They were all spaceships, pt. 1

In my ongoing attempt to uproot all of the things which I have stored over the years, I recently took my Legos out of storage. I spent my childhood and adolescence sitting on my bedroom floor surrounded by shaped plastic bits. They were scattered everywhere, and I was the only one who know where it was safe to step without impaling my feet on small piles of rubble. I had a small selection of books on tape and radio dramas, including Hitchhiker's Guide, the BBC Hobbit, and the Star Wars radio drama. I would come home from school, eat a snack, and retreat to my room to create worlds out of plastic.

I went up into the attic several weeks ago, in search of the two large bins I knew were there, as well as several boxes of old Star Wars books I intended to sell. The intensity of the attic struck me, as an environment. Unfinished, the floor is more of a creative path of plywood laid over beams than a reality, and if you step off to one side, your foot will go through the insulation and into the room below. The air is hot and dusty, with just a hint of mold, although it gets so hot in that space that not many spores can survive. Mostly it smells of old wood, tired soot, and dust. Meager piles of storage surround the only island of floor, and it was in these that I found my prize. One plastic, one cardboard, these two boxes contained all the remaining legos I had refused to dispose of when I decided I needed to spend that time on other things.

And, for a week or so, that was that. I didn't delve into the contents of the boxes because of other distractions. However, I knew they were sitting there, and I knew that there was some prize, some unremembered revelation about myself, my past, and my potential future hidden in those two boxes. Ok, maybe I didn't know that, but it turned out to be true anyway.

The recollation* I came to is this: they were all spaceships. With a very few exceptions, almost every model I found half-assembled in those boxes was a spaceship.** This, in turn, led me to recollect that, indeed, most of the boxed sets I specifically requested as gifts for birthdays or Christmas, or which I spent my own carefully hoarded allowance on were space themed. Each set which was bought for me which wasn't space themed was quickly incorporated into the larger genre. With some of the more specialized pieces, this presented a problem which had to be overcome with a certain amount of linguistic creativity. The horses became space horses; the dragon, a space dragon.

In any case, as I pulled out more pieces and reentered that world, however briefly, I began to realize something else. I spent most of my time growing up living in one or another fantasy world. I loved the huge, established worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars. I could immerse myself fully in other people's creations, but I also spent a lot of time in worlds of my own building.

Next time I write: Living in fantastic worlds and how it applies to the martial artist.




* That's a combination of "recollection" and "revelation." I'm aware it's a word in its own right. Bear with me.
** My favorite non-spaceship discovery was a complete lego crime scene, complete with headless corpse. The head was in the oven. I make no claim to being a normal child.