Mining for Diamonds



My son Toby and I have been digging for diamond ore.

It lies deep- very deep, secretly embedded in the depths of the digital world; you won't come across any in those upper layers Minecraft’s green surface. Finding any at all requires some heavy mining- down many, many levels past the dirt, the cobblestone, the granite. Beyond the deposits of coal and clusters of redstone. I even passed up some gold ore to get to it. When I had finally made it into the bowels of the underworld, it still took a lot of work and dumb luck with my simulated iron pickaxe to reach some of those rare grey cubes glittering with nuggets of sky blue diamond ore. I get there, mark the site, and notify Toby about my discovery. He had tasked me with finding diamond ore for a special purpose. He joins me sublevel and assists in the harvest to bring the bounty to his wizard's crafting table. He can then create all kinds of special implements endowed with magical spells.

Every Wednesday, we meet online in this  private Minecraft world. For weeks now we have been creating a homestead complete with main house, barn, gardens, and armory worthy of the most esteemed medieval royalty, created from our mines and with our minds. We build by day and defend by night (when the zombies, creepers, and endermen come out to attack us). We share garden tools, mining tools, and weapons. We raise cattle and chickens. Our physical  bodies sit in front of our laptops, in different houses, miles apart, while our avatars come together for this digital adventure. The Minecraft software graphics fill the screen and we speak to each other in real time using the Discord platform.

Four years ago, I lost my youngest son; I lost all of my children. I was in a dark place- newly sober, blind, crawling around a dungeon of my own creation with only my sense of touch to find my way out. As time went on and I grew in my program I saw sparkles; glimmers of light began to appear before my eyes, and I followed them. I soon recognized that the only permissable path to reconnect with my children was through the internet. This was their preference. It started with emails, which, for two of the three, is where it remains to this day. With my third, we found our meeting spot in online gaming. Now we talk to each other; we actually hear each others' voices, once a week. We speak only of the game- no discussion of our relationship, life or future, or serious topic of any kind; only of building, mining, and defending what we create. 

I found my shimmering building blocks, and Toby and I  are creating something magical. And I feel blessed with the wealth of a thousand tons of diamond ore. My son. My Toby.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Intubating Alcoholics

Image
In the past week I have put three alcoholics on life support. The first one was 39 years old. He arrived to the emergency department by EMS unconscious with almost no blood pressure. I placed my ultrasound probe on his heart and saw it was beating alright,  just very little blood was entering his ventricles. This is because he was bleeding to death. When I intubated him I saw pooled blood in the back of his throat. His liver was so far gone, so cirrhotic, that blood could not easily pass through it, and the backup and created high vein pressures on sensitive areas like his esophagus and stomach, whose linings themselves were eroded from the caustic effects of constant boozing. He was literally hemorrhaging internally, and it took many units of blood to even get a pressure back. He made it to the ICU, and later that night, died. We later learned from family that he had moved back to town "to get sober." Case two was  a 53 year old chronic alcoholic who came to me con...
Read more

Whiskey on the Walls

Image
Alcoholics in long-term recovery maintain a keen awareness  of any booze in our immediate vicinity. Whether sober a week or twenty years, we keep a heightened sensitivity to its presence in a room. So when my hospital chose to line the hallways with it, needless to say the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. These days hand sanitizer has become as ubiquitous as cellphones, face masks, and Bradley Cooper; you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dispenser. Companies simply cannot keep up with the demand. This being the case, a local valley distillery came up with the brilliant idea to temporarily convert its operations from whiskey to full-time sanitizer production, and began to supply local medical facilities. My hospital has been buying the stuff in bulk, restocking its depleted stores,  and filling all its dispensers with it. Here's the problem. Distilleries using equipment which had been continuously producing hard liquor for years can't magically c...
Read more

Baby Soul

Image
It’s  Baby Soul Day! In my younger teen years, I worshipped the iconic band Rush. At age 14 I was small, nerdy, intellectual, and afraid of my own shadow. Geddy Lee's voice, Alex Lifeson's guitar, and Neal Peart's lyrics encapsulated perfectly how I felt growing up in 1980s suburban North Jersey surrounded by big studly Italian boys and athletic Irish kids.  Neither the albums  Moving Pictures nor  Signals left my turntable *ever* unless I was simply swapping out one for the other. I hid in my room, pretending how I was going to somehow be cool, be accepted, break out. 30 years later, as I felt myself inevitably sinking in alcoholic quicksand, I read Neal Peart's memoir  Ghost Rider . Having lost his daughter to a car crash and wife to cancer within the same year, the legendary drummer one morning mounted his motorcycle and embarked on a two-year tour of the Americas, riding wherever the wind (his HP?) took him. While journaling his geographic advent...
Read more