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Foreword: this is a typed transcription of a hand-written thing. But I rather like it that way; writing by hand is a different process, as the neuroscientists have noted. It's also odd to be re-colonizing an old online space, for me

So ever since Grandpa died I've been a little bit (okay, a lot, but sporadically, so it averages down to a little) like what the FUCK am I doing with my life?

I'm working a burnout job that brings me too little satisfaction and too much stupid and avoidable stress. With different circumstances it would keep me busy and perhaps content-ish, but fail to satisfy my creative desires… you see, I'm a creative. Artist? Designer? These labels are laden. I love experience and richness of observation and subtlety.

Shadows on a wall.

And several online writers have offered a 'just do it' suggestion - blog your way to understanding yourself. So I think I want to do that (the confluence seems like a bit of an existential neon sign); freeform write in the evening about the things I think of during the day.

I was thinking I'd like to install Of a ship in peoples' homes. It changes when lived with. But it becomes about the performance specification (to use a term from architectural practice). Not an instruction like Sol Lewitt exactly, but the special thing is the artist's work of considering its installation, maybe moreso than installing it. The idea is precious and the materials ordinary. (Much like Lewitt, actually. Ah.)
And I imagine making one for Charlie's new house.
My instruction piece A place upon which light may fall relates poetically to installing this piece.
[So, ah, if you have a desire to share your home with a dark expanse of wall, keep reading, and if you still do, please contact me. I love to imagine this piece being embodied in many ways, and in many lives. Same sentiment for many of my pieces, actually, which is part of why I enjoy working with instruction so very much.]

I also thought of reframing a bathroom ceiling to make it very tall; into an attic, reframing joists and rafters as necessary, so you walk into a space and feel as though you're in the bottom of a well, [except there's a bathroom at the bottom of the well, and some light], and that was really interesting, [the thought of] doing that in a residential space. [So the ceiling is just under the rafters, way up. The room would be painted a similar dark color to of a ship. And it wouldn't exactly be like a well because there wouldn't be an opening into the sky.]  It has to be understood as art, then, and carefully, because it's just so darn odd. And one grows accustomed and forgets wonder and then maybe remembers or lives it vicariously, by surprising visitors. [And these ideas about how we live with things and forget and remember is important to me too.]

Of a ship started out being about the scale of a barge but it became about vastness and the water and observation, and the slow time of a larger timescale, and indirectly about how difficult it is to access that. And maybe the sublime of Rothko and of Klein.

I'm wary of how this blogging exercise could easily focus on the unmet aspects of my life and overlook some that are met… like my enjoyment of proposal-writing is an enjoyment of finite detailed concrete tasks. I suppose doing the laundry does just as well… or (in the future when I am only doing residential design consulting and art) doing bills and accounting. The satisfaction of these little necessary things; of things orderly and done well. One needs an anchor, a reference point, after all. Even if it's just a tidy kitchen.

Of Marx and Deity

At brunch I sat glumly, my mind a swirl around Marxist alienation and well aware that this was not acceptable fare for Christmas morning. (Don't have experiences that are different from everyone else's, and especially don't understand those experiences differently than everyone else. Whatever else you may then be, at least you won't be alone. This passes for humor, darkly.) At least when Dad asked what I was thinking about, he rescued me by then supposing that yesterday's drive was tiring. It wasn't, but at least then we were then talking about driving rather than alienation, though in some ways I suppose it amounts to the same thing.

After things were put away I sat to read for a bit and flipped my book to the marked page, my eyes falling first on a sentence three-quarters of the way down the right hand leaf:

Similarly, limited points of view emphasize the isolation of individual consciousness.

It's hardly acceptable to speak of Marx and deity in the same sentences, but of deity I must speak, because a single sentence at once distilled and crystallized my unutterably inchoate thoughts, and for this I blame deity.

(Parenthetical #1: Yes, lately I'm a theist. Deity could always retreat just beyond our reach and grasp; it would stand to reason, after all, and is the sort of absurdity that, given everything else, would only make sense.) (Parenthetical #2: We are alone, but also each alone with the Alone. That news is all comfort, and none at all.)  


So I leave these thoughts with you, dear Internet, because they're hardly the thing to send to anyone on Christmas, to start, and I don't know who would talk with me about Marx and deity, besides.

a note from here:

still seeking the holy.
beauty alone isn't enough.

That's something I wrote to myself a day or two ago; now I'm trying to remember what it means, amidst the stresses of packing and starting life over. Again.

On the hardest thing

Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
- Annie Besant

Here's a youtube video.

[For those who don't know, I have a summer job in Ohio doing architect stuff.]

So, four days into a new job - the job itself is familiar, though some parts are new. The great source of intrigue is the people. Observing them, and observing myself, and the interactions. Mostly I hang back and watch. Everything about me is in plain sight - for those who know what they're looking for. I've had a few interactions and conversations whose nature rather surprised me, and I sure didn't start them.

I guess that's a comment and an observation. I'm still learning to understand it. Connection has been a central topic for me over the last months, so it's fascinating and beautiful to move from relative isolation, in terms of relationships with other adults, to relative population.

I keep looking for this quote and returning to it. It's in C.S. Lewis - Surprised by Joy.

It's about the distinction between enjoyment and contemplation. It's on 217-218. Maybe now I'll be able to find it again more easily. I got lucky finding it this time.

‘ I read in Alexander’s Space Time and Deity his theory of “Enjoyment” and “Contemplation.” These are technical terms in Alexander’s philosophy; “Enjoyment” has nothing to do with pleasure, nor “Contemplation” with the contemplative life. When you see a table you “enjoy” the act of seeing and “contemplate’ the table… In bereavement you contemplate the beloved and the beloved’s death and, in Alexander’s sense, “enjoy” the loneliness and grief; but a psychologist, if he were considering you as a case of melancholia, would be contemplating your grief and enjoying philosophy. ‘

…It seemed to me self-evident that one essential property of love, hate, fear, hope, or desire was attention to their object. To cease thinking about or attending to the woman is, so far, to cease loving; to cease thinking about or attending to the dreaded thing is, so far, to cease being afraid… In other words the enjoyment and the contemplation of our inner activities are incompatible. You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. Of course the two activities can and do alternate with great rapidity; but they are distinct and incompatible. ‘

Five years.

It's been just over five years since my world turned upside down. For me it's hard and a little embarrassing to go back and read what I wrote of that experience. Whether the writing is obtuse or clear, it is hard to see how much it lays bare. Of that particular shift itself: I have thought of other ways of expressing it, from time to time. Expectation no longer forming my reality. Thus, loss of everything I was attached to, everything I held to. Except, at the time, God - but that slipped away, too. But loss, loneliness, and only ever always falling. I'm five years more accustomed to the sense of it.

It's coming up on five years since I declared love to be my highest priority:

The argument is this: love comes first. I don't mean sissy love from afar without getting our hands dirty. I mean gritty, real, messy, beautiful, difficult love. (I could more easily show you than tell you, but this is a blog; please forgive my words for falling short.) Doing what Christ did in coming to earth. Sitting down and caring for people with no agenda whatsoever. To be one of those people whose qualities I mentioned in an earlier post:

... approachable, accepting, slow to anger, slow to judge, quick to pardon, seeking to understand, seeking to love, seeking to do right. They create a space where the tide of fear is held back, where no secret is too dark, no failure too deep, where any uncertainty is permitted. Where our humanity can be laid bare without shame or judgment.

Five years later, looking at my own writing: it's strong, vulnerable, and true. Five years. My aim was unerring. I still seek to be that love, and could say it no better now. Love is hard. Love is easy.