Monkey See, Monkey Do

Phil Goldman died this weekend, he was 39. one of the founders of webtv, i knew him vaguely though he was a good friend of many people i’ve worked with. his wife said she went to bed while he was still working on the computer, when he didn’t come to bed she went to investigate and found him collapsed and unmovable.

life is so impermanent. this leaves me to feel the unsteadiness of things, the shakiness of the ground i think is so solid. we could be gone at any moment. clearly the truck accident i experienced earlier this year drove that point home, but it’s so easy to put it out of my mind. what am i doing with my time? what really has value to me?

if you thought that you would be gone tomorrow, what would you do tonight? what have you been worrying about today, which would suddenly be meaningless?

my flatmates are considering moving in february. i knew there was a chance they would move, but i was surprised the plan is only a four month contract in another state. Then they would move back.

this makes me a little worried about finding a sublet person who i’m compatible with, they’ll check with friends first before hitting craigslist, but i might be more inclined to just rent the whole flat for that short period of time. especially if the landlord drops the rent a little.

but that also means that i can stay in one spot for longer. which makes me happy.

ok, so for the second time this blog software has deleted my monthly archives. i had most backed up but will need to recreate november. time to upgrade. luckily most alternatives offer an easy way for me convert existing entries over to a new system. i think i’ll use a php blog next.

ok, i setup a mobile blog (”mob”) thanks to textamerica dot com. hopefully little pictures will load for you to the right in the side bar: the three most recent pictures i’ve taken with my camera phone. click on a picture to see more details and leave comments.

let’s see if this turns me into a phone shutterbug.

had a great time with the folks, we had a really mellow time chatting and we watched a couple good movies…

i’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with receiving gifts over the years. we’ve agreed not to exchange gifts starting next year, though maybe that will evolve into giving just one or two. mom still really likes the aesthetic of christmas and the memories, and would like to keep gifts as part of that.

what do you think about gift giving? what does it mean to you?

along the lines of the mayfly project, here is my year in review in less than 20 words:

startup company roller coaster.
leading meditation; silent retreats; calm.
family. dancing. moving moving moving.
raising windhorse.

and these are my hopes for this up and coming year:

removing unknown onion layers.
sit. travel. create.
embody authentic presence.

Had a small earthquake this morning, and it didn’t help that I was on the eleventh story of a twelve story building. It actually was a big earthquake (6.5, almost as bad as the Northridge quake in LA recently) but the center was over a hundred miles to the south. It rolled and rolled and the building swayed this way and that, felt like being on a big ship out at sea. I decided to sit under my desk for the ride. It didn’t feel that dangerous but I figured at any second it could decide to give a serious lurch and my 30 kilogram computer monitor could fly at me.

I hope the folks in San Luis Obisbo faired ok.

On the plus side, the USGS had set up an underground observatory recently very close to this quake. That fault has a major earthquake of this magnitude every 22 years but the last one was 31 years ago. They figured it was going to pop soon, so they dug a hole 1.4 miles down lined with concrete and peppered with scientific instruments. I hope they grabbed some good data. This was just a pilot hole, they were planning to dig one 2.4 miles deep over the next five years. Maybe they should reconsider digging that one and just live with the data they got this morning, if it will be another 22 years for the next one.

Did you feel it?

it was my turn to lead discussion sunday morning after our meditation group sit. i chose a short reading from pema chodron about non-aggression and using the difficulties in each day as part of the path. this is something i still really struggle with. my first reaction when i realize that i’m caught up in some story or fantasy is to be critical of myself, to use my awareness of it as an opportunity to criticize further. i’ll say, “there you go again…” or “why am i always caught up in some daydream?”. in that way i’ve turned my practice of insight into just another form of aggression against myself.

the reading i chose today was a reminder to myself to instead receive each insight and perceive each moment as a potential gift: further understanding of and insight into how my own human mind operates. if i’m having some angry, hateful thought then so be it. that’s just an opportunity to see a little more clearly how my mind works and how those kinds of thoughts come up and then pass on.

and those thoughts then also make it easier for me to be compassionate and feel kinship with every other human who gets angry and hateful. i can remember that i’m just as human and relate to the angry feelings that other people have. Or when i encounter an angry or hateful person instead of shutting down with my own criticism of them i can remember my own moments of anger and hate and feel true compassion for the situation that they’re in.

spent a good chunk of Sunday going through more boxes, picking out things to give away and things to just throw out. found all my bank statements from the mid-1990’s and all my engineering notebooks from the same period. found some old notes from friends that were fun to read ten years later. i’m doing a good job though cleaning everything out so far. out, out, out i say…

ok, i stayed up past midnight tonight because a present arrived early for me in the mail. the biofeedback game I ordered some weeks ago arrived today!

it’s amazing. you rest three fingers in these little blue rings which measure electrical connectivity and heart rate. but what they can do in the game is so beautiful.

the game is like myst but done with shockwave and quicktime instead of hypercard. you click to navigate around and it feels like you’re walking here and there. the aesthetic is a little bright and cluttered, the language and story line is super foofoo and new agey (you’ve been warned), but playing the little biofeedback games is addictive in how they make me feel and just how connected my inner world can be to what’s occurring on the screen.

the first game was a little pinwheel on the screen. you had to take deep breaths and blow air at your computer screen to get the pinwheel to spin. and it spun! and that was the *only* way i could get it to spin. i felt like a fool blowing air at my computer screen but there it was, the pinwheel was spinning. i tried different things, but clearly the little sensors on my finger tips could tell when i was actually blowing air. i tried playing with my heart rate, hyperventilating, lots of small breaths, and yet i failed to confuse it. i had to actually blow at the screen to get the pinwheel to turn.

other games involved raising and lowering balloons and balls, controlling birds in flight, and opening doors by reaching a meditative calm that would take a few minutes of real focus and relaxation. having a little figure on the computer screen that moved or changed in direct relationship to my inner meditative state felt *encouraging*. it made it more fun to meditate. it was visually rewarding. i found myself wanting to play the games multiple times and not stopping even when completing the task because the games were so fun and the states i was get to felt so joyful.

so if you can get past the new agey-ness of the story line, or you’re curious about biofeedback or meditation, i really recommend this game. runs on mac and windows too.

what they really should do for a future game is try a more masculine story line and drop the hippy crap. something about warrior training, even with a david carradine ethic of non-violence, would be easier for me to stomach than all the earth mother characters in multicolored mumus.

i should look into other types of biofeedback that you could use. this is fun as a high end game but it seems like it would be really useful for the general population if you could mass market it to the same people who do crossword puzzles every day.