Shapes Seeking Their Place—Tetris Blocks, Data's Beard and the Compost Behind the Garage

I discovered Tetris in the 1990s, when computers still felt like furniture—large, heavy, and always visible.

The monitors took up half the desk, floppy disks weren’t supposed to be bent (but we bent them anyway), and every startup sound and blinking cursor felt like a small victory.

Tetris wasn’t flashy or complex. It was simple and hypnotic. So much so that it spawned its own named phenomenon: the Tetris Effect. The rhythm of the game spilled beyond the screen—even into dreams. Grocery bags, boxes, street corners—everything began to seek its place, as if part of an invisible game.

Tetris had no storyline, no graphics. And for most players, no ending. The pace simply increased until defeat was inevitable. Level 12 was already high, and for a long time, level 29 was seen as the final frontier—even hardcoded into the game. The point where blocks fell faster than a human could react.

And still—someone went further. In December 2023, a thirteen-year-old named Blue Scuti reached level 157 in the original NES Tetris—a point long considered humanly impossible.

As Blue Scuti broke the record, the graphics began to glitch, level numbers scrambled, and the chaotic rhythm of the falling blocks collapsed. The game surrendered. Its inner logic stopped clinging to order.

The dance between chaos and order finally fell into chaos.

Perhaps that’s why Tetris feels so human—even without records. Unpredictable falling shapes that often don’t seem to fit—and us, in the middle of them.

Tetris doesn’t ask why—but what now. In the end, it asks the same thing life does: what will you do with what happens—right in this moment?

When the Block Isn’t Yet a Story

I’ve met that same question again and again—through the eyes of an android.

That android is Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation—a robot studying humanity while resembling one himself.

“Again and again” means more rewatches than I care to count—starting with VHS tapes and ending in an era where the algorithm knows I need Data before I do.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m rewatching the series, or if the series is rewatching me.

On the show, Data has tried to grow a beard, paint abstract sorrow, write poems about his cat, and practice small talk in front of a mirror. He’s played Sherlock Holmes and wondered why people enjoy suspense even when they know it’s fiction.

He’s tried to understand why people cry when eating their mother’s blueberry pie—even if the recipe is the same as any other pie. He’s analyzed jokes structurally and laughed once—out of politeness.

He’s tried meditating but spent the time calibrating his internal cooling system.

All of this—and more—because he wanted to understand how humans turn experience into reality—and reality into experience.

I can easily imagine Data standing in the rain. Not romantic. Not gloomy. Not something that ruins plans. Just water.

We, on the other hand, call it bad weather. And in that moment, something in us starts resisting—not the rain, but the world not being what we hoped it would be.

And suddenly, the entire day feels wrong.

Perhaps that’s why Tetris never felt like just a game.

In Tetris, the story of the block is often one of relief at the next level—or the sting of returning to square one. It might also be frustration caused by the wrong piece, or anxiety triggered by too much speed.

Usually, it’s something that feels like something—as opposed to pure observation. Often it creates its own opposite: good or bad, right or wrong, wanted or unwanted.

As if a block—or its shape—couldn’t exist without a story and emotion attached to it. We need a reaction. Meaning. And its reinforcing counterpart.

What would our world look like if we didn’t immediately describe it? What if that which we haven’t yet named is exactly what could move us most?

The Compost of Our Interpretations

Many childhood memories are strange. Seemingly insignificant details filtered through dreamy, childlike lenses.

Like the compost behind my grandparents’ garage. Behind the raspberry bushes, at the end of what felt like endlessly tall ladders to a child.

The compost was fascinating, but something about it felt eerie. Strangely warm, steaming when opened, a box quietly brewing—its surface still recognizable fruit peels merging with something on its way to becoming something else.

Something that was no longer what it was—but not yet new. The rotting, with its deforming and disappearing shapes, was unsettling, sometimes nauseating. And still: the promised rich soil and next summer’s strawberries growing in it were a promise of sweetness.

Perhaps our mental reactions—bad weather and good Tetris blocks—are their own kind of compost. What looks wrong may just be part of a whole we don’t yet recognize. What feels overwhelming may just be something on its way to becoming what we cannot yet perceive.

Our senses capture only a narrow slice of the world—what they can reach. And even that, the mind filters, compares, and interprets.

What we truly see isn’t the full landscape—only what our gaze lands on. We unknowingly bypass everything else. And even if something slips through our filters, it’s often given an old name, an old story—and an old emotion.

A block is no longer just a block. Rain is no longer just water. This moment is no longer just this moment.

It becomes something we never really looked at—but already interpreted, judged, and renamed.

Maybe that’s why Tetris feels familiar. Maybe that’s why Data feels comforting.

Storyless Blocks and the Wisdom of Compost

Some days feel easy. Others come at us like an endless wave of oddly shaped Tetris blocks.

To Data, something oddly shaped wouldn’t be wrong or flawed—just a form that doesn’t yet have a place, but is still part of the whole. Bad weather wouldn’t be bad—just water, just nature.

A small dose of Data might change something in us too—something could loosen: from control, from expectations, from resistance.

The world would appear differently—not as a problem to be solved, not as a battle to be won, not as a screenplay that should unfold as we planned. But more like the compost behind my grandparents’ garage, where everything gets to decompose in its own time and become something we’re not yet ready to taste.

The very blocks we didn’t want might open up a new level. So-called obstacles, delays, and disasters may be the beginning of something—like compost that starts to give life just when we think it’s all over.

Maybe the way we function is a kind of Tetris Effect—not a game we dream about, but a way our mind automatically categorizes, defines, and judges shapes. Of days, events, moments, thoughts—even those that don’t seem to fit anywhere.

If every block in our life were an open story—a moment we haven’t yet labeled or resisted—we might be a little less hurried, a little less tense, a little less on our way somewhere.

And a little more at home.

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