Blue Moon x2

I hope everyone experienced the wonderful Blue Moon on New Year's Eve.

I saw it twice. I went out for a morning walk around 6:15 (you have to get out this early to score the magical morning effect). The sky was cloudy. I walked east for a few minutes.

When I turned north and glanced west, the Blue Moon took my breath away. It hung in the sky looking less like a moon than a perfect, huge, stylized planet rendered in a children's astronomy book. The clouds had dispersed enough to show the moon, but a few of them still moved across its surface in that gentle, spooky moon-cloud-dance.

I thanked my lucky stars for this perfect moment.

In the evening I saw the Blue Moon that everyone else saw. It was lovely but the perfect one had gone to the early bird.

my bathroom

I have hestitated to write about my bathroom because it seems somehow...wrong.

But the light in there is perfect. There is an east facing window and a skylight. At this time of year around 10 a.m. the light pours in from both sources. I cannot think of any words to describe it. It's not golden or buttery or glowy. It is a presence. It causes me to feel very very good. It seems alive. If there were a heaven it would have this light.

The banality of perfection

So many perfect moments, but many of them are banal and hardly seem worthy of writing about. I guess that's a good thing.

Like the perfection of my tomatoes from the volunteer plant. They are tiny, round, an arresting shade of red-orange. They taste heavenly.

Almost-perfect

On a recent trip to DC we visited the National Museum of the American Indian. On the second floor was a large display case -- along an entire long wall -- with contemporary interpretations of traditional Native American artifacts. The objects themselves were filled with perfection -- stunning, must-see things.

But they were badly displayed. The lighting was dim. The objects had no labels. A digital gadget enabled you to get more information. But you had to move your eyes to the (ugly) display and start poking at it.

The digital display could be useful under two conditions: if it were artistically designed, and its use would not be required, at least not for basic information such as where the artifact was from, and the name of the artist. My eye so badly wanted to range over the artifacts in the case, thinking about how they were produced in Arizona, or Oregon, or wherever, and by a person with name.

All objects exist in a context. A perfect object in an imperfect setting is not a fail, but neither can it yield perfection of experience.

The Quality of Perfection

Last week I was in Warwick (pronounced "Warrick") about 90 miles north of London. It was a work visit but at the last moment before the bus to Heathrow was about to leave, my host and I ran up the hill to see the Coventry Cathedral. Frankly I thought it was going to be just another European cathedral. Nothing against them but I've seen many including the best.

But Coventry Cathedral was unlike anything I had ever seen -- the remains of the 900 year old church which was fire bombed early in World War II next to the new Cathedral built in the 1950s. The prospect of the two standing next to one another is boggling. Can you say "mixed emotions"? The idea of sending a bomb anywhere near something as beautiful as that old cathedral is unthinkable but the creativity and artistry of the new juxtaposed to the old is breathtaking.

I found myself feeling that while the juxtaposition was impactful, I just could not like the new Cathedral the way I liked the old one. You can walk around inside of what's left and it is a testament to excellent design that a bombed out ruin can be fanstastically beautiful. You can still experience the perfect proportions of the rooms and windows. I will never get tired of looking at those lacy gothic effects - the eye has so much to work with.

I appreciated the new Cathedral but in an intellectual way. I could see what they were trying to do, and there were some nice light effects in the stained glass windows. But regarding the quality of perfection, the old Cathedral hit me like a ton of bricks. The new was an experience of conscious appreciation.

Anyway, as if anyone needed any more reason to be an Anglophile. If you find yourself up that way, do not miss Coventry Cathedral.

book cover

Today was very big on perfection.

University of Michigan Press, which will publish my book, My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (Spring 2010) in its Technologies of the Imagination Series, sent me a draft of the cover design.

It's a zinger!

I can't post it as it might change, and it's probably illegal wrt to copyright and stuff, but I'm really excited about it!

The Lifebinder

Excuse the WoW nerdiness, but I got the LifeBinder Staff in Ulduar last night. Definitely a "moment of limited perfection" as play theorist Johan Huizinga put it so well.