Touching Grass: The Game alphapost
Touching Grass: The Game is a solo journaling game played with pen and paper, a deck of Tarot cards, and the plants outside. Touching Grass: The Game is a ludditoludic technoparanoid hallucinatory amusement about the notions of modern technology as a mind-controlling conspiracy; of proximity to plants as magically inducing psychological growth; of “touching grass” as a demanding ascetic exercise in a world of addictive distractions. I have distilled these common feelings until the exhortation to touch grass became an exercise in recreational psychosis.
To finish Touching Grass: The Game, you will need to go outside somewhere between 8 to 78 times, depending on how you play it, the phase of the moon, and your luck. I suggest planning for one outing a day for a couple lunar cycles. If you complete Touching Grass: The Game at least once, you may publicly present yourself as a Phytocultist of the Green Gate.
The inspirations for this game are: Brave Sparrow (most of all); How to Touch Grass; Pokémon Go; Princess With a Cursed Dick Sword; Porpentine Charity Heartscape; William S. Burroughs (especially The Soft Machine); and the Zapatista revolution.
This is Version: alpha. Version: beta will be in zine format on itch.io.
Feedback welcomed by email to mirrorwitch @ trans mom dot love.
Touching Grass: The Game
you are trapped in the technotopy.
every day, the technotopy drains your aura with positronic tentacles—jagged, needle-thin noisetubes, lashing through the air to worry onto your aetheric body like so many leech-morays. the technotopy offers its humanoid population artefacts of electromagnetry as tokens, as devotional rewards. these devices are in fact the tentacle-to-user interface, the routing end-nodes of the positronic leechnet. they seep the life out of you.
the tentacles constantly irradiate eletrostactic anaesthetics. they numb your senses. they blunt your desires. they sap your will. they buzz with hypnopompic suggestions, pulsating lexical implants into the heartmind to make you more verbal, logical, aura full of sharp edges. they draw you away from your own silence, from your body, from others like you. they turn you into food.
due to the positronic droning, you cannot remember the old you, you cannot remember what the oldworld was like. you only remember it was green. people were the forest. there were so many plants. you remember.
live plants exude aura, like oxygen. live plants are in contact with the plants of the oldworld through the tips of their roots. each root hair is the pathway of a message sent between worlds. you have dug and dug at plant roots but you cannot find the connection. in the world-matter of the technotopy there is a barrier, a mask. a virtual reality, projected. you will need to slash through the barrier with something immaterial. you will need art.
the method of control of the technotopy is misdirection. the tentacles tell you not to look at plants. they are telling you this right now: do not look at plants. can you hear it? yes, now you hear it. I knew you were ready.
take back control. leave.
we are going on an exploration.
these are your tools.
a journal made of paper (plants). there cannot be any plastic in the composition of the journal. writing implement. there cannot be any plastic in the composition of the writing implement. a deck of tarot cards, made of paper (plants). the outside.
prepare your journal by dividing it into four sections. one is labelled Bond; one is Gate; one Prison; one Star. prepare your cards by separating them into two envelopes, one each for major and minor arcana. have a third envelope where you will collect previously drawn cards.
this is the method.
the exploration is divided into many expeditions. beware: do not attempt to run more than one expedition per day.
each expedition starts as a new page in the Bond. note down the current season, if there are seasons around you (Spring; Monsoon; Rainy). then note down the phase of the moon. (from New Moon day until First Quarter, the phase is New Moon; from First Quarter day until Full Moon day, the phase is Crescent Moon, and so on.)
walk away from the building. ignore the pull of a hundred eight tentacles tugging at your ætheric essences; the ache of the anæsthetics wearing off; the chill of your aura-holes oozing, exposed. keep walking.
bring absolutely no artefacts that wield electromagnetry. that machinery would lurk in your pocket like mechatronic scorpions, ready to spit a killword whenever the technotopy infers a probability of you making a bond.
locate a plant that you have not noticed before. look for the plants that the technotopy tried to keep covered from you. little nameless weeds at the corner of reality. strangely bent trees that seem to haunt the air. an improbable flower in a field of cursed concrete. beautiful aromatic things that cannot be reached without wetting your shoes in the swamp. open your senses, & you will know when you see them.
once you find the plant, notice the plant, and record the plant, and read the cards.
notice the plant:
open your journal on the expedition’s page in the Bond. give the plant a name. you may know one or more names for the plant within the technotopy. do not give them any of these names, but a new one, from within. green heart. creeping purple. old man’s tree. do not think about it but pick the first name that comes to you, that feels true. you are now bonded together.
observe your new bond. notice their leaves, stem, trunk, bark; their textures, shapes, colours. are there flowers, fruits, seeds, vines? what is round, angular, hairy or lumpy? what asymmetries do you see?
touch the plant. smell the plant. listen to the plant. what do you touch, smell, hear like? how do you feel inside?
where is the plant? what is the ground like, the soil, the sky? are they growing atop of a hill or in the valley of a brook, hidden under forest-trees or daring the sun on a burning sidewalk? which direction does sunlight come from? does the plant's own body tell you that? where may the wind come from? is there water nearby? can you learn that from the plant?
who is with the plant? any other plants you have bonded with? are there tiny creatures on, in, or around the plant?
record the plant:
as you notice the plant, write down what you find, in handwriting or sketches. record the plant in whatever means are most comfortable to you, but make at least one sketch, even if you do not enjoy your own drawings. this is important.
read the cards:
from your minor arcana deck, draw a card. see if the card suite matches the phase of the Moon:
Crescent: Wands. Full: Pentacles. Waning: Swords. New: Cups.
if there is no match, the gate is closed. the plant needs to tell you about the technotopy. observe the figure in the card, and listen from inside. do not try to interpret the card based on instructions you have learned elsewhere; focus on the drawing, and open your heart to the plant. this is a warning about how the technotopy maintains dominion over your individual life. open your journal in The Prison, and note down: the season, the moon, the plant's bond name, the card, and the lesson. put the card back in the deck. take the warning to heart.
if there is a match, the gate is open. the plant will tell you about the oldworld. observe the figure in the minor arcana, and listen. this is a story about the ways of the technotopy, and how it affects the plants in this world. then draw a major arcana. now the plant will tell you about what was their role in the oldworld. observe the details in the card figure, and listen: oldworld-stories are subtler, more impressionistic and emotional; but in the edges of this story, you can catch glimpses of how we all used to live—we animals, and the plants, and other, stranger beings. all together.
open your journal in the Gate section. write the season, the moon, the plant's bond name. write: “In the Technotopy”, the name of the minor arcana card, and its story. then write, “In the Oldworld”, the name of the major arcana card, and its story. remove both cards from play for the rest of the exploration.
every species of plant is the same plant. the individual is the species is the plant. once you have bonded with a plant, you cannot ask that one for more cards. you will have to locate a different plant. beware: no more than 3 bonds should be formed in a single expedition.
when you have drawn the last of the major arcanæ, the exploration ends. re-read your entire journal, and think of all that the plants have taught you. from this point on, you are allowed to learn the technotopy names of the plants, and their roles in this world—but do not write that down in the same journal. understand that the oldworld lies still in the technotopy as the ash & dust of a newworld; understand that the dead & inert is life in potentia; understand what is seed. consider what the seed needs to germinate & grow & spread roots that crack the asphalt. consider how you can garden.
this is the star:
for the entire duration of the exploration, sleep with your journal under your pillow, or by the bedside, with your writing instrument at hand. keep all electromagnetry artefacts well away from your sleeping body.
plants you have bonded with may appear in your dreams and tell you things. you may find yourself back in the oldworld—that is, forward in the new. if that happens, record the revelations in your journal as soon as you wake up.
do not be caught with this message. stay invisible to the technotopy. remember the forest. touch the grass.