epiphanies

Life never seems to prepare us sufficiently for epiphanies. By definition they come upon us suddenly, dazzling us by their raw power. They are not magical intrusions from another world, but reality, naked and without shame. Their very ordinariness shimmers with unexpected depth, which is why they take us by such surprise. It does not matter whether they occur in the majesty of the Hagia Sophia or in the elegant simplicity of a wooden chapel, the effect is the same.

- the Monks of New Skete, In the Spirit of Happiness

How I read

I usually have four or five books going at once.

- one in the bathroom
- one in the car
- one I carry with me
- two by my bed

When I'm in a timeful phase of life, I go through that handful every couple days. In busy phases, like now, it takes a week or two.

What I'm reading

In the Spirit of Happiness, by The Monks of New Skete
Radical Simplicity
Illustrated Watercolor Journalling
The Art of Leading Yourself
Notes on Christopher Alexander's "The Nature Of Order, Vol. 1"
Tea With the Black Dragon
The Poetry of Li Po
The Novel

My dog went to Taiwan & South Korea

Momo

And right now Momo, a black dog from Thailand, is visiting my desktop. When I came in this morning, there were four animals cavorting (the max allowable I have set).

Xbox 360 launch day

The Xbox 360 launches Sunday. The halls are buzzing here.

There's a big event -- google for "Xbox 360 Zero Hour" to see the Mojave Desert blowita coming Sunday night. Tuesday they're setting up the tent behind our games buildings here, and we're getting our own 360s. Wednesday, we'll pretty much just be playing.

For the Xbox group, and groups making launch-title games, this caps 2 years of exhausting overwork. December will be full of empty halls, as people take their long-postponed vacations.

My faves of our games coming out -- Kameo, a virtual-world title.


Kameo

Project Gotham Racing has a cool thing, Gotham TV, where you see broadcasts of other races as they are happening, inside your game. And an even cooler thing, Gotham Photo, where you can zoom the camera anywhere in the city or around -- or in -- your car, and snap screenshots. Since the game-builders modelled Tokyo and other cities pretty fanatically, this is surprisingly satisfying.


Project Gotham Racing - photo taken inside game

A Very Important 22-Minute Meeting, or, red dogs and espresso porn

"Let's have a Very Important 22-Minute Meeting," said my friend Rob today. "Okay," I said. He turned and strode rapidly toward his office. "I'll drive," he said.

Turns out, a Very Important 22-Minute Meeting is exactly how long it takes to drive to Tully's or Starbucks, get a beverage, return, park, and be back in the building, at the breakroom on our floor.

"There's also a Very Important 91-Minute Meeting, if you want to cross the bridge for GOOD coffee," he said happily, and dived into a lush description of the differences -- viscuous, honey, caramel, sugar, bitter, toasted, burnt, velvet, porous, 1/8th of the way toward whipped cream.

I'm happy to learn these things. Happy to be driven to an Important Meeting. Happy to be drinking an iced breve latte, while my red GoPetsLive dog -- which I downloaded free today -- trots across my screen, lays down on the blogger window, and scratches himself. At night, these pets go visit other pets across the world, and keep a blog of their travels. I hope mine goes to Korea and China.


My GoPetsLive red dog, Hamlet

"You've got to see espressoporn.com," said Rob, after reading this far. "It's safe to view at work."


A pic that coffee-lovers love, from espressoporn.com

This all strikes me as very Seattle, with Korea right around the corner. The coffee. The virtual-pet software. Red dogs and espresso porn. My faith in humanity is restored.

"Would you like to know the least common 4-digit number?" asked Rob.

I first met Rob when I was making kids' adventure games, and he was here as a freshman intern from MIT. He and I spent an entire night hacking, er I mean, decorating Michele McCarthy's (then still Michele Frame) office into an underwater scene, with dozens of foam-core cut-out fish suspended from the ceiling, and foam-core scuba-diver legs kicking toward the surface.

acedia

"They talk about the desert as part of the spiritual journey. Some call it acedia -- a time, maybe a place in a sense, when everything dries up. This place, and this life, lose their meaning. You get hit with anxiety of the most terrifying kind. "You've wasted your life," a voice inside you screams. You've thrown it away. All your sacrifices, everything you've endured has been as so much water poured into a hole in the sand.

When it hit me, I thought I'd lost it. The faith. God. Everything. I stopped believing. I didn't go around broadcasting the matter, but I tried to fight it. To do something about it. Wrong move. I realized, it's the novitiate all over again. I had to accept God being present to me in a different way."

-- Dom Thomas Mary MacDonald, Trappist monk

I am surrounded by blunt archangels. Their wings sweep and probe me, push me off balance.

Standing at the back of a boat, one sees a wild flurry of green water, swirling passage, wide waters of the sound. That's how Microsoft looks to me right now, and my life. A busy wideness.

I feel the buddha and the dharma, ever-close. I feel a great lack of sangha.

in this desert of countless sorrows

I am having a black day. With my last theatre structure gone, I feel made of wind.

My therapist said, "I feel the impulse to remind you who you are: You are a monk." His eyes were steady. "I think it is important that you know someone else knows you are a monk."

It was curiously settling, in this great and swirling darkness, to hear that.

"Where in the monk's journey am I?" I asked. "Where your first Call no longer rings true," he said, "And your next Call has not yet arrived." That felt right. I am still listening to god and obeying. I just cannot see where it leads.

"This is when many people abandon their Vision," he said. "They cannot tolerate the great discomfort, so they settle for something inferior."

"I read of a Russian monk whose prayer consisted of going outside at dusk and waiting," I said. "Sometimes god came. Usually he did not. That was not the point. The waiting was the prayer."

At the end I asked for a song. We sang together, me improvising a light high harmony over his melody. He sang:

in this land of the walking wounded
in this desert of countless sorrows
i will cling to his hand today and
fear not for tomorrow

in my heart i have made this promise
with this song i declare my choice
i will walk where the shepherd
leads and heed no other voice

in the chill of my darkest hour
i am saved from my deep despair
for the father who loves his
children hears my trusting prayer

in my soul there is one light shining
from the flame of my true belief
and its embers cannot be quenched
or robbed by any thief

in the end we are not forgotten
and our journey is not in vain
for the master who bought us here
will lead us home lead us home again

I was so deep I could only hear the first two lines.

i.n...t.h.i.s...l.a.n.d...o.f...t.h.e...w.a.l.k.i.n.g...w.o.u.n.d.e.d
i.n...t.h.i.s...d.e.s.e.r.t...o.f...c.o.u.n.t.l.e.s.s...s.o.r.r.o.w.s

I went to dinner before coming back to work. As I ate, I read the book I had begun this morning, Voices of Silence, about Trappist monks.

The buddha where I'm housesitting is Kuan Yin. She's got the mother/Mary presence of Tara, but is -- like the Dalai Lama -- an emanation of Avalokitesvara. "In its proper form," says a Google entry, "It is Kuanshih Yin, which means She who harkens to the cries of the world."

my horrible day

I woke up late. I lost my good dream when I woke up. I'd eaten all the fried rice, so there was only eggs for breakfast. I had two jolting crappy developments on my project when I got to work that made me want to say, Fuck it, YOU do the game. I haven't had time to process Sunday's Hamlet or housesitting. One of my friends is making more in stock this year than I am in salary. Kipley is loving his puppet show and making great progress and, with my finishing this acting lab, I AM NOW DOING NO ART AT ALL.

what I'm reading

- Online Game Architecture Back-End Strategies: The dark side of MMORPGs, infrastructure gone mad
- The White Pony: An anthology of Chinese poetry from the earliest times to the present day
- Gallico Magic
- Chanur's Homecoming

Hamlet scenes

My life has condensed to Work and Sleep. And not much of the latter. I wish I could talk about work in my blog.

Hamlet scenes are going well. We're doing:

Hamlet - to be or not to be
Hamlet/Ophelia - get thee to a nunnery
Laertes/Ophelia - fear it dear sister
Polonius/Laertes - to thine own self be true
Polonius/Ophelia - do not believe his vows

chagall painted goats floating sideways in the sky

I don't believe Chagall was thinking anything except humming, like Pooh with honey, when he painted goats floating sideways in the sky, green women, red men, pale moons.

We had our next-to-last Living Your Vision coaching call tonight. This week's focus was "Fame And Reputation" or as it is sometimes known, "Legacy." I read my Intention, Choices, and Actions. The others were quiet. "I'm done," I said. They were still quiet. "Do you want some affirmation, Rachel?" asked the leader. "No, I'm good," I said. "I've used up a lot of time. The next person can go now." They began to speak. It was as if I had said something great. It was strange. Usually I know if I have said something great. This was not tongues of fire. It was my to-do list.

Writing these were a welcome break for me. It felt like designing calligraphy for my housemate last night. Creating for me is a contented mindless hum. I rest in the act of creation.