FOUND FOLIOS 1: Jenga
Depictions of ruin and dark futures never really dealt with the idea of free time. The running assumption was that if someone was fighting both physically and mentally to survive, they would have no real need for pastimes; they’d be too exhausted from their toil. That, or the author didn’t really think about it in lieu of heroic deeds and protagonistic actions.
The reality is far, far from the truth. Perhaps if there were more survivors, the storytellers of before may have been more accurate; if competition increases, then every resource must be stretched further. Yet we have barely enough people to form communities, let alone begin pillaging each other. There is a lot of free time.
I now present one of my favourite pieces I’ve found recently. It deals with one person’s solution to the free time problem:
June? 203?
I had to move cars again today. Or at least I tried to. Some cooperated. But others are now a problem for the next shift.
I think I’m going to volunteer again, though. It’s always a job nobody wants, but it’s alright tbh. People complain cos you’re out there, all exposed and that. Who cares? It’s more fun than cleaning or mending. Plus, I always hated those conversations about cars that people used to have. Car people were the worst.
I fear I’m becoming one — the other day, I mentioned I’d seen something called a ‘LADA.’ And a few of the blokes all started talking about it like I’d unearthed some forgotten lore.
I just liked it cos the handbrake cable was really easy to cut. If more cars were LADAs, our work would be so much easier.
Actually, I think that’s why I love moving the old cars to much. Not for the clear road that follows, nor the praise from traders when they can get their carts a bit further to our gates.
Na, none of that. It’s like Jenga. Jenga’s class. People jeer and cheer when the tower falls, but I’m on about the actual game. Testing the pieces before you decide which one to push. When you find that one that just glides effortlessly out of the tower, then place it smugly on the top and hand the risk over to someone else. A good car is like that; it’ll start rolling with just a little push, and cooperate. A bad car will be rusted still, or off the axle. Still, even the most obnoxiously stagnant vehicle regains some merit by giving you a puzzle to fix that feels worthwhile.
God, I miss jenga. Do I need to capitalise it nowadays? We had a copy for the longest time, then two when we joined these guys. Both are gone now. The first got used so much over the years that the pieces became uneven and random, then sold to someone who didn’t understand how irritating that was to play with. The second got graffiti’d into some barely-remembered drinking game, then burned by said graffiti dickheads as a result of the game.
With enough collected memory, and/or an old version of a game, you can recreate pretty much any board or card game. I remember a funny internet thing decades ago, with two soldiers in the middle east playing warhammer with a few bits of trash.
jJenga’s not that easy. You need smooth, machined parts, all equal and of the same material. That’s so hard to do nowadays. Or, at least, I’ve never managed to make a set that feels right.
When nothing else is feeling right, a game of jenga would go a long way.
~Unknown
I guess this Found Folios series is, itself, my own solution to the free time problem. I hope this ‘something to do’ is as useful as clearing cars from a path.
The Curator
