Crush

I am one of the unfortunate masses who is addicted to a little game called Candy Crush Saga. I would like to describe this as just a harmless entertainment, but I fear it is a sign of a character flaw.

I used to do the New York Times crossword on my electronic devices, but there came a time when all I did was crush candy and bring ingredients down. I came to hate chocolate, that insidious substance that grows on the board and blocks one’s way.

I actually kicked this habit for several years. I uninstalled it from my devices. But after hearing on public radio the great violinist Itzhak Perlman admit that he spent time crushing candy, I was drawn back in. When I got an iPhone back in December, I installed Candy Crush on it. That is where I play. That is where I have progressed to Level 200.

After the diagnosis, when things radically reshuffled in terms of priorities and an understanding of one’s own mortality, many things seem odd. One of the things for me is the concept of “lives” in Candy Crush. Every day I start out with five lives. My online friends can also send me lives– and there I am after I’ve used my precious five lives accepting the gift of lives from others. “Liz sent you a life.” “Lydia sent you a life.” “Doug sent you a life.” Oh thank you, thank you, thank you friends.

I have one Facebook friend who knows I am a regular, and she is always requesting more lives. Always. Every time I open the program I have a message in my inbox: “Please send Jackie a life.” It makes me laugh, because the only relief from Candy Crush is running out of lives and so being denied the chance to waste more time there.

There is very little skill involved in Candy Crush. I have some moves, but really the board has to cooperate. It’s a battle with frustration, and it does encourage one to develop a somewhat zen attitude. I imagine it is not a good game for people who are truly competitive.

The idea of candy crush “lives,” like, really, the idea of crushing candy, is a nice absurdity. I place it at the opposite end of the spectrum to the famous poem: “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, where she asks: “What is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?”

Here is Mary Oliver’s poem, which encourages us to do less and so do more. Watch the grasshoppers. See how they move their jaws. I planted the cold frame today, watering it deeply, spreading some hardwood ash and fertilizer, then seeding it with a variety of greens, spinach, kale, collards. It might still freeze, but those seeds can do their work and take off once it’s warm enough. And now, to go see my friends and spend a few of my magically recharging lives!

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean– 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.
All rights reserved.