Yes, this is the way it is.

Pictured above: “Hawk Cliff Today“

I do not think that Hawk Cliff Today successfully or appropriately conveys what it is that I wanted it to capture for me, but I showed it to a friend on the bus (on the bus! what an amazing thing, that i can show a tiny Godot videogame-thing to a friend on the bus) and since then have been thinking about “diary games.”

Jack, I am wondering today, have I misunderstood haiku? Is it a form of minimalist cleverness, a beautiful sleight of hand, or has haiku always been nothing more than the breezy diary entry of a master diarist? As with all things, I suppose that the truth lies in the middle — or rather, in both places at once.

To put too fine a point on it, when you write “Perhaps I want to make games with the same knowing, zen wink about nature, as my favorite haiku,” I wonder if this is failing to seek what they sought. Does the diarist wink at all? Or is it that only something that can be seen in the tea leaves after the tea has all been drunk?

Thinking, And Not Thinking

You write of “good ideas” and being “interested in the shape” and I am caught thinking, emersion places these objects firmly outside the work. They motivate the work, but they do not get wrapped inside of it.

Anyway, to get away from being too prescriptive or even descriptive about haiku games, exotic creatures, I’m favouring the term “diary games,” as a very good synonym for that portion of haiku games interesting me at the moment.

I’d like to have my good ideas in my everyday life. “This is something I’d like to capture and remember” is a type of good idea. “I’d like to catch it using this shape” is another. To me, this is emersion through diary games. The good ideas are not “about” anything emersive, but the act of having them out in the world is itself emersive.

So, diary games.

Pictured above: “One Particular Garden Market“

There is an itch that I want to scratch, and I had a feeling Zeigfreid’s Miraculous Coincidences would help me get there:

“Why was Jermaine painting landscapes in the first place? Suppose that he was trying to make art which notices reality; suppose that he was trying to celebrate, or capture, or express the beauty that he saw in the world around him. His abstract art still does that, certainly for him but also for those with an eye for it . . . I have to work deeply with the medium, to understand how it is expressive . . . you can’t escape needing a medium.“

. . .

I read a book in a thrift store about ‘haiku drawings,’ and I’ve been kicking myself for not picking it up. I flipped to a random page, totally random, and the author gave a quick description of what it is that haikus are: descriptions, snapshots, a noticing of some moment or thing.

Perhaps I am in the minority here, which would be okay with me, but I’d like to put forward a picture of these diary games.

very close to home for me. So close that I scarcely know what to say about it! “Yes, this is the way it is”.

from Confused about my dreams, as always

“Yes, this is the way it is.”

I began writing this with the thought in mind that the “wink” was a wrong goal and “yes, this is the way it is” was a right goal. But I’ve realized that they are both interpretive goals, goals about the way a thing is received and taken.

“Yes, this is the way it is” has a calming effect. A wet, warm blanket on discourse. It strikes me as emersive in a way. I guess it is an aesthetic goal that I have.

I like the cleverness of the wink when it comes, the noticing-of-the-medium when it is effortless, but catching something true and rendering it in a way that is both brief and successful… hmm.

The expertise and care it takes to do that feel right to me, and they feel like they take the work that I want to be doing:

1. Remain emersed, gathering experiences and inspiration
2. Engage with, immerse oneself in, some medium — sufficient and necessary — to catch the stuff in one smooth motion
3. Finish it, and let all these nice interpretations bubble to the surface — is there a wink? does it emerse me? does it make me feel something?
4. React to these interpretations. Adjust the process accordingly.

Knowing without naming

“But do you think the process really leaves nothing behind? No imprints of knowing? No experience internalized?”

There are imprints, but they are invisible. They are not lines. At least not for me. I’m terrible at documenting what I’ve learned, and even more terrible from really learning from documentation. The very best internalized experience has no imprint…