Entries Past #3: "Valiant Hearts: I liked this game"

Title Valiant Hearts: I liked this game

Body 

Much has been written

i add only

art

story

learning

gameplay - yeah, silly

but i've played worse.

Date Lost to history, but must be around April 25th, 2015

Rating 11/10. Would blog-review this videogame again

Notes First of all, if you want to check me on this or any game, check me here. Now, to this post. I think I was moved to write it because I thought this game was flawed but had real heart? I guess? I don't really exactly know I thought I should write a blog post "reviewing" this game; the whole idea seems super-crazy to me now.

That said, I admire my choice to write the review in free verse prose poetry. Very brave.

If you haven't played Valiant Hearts, I do recommend it. It is an unusual game, more than anything else, on both merits and flaws.

Entries Past #2: "Europe is great. So is America."

Title Europe is Great. So is America

Body I was walking around Zurich tonight with D------, an amazing old friend. And it was rainy and wet which is unusual, so everyone I'd encountered was telling me how I'd picked the worst day to be there. But it was still beautiful; it's a beautiful city.

At one point, we were looking across the Limmat, the river that snakes up from Zurichsee ("Lake Zurich") and runs through the city. And D------- pointed across at a group of stately old buildings, and told me how they all belonged to the guilds. And how the guilds (Zunfte; organizations of various tradecrafts and professions) used to sort of run the city, but have faded in influence since an actual strong representative government has been put in place. And I thought of another friend, with whom I just in fact stayed, who is a member of something not really similar, but reminiscent in my limited American understanding: The Mercer's Company, the "Premier Livery Company of the City of London." D------ mentioned that there is still a festival at which the guilds get to parade and do their thing, and that membership is rather exclusive osed on alss

Date 02/23/15

Rating ******* / *****

Notes It is a real loss to the world that this post was not published. It contains both important original research and a novel engagement of the "old" / "new" world dichotomy. I think the point of the title was...I think it was going to be something like "it's super-cool that Europe has these cultural forms and traditions that are built on an edifice of hundreds of years of history; that's like a cool thing that the U.S. doesn't have. But then also those things are like a weight, a constraint." No one has ever made this observation, so it's a shame I did not.

I am a little interested in what kinda went down right @ the end, there. I'm thinking probably I fell asleep at the keyboard. That happens a lot.

Entries Past #1: "Holy Crap, Part One"

My New Year's Resolution in 2015 (i.e., going into 2016) was to tell no lies ever to anyone. I knew that I'd fail (and recorded my failures, whenever they inevitably came), but it felt and feels like a good goal.

Unsurprisingly, it's most challenging in semi-trivial social situations. Like--I hope!--most of us, I don't go around lying to my friends, or even chalking up the small misrepresentations that under this rubric do get tagged as 'lies'. But in semi-trivial social situations--not totally trivial, where you just breeze through, but with people who aren't quite friends either--I found I had the frequent impulse to lie ("absolutely! dinner soon!" ⇐ This is a lie, if you know it won't happen).

It was important, from the start, to establish a sense of the line between 'omission' and 'lie'. The best example of something at the line is answering "How are you?" It's probably obvious that it's not a 'lie' to answer that question by barfing up every single thing about 'how you are' at this moment to whatever poor person has unwittingly put themselves in the cross-hairs of your radical transparency. On the other hand, a bright 'yeah, great!' when really you're not is probably kind of a lie. What a lot of it comes down to, to me, is the intention; 'how are you?' is a pretty reflexive question -- in most day-to-day situations the person is explicitly not saying, "unburden yourself unto me." BUT, in most day-to-day situations, they probably are saying, "hey, person that i know: what is up?" So that's where the measure of what an 'honest' answer to that question comes from.

Why am I talking about this?!? Because! This is a space that I perceive to be between me and my friends. While that's literally true, it's also figuratively true: like it is for many people, the act of writing this stuff out is an act of friendship for me. NOT LIKE I THINK I'M DOING YOU SOME SERVICE!! Oh my gosh that'd be hilarious. No: but I think the space, if you will, of this blog is a friendship space defined mostly by your presence here right now as a reader, and it is a solace and relief to me that I'm grateful for.

So I feel bad that I've lied to you.

Remember the line between 'lies' and 'omission'? I was looking over my drafts of unfinished blog posts--these go back years--and my sense of it began to push from the (okay) to the former (not). The issue was the volume and scope of things I have left unsaid; things I have wanted to say but--and here is the crux HERE'S WHAT'S HARD ABOUT NOT LYING MOSTLY (unless you're a nefarious thief)--lacked the skill or time to say in a way that was worthy of reading, rather than some simpler lying way that fell back onto established scripts that shield the speaker and obscure the essential specific truth of a given instance.

Buuuuuuuuuut...also, these are posts from years ago, and a lot of them are not "good" ideas, or "good" posts. I certainly do not want to spend hours writing up bad ideas I had six years ago.

Thus, this series: "Entries Past".

In "Entries Past" I will give quick and rough treatment to each of these drafts. There will be a format, perhaps fine-tuned over time but outlined quite clearly in the first entry, below. And that's it! Will cruise through 'em! Sometimes, I will not remember what the heck I was getting at. These will be the best ones.

Title Holy Crap, Part One

Body Last Tuesday I mistimed a dusk run out and back on Westridge, a trail in the Santa Monicas that runs about 3.5 miles (during which time you do about 500 feet in elevation). I was 25 minutes later than intended, and my dusk run became a night run in its latter half, for which I was unprepared, particularly in that I had no light. Running along the Westridge fire road - a trail wide and clear enough for a car -  is pleasant and challenging during the day, and nice enough at dusk except that apparently there are invisible rattlesnakes who want to kill you. At least this is how my predicament who was explained to me by a woman running ahead of me on the way down, by which time it was quite dark.

Date 10/16/11

Rating 11/10

Notes I totally remember this run. I hadn't lived in L.A. that long (I moved here in March of 2011, but volleyed back and forth between the coasts that summer and didn't start to settle until July (6 years ago!!!)). I remember being on the Westridge fire road as dark descended more quick and dark than expected; I remember losing first the fine then the broad contours of the trail, my pace slowing and step getting more careful in fear of twisting an ankle. And I remember this lady, who 100% got way up in bizness as I passed her, about the snakes and the lateness and how unsafe it was to run at night without a headlamp.

Bearded --> Not; But Really: Erra

I've been feeling caught in the time suck of Hotel California (you will not be surprised by the link, don't...fine. welcome back). I've been feeling as if I've been doing the same thing for years, spinning through a cycle of seasons that blend. I feel this way because it is taking so long to finish Erra, of course.

And I am right. It's true.

It's also not THAT true.

This post is about that. Because in a series of pictures taken almost exactly one year ago, I recall that just one year ago I had that preposterous freaking beard -- in fact, I'd had it for months! And, and, just one year ago I was in the midst of mending my psyche after getting rolled by a ♀. And, just one year ago, some neighbors who were always very generous to me performed one of their most-generous-ever services: improving my face by removing that beard.

What preposterous beard, you ask?

It would be disingenuous of me to be like, oh, WHAT I was thinking?! that thing looks so stupid! I mean yes: it looks stupid. But I mostly thought that throughout the period that I had it, too. I know exactly what I was thinking. (Did I explain here, ever? I can't remember -- I said it to so many people. Sorry if I did.) What I was thinking was: I am obsessed all the time (Erra). My obsession is 'captivating' in both good and bad ways. In order to be in good faith with those around me, I should wear some mark of this obsession, some aspect so that people can know--even if they do not know what I'm obsessed with--that I am a person deranged and obsessed.

Also, I was thinking that I look dumb with a beard--it grows strange on my face--so yeah basically I'm punishing myself to get this thing done.

And what's a little...okay, "interesting" is a stretch; what for me is interesting is that these pictures of me and my idiot beard, recalling the thinking and actually having the thing on my face, help me recall more about the arc of the process with Erra.

What I remember is swims. The swims of the summers of 2016 and 2015, and how they were different.

Here we are, now: 2017. I will withhold account of what my swims are/were/will be "about" this summer. Let's see!

The summer of 2016--that's the summer you're looking at pictures of now; the summer during which I had then shaved off this dumb beard--I was spending long ocean swims kind of zoning out (not like that, mom -- don't worry; very attentive to surroundings). My brain would lapse into rhythm and pace and stroke count. But, in that state, I would also kind of roll around with thoughts, considerations. And the essence of these thoughts/considerations was VERY uneasily slipping into the idea that making Erra as good as I believed and believe it could/can be is going to take way too long; that this crazy notion I'd had a few months earlier (Jan/Feb 2016), this idea of going back and reworking Column 5 just a bit, was a good idea in that Column 5 needed it, I wasn't futzing around.

But it was also a very bad idea in that...well, it is now 2017. I'm working to finish up Column 2, having taken this approach all the way back to the beginning. So, y'know: bad idea as well, clearly.

Then, if we go back another summer--to the summer of 2015--I recall different swims. In these swims, 2015, my mind was wandering in ways that seem funny to me, now.

I was trying to figure out the story.

I knew the story, but I wasn't satisfied with it. Crucial elements of the first draft that I'd written...almost two years (?!?) before that were just not clicking. NOT "in need of reworking"; I hadn't found quite the right things: events, plot widgets. Plot widgets, mostly. And I would spend these swims trying to find them: feeling a rush as I attached myself to some idea that occurred to me, even as I knew elsewhere in my mind that this idea wasn't it

stroke-stroke ocean ocean "there's a pelican, that's so nice"

And plot widgets, again.

I don't remember the summer of 2014 in this way, one way or another. I'm not sure how much I was swimming then. I did not have a beard. I've only ever once had a beard, during this latter part of 2015/first part of 2016 that we're temporally dancing through here.

My point is, I guess, that the maddening incrementalism of most kinds of progress--at least "progress" such as I'm currently able to achieve it--might sometimes obscure ways that things are indeed changing, progressing. Perhaps improving, although honestly that seems a bit much.

Anyway.

game on.

This was a fun for, like, a transitional day

The "Cherokee Triangle" of Louisville is Great: photojournal

Two people I love got married in Louisville this weekend.

Part of their goodness is generosity; characteristically, they put a bunch of us up in a very nice house in a part of town that is called the "Cherokee Triangle" and/or the "Highlands". I thought these were abutting neighborhoods but per Wikipedia: "[Cherokee Triangle] is considered a part of a larger area of Louisville called The Highlands..."

We were pretty wrapped up in wedding stuff, but I got to do a couple of runs and had a long walk to yoga (solid!) Saturday morning, which gave a taste of the neighborhood. 

Highlands ("The Highlands"? the "Highlands"? anyway)
is a lot like this mural.

I know nothing about Louisville. I've never been here and have no ties or family here.

I really liked it.

Okay so you know how glossy publications that do long-form sometimes throw in pictures with captions that are on the same topic as the overall story but kind of a different thread, thus surreptitiously shoehorning in content that didn't make the main copy? [note: Slimbuttons has no idea if this is "why" they do this. --Ed.] That is how this entry will be: some pictures thrown in, while the words are about two Lyft rides I took.

Lyft #1: B
First of all: both of these Lyft rides were good. Nice, responsible drivers picked me up on time and efficiently took me where I needed to go. Both were friendly; both were chatty, once I signaled that I was receptive to that.

First was B.

B tells me that he's originally from Iraq; actually, as he shortly clarifies, he is in fact from the mountains of Jordan. His mother is Arab is father is Kurdish. He does a thing with his hands, stacking right-to-left: "Iraq, Jordan, Israel". I wonder, as he does this, why he includes Israel, which never otherwise comes up in discussion; if you're going to throw another nation-state in that geographic layout it seems like the comparatively very big one immediately to the south would better anchor the map; I wondered and still wonder if B illustrates Jordan's location in this way because he assumed that I, as an America, would be more familiar with/interested in Israel?

Anyway.

Most of our conversation is located outside the complexity of B's point of origin. It comes up, but glancingly, and in much the same way that my being from Manhattan comes up: we are talking about the upsides and downsides of places like Louisville vs. places like Chicago (rather: we talk about the upsides and downsides of Louisville vs. Chicago, those actual places). Cosmopolitan-ness, diversity, food, nightlife, etc.

I saw this walking to yoga Saturday morning.
F*ck yeah, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School.

Towards the end of the ride, we gravitate towards questions of how long he's lived here and continue from there. B is excited about America in a contagious way; this has already been made clear in our conversation about cities and comes up again with an assertion he makes that, essentially, people in America from different backgrounds all feel "American", even if they also feel "African-American" or "Chinese-American" or what have you.

Then we loop back more explicitly to his own point of origin and sense of identity. We start talking about the Kurds--with no expressed animus to "the Arabs", he makes it clear that he speaks Arabic because of his mother but that he himself is/feels Kurdish. Once I say a couple of things that signal my interest in and basic awareness of the topic, he dives into the question of Kurdish independence and the position they find themselves in: caught between Turkey's wishes, the current Iraqi government's wishes, and their value as a coalition partner to external actors (not least: America) seeking reliable forces on the ground to assure stability.

B connects this to his enthusiasm for America by saying that, in terms of how he feels, he used to feel Iraqi first, and then Kurdish as a sub-categorical identity. But since the invasion and subsequent fracture of the Iraqi state, B no longer feels "Iraqi"; he seems unsure what that means or to whom he'd be giving allegiance.  It is clear that, while he is enthusiastic about America and living here, he feels negatively about the invasion and its impact on the civilian population. I do not ask how directly he has experienced some of the things that he mentions.

That's about it. We reach no conclusions. It is a "good talk."

B drops me off at the thrift store whose revenues benefit a non-profit that supports individuals infected with HIV; my parsing of Yelp has led me to believe this place will be good. I need clothes for the wedding of these wonderful people -- for a variety of Slimbuttons-typical reasons I have no appropriate clothes even for just like being out and in public, nevermind attending a wedding.

Lyft #2: R
The thrift shop is great! It has a good selection and a friendly gentleman minding the till who is thoughtful--perhaps clocking my appearance--about making sure that I in fact purchase everything a man would require in order to be presentable at a wedding.

I do that. It costs like thirty-three bucks. Thrift stores: great.

Waiting for me upon completion of shopping is R.

I think, from R's Lyft pic, that a young woman is coming to pick me up -- the little pic in the app shows a face with finely plucked eyebrows, light make-up, wide lips pinched in a sensuous moue. The sex of the person who picks me up, of R, is male; R's gender is male as well, but my misunderstanding is not a random accident.

R and I get to chatting and the two-- no, the three things that become clear at once are:

1. R is gay
2. R is young; maybe 20? I wonder what Lyft's minimum age is
3. R is in a place where the transitional process into a public gay life still feels tentative to him

He presents a mix of caution and candor that is sad and inspiring. His Lyft pic is obviously a kind of declaration; as are the rainbow-striped sunglasses he wears. But he soft floats balloons throughout our conversation, and when I'm gentle with them--asking about them, rather than either puncturing them or letting them fly up and away to spare us both what I guess would be the awkwardness of my disapproval--he increases his frankness and specifies his terminology.

I approve this message.

So, for the first leg of the ride we are talking about how Louisville compares to the small town in Kentucky where he grew up. And the diction here is of people "like him", the lack of such people and the negative view of such people and what he experienced as a claustrophobic and judgmental social environment.

Then--just to skip a bit--by the ride's last ten minutes, R is telling me in some detail about his gig in Louisville as a drag queen (!!!) whose name I will not share in case he'd prefer I not do that but which is pretty great, and the freedom of inhabiting that persona and how he is proud that she is not one-dimensional: that he can play with different looks and makeup and songs all within the same persona (i.e., not "playing" a different character, but rather adding layers to this one persona, who is his alter-). And he talks about the "friend" (I'm putting that in quotes, but actually by this point in the conversation I think that this person maybe was in fact just a friend, that R might use a different word if this person were something else; but I dunno!) who kind of swept into R's small-town and helped R not recognize his own orientation (he, R, had had no trouble recognizing his own orientation) but helped R live it and--specifically--introduced R to the drag scene. R says that he'd not even know what "drag" was.

R opines that the drag scene in New York and other big markets is more about extravagance and being OTT, whereas in Louisville he characterizes it as being more about being "feminine" and "beautiful."

It is expensive. "You can't just buy something off the rack"; it's still a drag show -- you have to be a creation, fantastic.

He loves it -- it's clear.

But he's taking a break!

Sometimes, "you know how it is" (it had relaxed R a lot when I'd said that I used to be an actor; that I was unsuccessful but did get some work and share some of his feelings about inhabiting a persona), sometimes R feels a little underappreciated and (my editorialization) the scene sounds kind of political/dramatic. So R, though he loves it, who after all is a freaking kid in a state of identity flux, says that he's taking a break.

An urban place without some measure of picturesque decrepitude
is, at best, a suspect urban place.

Which is perhaps how I had the good fortune to get a ride from him.

We also talked about how nice the houses were getting as we drove towards my destination. Then we got to my destination and parted with handshakes and wishes of good luck.

Don't Know What She Looks Like

So here's an odd thing: I've thought so much on this post that it was basically written when I logged in tonight; written and in-fact revised a few times. Which meant I was certain I had in fact drafted it. But I hadn't! I'd just spent lots of time in my head.

You now know my inner life. It may looks much like yours, with different particulars.

Here are some of my particulars:

You know how it is, that it sometimes only takes a couple of instances for a practice or habit to become that thing that you do Mondays (or whatever)? A version of that that I'm having is this: I've been five or six times, in total, but a thing that I like to do Mondays--when I can--is go to this yoga teacher's really excellent class at Yogaworks (gorgeous) Westlake Village location. I go early, to "avoid traffic", even though in fact there is very little traffic in either direction between Topanga and Westlake Village at any time of day; I camp out in a great place to work for the afternoon (I never buy food; I buy one cup of coffee, take advantage of refills, and semi-surreptitiously eat protein bars; I tip well).

What's good about this teacher's class for me is that it is about music and flow and has a distinct and I would say joyful energy; it's not particularly technical re: what she calls out but it's athletic and moves fast and is a class where she gives you the room to do stuff that you want and the vibe of the class validates that: doing stuff that you want. It's a class where people think it's fun, or at worst cool wutever, if there's a sweaty guy in the front doing arm balances, rather than people thinking that's...whatever. Anyway.

The point of this post is
I've been to this teacher's class I'd say five or six times,
I'd like to go a bunch more,
and I have very little idea what she looks like.
I'm trying to keep it that way.

It started the first time I went to her class. I had pushed myself to do a bit of an exploration; Westlake Village isn't that far from where I live, but you have to want to go there from where I live. And/but I was having trouble finding classes I liked close to me, so exploring seemed smart. And so I'd pushed myself to do this afternoon exploration, and I'd done the thing with the coffee and sneaking my protein bars, and I was either tired or pissed off or one of these dumb stupid things that I get, so for the preamble to and the start of that very first class I was on my back, then face down and just doing the flow, not looking around, not saying hi to the teacher. And she is particularly mobile, particularly vocal: she's a chatty and dynamic presence, padding around, making jokes/observations (another reason I like her class: my favorite thing is when yoga teachers simply do not do the "yoga teacher talking" stuff. BUT, if they must, it's better if it is interesting/not dumb. This teacher is uniformly interesting, always generous, and never dumb; she veered into woo-woo like, one time for one sentence, and immediately laughed about it and etc.).

Anyway the point is I got about half-an-hour into my first class with her and I realized two things:

1. I really liked her voice; both for itself (she has a nice voice, she says good stuff), and for the quality it had, bouncing around in this gorgeous high-ceiling'ed studio; and
2. I had no idea what she looked like. Which was a little bit helping me love her voice, more.

So basically I decided to just go with that. And I have.

I know that she is a slim, Caucasian woman. I know that she has dark brown or maybe black hair. I have a couple of concepts regarding her nose. But beyond that: nothing. I do not think I could pick her out of a lineup. When I got that link for you, above, the one to her website, I averted my eyes from the screen where it showed so I again saw just "slim white lady dark hair".

I know that this affects my affect in class. I say "thank you" at the end, of course, or I do when the opportunity arises (it's a big class; she's very popular, chatting with regulars after). But I do not look up and make eye-contact during; I have never engaged with her, directly face-on. This is probably not weird from her viewpoint, at all; it's not like every yoga student has lots of face-on interactions with every yoga teacher. But it's a little weird for me: I tend to like connecting at least once or twice per class with teachers I like; a smile, a joke, whatever. If she has perceived any aspect of this, at all, I imagine she thinks that I'm shy or whatever. Or possibly cold, I guess -- I'd prefer not to think that but I suppose it could be.

But I...love it. I love not really having a physical concept of her. Having nothing to do with blahBLAHblah all that; I just love knowing her only as a presence, a voice. It makes her exist purely as a presence, a voice. And of course she is a whole person, with a whole-person life, and in fact because she has added nice things to my life I wish her nothing but goodness in that whole-person life. But as she weaves through my life: she's a good yoga teacher; that's her principal role. And until the day--it will come--when I glance up at the wrong time and BAM: FULL INSTANTIATION -- until that happens she lives as a voice and a form and a practice and thoughts I enjoy and appreciate exactly for themselves.

HliAT #25: it's the airport so u r sto0p1d Edition

How long it actually Takes to...

sit at the red light in the shuttle from the parking garage, on the way to your flight, about thirty minutes after you wanted to be there, 

thinking "if I could just teleport to the moment when I'm at the front of the security line I'd be fine" because you're stressed about what the security lines will be like; 

then you get through the red light and ask the shuttle driver if you should just walk from terminal 1 to terminal 3 because traffic's so bad 

& he laughs and's like, "I'd say no need" 

and then laughs again like (but not saying) "but don't blame me, friend" 

and you say (out loud) "don't worry I won't blame you" 

and he laughs again;

then you get through terminal traffic 

and to the terminal 

and hop out and everything goes pretty smoothly: 

security isn't that bad 

and here you are at the front of the line, the place you wanted to teleport to this much time ago,

taking off your shoes: 12:18.87

side-note: you arrive at the gate nine minutes before boarding, just as they start making announcements.