Three Burials, Chagall, rooms

Today has been a poem. I am a poem, when left to my currents & ways. I bought soup and medicine for Jeff. Hung Chagall posters in my closet. Had a long talk with Jim, where the last of the Leonid stuff finally clicked. A movie. White sky, rain. Green beans and tofu. A mocha.

I am on vacation this week & next. Not traveling, just clearing my psyche. A private walkabout.



The younger guy in Three Burials moved like a song -- like a longing, a tension, an asymptotic drive for perfection. A face like Caravaggio, Anna once wrote. Only bodies in incredible shape move like this. Oxygen and sinew. I could write poems to the canyons of his stomach.

I was aware of him the entire movie. Stunningly male. His body moving as a piece. I always knew where his abs were.

It is my own body I hear in his.

When Jeff moved in, I had the upstairs bedroom and he had the small room below it. Now he has moved to the glass room and I have moved down to the small room. No one lives upstairs, which is becoming a sitting room. After I get up, Jeff opens the door to my room while he showers. The house is becoming supple, fluid.

Tomorrow I paint with Wes. I have been dreaming about paintings. In every painting I look at, I see its hidden paintings, and I see the paintings I would make of it.

Microsoft and Google

After looking at my pictures of Flat T in both places, I decided my group is a funner place to work. But no question, Google pays better.

We are both outposts. My building is not on the main MS campus, or even the main games campus. And the Kirkland Google campus is two states away from their headquarters. Chaos theory says change in systems always starts at the edges.

Flat T visits Seattle

Flat T


Flat T checks out the Space Needle


===== GOOGLE =====



Flat T goes to Google in Kirkland


Flat T sits in the comfy chair


Flat T hangs out with Rachel and Radmila in the lobby


===== MICROSOFT CASUAL GAMES =====



Flat T goes to Microsoft Casual Games in Redmond


Flat T gets a free pop


Flat T looks at a game artist's whiteboard


Flat T stands on Rachel's art table


Flat T looks at games in Rich's office


Flat T meets Rich


Flat T checks out Texas HoldEm Poker's art & schedule


Flat T plays the Xbox


Flat T visits Katie in Xbox Live Arcade


===== HALF-PRICE BOOKS, REDMOND =====



Flat T listens to CDs at Half-Price Books


Flat T gets ready to bin & price some books


Flat T organizes the comics section


===== SALMON BEACH, TACOMA =====



Flat T smells Grandma Joan's flowers


Flat T and Grandma Joan make dinner

cloth for green robes

This is now. Now is. Don't
postpone till then. Spend

the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table;

dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy

and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the

spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth

for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You are

the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.

-- Rumi

taking stock

financials

I have been working on my financials.

prayer/meditation request: Keith

For those who are so inclined, please pray or meditate for my friend's brother, Keith, who is in surgery this afternoon & evening for lungs, ribs, intestines.

Update 2/23
The surgery went well. Now he is in for a long recovery. I am keeping him in my prayers & thoughts through end of March; if you wish to, please do the same.

Five Things meme

What were you doing ten years ago?
I was living in Sydney, Australia with John, making videogames for Microsoft with developers in Melbourne, and living 5 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. I would walk to the ocean at 10pm, get steaming hot fish & chips from the Greek place, then lie in the sand, eat my chips, listen to the surf, and watch the moon. A fat blue-tongued lizard lived in our drainpipe and flocks of white cockatiels wheeled overhead screaming. I played defense on the Nullabura ice hockey team, and the Microsoft cafeteria served afternoon tea at 4:00.

Things not dreamt of yet: Owning a house. Being single. Teamworx. Therapy. Theatre. The Odin. Teaching at BCC. Life coaching. Blogs. My mom's health problems. Casual Games. The friends I have made through theatre & BCC.

Things still (or again) in my life: Microsoft. John. Barron. Joan. Rob. Rustling intimations of great change.

What were you doing one year ago?
I was in rehearsal for Communicating Doors and Noir, living with Jeff, and sending out 10 resumes a day for Microsoft games PM jobs. My house was in foreclosure. Keith and Lara were a main feature of my life -- acting in both plays, writing one, costuming & propping the other, AND living in North Bend (an hour and a half from Seattle) AND working full-time at Microsoft. I have no idea how they did it. Here is what I was posting.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1) Edamame
2) Cheese sandwich with chips, dill pickle, 1/2 sliced Gala apple, pop, & hot sweet tea
3) Hot buttery, salty, peppery corn-on-the-cob, with steamed fresh green beans, and a sliced cold Roma tomato
4) Surprising Serbian dishes cooked by Radmila
5) Surprising Cantonese dishes cooked by Lyon
6) Breakfast burritos cooked by John
7) My mom's anything

Five songs you know the words to:
These are ones I know at least a verse & chorus of.
1) Amazing Grace
2) Hallelujiah (I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord...)
3) Graceland
4) The Seven Bridges Road (There are stars in the southern skies...)
5) Suite Judy Blue Eyes

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
A million isn't enough. And there's way more than five.

1) Ask Lyon what to do with the money & do it
2) Pay off my debts & mortgage
3) Take care of me & my loved ones (including Nice or Rome)
4) Hire support teams -- dancer/trainer/yoga/wellness/doctors; accountant/lawyer/tax/financial; fix-it/maintenance/yard/windows; spiritual/sangha
5) Give some to the Odin
6) Save enough so I don't have to work again
7) Fix the house
8) Finish Life Coach certification
9) Get a better car

Five things I would do if there was another million:

1) A surprise involving travel, education, career, growth
2) A surprise involving love
3) Start the company
4) Buy land in Denmark
5) Save some

Five bad habits:
1) Delaying returning emails & phone calls
2) No regular physical routine at the moment
3) Procrastinating
4) Isolating when I'm scared
5) Not asking for help nearly enough

Five good habits:
1) I pay bills every payday
2) I clean with my housekeeper every other Sunday
3) I am in conscious spiritual practice most of the time
4) I check the oil each time I add gas
5) I ask for help more and more

Five things you enjoy doing:
1) Rehearsing
2) Writing and drawing
3) Self-actualizing with others
4) Using my body & praying/meditating (these converge)
5) Being in Nature

Five things you would never wear again:
1) The brown dress I wore to my father's funeral
2) That cream-on-cream striped shiny satin, wide bell-bottomed, plunging-neck, jacketed thin lounge outfit I played tenor sax in, when Jazz Band was in its glitter heyday and I had that rockin' 16-bar solo I got to stand up for
3) That unlucky shirt
4) Pants that are too tight
5) Shoes that hurt

Five favorite toys:
1) My brain (and whole sentience)
2) Other people's brains/sentiences
3) My body (and other people's bodies)
4) Computers/internet
5) Nature

Flat T

I got a letter from my nephew, T, saying their class had read a book called Flat Stanley, about a kid who got squashed flat by a bulletin board then had lots of adventures being mailed around the world.



He was enclosing a "Flat T," and asked that I take him around lots of places, photograph him, put the pictures in the booklet, and return it all by the end of the month.

Flat T is a 10", hand-made, hand-drawn, paper-cut-out figure, carefully colored, with a cutout t-shirt and blue shorts pasted on. His head was folded over at the neck, face down on his chest, so he would fit in the envelope. The booklet is a stapled set of blank quarter-pages with a yellow paper cover.

My housemate is going to take Flat T to work with him to Half-Price Books. Flat T will buy books from customers... work the cash register... shelve books... read a comic. (Jeff's sections right now are Comics, Travel, and Children.) I'll bring Flat T to sit in at a meeting at Microsoft, look at the drawings for a game, and play an Xbox. At home, he will get in the fridge and help take out an apple. If you happen to be related to T -- you know who you are :) -- don't tell him this, as we may come up with better ideas.

If you have other ideas, let me know. I'd like Flat T to have a rich adventure before he returns home.

Here is a website I found, of Flat Children having adventures.

This isn't so different from GoPets, where my red dog Hamlet runs off to Taiwan and Malaysia every night, returning with green tea buns and messages in exotic languages. Flat T is slower, what with mail travel and all, and somehow more intimate.

taking care of business

I slept. Came in early. Wrote a long but lean status report. Ate vegie Indian food for lunch. Talked with other program managers. Paid my mortgage. Researched online banking. Updated my project plan.

Jeff's gone. I've got the house to myself. I plan to sleep.

still thinking but back... (long version)

Still thinking but back

gone thinking

Separate ways

Well, despite having near-identical artistic principles, Leonid's & my paths are diverging. I have withdrawn from assistant-directing his Seagull and producing his Tokyo company's tour.

You will still hear me quote Leonid & his principles, but there will be no more tales from rehearsal.

what a house, what a play

We are rehearsing Seagull 5 nights a week, 6:30 - 10:30.

We rehearse in the house where we will hold performances. It is a grand and spacious house. Three floors. Not many rooms, but each one has high ceilings and high windows. Double sliding wood doors. A wide staircase.

The play's action is not staged to all happen in one end of the living room. Instead, it flows throughout the house. The actors lean against the windows, lay on the couch, move to the kitchen, walk out the back door. It's as if Russian ghosts, in American guise, have inhabited the house and for this short time can be seen. Or glimpsed, as often they work by candlelight.

The experience, the vibration, of Chekhov is profound. Leonid's work is profound. To have both inside this tall old house, is stunning. "This house is like the houses of Chekhov's time," says Leonid. "Exactly same. Same architecture, same feeling. But Chekhov himself lived out in the country. Like where Rachel lives. Chekhov would visit here, but live at Rachel's."

I saw a play in a house once, the spectators will say. What a house. What a play.

We may not have this house beyond the summer, as Bart has two kids going to college and may need to downsize.

Two days ago I invited Stanislavski and Chekhov to rehearsal. Stanislavski leaned on the right between two tall windows. Chekhov, shorter, leaned in the left corner. Like lazy versions of the stone lions outside Shinto shrines, they guarded the actors. They watched a while, then left.