Landscapes of the Heart

I live in the beautiful mountains of New Mexico but the plains are a close ten mile drive away. Typically, spring is the driest part of the year but sometimes we get early monsoonal moisture and the rolling hills turn from blond to green and wildflowers jump up over night. During these times the landscape mimics the well-known Windows XP wallpaper Bliss. Walking undulating paths with daises and Indian paintbrush on either side my heart gives a joyous shout. “Bliss”, a faint voice whispers gently in my ear. “Bliss.” At such moments I realize I could be staring at the image of bliss on a computer screen, drifting away to some imaginary dream world. But I’m not, I’m actually living the metaphor.

A Beautiful World

One of the things that made me fall in love with WoW is its gorgeous scenery. Interestingly, the Night Elf starting area is one of the least visually attractive as far as I am concerned. If I had known better I would have played a Tuaren simply because of the scenery. The first time I saw the Barrens with all the yellows and reds my jaw dropped. I learned later that it was supposed to mimic the savannas of Africa but it could be the view from my window. Here I was, young Druid of Elune, sneaking my way from the shadows into the light. Excited with adventure, eagerly perusing the quest for water form. Oh Westfall, land of men, overrun by the evil Defias. Still now my heart does flip-flops thinking of your billowing cliffs, your waving fields of gain, your beaches stretching forever.

There are two things I never did before the age of 20. The first one was that I never read Lord of the Rings and the second was that I never saw the ocean. These are deeply connected. I never read LOTR because I had read something else by Tolkien as a tween and I didn’t like it; I was convinced Frodo and crew were nothing but over-hyped pap. To me, real fantasy meant Ursula Le Guin and Stephen Donaldson. The sea itself was 1500 miles in any direction. Books, yes I had seen pictures in books. But seen the sea, touched the sea, tasted the sea, lived the sea. No, I couldn’t imagine.

To this day I remember the shock. I think it was at that moment in time that I first accepted evolution as true. An aching and distant voice that I could never quite catch before rushed upon the ship of soul and crashed it in a massive tidal wave. “Home” it shrieked. Home HOme HOME. A wailing banshee tearing me apart, tossing up my losses, shredding the sails of my inhibitions. I sat down in the sand, burst into tears.

Legolas would have understood. Many years later when I finally read the entire series this was the part that resonated with me most. “If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore/Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more." No truer words were ever spoken. I can live in the forest but the ache for the sea is a distant restless thunder.

Evening server time has become a special time for me. I was swimming once around Ranazjar Isle mining Mithril ore and entirely by accident I popped up on the island as the sun was setting. Hypnotized, I stared as the sun set with the Naga swimming around in the sea. For the first time the world seemed real to me. Here was where I belonged, at the sea. Unfortunately, it didn’t take too long for one of those Naga to come up and whack me, bringing me back to my senses. But a love affair was born. Even today I will come to Ranazjar Isle just to watch the sun set and the Naga swim. It’s my sea fix.

Imagination Vacation

I have come to think of the World of Warcraft as a imagination vacation. There I can let my dreams soar, absorb myself in a world of magic and mystery. In a way that’s hard to put into words I mix memory and fantasy to create a world that’s even more vivid than the pictures on the screen make it. The poet Richard Lovelace wrote more than 450 years ago:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.

There is a sense in which Warcraft is a hermitage driving the imagination onward, inward. Brick upon brick creating buildings to populate the landscapes of the heart. I think it’s something Thomas a Kempis would have understood. There is what’s in the game design; there is what we bring to the game. Both are important. Both are necessary for balance.

This is why I enjoy role playing and even watching other people role play. It brings the game and the server alive in a way that a quest from an NPC can never do. It’s like discovering a pattern in the stars. And then realizing there are no patterns in the stars, just patterns our minds supply. Orion, the Drinking Gourd, the Seven Sisters only exist in the ephemerality of conventionality. Gazing up at the stars at night, we can connect the dots in whatever image we choose, whatever way that brings meaning to our game.

Mark Sanford

The press says that the current Governor of South Carolina has become an international embarrassment because of his globe trotting love affair. I doubt that’s true only because I know that people outside of America aren’t as fascinated with America as Americans think they are. And unlike the apparent majority of people here I don’t think he’s an embarrassment, at least not a total one. I don’t condone martial infidelity. But there’s something about falling in love that captures the imagination. It takes genuine courage to risk family, fame, fortune just to hear the tap tap tap of a lover’s heart. One has to be driven by some primary hunger to fly 4000 miles just to connect the dot. For there is nothing to love but the imagination; it exists nowhere else. If this Argentinean woman truly is his soul-mate that’s a discovery that should not be slighted by anyone. That indeed is a prize upon which to risk it all.

Poets say that love rules the world; psychologists say love is all in the mind. I think that both are true; that our minds create images of love, to love, for love in this material world in a vast and never ending game of connect the dots. It’s how we make sense of the senseless. To us the stars are pixels; to God every mind is a pixel. What draws these pixels together is love. Nothing but love.

So I sit here on the tor of Ethel Rethor and watch the sun dip into the sea. I think of the landscapes that I have seen: the frozen tundra of Borean, the vivid jungle of Stranglethorn Vale, the cool lake of Loch Modan. Staring at the monitor I think I can see each pixel; each pixel a beating heart. What connects it all together is love; a love whose product is light. It bathes my face.