Earlier this year I was driving home along the interstate, and I was stunned at the sheer number of wisterias that were flowering among the border walls and trees. The blooms were cascading down in scores of purple waterfalls. You couldn't drive a quarter of a mile without seeing another patch bursting out of the branches. I've never seen anything like it despite living around DC for the past thirty years, which is strange when you consider that the American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) is native to this area. In order to explain why, we need to talk about another plant.

Kudzu (Pueraria montana) was introduced to the United States in the middle of the 19th century as an ornamental vine, but it really began spreading in the early 20th century when it was planted by the government to attempt to control soil erosion. Kudzu grows rapidly, out-competing native plants and damaging buildings that it grows on. It is the vine that ate the south, leaving swaths of land desolate and choked by its vines. My whole life, the boundaries of forests have been defined by kudzu, vast mats of emerald leaves stretching from the ground to the treetops, denying anything else from living there.

But things are beginning to change. Purple wisteria flowers cascading where there was once nothing but kudzu. After decades of the government's efforts at controlling the invasive vine there is a small hope blooming at the edge of forests. There is still much work to be done, and the work will never end, but knowing that it can be successful makes that fact a bit more bearable.

To start, I should say that I am good at video games, if I put my mind to it. I stopped playing Dark Souls II in part because it was too easy (and the other part the bugs on PC...). I was top in the 5% restoration shamans in the world during the Uldir raid in World of Warcraft. So I feel secure saying that, given a reason and opportunity, I can become very good at a video game.

Anyways, Valheim is an early access game about being a viking in the viking equivalent of purgatory, and I like it. A lot. It is the game I've played the most on Steam, past Mount and Blade: Warband, Dark Souls, Satisfactory, and Stellaris. Recently the latest content patch was released, giving purpose to the Mistlands biome in the game. I haven't quite reached that part of the game yet due to starting anew (and how impossible it is to find a Yagluth altar) but I'm getting close to it. And something that I'm noticing is that the game seems so easy now. After 300+ hours playing I've reached the point where I get the game. I block enemies instinctively, I don't need to watch my stamina because I *feel* where it's at, hell I even *dream* of the game occasionally.

And yet despite arguably approaching mastery of the game, I feel... sad? I look back and thing of how far I've come, and how much my perspective has grown. The firsts that I will never have again; fighting the first boss Eikthyr and the adrenaline of not knowing what was coming; stepping foot in to the Black Forest for the first time and running away from Greydwarfs; dying over and over again to Bonemass because I didn't know how to manage my stamina. Now all these former milestones pass by me with nary a thought; Eikthyr is a pushover, Greydwarfs are just an annoyance, Bonemass is trivial now that I know how to parry. Going in to the Plains I've started to just wade in to fuling villages, sword and shield in hand, searching for any feeling of a challenge. Bonemass power up, aggression is the best defense to get the enemies staggered, and if they start to encircle me the atgeir M2 is always close at hand to knock them back. The game rewards knowing when to go slow and when to push your advantage.

I've found a Yagluth vegvesir today though, so soon I'll fight the Goblin King and move on to the actually new content. Will I find my challenge there? Or will I be left in a purgatory to match the one my viking is in?

Maybe I'll take up farming. That is an honorable way to spend the afterlife...

If you haven't already, I would highly recommend watching Kevin Perjurer's latest Defunctland documentary, on the Disney Channel theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ

If you've never heard of Defunctland, I highly recommend the series, even if you're not a Disney or theme park person. I'm not either of those, and yet the videos, their stories, and the stories told over the arc of a season are amazing works of art. But, that's not what I wanted to write about.

What I wanted to write about was watching this video has brought up a lot of thoughts in my head about legacies. The legacies that we leave behind, the legacies that we encounter in our lives, and the legacies that are lost forever to time. I'm no artist making bumpers for the biggest media company in the world, I'm just a systems administrator in a big organization. The legacy that I leave will inevitable be left behind as technology ever marches forwards. Services that I stood up and maintain will be replaced. All the people that I've helped will eventually leave. Cables that I've pulled will be cut up and discarded, the blood I've spilled lifting two hundred pound servers with my coworkers, the laughs we shared over donuts and coffee at our weekly stand-ups. It will all eventually be forgotten.

So much of what makes us human is swallowed, consumed, and subsumed by uncaring, unfeeling systems that are so much bigger than us. Alex Lasarenko, mere decades after his death, was on the brink of being forgotten despite making an enormous contribution to Disney and their brand strength. He never got officially documented credit for what he did. The systems that we live in don't care about artistry beyond the value they can extract from it. He was just making bumpers for children's television, after all. Nobody will care about it twenty years after the bumpers stop running.

All that being said, is legacy something we should care about? Is it something Lasarenko even cared about? I sign my name onto all the scripts I write, and add myself as a contributor to all the ones I modify. But to what end? My name will mean nothing to anyone who has never met me. It probably doesn't mean much to many people who have, aside from them being able to go, "Ah, he wrote the script, he'll know how to troubleshoot." I look at the art that I have on my wall above my computer and remember the artists. Kibu. ECM. F.Lee. Tuffi. These names all mean something to be, but if I were to die today they would mean nothing to my brother when he goes through my stuff. So even though I carry with me little pieces of their legacy, do those pieces die with me? Surely not as the artists will continue to exist, and the art will continue to be pieces of their body of work. But it feels like something would die with me. The intent? The spark that drew me to the art?

Whatever it is, that is the legacy that I wish to leave behind. I want people to be able to look at the fragments of a departed life, see the beauty that led to those fragments being woven into a whole, and to take those fragments into their whole. No need to know who, or why.