On Holding On
Have you ever kept something with the odd expectation that it might come in handy someday...?
Back in August, when I first met the Reverend Dr. Roslyn Thomas, she was in the process of downsizing. That afternoon, sweaty on my way back from a bike ride, I encountered this wonderfully polite lady who was looking to get rid of some furniture (some of which had been damaged in transit from Virginia). Life through the pandemic had taken some painfully unexpected turns for Dr. Thomas (understatement, I know). She and I both found ourselves in a bit of a transitional phase, trying to square the particular loneliness of that period in our lives with the possibility of a new start. So, when we met, she was clearing out the old to accommodate the new. In this case, I could tell, it was a bittersweet sort of parting—a melancholy farewell to the artifacts of a bygone and beautiful era.
Among the furniture Dr. Thomas was reluctantly saying goodbye to, one piece stood out. It was a grandfather clock. Over six feet tall, beautiful brown wood with all the chimes and a gorgeously ornate face—a wedding gift from her late husband.
All things are in a state of flux, their stories determined by two sorts of sentences (sometimes concurrently written). The first sentence, arguably, is that of gestation. Gestation sentences typically come to full stop at the moment of birth. What follows gestation and birth is typically a sentence of decay. Any sentence of decay, as you well know, comes to full stop with a kind of death. Scientists refer to this gradual decay, the measurable half-life of atomic matter for example, as entropy. And this, it seems, is the inescapable grammar of the universe, its unexpected shifts in syntax and morphology punctuated by forms of birth and death.
Considering the inevitability of decay (and the miracle of life), it’s hard to overstate the challenge and importance of holding on—holding on to a dream, a memory, a tradition, a ritual, an heirloom.
If, ideologically, liberalism aims to freely allow, then conservatism strives to maintain, preserve, or keep. Regardless of our common political associations with these ideologies, we spend all our lives navigating the push and pull of change and constancy. We calculate quick cost-benefit analyses to determine whether the risks are worth the rewards. Or we find ourselves, comfortable in our subject-position, averse to what might destabilize our equilibrium—risk-aversion. In other words, we are either in need of change or trying to keep things the same. Hard to say when and whether we should concede to entropy or fight the good fight and swim upstream. After all, change is the only constant. And if change is the only constant, what good is our straining against it?
1998 was a great year for Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 was at the height of its popularity (though the cartridge based console would never match the CD-driven success of Sony’s PlayStation) and the GameBoy Color would continue to bolster Nintendo’s astronomical handheld sales. But 1998 wasn’t just a good year for console sales. ‘98 was also an annus mirabilis for the company’s second most recognizable franchise, The Legend of Zelda.
Ocarina of Time was the fifth entry in The Legend of Zelda series (not counting the Philips CD-i spinoffs) and it was Nintendo’s first foray into 3D, vectored graphics for the franchise. Ocarina of Time would become one of the most critically-acclaimed and best-selling games of all-time. It certainly holds a place in my heart as a life-changing video-game experience.
That year, Nintendo also released a remake of the fourth entry in the Legend of Zelda series, Link’s Awakening, for the GameBoy Color. Originally released for the OG GameBoy in 1993, this remake, dubbed Link’s Awakening DX, would see the inclusion of color graphics, GameBoy printer functionality (for the game’s photography sidequests), and an extra (color-themed) dungeon (impossible to play on the green, dot-matrix screen of the original GameBoy).
Link’s Awakening is often considered one of the quirkiest games in the mainline series. Conceived of by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kensuke Tanabe, the game was meant to feel surreal from start to finish. Indeed, the games narrative conceit is that the series protagonist, out at sea, washes ashore on Koholint Island after a terrible storm and is discovered by the lovely Marin—a pretty red-headed girl who dreams of flying, like a seagull, to distant lands.
The game communicates much of this exposition within a 60 second opening cut-scene meant to be enjoyed on a tiny, near-square 160 x 144 pixel screen (approximately 4.4 x 4 cm or 1.7” x 1.6”). It certainly seemed bigger back then.
After the opening cut-scene, Link (the game’s now-woke protagonist) is nursed back to health by Marin and her father, Tarin, in Mabe Village. They have his shield. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find his sword. So off he goes in search of his sword and shortly after finding it on Toronbo Shores, he learns from a talking owl that atop Mt. Tamaranch sits the giant egg of the sleeping Wind Fish. In order for Link to return home, he must wake the Wind Fish with the eight magical instruments of the Sirens, each hidden across the island. But it’s not so simple…
Turns out, Koholint Island (and all of its residents) exist in the dreaming of the Wind Fish. If Link is to awaken the Wind Fish and return home, all of Koholint Island might disappear (including lovely, red-headed Marin).
If you ask me, it’s really the sweetest and most melancholically beautiful game in all of the series. And, in retrospect, the game’s oneiric allegory shares much with Yann Martel’s best-selling Life of Pi, published eight years later in 2001.
The game’s director, Takashi Tezuka, was famously inspired to have this dream-like world (from which the titular princess Zelda is notably absent and nothing is as it seems) feel like, of all things, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks—a small-town mystery enshrouded in supernatural enigma. Overall, the game is said to have taken a year and a half to develop (gestate) and finally released to American audiences on December 15, 1998.
Link’s Awakening is a curious example of how birth sweeps in and out of death, how dreams mirror our waking condition—and all of that story-telling captured with the grace of a Yasujiro Ozu film on a tiny, 10:9 screen incapable of displaying more than 56 colors at the same time.
For me, the most fascinating punctum of the game is not its narrative hook or its unusual setting, but its inventory system.
Because the GameBoy had a relatively limited number of buttons (+ directional pad, A button, B button, start and select) players were forced to open a menu if they needed to use more than two items (one item mapped to A or B at a time). This meant a lot of menu-fiddling and a general interruption to the game rhythm. Many of these items, like the sword and shield and bow, the hookshot and Roc’s feather, were necessary to overcome obstacles. But there was also a particular subset of items that were not mappable to the A and B buttons. A Yoshi doll, for example.
The utility of these items was not immediately clear. Link couldn’t vanquish foes with them. They wouldn’t help wake the Wind Fish. Nevertheless, they were interesting enough, of value enough, for the player character to pick them up and keep them close (alongside the bombs and magical powders, etc). But why? They served no obvious purpose. What, I wondered, was the point of these things?
Dr. Thomas had been looking specifically to get rid of an antique desk as well as the grandfather clock. She posted some photos on Facebook to get the word out and the post attracted the interest of a young couple.
Perhaps these two are the unsung heroes of this story. I wish I could remember their names. It was they that insisted Dr. Thomas not get rid of the clock. They were a memorable pair—a swift-talking black man with a five o’clock shadow and a comparatively quiet white woman with periwinkle hair (formerly purple, the dye had changed on her).
They must’ve arrived shortly before I rolled by and had already inspected the antique desk. Sadly the movers had severely damaged (see: broken) one of the desk’s legs in transit. This felt doubly tragic after Dr. Thomas explained that the desk was over 100 years old.
The couple elected to take with them the damaged desk, but the grandfather clock was a bit more compromising an object. It wasn’t just a grandfather clock. It was an heirloom, a wedding gift from Dr. Thomas’s dearly departed husband, and it was engraved. Here was an object possessed of an intangible weight, one impossible to evaluate. Sure, they could pop off the name-plate and keep it as their own, or sell it…but it seemed these two felt it would be inappropriate to enact such a violence on such a one-of-a-kind object. In my least charitable reading of the situation, it just would’ve been too much work.
Instead, as I passed, the two curious collectors looked at each other, then at Dr. Thomas, and decided to ask me: Hey, do you think you could hold on to this for a while? The story of the clock (a quick version) was shared with me in hopes it might tug on my heartstrings. Hesitant at first, because space ain’t free or cheap in New York City, I realized how important the clock and how both kind and vulnerable Dr. Roslyn was in that moment. So I agreed, as her neighbor, to hold on to it for as long as it took for her to find suitable space of her own. I only had one caveat…the young couple would have to move it. I had just finished a bike ride. I was tired and sweaty and beautifully bronzed and wasn’t looking to lift heavy clocks on my leisurely afternoon. Perhaps sensing my royal daintiness, the good Samaritans agreed to my one caveat and thoughtfully heave-hoed the clock into my space. The deed was done.
Though Dr. Thomas would encourage me to sell or get rid of the clock if it became a burden, I couldn’t. I can’t. I had accepted the responsibility of guardianship for a grandfather clock gifted to the Reverend Dr. Roslyn Thomas by her late husband William Thomas to commemorate their wedding on July 23, 1983. All in hope that Dr. Roslyn might be spared the heartbreak of losing something so precious.
With the acceptance of that responsibility too came the possibility that the clock might never be reclaimed, that I’d be left holding this weighty and impossible memento of a life, a memory, a history, a love. But I’ve held on to worse things—movie stubs, letters, string, promises.
Like this one time, on Koholint Island, I won a useless Yoshi doll at a Trendy Game shop and it turns out the doll wasn’t as useless or burdensome as I thought.
Few joys match that of finding use for something once thought useless. It’s not just a physical restoration, but a restoration of purpose or meaning or value. It’s what artists and artisans do. They take the raw or discarded material of life and make a thing of use or beauty or both. More generally, it’s what we all do whenever we insist on the value of a thing that is otherwise valueless or negligible. It’s what we do when we archive our histories, our memories, our traditions and experiences. It’s what we do when we keep a promise, keep a secret, preserve a bond of trust between self and other.
That’s the thing about things. Regardless of their utility (or lack thereof) we affix to them pieces of our selves. They become vessels of memory, sacred and holy, or salacious and mundane. Objects, in some animistic traditions, even contain entire spirits or become earthly monuments to the deceased. Things are always more than just things—and the value of a thing is as strange and mutable as the human evaluating it.
Last Christmas, among the gifts I wrapped for my mom were a Hermès scarf and a 4-inch figurine of a horse. Why the horse figurine? Because she loves horses and the Timothée Chalamet SNL skit “Tiny Horse”. It leaves her in stitches every time. Maybe you already see where I’m going with this little anecdote. She’s never worn the scarf, but she adores her tiny horse—which literally cost me 1/100th the price of the scarf.
All of that to say, after our basic human needs are met (in keeping with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) it becomes impossible to determine what an individual might value as special (beyond reason).
In Link’s Awakening when you find the Yoshi doll at the Trendy Game shop, you initiate a 14 item long trade sequence. Link can give the doll to a mother (Mamasha) who’s trying to pacify her frantic baby. In return, she’ll give Link a red hair-ribbon. The red hair ribbon can be given to the baby bow-wow (dog) named CiaoCiao. She’s been looking for accessories and the red ribbon really appeals to her. Give it to her, she’ll put it on, and in exchange she’ll give you a tin of dog food. Now surely what can be done with a tin of dog food? Link has no dog! But Sale the crocodile, who lives in a shack on Toronbo Shores, is, oddly enough, a collector of dog food. Give Sale the dog food and he’ll give you a bunch of bananas from his stash. Bananas are pretty valuable on their own. But Link really doesn’t have much of an appetite in this dream-world. Kiki the monkey, on the other hand, will go bananas for some bananas. After you offer Kiki the bananas, Kiki invites all of his friends. Suddenly, the tiny screen is swarmed by a flurry of monkeys who…I don’t know…eat the bananas and simultaneously build Link a wooden bridge that allows him to sneak into the previously inaccessible castle? After the architecturally inclined clan of primates departs, they leave in their wake a little stick. Link sees some value in this stick, though of course it’s hard to determine why. Some time later, Link encounters Tarin (the father of lovely Marin) standing beneath a tree. In the tree is a beehive and Tarin is very curious. Link offers him the stick and Tarin, poor Tarin, pokes the hive…only to be greeted by a swarm of angry bees. He runs off screen and the hive/honeycomb falls to the ground. The honeycomb can then be given to Chef Bear in the Animal Village, who needs ingredients for his food. In return, he offers Link a pineapple. The pineapple comes in handy later when, at the top of Tal Tal Mountain range, Link encounters Papahl (husband to Mamasha, the woman you’ve already given the Yoshi doll to). Papahl got lost up there in the mountains and is starving. Fortunately Link can offer him the pineapple! Papahl scarfs it down and offers (not as a reward!) a hibiscus flower. Here the trading sequence becomes even more absurd and charming.
There lives in the Animal Village a sweet she-goat named Christine who loves flowers—hibiscus most all. If Link offers her the hibiscus (which she wears, Billie Holiday style) she’ll give him a letter. Unlike the other items in the trade sequence, this one comes with instructions. She tells Link to deliver the letter (sealed with a heart) to Mr. Write (pun intended, I’m sure). As it happens, Christine has been in correspondence with Mr. Write and things between them are getting a little hot and heavy. So, when Link delivers the letter to bespectacled Mr. Write, he excitedly opens it up to reveal that it’s come with a lovey-dovey sort of pin-up polaroid selfie signed with a <3 from Christine. But the photo (as seen at the very top of the article) is not at all the lovely goat lady from Animal Village. It’s rather a photo of Princess Peach, Mario (the plumber)’s famous on-again-off-again royal girlfriend. It seems Christine, back in 1993, was the first chronicled case of a catfish. And Mr. Write, oblivious to the lie, continues to live out the fantasy of his scripted love-affair. In gratitude for his love letter (and the photo you can be sure he’ll spend plenty of time alone with) Mr. Write gives Link…a broom. The broom can then be given to Grandma Yahoo, who’s looking to sweep around the village, and in return she gives Link a fishing hook. Link can give the fishing hook to the fisherman (duh) under the bridge in Martha’s Bay. Confident in his skill as an angler, the fisherman promises to give Link the very first thing he can catch with his new hook. In goes the hook and out jumps…a mermaid’s necklace? That’s when Link remembers the mermaid in Martha’s Bay who lost her necklace. Return the necklace to the mermaid and she’ll let Link take a scale from her tail (ouch).
Finally, yes, finally, the scale can be placed in a mermaid statue sculpted by the artist Schule Donavitch (red brother to Sale the blue crocodile, collector of dog foods). Once the scale is placed in the tail of the statue, it can be pushed aside to reveal a secret passage. Inside, Link finds the magnifying lens—an item that does have some vital function within the game (though is not at all necessary to complete the game).
Kensuke Tanabe built this lengthy and intricate sequence into the game. Takashi Tezuka, the director, likened it to the daikokumai (わらしべ長者), or the story of the straw millionaire, a Buddhist folk tale about a peasant who becomes increasingly wealthy after a series of trades that begins with a single piece of straw.
Whether you’ve played video games or not, I’m sure we can agree that the above sequence is more than a bit whimsical. As a child, I found this trade sequence so amusing and deeply gratifying. There was really no way of knowing what I’d do with the dog food, for example—that is unless I took an interest in the various NPCs that populated the world. Chatting with each of these characters revealed some unique facet of their person/story. And with such unique knowledge of the characters in this dream-world, I, as the player character, could begin to connect the dots and discern: ah, yes, Sale might really appreciate the dog food. Let me get it to him! It’s clever game design because it requires that part of the brain (and heart) that’s thoughtful, that wants to share for the sake of sharing (without particular expectations of a satisfying reward). I think that’s the joy of holding on.
Keeping things that are seemingly useless, but bear some sentimental or intangible value, can sometimes be conflated with hoarding. This sort of deliberate keeping, holding, is really the opposite of hoarding. Hoarding and hoarders treat the objects they collect as fungible, essentially valueless or of completely equal and therefore indistinct value. A collector (or I’d prefer keeper), on the other hand, sees the object as distinct and irreplaceable. Even if they had a duplicate of the exact same object, identical in every way, it would not be the same and it would not have the same value. Moreover, you never know who might need or want what you’ve kept. For example, a colleague at work, Chris, collects cards and other curios (like the recent adult Happy Meal toys) in hopes of passing them on to his sister as an appreciating inheritance.
Dr. Thomas wrote to me recently to say that she would be able to reclaim the clock soon and my heart jumped with joy. Ever the kind Christian, she offered to compensate me for keeping her beautiful clock. I declined her off. Not to seem noble. Rather because meeting Dr. Thomas was all the blessing I never knew I needed. Cliché, I know. But a true thing is a thing true. One of these days I have to work up the courage to join her for Sunday service at her new Church. Put my shyness to the side and really embrace the beauty of life’s serendipitous unions
7 December 2022:
I’d like to offer, as a sort of post-script, some thoughts on Marin.
She is, in my opinion, one of the sweetest and most beguiling of characters in Legend of Zelda lore (despite her diminutive 16x16 pixel stature). She’s maybe even my favorite love interest for the player character. If you haven’t played the game and are interested, I recommend Grezzo’s toyetic 2019 remake of “Link’s Awakening” on Nintendo Switch. If you’ve already played it, then I’d be curious to know how you feel about Marin and other of the characters on Koholint.
But Marin, among all of the characters, is unique. Not only does she rescue Link from the brink of disaster, she also shares some very special moments with him throughout the game.
While the two sit side by side on a piece of driftwood at Toronbo Shores (see above), Marin exclaims:
“When I discovered you, Link, my heart skipped a beat!… I thought, this person has come to give us a message… … [Link is silent] … … If I was a seagull, I would fly as far as I could!… I would fly to faraway places and sing for many people!… If I wish to the Wind Fish, I wonder if my dream will come true…”
It’s an erotic overture, Nintendo-style, as innocently realized as a kindergarten crush, washed in the bittersweet spume of her longing. This “dialogue” between Marin and Link underscores her life on Koholint as relatively lonely and dull. Even she recognizes that some essential, life-begetting randomness is missing from her existence. What she lacks, in essence, is the freedom to leave. And that’s because she’s a manifestation of the Wind Fish’s dreaming.
The game reminds us at crucial moments that Link is not actually listening to Marin, but some delightfully rendered part of the Wind Fish’s imagination, perhaps designed to appeal to Link (and therefore the player) with her vulnerability. Marin is a (sentient) lure, like the light that dangles from the head of an anglerfish. Link is the catch.
If you remember, the Wind Fish has been plagued by a malevolent presence in its dreaming. This is why there are villains and monsters scattered across Koholint Island. When the Wind Fish finds Link at sea, it devises a plan to enlist the hero. Marin is a part of that plan. Marin rescues him from the wreckage of the Wind Fish’s re-routing storm and becomes the compelling voice and face of the Wind Fish’s little sleep problem.
“Please, don’t ever forget this song…” implores Marin after your duet in the Animal Village “Or me…”
If you complete the game without a single death on your save file, a secret post-credit scene is unlocked where we learn that, despite the end of Koholint Island, Marin lives on as a seagull. She is preserved, maybe as a sort of compromise between the departing Wind Fish and the hero who’s borne witness. It’s the Wind Fish that created (and released) Marin and it’s Link who remembers her, it’s Link who holds alive the memory of her.
Marin is not, by contemporary literary standards, a well-written female character. She demonstrates no significant agency in the plot. But that’s sorta her thing…she wants to be free (even if that means disappearing entirely). Though she may have been a fictive construct of the Wind Fish, Marin succeeds in drawing the hero toward his destiny. And, in liberating the Wind Fish to dream freely again, the hero also liberates Marin to actualize her own dream (of flying to distant lands). No other Legend of Zelda game has come so close to telling a perfect love story.