my notes and thoughts on following the run and jump chapter 2 exercise

this of course maps better to falling, although i do wonder what it would be like to make a platformer where falling up is bad. (VVVVVV?)

3. this fanciful detachment is something which is built up carefully, slowly... and is shattered instantly, easily, by e.g. the opening of a door, or the ringing of a doorbell.

1. physically speaking, the narrator (“you”) are above the source of connection; you are in your bedroom, the adults and life in general are below you.

2. many of your flights of fancy relate to the night sky, the stars: moving “up” brings you closer to them, in some cases explicitly.

there are a few reasons for this;

. . . all the laughter came upstairs suddenly in a gust.

Then downstairs some one began to play the piano, and you listened to the muted music.

You lay very still in your bed and listened to something, perhaps a dead leaf, perhaps a twig from the top of the house,

That was long, long ago.

You never knew what things they laughed at when they laughed so long in the evenings, and now you never will know.

They were all laughing in the drawing-room below.

Outdoors the quiet snow and the sky beat like a pulse, and then you heard a leaf scrambling across the crust of the snow, scratching minutely with fingers of wire; it slid, and ceased.

Then they stopped playing and it was all still again.

You wondered what it was that had made the music so sad, that made you so sad.

what was it that the music had known and wept for, something that was over and could never be forgotten

The moonlight lay along the glass of the pictures and across the bookcase, and you thought about the books in their shelves and the three white chairs and the black table and your desk, all ranged in the darkness around you.

You held the pillow up to your face and fitted it to your cheek, and lay still in the room you knew so well.

You thought about the little animals in the woods beyond the snow, . . . and the great stars in the sky above the world.

And then they closed the door, somewhere, and the sound clapped shut, and you could hear them laughing faintly, far away.

You heard the peal of the front-doorbell sing through the house, and some one opened a door and all the laughter came up to you in a clear sudden burst.

(under you only was a house full of lights and the sound of people laughing.)

. . . suspended in a dark tower above the world. . . . And a great bell tolling.

. . . rising higher and higher into the dark sky where the stars shone; . . .

the surface of the vast, murmurous snow. Forever, all over the round smooth world it was dark and still and beautifully cold, fatefully and eternally hushed

. . . was far away and bright and legendary. . . . You longed for something . . . you will never know what it was.

. . . They knew about strange things, places, and shining people, great singers, and dancers from Russia, balls in Vienna and cities in China . . .

What were they all laughing at? Something you knew nothing about, something beautiful and exalted.

It was enormous and still outside, . . . with the stars a million miles deep in the high sky.

. . . farther and farther and then it was gone away.

Outside the house a car drove by . . . the lights came in the window . . .

They were laughing downstairs. It rang like bells . . .

I’d like to map the feeling of being lost in a dream, young, confused, alone... the feeling of connection, versus isolation.

↑ ISOLATION

↓ CONNECTION

At this point I realized: ISOLATION should be UP.

I’d like to map the feeling of being lost in a dream, young, confused, alone... the feeling of connection, versus isolation.

↑ CONNECTION

↓ ISOLATION

It was enormous and still outside, . . . with the stars a million miles deep in the high sky.

. . . farther and farther and then it was gone away.

Outside the house a car drove by . . . the lights came in the window . . .

. . . all the laughter came upstairs suddenly in a gust.

. . . was far away and bright and legendary. . . . You longed for something . . . you will never know what it was.

That was long, long ago.