the pond
the pond

29 august

one week-end ago, i took a trip to a wedding. the guy's who wedding it was, he's a lawyer who defends people who have been sentenced to die. recently, he saved a man from death row, and then retried his case and the man was found innocent. the jury at both cases came out of the jury booth to hug the man.

that is truly great work. thinking about what he does makes me want to cry.

anyhow, at this wedding, i met his niece. she's 11 years old. smart, beautiful, bright. and she is a writer. i mean she has writer in her bone marrow. for years i've heard about her stories, and now i hear from her and her parents that she writes daily. she says that if she doesn't write at least a half an hour a day she's quite anxious. she writers mostly stories, sometimes letters or a journal. she's won prizes for pre-teen authors. this chick is goin' places.

i'm excited to someday read her material, and moreover, it reminds me of a message i've heard before from howard - writers write. if i'm a writer, i should be applying myself to the craft daily. of course she's inspiring because she breathes words.

i am a writer i guess, i'm a least anxious enough that soon after hearing of her devotion, i took time to write something like i haven't written in years - third person non-specific short story. it didn't go much beyond three paragraphs, but here it is: absolute fiction.

would you be loved

his ear hurt and that was bad news for getting on a plane. if there was anything worse than an earache on a plane, he didn't know what it was. still, he was excited to go see his girl, waiting at the other end of the jetway - it was like going in a tunnel and coming out the other end in the arms of love.

she wasn't always excited to see him, at least on the phone. but by the time he was inbound, she'd usually manage to work up some modicum of verve in her voice, something to further encourage his own enthusiasm. neither knew much about the content of the days of the other - it was a relationship that existed above and beyond the every day - each time one emerged from that jet tunnel into the life of the other, everything was suspended animation and they were able to lay together in the bed that only exists for three days between lovers.

There's a song about Three Days, and the singer/protagonist enjoys the bed company of two young beauties - friends. He wondered about that - he could never handle that kind of love triangle, especially as he got older. Sure everyone cavorted in polymorphous sexuality in seventh grade but by the time age and serial monogamy set in, who was able to manage jealousy? Perhaps the singer, the libertines - they could be so detached to share their love and sex energy equally. Or perhaps they were inhabited by a kind of fire he did not share - a hunger that could fuel their sexual dalliances beyond his own routine. Well, he remembered, routine sex with his girl was like the fourth of july, but only more often. the fireworks never ceased to amaze him.

the pond

so i wish i would do that every day. that and meditate (a few minutes with lidded eyes and thoughts flat like the pond), and yoga. instead of daily writing here or for other venues, i'm applying myself to is my job - i'm trying to be a good man and fulfill my employee obligation. there's decreasing levels of cynicism i think (at first any job can seem less fulfilling than independent work), but my respect for my peers grows daily.

i guess i took this job because i wanted to learn about games. or that i played games with an intensity that i couldn't find matched in my web community or my family or my college friends or mostly anyone i met. but here at this company - people have games in their bone marrow.

i went into my company 9am friday morning, and stayed quite late because amy was out of town. at 9pm i broke to work out at the YMCA (first health club experience in at least 6 years). then i returned and started playing a game i'm reviewing for firing squad - Jagged Alliance 2 (recommended to me by tim burke @ swarthmore. I played it until 5.49am. and there was still another dude there! in fact there were multiple dudes there until 3am. everyone writing a review or letters or chatting with their coworkers or playing quake 1 2 or 3, modified or talking shit or playing playstation: um jammer lammy or what have you!

and then saturday, i went in at 9pm, on a saturday night, THERE'S TEN DUDES THERE. the firing squad people are very hard core. a few from gamers.com dev and editorial. mostly the company is just comprised of motherfucking gamers. and that's why i took the position! we gamed saturday night from 9 or 10 until 3am, and then we all 5 remaining took a break to sit around and compare the quake engine to the unreal engine (engine being the root technology behind 3D "first person shooters" - run through halls and frag your friends)

they knew what they were talking about, enough to have opinions they could back up with quick gameplay examples. they knew history. hell half these folks have played quake professionally in tournaments - they can recite miles of virtual community deathmaking history.

all this time gaming, computer gaming, they know the history and present in a way that fills my brain. listening to bob and kenn argue about the virtues of the engines, the storytelling efforts of one company versus another, the series of gaming innovations in any one popular genre, and the importance of single player versus multiplayer - it's pretty deep game voodoo, and it's not even exactly anything that would make me more productive, but i'm getting my game education. FULL ON

what's happening:
i got a job and went to nebraska
i wrote about Funky PalmPilot Software
i got they're red hot in my head, and gamers all around me and hamsters too.

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