The Ravens Nest

…And Could Be Again

In case you haven’t seen my Tarot card of the day or Rune of the week, this Wednesday is a special one because everything I mention ties together very nicely and I’m going to show you how life’s synchronicities can be amazing.

First, I want you to start here…

This video montage was obviously made for humor purposes. I’d met some fellow Star Wars fans sixteen years ago, two years after this video was posted and I showed it to them. We all had great laughs and it was endlessly quotable. The line that sticks with us most, is very random and it starts at at the 4:29 mark. Where did that line come from? Well the lines from other movies featuring the late James Earl Jones, may he rest in peace, was from the movie Field of Dreams. In fact, here it is.

I watched that movie and thought “Why don’t they make movies like this anymore?” Stories of hope, of families, of tough times, crazy dreams and making it through; something magical? Something awe-inspiring.

Something struck me about it though and I couldn’t put my finger on what…until I remembered a Christmas gift I’d received.

Keep in mind, I’m not a sports guy. I tried when I was younger but I just couldn’t hang so, after the year without the World Series, I walked away. There where times when I’d exclaim “Son of a…” around these friends I’d made and one of them quickly interjected with an impression of James Earl Jones saying “Basebaaaall…” and gave us all a good laugh. I wasn’t going to complete the epithet but here we were with a new one that could be used anywhere. Son of a Baseball!

I went to dig that Christmas gift out of a box. Even though I am not a sports guy when this gift was in my hands, well, see for yourself…

I’ve read it…twice and much of the history, I do remember. I had become a bit obsessed with the game when I was a kid. I knew players’ batting averages, I practically worshipped Nolan Ryan’s pitching. It was a great time. Then money became involved and politics of the parental sort on the little league field killed my interest altogether.

But there it was, that book. Field of Dreams was over and I felt great for watching it but now I wanted to go into this book again. I started reading it, bookmarked my place and put it where my favorite books go.

This gift was one of those moments where someone completely opposite me decided to put all that thought, condensed into a moment of instant on-sight recognition and it went supernova from being so compressed, so quickly that it resulted in a moment where the unspoken conversation was “Dude, I get you!” and my response was “Yeah, you absolutely do. Thank you!”

In the pages I re-read, there were memories of where I was at the time when I heard the news of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire’s home run-off. There were articles on Babe Ruth. Baseball’s most outstanding moments and players are in this book.

Now, the Rune of the week was Isa and today’s card was Temperance. Seen here…

The fact that I saw a movie that I loved as a kid, loved it more as an adult, a book about a sport I no longer follow but love it’s history and then, it’s placement. Where did I put that book with the sticky note still attached to it after all these years?

Right here…

With this week’s rune being Isa (Ice) meaning any forward momentum in my life is hitting a bit of a slowdown or an all-out stop, that’s terrible news for a guy constantly on the go. It’s also a reminder that sometimes, one does need to slow down and prepare…something big is coming. The Temperance card told me to lay off the posting on the taking down of other games even if it’s factual. Both forced me to look at that shelf and realize what I’d just done unconsciously.

There was that line again. “It reminds us of what once was good…and could be again.”

That was the important part. There were things I loved about baseball. There are a ton of things I love about my RPGs. I didn’t get to play a lot of them when I was younger and now my library is such that I can just take my pick. I’m truly steeped in it and I don’t really have too much of a right to complain, especially since my resolve to not buy from companies that hate my guts is still firmly in place. I have what makes me happy and that’s what matters.

I still like taking my Brooklyn Smasher (aka Brook) to batting cages and blasting baseballs pitched at me from machines. I don’t know why, I just do. Am I good at it? No. I still love playing Magic: The Gathering even though I only have decks that aren’t tournament legal. I lose more games than I win and I still love to play. It makes those victories that much sweeter.

I still love cracking one of these books or hopping onto Second Life where we just make shit up, sometimes we dice roll when we can’t make a good decision. We do incorporate elements of what’s written in all these books, bringing our experiences from the table to the digital virtual world and we still have so much fun doing it. It’s amazing.

At the end of it all, we sit back in our chairs and ruminate a little over the genre we’ve played, the characters we play, how our characters support other characters and we just have a great time.

The impact of that Christmas gift that started out as one of our little inside jokes had such a profound effect on me when I needed it most, and with our cosmic forces of Nature or The Universe, or whatever you choose to call it, it came with precision timing and I’m forever grateful for it.

Sometimes, it truly is the little things. Bringing back that feeling of being an innocent child when cracking that book for the first time and not being able to explain why these games appeal to me but accepting that they just do, it made all the difference.

It was a reminder of what once was good…and could be again.

Ahhh, baseball…