from one absent building to another, empty and vacant or, perhaps, the other way around from one unoccupied space to a building no longer extant such a dangerous passage the portal must be not merely boarded up but secured with masonry
you and I, though need not halt our journey on account of the merely material we know how to walk through walls we are able to travel through time we have the intelligence of our bodies to reveal to us the past in the here and now and to glimpse and even inhabit possible futures
now, then, from across the street what a different way of seeing this same stretch of wall with the protruding painted bricks and the ambiguous commercial status framed by one well lit municipal planting and the cheerful precautionary cylinders decorating the cables which stabilize the telephone pole at center stage
an awkward view at best one in which the intentions of too many disparate parties commingle uncomfortably unable to present any sort of coherent aesthetic
Christopher Alexander, et al in their A Pattern Language were proponents of spending time in a place getting to know the way the elements moved through a location before beginning to consider what should be built there let alone how it should look or function
aesthetics, I imagine must have played a role in their thinking, although my sense is that role was secondary to function but I do not know
sometimes it can be difficult to tease the two apart beauty is far more potent than we are taught to believe
imagine here a broader sidewalk an absence of utility hardware and perhaps more than just a few trees planted amidst bricks how different the feeling of walking down a grassy path with room to spare for people passing without having to yield the right of way to the convenience of the power company… and room for taller trees and the shade they provide as they shield eyes from the glare of the sun
there are other ways of doing things than those we have learned other ways of seeing and other ways of being
everything is in relationship and each minute change generates movement ripples traveling farther than we may be able to glean at first blush
some places have more than one thing to say some places seem to have been waiting for someone to talk to for a long time
there I like to linger listening until all has been said that wants or need to be said and I begin to feel that the place in question is experiencing the sort of relief that comes with telling your story to a willing ear, not unlike exhaling in full after holding your breath for far too long
in case you haven’t noticed we’ve been taking a walk together I’ve been posting photographs for the past few weeks in the same order I found them walking and driving and walking again dancing first with this partner and then with this other making friends with Place while I forage inviting each location to show me the light in which they would like to be conveyed
corrugated siding and ongoing efforts to corral the wild spirit of the wood that still lives even after an intensive process of cutting, slicing, pressing, gluing to be made stable enough for civilized culture to manipulate it into abstract forms and cover the holes in the facades of their culture the complicated structures that are always deteriorating and never a viable replacement for the complex living systems suppressed by cutting, burning, plowing, and excavation in order to make way for these simply complicated efforts to shore up the addiction to consumption that is the fuel source for the same principle of growth that turns off cell death in malignant tumors
take a moment and notice, if you will just how effective these efforts at corralling this wild spirit have been
shadows converging as they point to the horizon lengthening as the sun goes down
a smörgåsbord of textures catching and holding or reflecting back the light and shadow as it travels its daily route imperceptibly shifting each day until it comes around again twice each year to the crossing points between increasing light and dark
inset at an angle in the shade of the late afternoon locked up and boarded with remnants of the building next door still clinging quietly to the wall one solitary slab of orphaned masonry clinging to the one connection with what is familiar after all it has known has been violently stripped away
is this the temple whose building was prompted by some earthbound peasant inquiring of Odysseus why he was carrying on his shoulder a winnowing staff or whether it was the blade of a windmill never having seen an oar
for here is a place where libations to Poseidon must abound should he wander so far inland as to work up a thirst among these followers who know not the sea
a building with many secrets and more bricks than windows in between lives, it seems with a little glass left in the ghosts of old windows but mostly boarded up waiting still
a home surrounded by new neighbors which, while they have been around now for years, are relative newcomers to this part of town
who lived here before these brutalist intrusions? where have they gone, and their families with them? the inexorable spread of the civilizing force ever robbing those of the least means of home and wealth and culture which are then distributed among those of the most means robbing from the poor to give to the rich no wonder Robin Hood was disliked by the gentry he was addressing a foundational feature of civilization an inconvenient truth that applies to all of us who contribute
