Chapter 10 - The Road Less Traveled
For fifteen years I had chased the Hollywood dream. It was a fairly typical goal of money, success and notoriety. Nothing wrong with that and I really enjoyed doing it. But prior to meeting Jennifer I had begun to feel that this success rush was coming to an end. I sensed my interests lay somewhere else and that seemed like a road less traveled. Little did I know then, how much this new path would take me into the back country.
Jennifer went home to Sun Valley and I went back to my Disney life. We continued to talk almost on a nightly basis. I had been using Jamie Sam’s Medicine Cards during this period to give me perspectives on whatever I asked about. When Jennifer went back to Sun Valley, both of us kept seeing a pair of red dragonfly’s where ever we went.
In Native teachings all new endeavors including relationships have a spirit animal that embodies the spirit of the enterprise. As the dragonfly’s keep showing up I looked them up in Medicine Card system. Here is what it said.
27 - Shattering Illusion
Dragonfly medicine is of the dreamtime and the illusionary facade we accept as physical reality. The iridescence of Dragonfly’s wings reminds us of colors not found in our everyday experience. Dragonfly’s shifting of color, energy, form, and movement explodes into the mind of the observer, bringing vague memories of a time or place where magic reigned.
Some legends say that Dragonfly was once Dragon, and that Dragon had scales like Dragonfly’s wings. Dragon was full of wisdom, and flew through the night bringing light with its fiery breath. The breath of Dragon brought forth the art of magic and the illusion of changing form. Then Dragon got caught in its own facade. Coyote tricked Dragon into changing form, and the shape of its new body became like Dragonfly’s. In accepting the challenge to prove its power and magical prowess, Dragon lost its power.
Dragonfly is the essence of the winds of change, the messages of wisdom and enlightenment, and the communications from the elemental world. This elemental world is made up of the tiny spirits of plants, and the elements air, earth, fire, and water. In essence, this world is full of nature spirits. If Dragonfly has flown into your cards today, you may have forgotten to water your plants.
On another level, you may need to give thanks to the foods you eat for sustaining your body. On the psychological level, it may be time to break down the illusions you have held that restrict your actions or ideas. Dragonfly medicine always beckons you to seek out the parts of your habits, which you need to change. Have you put on too much weight, or have you started to look like a scarecrow? Have you tended to the changes you have wanted to make in your life? If you feel the need for change, call on Dragonfly to guide you through the mists of illusion to the pathway of transformation. See how you can apply the art of illusion to your present question or situation, and remember that things are never completely as they seem.
Such a strong omen of change and cutting through illusion and letting go of old habits certainly represented us then and as we have journeyed together all these years.
Tracker School
The summer I met Jennifer I had planned to go to Tracker school. In my curiosity about Native American ways, I had read a series of books by Tom Brown.
He was a white man that as a young boy had been living on the edge of the Piney Barrens in New Jersey. Tom spent a lot of time alone in this wild place. At some point an older native man began mentoring him in how to experience the natural world through expanded awareness. Natives were experts at tracking. They would have starved if they couldn’t find animals to eat. This required a deep understanding of the “signs” that existed in nature that told you where the animals were.
The natives also talked about standing in the “dead zone.” There had been stories at first contact with whites that certain medicine men could literally disappear into thin air. It turns out the trick has to do with a humans field of vision. Because of the noise of our white society we tend to see a limited field of vision. Natives because their world was more natural had an expanded field of vision. When the medicine men “disappeared” they actually just moved out of the white’s limited field of vision and into the dead space outside of it. Medicine men could teach you to expand your field of vision to see much more. Tom became an expert tracker with a reputation of finding anyone who was lost. Later he wrote the series of books I read and he started the Tracker School to teach these skills.
On arriving at the week long course, Tom opened the class by saying that sometime during the next week we would have a moment where we would see the natural environment in its totality for the first time. Literally an “opening/expanding” experience. He couldn’t say when it would happen, but if we followed his lead it would. This was similar to what Eastern Religion monks would say about meditation practice leading to enlightenment. If you follow the course of study they suggest, eventually you would have a moment when true reality opened up. Needless to say I was fascinated.
Before I arrived at the class I had actually contacted Tom about possibly doing a documentary film about his work. He promised to talk to me sometime during the week. As we got our assignments and went out into nature to practice, his presence was impressive. However, when I went “backstage” to talk with him I discovered he was a severe alcoholic and abusive to his family and staff. It was shocking to say the least. This kind of discovery would happen again many times during my future journey’s into the native world and later in spiritual communities, but this first time was a bit impactful. The question arises… “if this person has something valuable to teach me, do their personal failings color the value of the teachings.”
I went back to the class assignments and sure enough on the fifth day of practice, my vision suddenly opened up and I could see every nuance of the tracks that animals had left the night before. It was vivid like day glow paint. It was also unsettling, but expanding in the same moment. I questioned how a man could teach this revolutionary concept and be such a miserable human being. It was one of my early lessons about learning what I could from flawed teachers and moving on.
Jennifer Arising
Whatever had begun in LA with Jennifer, deepened. At some point I realized I was falling in love again. The fact that Jennifer had a child I was yet to meet and if we were going to be together someone would have to move, was all was in the background. When love hits like that, you often don’t pay much attention to the details at first.
I did fly up to Sun Valley to visit a couple of times.
This mountain town was beautiful and everyone I met spoke about Jennifer’s influence in the community over her 15 years of living there. She had organized global conferences way before it was hip addressing issues like global warming with a cross section of talented people. One was even tele-transmitted to Russia. Quite a feat in those days. The original conference was covered by the news media and influenced CNN to create their Earth Beat feature.
She also opened a natural foods store/restaurant with her husband and arranged to bring healers and thought leaders in a variety of New Age disciplines to Sun Valley. She and Ed hung out with celebrities like Bruce Willis and Steve McQueen and had encounters with UFO’s.
You may be thinking if all that was true, why would she want to leave? The reason goes back to my theme of cycles. Nothing lasts forever and the energy that gives something, someplace or relationships power eventually dissipates. She was also now separated from Ed, living in her own home with Matthew, so there was that too. Sun Valley is a small town with all its positives and negatives. One of the negatives for Jennifer was that everyone knew her and depended on her to educate them. This had included some channeling work she had done for a while before becoming uncomfortable with it after Matthew was born. At the moment we met, she felt like she wanted a little less of everyone in her life.
You might ask.., what drew me to her. At that point, my life had been spinning in the Hollywood field for some time and was starting to show signs of fracturing. I was less enamored by all the money and notoriety. I was also re-awakening to the issues facing all of us and the planet. I felt in some way’s ready to re-enter a more normal existence and use whatever skills I had as a storyteller to make a contribution to making the world better. This was just a vague notion at that point. It would take a whole new chapter of work to actually complete this chapter of the Hollywood story, but what Jennifer was interested in fit with what I thought I might explore next. This included spiritual pursuits as well, and seeing as we had met and had been blessed by the Dali Lama, it seem fated. A real karmic connection.
And Matthew?
I had been a step parent before with all that it had blessed my life with and the challenges it brought as well. This time I did not feel so naïve in my understanding of what it meant to have children in your life. I met Matt when he was four during my visits to Sun Valley. He was a really sweet presence with a keen sense of curiosity and fun. I also met Jenny’s ex Ed as well. All seemed as stable as it could be after a divorce.
Jennifer told me the story of Matthew coming into to this life very early on. She was not supposed to have children as a result of ruptured tubal pregnancy that almost killed her. She and Ed had gone off to India to hang out with the Dali Lama. They spent time in Dharamshala with side trips to sacred sites high in the Himalayas like Ladakh. Ladakh had been a sacred center of Tibetan Buddhism for many years. There were all kinds of temples scattered around its location.
As the story goes, Jennifer and Ed got directed to a particular temple by a smiling monk. When they had entered they realized that they were standing in complete darkness. The doors closed behind them and as their eyes adjusted, they realized sitting in front of them was a giant Buddha, multiple stories high. Extending from the Buddha’s groin area was a giant phallic penis. You can imagine their shock, but it turns out this temple was dedicated to fertility. Can you hear the dramatic music coming up in the background?
Jennifer and Ed returned to Dharamshala not knowing what to think and hoped for a glimpse of the Dali Lama. They stood with other westerners in one of the many places people waited for the Dali Lama to emerge. When he finally showed, he came right over to Jennifer, smiled and did some sort of incantation over her belly (I am not making this up) and laughed. As he walked away Ed and the rest of the sojourners crowded around to ask… “what was that?”
Shortly after their return to Sun Valley, against all odds, Jennifer became pregnant. The story doesn’t stop there however, and there is a point I am getting to about Matthew’s presence in the world. While Jennifer was pregnant she had five very powerful vision dreams of a young boy talking emphatically to her. He would say “my name is… Tenzin.” Tenzin was the first name of the Dali Lama. It was common in the Tibetan community in exile because a mother could ask the Dali Lama for his name for her child. These dreams were so powerful that when Matt was born Jennifer gave him the middle name of Tenzin after getting permission from the Dali Lama himself.
At that point in Tibetan history with their country being systemically dismantled by the Chinese, there was a story going around that monks were reincarnating to the west. This migration was a part of the ancient Eastern teachings coming to the West in the seventies.
Now what did I make of this? I didn’t know at the time, but when I met this very young child, he struck me as being very bright with some unusual qualities. Like me when I was younger, he did not seem to approach things in a typical manner. In my life this had some negative consequences when I was younger and served me well as an adult. One way to describe Matthew was that he was an original. There were little things. For example, he would insist on wearing four hats, the bills pointing in different directions. This would create an effect of what Tibetan headgear looked like.
He also had this thing about taking everything he owned with him, as if he was worried he wasn’t coming back. Never the less, we thought my meeting Matthew was going well until one day we were walking out the door to take a hike and I noticed that Matt had taken a red marker and drawn all over Jennifer’s pure white couch. We both looked at each other and smiled. And after Claytie and Servin, Matt was a boy person. That boded well for trouble we could get into.
The Mouse Begins Wavering
Following the release of the Toy Story game, I struggled to find something interesting to do next at Disney. We had lots of meetings, drew up lots of plans, but without technological tools Disney could not really morph into a real game company. At one point I suggested that they just release kids programs with each of their major movies. Their educational software group was already doing this and because of the Disney name they sold millions. That was a business that was unique to Disney I argued.
Beaver Creek
As I started to wonder if I would ever produce big interactive entertainment projects again, I was asked, because of my position at Disney and the Toy Story game, to speak at a variety of Internet conferences. One of those was in Beaver Creek Colorado. The conference was organized by a local interactive media company and after the conference they asked me for advice on how they should proceed.
At that point no one really knew where the Internet was going. I certainly wanted to explore that, so I came up with this idea of gathering 40 of my cohorts from the studios and game companies at Beaver Creek in Colorado for four days.
At the time many of us were competitors so we couldn’t talk about what we were actually doing in-house, but I reasoned that we could talk about general Internet qualities that could be useful to all of us. In my work with the Headlands Center for the Arts, my friend David Sibbet and I had pioneered a process I called storycatching. It combined David’s visual group memory work with my method of story gathering. What we were imagining for this gathering could be captured and mined for the common themes they suggested for the future.
To my surprise River Interactive said yes, so I put together a budget and dragged out my rolodex and began inviting an A list of participants. As long as I kept my Disney work up to date and included Disney brass they were okay with me doing this. There certainly wasn’t a lot else going on.
David and I picked some dates. In addition to my excitement about the possibilities I also saw it as a way Jennifer and I could produce something together. She had experience in stewarding big egos at these kinds of endeavors and I thought a chance to explore working together was just the thing. We decided to meet in Colorado to visualize the gathering at the location.
David, Jennifer and few people from the sponsoring organization used David’s graphic memory process to plan the event. We asked for guidance from a number of sources including Jamie Sam’s “Medicine Cards” These cards and their importance in my life would have much more significance latter.
Prior to meeting in Colorado I had been in Portland for the wedding of my cousin Steve. It was a reunion of sorts of the different clans of Pinger’s and Riordan’s that had begun to re-connect because of my crazy drive about two years prior.
After the wedding, I flew to Colorado from Portland to meet the others at the Denver airport. Little did I know this airport would play a huge part in a future chapter.
As we drove up the hill we stopped in St. Georges to eat and as we came out of the restaurant I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly kissed Jennifer for the first time. It was magic.
She was a bit taken aback, but not that much. This trip cemented our wanting to be together. The event came off great, everyone had a good time and we all learned something for our future Internet work.
One of the predictions we made in 1996 was that Microsoft’s influence, who at that time, dominated everything having to do with software and digital networks would decrease. Someone else would take their place.
We all laughed. No one could imagine that happening or the “what” that would take their place. However, at that very moment two students at Stanford were developing a search engine that would later be known as “Google”. No one saw that.
The Interplay of it All
I was becoming more and more bored at Disney. An old acquaintance of mine in the interactive entertainment biz, started talking to me again. I had known Brian for a while. He had been a pioneer in the game business and had a company called Interplay that was located in Orange County south of Hollywood. He had always been a fan of the Cinemaware style games I had done and had bought the PC rights to Voyeur when I was at POV.
Brian was looking to expand the company and take it public. He just couldn’t understand why I worked for companies like Time Warner and Disney. In his mind they were not real game companies. He was leaning on me again about joining him. I also knew that Brian had a mixed reputation in terms of values. He was kind of a player. As I was taking all that into consideration he upped the ante.
I had been a fan of a sci-fi- fantasy artist named Gil Bruvel for a while. Lately he had been committing his painting style to 3D environments created on large Sun graphic work stations.
Brian thought we could make a game whose environment was based on his paintings and sent some of the plates to me. I thought they were fantastic.
The other project he was promoting was a Star Trek project. There had been a number of Star Trek games over the years, some good, others lame. Interplay had the direct license with Paramount to develop a game using the original cast of characters from the first show. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and all the others. Those actors had grown old, but the plan was to create 3D graphic versions of them and use the actors to voice the animated characters.
I had always loved Star Trek so this put the final touches on our deal for me. My boss at Disney accepted my decision with good humor. Disney Interactive, in spite of spending millions, never really amounted to anything of note in those next years, so creatively it was probably the right choice.
There was another factor in this decision. Jennifer had said very early on that she could not imagine raising Matt in Hollywood. I didn’t disagree. So when the Interplay deal came up we discussed it and she said she was ok living in Laguna Beach in Orange County for a while. So, I put together a production group entitled…
