Answer

What we are looking for is what is looking.
- St. Francis of Assisi

That which you are seeking is causing you to seek.
- Cheri Huber

These Peace Quotes from earlier in the week remind me of comments by Matt Long in the master class I took the-week-before-last. He said that when we asked a question, when we found the answer we'd find that the answer was in asking of the question, that the question is the answer. St. Francis' words also remind me of Adyashanti.

The master class was wonderful. Getting up in the morning and working in clay all day was wonderful. I began some really good work, garnered serious praise from Matt, enjoyed and cared about what I was making. It's kind of hard to hang on to all that, or even remember what happened, after being plunged back into everyday work, where my best, most energetic, and most productive hours are taken by architecture, can't be preserved for clay, where I'd really like to use them.

Off the mountaintop and back into the valley, I guess. But I can't help but notice that I was happier that week than in the surrounding ones.

Afternoon Thoughts

There's a remarkable sense of otherness, lately, about even the most familiar people.

I know I know you, yet every time we interact, it's as though for the first time. I recognize familiar habits, coughing to clear your throat, a face you always make. And yet you are as a stranger. And then the spell breaks and it's you and I again, playing out one of our usual interactions, actors in a familiar scene. But is it really us? I wonder if I'm losing my mind. This should be more familiar.

Truth and authority, dreams and experience.

"They must find it difficult, those that take authority as truth, instead of truth as the authority."

Nothing else has quite so neatly encapsulated my largest, erm, objections, with religion.

In other news; a couple of weeks ago I spent the weekend firing a wood kiln. I enjoyed several interesting conversations with one fellow firer, which circled around ways of seeing and experiencing. The conversations made me reconsider the notion of astral travel. He's been playing in other realms, he said, for so long that sometimes he doesn't know if he's here or there, without checking. The notion is one I had considered and discarded because, well, it's not real.

While completely overlooking the concurrent thought that this realm isn't real, either. Well, is and isn't, but that's beside the point. I again set the thing on a back burner.

As if to insist upon the point, a daily quote from the same week: "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." Poe.

Huh.

So I wondered, why not have fun in dreaming? My dream life tends to be a bit more fantastic than this one; I wouldn't mind if the present would fall into step, rather than the other way around. In any event, the question's back on the table.

Oh, and it seemed that somebody was looking for me last night. By the by.

a greeting

"be the ocean where it meets the sky"

"be the magic in the northern lights"

"be the river as it rolls along"

"be the rain and remember falling"

meant to post that for awhile.

Moments

Looking at someone again and again to soak in some ineffable change in countenance.

Reading a book that's like paddling on swells in the lake.

Listening to a coworker laugh over something so stupidly ridiculous that most people would be frustrated, until tears nearly ran down his face.

Sitting comfortably in my drafty 60-degree house (apartment) because of four beautiful and comfortable garments, a good pair of socks, and my trusty slippers.

Flipping into a magazine, finding a print ad, a photo that I want to live in, that I had seen before and forgotten.

It's not that I've had nothing to share lately. I don't know that anybody reads; of those that read, that any understand. Heck, I can't describe what any of that is like; I spent most of a 45-minute train ride sitting with one of those experiences, (or the sense of it or my memory of it, but to say I sat with the experience itself is yet somehow closer to the truth) - with a few sentences in "The Waves" interspersed here and there; after all, I meant to spend the time reading - still couldn't get more than a stumbling phrase around it, a perfect phrase, that nobody may understand except me. What do I say? "You feel great" is the closest I can get to a thought on something, and it's so accurate yet so imprecise that the only time it'll be understood is in the moment before the brain grabs onto a percieved misuse of language - and are most people even capable of dwelling in that moment for long enough to register it?

I percieve thusly. How does anyone else percieve me? The people that see me frequently, and what of those whose only window into my world is the one I draw? How does it seem?

I-74, Peoria, IL: Julie rocks the camera.

The day I shot this highway ranks among the most fun work days I've had.

Eye level with the roadway.

Green grass, blue sky, bridge.

Wide angle on an underpass.

A bit of everything: retaining wall kicked in, two kinds of form liners, light bollard, railing, and a nice composition.

Juxtaposition: articulated sound wall, roadway, ramp.

Juxtaposition, again: light bollard, stepped fence, high-mast lights, bridge.

Under the big bridge.

Light bollard, leading lines.

Juxtaposition 2.

Wishbone bridge.

High mast lights.

Articulated sound wall, residential side.

Equipment: Fuji DSLR with Nikon lenses; 12-24mm, 28-70mm, and 70-200mm. There's something very satisfying about the sound of a shutter.

Three Paragraphs

I have much, perhaps, to communicate. But, despite a facility with words, few seem to understand what they mean. Words mustn't always be read with the mind; there are other ways of knowing and reading.

When asked about my artwork, I'm often at a loss for words. Pick something I've made. It's an object. There are concepts integrated into that object that interest me. But this isn't meant to be an intellectual exercise. Most often it's about the experience of creating, the experience of interacting, how the concepts that interest me play into the final object. The object is something that can be appreciated and discovered long after it's acquired.

Today I recieved a somewhat frantic phone call from the GC with a poorly concieved question. After considering the situation, it seemed best to talk to the roofer after explaining the situation to my PM. When my PM returned, he'd already spoken to the roofer and worked everything out. What interests me was that my PM said simply, "I trust the guy."