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Two weeks ago in Orlando, amidst a balmy 75-degree sunset, I saw workers at a hotel near Disney putting up a huge, white-lit frame with intricate designs around one huge shiny word: “ICE”. Clearly this very ironic sign was not descriptive of any nearby location or state. Unless they were advertising the effectiveness of their hallway machines. Today I walked in to Starbucks in San Francisco to use the restroom, and noticed that everything inside was red and green, with white spinning snowflakey thingies. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was playing, and all sorts of “seasonal favorites” were available for purchase. Mention was made in the various wall advertisements of some “spirit” of the season which is supposedly upon us, whether we like it or not. ...

Given that I’ve been feeling the way I described in my last entry, I decided that I needed to write music. For me, writing and recording music is one of the only healthy ways I have to deal with frustration of various kinds. So last night around 1am, I sat down with my keyboard and decided to write and record a song. What happened next was amazing–I composed and played something which, more than any other song at the moment I wrote it, mirrored my thoughts and feelings with infinitely better accuracy than any number of words. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this song, in terms of how it describes my emotional state, is worth a million.

I’m in something of a bad state right now, and I’m not sure exactly how I got here or what to do about it. I’m not even going to attempt my typical philosophical analysis, partly because of apathy and partly because I’m pretty sure it won’t help. Instead, I’m going to use over-dramatic words to deliver a sense of what I am feeling. You may want to stop reading now.

I’m in Orlando this week for a seminar we’re putting on with Alister McGrath as the lecturer. We’re filming the whole experience in an insanely-designed soundstage at Disney’s MGM studios, and just being in such a cool place every day is pretty fun. The lectures themselves, and more importantly the interaction that I’ve been able to have with Alister both on and off camera, have been incredible.

So that I will not be accused of only making lists of heavy and depressing stuff like doubts, here is installment #1 of “Things I Like”! I have put “10-2005” in the title, which implies but does not do anything like promise that this will be a monthly series. The list is not supposed to be particularly deep, so please do not feel injured that I do not mention our relationship, or Jesus, or anything like that. But do remember that I spend most of my days coding, and so a lot of this will be my inner nerd coming out. Here is the list, in no particular order:

Last evening from Windy Hill: More Photos

Well, even though I promised I would try and maintain two separate weblogs for two separate purposes, I failed. I guess I just can’t handle that much literary self-distintegration. I’m now pretty much exclusively writing at my teleios weblog, which, although it has less snazzy of a design, was in fact completely coded by me (take that, Movable Type!) and exists in a network of a bunch of other cool people’s weblogs. So please make sure to be checking that site as frequently as you used to check this one, or better yet go there and subscribe to the RSS feed, or even better yet sign up and choose to get e-mail notifications when new entries are posted. ...

Right now, it frustrates me to have people just assume that I believe, or even to be around people whom I fairly or unfairly believe just assume, the following things:

I’m in a really awesome spiritual community here in Palo Alto. There aren’t that many of us right now, but it’s getting sizable enough where sometimes I want to do the following exercise: sit everyone down for an hour, give them 1 piece of paper and a pen, and say, “Answer these questions on paper: what are we trying to become, and why, and how do you feel about that?”. Then, we each read our “papers” aloud to the others. ...

This video has been one of my close companions over the last few weeks, reminding me what I love to dream about most. You may have already seen it; if not, an incredible experience awaits!