healthy. You will end up standing around on each flight of stairs for what seems like forever, waiting for them to decide to finally wander over and join you. You will have to rescue them from traps, themselves, and foes that are out of their league….but for all this effort, you get a companion; someone to lean on when the monsters close in; someone to watch your back down those long dark hallways. They progress with you, as you progress, only slower. Initially, in fact, they are stronger than you are, but at a certain point in the trek you always overtake them, and render them somewhat obsolete…until, one day, whether you are ready for it or not, they invariably get killed by something (usually a falling rock trap, and usually prematurely), and just as the game informs us if it happens off screen, we most definitely "feel sad for a moment…then it passes."

Sometimes it happens right away, while we are still far too weak to handle the dungeon alone. The bond we forged with the pet is fortunately weak, so sentiment doesn’t suffer their passing– but we are not apt to survive long without them at low levels, thus fear replaces what might otherwise be melancholy…because sometimes it happens much, much later into the game. Long after they served their purpose of guiding you to a place of strength; a place where they are no longer needed for survival at all. These late-game pet deaths always hit me harder, though…the bond of sentiment is much stronger, and although I had been holding back on my full deadly potential, just to continue tending to the pet’s needs, the sudden liberation feels hollow and meaningless without being able to share it with them.

But only for a moment…

Again, the weather tonight is maddening. Wet, lazy, cool, Norah-Jones-rainy. I’m overwhelmed by the same combination of feelings that have been snowballing on me all week; apathy, helplessness, fear, and sadness– spiked by the most unusual hodge-podge of memories from all over the place. Tonight I started getting hit by memories of being 14 years old, taking walks in the fog, and waking up early for racquetball, oatmeal, and sailor moon. Night time it was simon and garfunkel and fantasies about romance and the future and how amazing every unknown thing was. I need another comet of beauty to collide with my world, but a watched planet never gets struck. I’m too old to make tragedy into beauty….after a certain point music and romanticizing one’s own plight just doesn’t work anymore. Everything is just sad, and helplessly so. I don’t know what to do. I’m all alone, left behind, out of future, and plagued by a much too pleasant past. All my beacons of naive optimism have burnt out, or drifted off. I feel like I’m reeling in the dark and it’s just getting darker, but I’m not allowed to care…so I don’t, and laugh instead, because according to logic and reason what more can one do?