Journey to the American West

“When you get to the fork in the road…take it.” I think Yogi Berra is credited with that little nugget of wisdom. I heard someone say it today on the radio and like most of my odd cascades of thought, it triggered my memories of the people who stood at the fork in the road at some point (that became a key point) in my life.

Its going to sound like I’m not grateful for everything everyone has contributed to my life (remember “people come into our lives for a reason, or a season…” and however it worked out, i learned from every knock in the head from the panchesin brothers, the handgun held to my forehead by that fellow named Marmesh (guns in dorms are a bad idea), mr. t in fargo, not living up to his partnership principles, I’m sure I’ve learned from all of them but I can’t say they were positive forces in my life at this time.

The first person I remembering changing my life direction was my friend Rick. We had shared all kinds of Mitty-esque improvisations, some social indignation (who doesn’t in high school?), some losses (Greg and Dusty) but one day we were looking at the graduation order on the high school counselor’s door and both of us were in about the same place (not tellin…) and he was talking about going to college. I’d never thought of college until then. Rick talked about the process for applying to NDSU and the architecture program and how they were going to pay him to be a dorm resident assistant (but he wasn’t on duty the night of the Marmesh thing) so he encouraged me to apply, helped me with addresses and things, and soon I was sitting up at the kitchen table in the middle of the night waiting for Rick and Mike to pick me up and drive me (with my one footlocker) up to Fargo to go to college! Amazing.

Mom had one more lesson to teach me that night, showing me how to play different poker games, and taking pretty much all my travel money in some game called “in-between.” I thought she was going to give it back and when Rick pulled up in the 66 Bonneville, or was it a Catalina?, (either way I think it was the largest car ever built) I asked Mom for my money and she said “no and let that be a lesson to you, don’t play cards for money!” It was to be one of a series of life lessons that wouldn’t be initially positive, but upon reflection I can see that I learned something….

The Bonneville’s (I’m pretty sure) cavernous trunk swallowed up my footlocker easily and I tumbled into the back seat for the 14 hour drive. I remember Rick had two eight track tapes (and a pioneer player?) one was the Doors, and the other was Carole King… I can still sing most of those lyrics.

I met a second person at a fork in my life during the second year of school in Fargo. Late one evening I was working in the studio, standing up at the drafting board, which I had tilted up to save my back, when I became aware of of someone watching me. I looked up to the top edge of the board and saw two eyes and black hair, then Professor Loh stepped out from behind my board and asked “do you want to be an architect?” It was late, I was tired, and had only known Professor Loh from his fierce reputation. Back then almost every faculty was fierce. I remember walking into a review as a freshman, when a faculty from Australia stood up, took a dime (it was 1971 after all) out of his pocket, leaned down and slowly rolled the dime across to the student who was not looking too confident standing in front of their work. “Pick it up.” Professor Pike said, “go ahead, pick it up, and go call your mother and tell her you’ll be home tomorrow because you will NEVER be an architect.” Holy cow!

When Professor Loh asked, I said “yes, sure” doing my best Fargo accent (should’ve added a “you betcha”) he told me to be in his office first thing the next morning.

I knocked on his door, he invited me to sit (Thonet bentwood chairs I think) and asked me “What do you want to learn?” I told him the courses I was taking, structures, professional practice, studio…. and he cut me off saying “No, what do YOU want to LEARN?” I stammered around for a bit, and realized I had no clue what I wanted to learn, no clue that I had a choice of what to learn, I’d always thought the curriculum was a given, that you had to learn what they taught, here was someone telling me no, that wasn’t enough.

He finally threw me a lifeline and offered that I might want to learn about how to see and break apart a problem. Feeling like Ralphie after he told Santa he wanted a football for Christmas instead of a Red Rider something something bb gun, I nodded to Professor Loh. He gave me some books to look up in the library and read (my first card catalog adventure) and told me to come back in a few weeks. As we met, he showed me how to see a larger problem as smaller and smaller parts, how to map the parts for interrelationships, structure the parts according to ways of moving through buildings (linear, centroidal/radial, field) and how to put it all back together again.

Every quarter for four years he did that….and near the end, I kind of had answers to what I’d like to learn. One day at the end of fourth year, he asked me again. I said “I want to learn the problem solving process for large urban development plans” or something similarly silly. He stopped me cold with a wave of his hand saying “no, it is time for you to learn about mystery in architecture….and I cannot teach you anything about that.” He left NDSU that summer with his wonderful spouse Alice, they went to San Luis Obisbo. Professor Loh is listed as an emeritus faculty on their website. I’ve written to extend my thanks, and hope the message gets to him.

It turned out, learning about the mystery in architecture was really hard. I flailed about thinking it was in the light, or in the scale and then back-burnered it and accepted an invitation to teach. Cecil Elliott was the new department head at NDSU and hired me and Dennis, who’d graduated a few years ahead of me. That first year teaching was one terrifying moment after another. Cecil would take Dennis and I out for dinner and somehow calm us down and get us refocused for the next day in the studio or the classroom. Cecil was the first person to talk to me about how students learn, about letting people make their own mistakes, and being there to help them back onto a path towards success. He also said we had to make each point three times, in three ways, so one of the ways would “stick” with the student. That first year was kind of a mess (sorry to you all who experienced that) but by my third year of teaching (alternating with practice every other year) I was feeling pretty good about my teaching.

Friday, as I was greeting students coming off the stage in graduation, I thought back to a lot of those students from NDSU. Darla is a successful faculty and kind of an academic entrepreneur. Cindy is back teaching there, Dale and most others are architects, having had long careers by now and are almost to retirement!

Back to the point… In my third year teaching, Cecil and I went to dinner, and he told me he wasn’t going to hire me anymore. I was kind of floored, I thought it all had been going well, but he explained. If I was going to keep teaching, make a career in teaching, I needed a graduate degree in architecture, “and not from anyplace in the Midwest, go where they don’t think like people here.”

Summer came and I was back in the office in practice. Deaner, Steve, Harold, and even Rick made up the office team, with Fred anchoring specifications, and David, just back from his Master’s degree. David and I had set up a small business (that folded pretty quickly) where we had lots of time (hence the folding) to talk. He was super enthusiastic about the school he had graduated from and the faculty, Milka (emeritus and still a force), Charles (now a university president!) and like Rick did for me in high school, David connected me with the addresses, and people to talk to about applying. That summer I sold my sports car (you cannot get dual Su carbs to stay in sync long enough to start a car at -40 anyways) and drove around the country touring schools of architecture from Fargo to Boston and down through Virginia. At most of the schools I could recognize what they were doing, functional diagram, extrude, render… no mystery there.

At Virginia Tech, I walked in the door saw a group of students making models that weren’t stylized, inflated boxes but were bones. Very nice bones too, beautifully proportioned, clearly structured by an underlying geometry, I went over and was talking to a student, describing what a powerful entry sequence they had developed. The student said “no, its not a building, its 3 and 7.”

Again I was floored, I had no idea what these people were talking about but, it did seem mysterious enough so I applied, was accepted, sold my sensible sedan for a 300 dollar pickup, (didn’t think to look under it and see the blocks of wood wedged in the broken springs,) and set out for Virginia. As I pulled into the driveway of the apartment in Blacksburg, every red light on the dash appeared, the engine made some bad banging sounds and I coasted into a parking space. I think it was towed away by the person who finally bought it. So I did lots of walking and the day I was walking along the highway, footlocker on one shoulder, chain to lock it to the desk on the other, a car pulled up next to me, slowed, and honked…it was David!

He had moved to Atlanta, and his spouse had parents in Blacksburg! What an amazing moment, well, until you realize Blacksburg is a really small town if someone you know is in town, you’ll see them or they’ll see you before long. But it was great, David introduced me to his parents in law, they let me take a hot shower (no power to my apartment yet…hmmm…and today the hot water heater blew so it was a cold shower for me here…maybe that’s why I’m typing all this?)

The first week of school was also mysterious. Professor Brown gave us all (4th year, first professional masters students and one year post professional students like me all together) a project, told us presentations were on Friday, then left. That Friday, all the students are posting beautiful colored-pencil diagrams and those odd bones models while Tom (another architect in the class) and myself posted dozens of sheets of analysis of the problem. Professor Brown walked from one project to the next, talking about the potential for wonder and architecture in each. When he got to my analysis, he lifted each sheet slowly, looking carefully at my work (I was feeling like Ralphie when he turned in his Christmas “theme”) and then without raising his voice or asking a question said “there is no architecture here” pulled the pins from the wall and let the drawings flutter to the floor. Again, I was stunned. He kept on talking about wonder and architecture and came to Tom’s analysis, same thing happened.

Tom and I spent that evening in the Cellar, with pizza and beer. I remember us saying “we have cards in our wallets that say everything we DO is architecture!” (a clear sign of too much beer.) And I think I said “well, I came here because I had no idea what they were doing so I’ll bite.”

I spent the next 10 weeks on every Sunday morning (exposing my unchurchedness here) photographing the student’s desks, then every Tuesday and Wednesday night watching slides while I ate at home. I finally started to see what Professor Brown meant when he spoke of “the architecture of brick or the architecture of the water’s edge, or the architecture of a wall” and Professor Loh’s words rang in my ears. The mystery of architecture at last!

Professor Brown taught me architecture as Professor Loh had taught me problem solving. After a few years of practice (see reference to Mr. T and his lapse in the early paragraphs) I was fortunate to be invited to interview for a teaching position at Virginia Tech.

I was pretty nervous in the interview. My slides were bad, an even balance of over and under exposed diagrams and pictures, and I was talking like I was at a school board meeting, pitching our firm’s services. The faculty was very polite, tossing me mostly softball questions but there was one that again changed my direction in life, and one that took me up to the day of my interview with the promotion and tenure committee for that all important tenure decision.

The life changing question came from Professor Ferrari, who is credited by many with having built the pedagogical side of the school at Virginia Tech, with Dean Burchard forming the political and organizational landscape. Professor Ferrari asked me to back my slides up to a drawing I had made of the plan of the Pantheon in Rome (a building I hope to see one day.) With the slide up, he asked “so, are you closer to the white or the black part of the plan?” without thinking I said “the black.”

Without really knowing what I was doing, I had just committed to a career focused on the fabric of the building, its structure, its enclosure, its surfaces, and somehow looked past the white part of the plan, which was the space enclosed by the black lines describing the exterior walls. I didn’t know until a few years later, that Professor Ferrari had asked another fellow that question in the same faculty search. Frank and I finally figured it out some years later, it might have been at a memorial service for Professor Ferrari I’m not sure.

The other question, that took me six years to answer, was asked by Professor Rott, who still shapes the graduate program at Virginia Tech with his high standards for clarity in thought and word. He asked, “on what grounds, other than health, light, air or code, do you argue for a window in a wall?”

Six years later, I’m sitting across the granite table top in the dean’s office (a great design by Bob Dunay) and all of a sudden it hits me. Professor Rott didn’t ask, but I offered that I had the answer to his question six years prior. “The presence of the wall.” He knew what I meant right away.

Thirteen years later, a fellow named Cho changed me, but instead of offering a fork in my life path, he forced one. A few years after that a fellow named Tyler, who I never met, showed me another fork in the path of life, maybe the most noble one I’ve come close to.

My daughters regularly teach me about faith and strength. I’m not sure they know that but I think of it every day.

In a tree, the fork in a limb is often a weak point, a place where there is a split, a crack, and a failure waiting to happen the next time the wind comes up. I think these life forks could’ve been that way. Changing ones path in life is always risky, you never know how it will go, who you will meet along the way, but I believe there are moments when people show you a quality, speak to you sincerely, and it hits you just at the right time, when you’re open, receptive and ready to risk.

So, its another “Forest Gump” ending, like a box of chocolates, you never know what that person you’re standing next to might be able to do for you, they almost never know what they’ve done, (unless you tell them) never know that their moment of insight, of sincerity, has entered you because for some reason you were ready.

The flip side of that might be that if we’re not walking around open, ready, sensitive to what people are trying to tell us through their words and actions, we might completely miss the taking the fork in the road.

Soooo, be open, be ready, be respectful of those you meet each day, they might just change your life.

Be good to each other.
Take Care

Yesterday’s painting happened like this:

First I lay out a square, no meaning or intent, just a square with a square inside.

Second, I choose color. I’d been working with dark colors so I choose white for the center just to make a change.

Third, I develop the texture as I apply the color, moving the brush from the centerline to the edge of the inner square. The sun is up now, and bathes each brush stroke in low angle warm light, shadows form, cast from the liquid thickness of the paint.

Fourth, I choose a color for the outer square. I choose blue, mostly arbitrarily and mix it with the remaining white on my mixing paper. I add a bit of mixing media to thin the mix.

I apply this color to two edges of the outer square, mitering the corners as I go. The mitering comes to me as I look at the diagonals used to draw the square on the canvas.

Fifth, I run out of the blue white mix. This happens often, and since I don’t record what proportions I used to make what color, I don’t even try to match it, but take it as a sign that I should change colors.

So both the mitred corners and the two-color outer square comes from me trying to hear the painting as I paint it. Its like seeing every point of resistance, every problem as a proposition from the work to me. There is always a choice, to listen or not, and some days I don’t listen, but I did yesterday and thought about another color.

Sixth, I chose the yellow ochre thinking that when combined with the blue, I’d get a nice green. This painting and a few of my recent ones are kind of “build ups” of color. So in this one, I start with white for the center element, then add blue to the remaining white on the mixing sheet to get the outer square mitre on two sides, then add ochre to the blue to make a green for the other two sides of the outer square. Again, no mystery or intent, just thought it’d be pretty and that by always linking two colors in the mix, that the painting would hold together a bit better.

Seventh, I start applying the green from the miters outward, remembering that I had made a mistake on an earlier painting, and didn’t quite merge the two colors, but let the white canvas show through from below. It really brings your eye to the point where two colors don’t quite meet. So I leave a sliver of canvas visible and paint from the mitre outwards and fill the remaining outer square.

Eighth, I step back and look at what is on the canvas, thinking about some yogurt for breakfast, something isn’t right. the center white square is too independent of the outer square pieces. I start to get disillusioned with the piece and go for the yogurt. A piece of florist wire is laying on the counter, its a cast off bit formed when I was thinking I’d hold the lily up off the bottom of the cylinder of the tabletop pond. I open the yogurt, the foil top tears in half and I dig in the drawer for a spoon to get the rest of the foil off. I’d put the yogurt down on the counter and it made the wire twist up and catch a bit of sun. I pick the remaining foil from the yogurt to open it, grab the spoon, lift the yogurt and the wire falls back.

I’m seeing the wire, thin, a bit curved lay on the tile countertop. The tile is chunky and the contrast with the wire is strong in both the thinness of it, its curve against the grid of the tiles, and its green color against the beige countertop. I pick it up and carry it with the yogurt back to the painting. I’m standing over the painting, holding the wire, spoon, and yogurt, go to fill the spoon and drop the wire into the paint. It lays there for a quick expletive and I snatch it up. As I stand looking at the damage of the wire in the thick paint, I see that it has left a track across the high parts of the brush strokes. The track is thin, the paint is thick, and as I removed the wire, a bit of blue has been dragged into the white.

I’m thinking of how friendships begin now as I look at the blue dragged into the white, I don’t know why, but I see the wisp of blue extending into the white as the first gesture from one to another. We make these gestures sometimes out of politeness, sometimes out of compassion, sometimes as an entree to meet someone and occasionally, each little wisp of effort takes hold, a dialog of little efforts exchange between two people and even more rarely, become a mesh or a netting of efforts that become the shared experiences and gestures that hold friends together. Mostly here I was thinking about when I first met my friend Rick in high school, from that first gym class, we worked on cars, met other friends, took days off from high school, and as a group (Nancy, Diane, John and John) we cooked, saw the auto show, went to the indiana dunes, all sorts of things that bit by bit wisp by wisp bound us together in friendship. Mostly, I’m thinking of this because Nancy and I found each other again on facebook recently and I’ve been trying to think of how to describe my life since we fell out of touch (the wisps snap when you don’t maintain them) during college.

So I pick up the wire and begin dragging thin bits of color from the edge square into the white center square, bits of color across the open white mitre joint, imagining each wisp will bind the parts together just a bit more firmly. After scratching the wire through the paint in rectilinear patterns, I sweep it across the canvas, and curl it into the sweep at the end.

Now I’m thinking of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, one of the “Glasgow Four” a small group (like my high school friends) that changed the art and architecture of a city, a country, and now their few remaining works draw tourists “toshies” from all around the world to come and see their work. Macdonald’s works are mostly feminine motifs, and the continuity of the curved lines she uses seems to be a useful contrast to the rectilinear patterns I just made in the paint with the wire…so I clumsily turn the curve into a very abstract figure, cradling a flower bloom (you’d never guess it to see it) I’m feeling better about the painting now, and bring one more tiny element into it with the wire. I etch the cotyledon, the “seed germ” that architect Louis Sullivan places at the beginning of his ornament into my wisps of color thinking that this painting is a beginning of a new series of studies, and that the seed germ may bloom into something at some point.

I take a few snaps with my point and shoot camera, pick up the yogurt, stare a bit more at the lily rising in the glass column on the dining table, and head to the bath to get ready for work.

All this is to say, the paintings I do begin simply, and I’m looking for something to catch me, to speak to me, like walking through a garden. I’m trying to slow my mind down enough to let something pop into my eyes and reach me. Each time that happens, I’m outside of myself, forgetting my calendar, forgetting the past, it helps me to enjoy that moment when the sun is low, the birds are noisy, and the yogurt is still cold.

I enjoy the memories and thoughts that this process brings to me, and somedays, my mind is already too busy when my feet touch the floor to have this dialogue with the work. But somedays it works.

Almost forgot, here is the overall piece.

Thanks for helping me think of this, have a great day, be good to each other, listen to your work!

Early May has a number of associations, some being the end of winter in the northern latitudes, some being celebrations of a new season of growth (the dance around the May Pole with each persons ribbon winding around it to brighten and renew it), some being an anonymous expression of affection (the May Basket) and an end to the twelve hour working day.

History records that in Chicago, a labor strike to support the formation of the 8 hour work day would erupt into a chaotic scene with a small explosion in Haymarket Square that would forever be associated with the emancipation of working class Americans (to work only 8 hours a day) from the expectations of the privileged class who lived off the 12 to 16 hours of daily labor of others. The start of May is thus associated with workers in many countries.

A worker labors to live I think (and it could be a professional lives to labor.) In agricultural America, work had been seen as its own reward, a source of pride, something to be accomplished with skill and discipline, and when one is observing the work of a dedicated person, the hallmarks of pride in a job well done might still be observed. Accuracy, on-time completion, a visible ingenuity, and follow-through connect a task well done with thousands of similarly proud workers around the world.

All this comes to mind in early May for me, partly because it was the run-up to my few weeks of work with Dad at the lake. I was remembering tonight that the highest compliment Dad ever paid me was to call me a good mechanic, a worker knowledgeable of the tools, materials, and methods of their trade, and willing to bring this knowledge to bear in the interests of doing good work as part of a life ethic. Garrison Keilor still signs off his radio show by saying “do good work.”

Oftentimes today it’s hard to become knowledgeable about ones work. The software we use changes twice a year it seems, the time allotted to assigned tasks shrinks a bit more each year, and the people we need to coordinate with seem busier and busier each year making it harder and harder to do a job well. The stresses of less time, less support, and less familiarity mount on all of us and seriously challenge this nation-building ethic of doing good work.

A person could rightly ask, “Does something have to be done perfectly?” I remember seeing a tee shirt on a construction site in Fargo once that read “It may not be perfect, but its good enough for you.” I thought it was funny at the time, but today as I read the strain on the faces of the people I work with, work for, work under, I realize that the compression of time-on-task doesn’t just mean jobs don’t get done as well, it more importantly means that the fiber of good people, trying to do good work, because that’s who they are, is being challenged at best, and at worst, undermined, eating away at who they are, making it harder for them to show their children pride in good work. Its a scary thing to nibble away at the fiber of a persons being, one never knows when that fiber will yield under the stress, separating that persons pride in work, pride in self from their daily life.

This is pretty rambling, I know, but that’s what happens when I write late at night. Snippets of the day seem to merge. A conversation with a good fellow who proposes making something look like it’s fixed instead of fixing it, a normally patient student getting testy at the thought of reworking a problem discovered in these closing hours of the studio project, an excellent student expressing the willingness to misrepresent their own thoughts instead of quickly reworking and presenting a more handmade explanation over an incorrect polished-looking computer rendering. This same day revealed snippets of great work, follow through on questions, jumping in to cover (my) calendar misunderstanding (Thanks Mark!), a table filled with people working over the smallest nuances of language to help a struggling apprentice learn from an assessment and proceed to future success.

I really work with good people, which inspires me to do good work, and it reassures me that the privileged haven’t bent the fibers of these people too far, that they will go home with a bit of pride in having done well today (Thanks Ginger, Mallory and Hala) and as a faculty member, I felt good going home knowing I cajoled, lent confidence (and my best pen!), and respected the work of the students I worked with today.

The weekend is on us now. Typically a time when most of us think we don’t work, but really, we’re just working at other things. Working at building families, futures, relationships, and even ourselves. If you get a chance, thank those you work with during the celebrations of workers that is May Day around the world. I’ll slip some donuts into the studio to support the student’s efforts to not just appear to, but to actually do the work to do it right.

“Be well, do good work, keep in touch” says Garrison Keilor each week. To that I’ll add, “thank those who do” (especially remember your Mother’s work next weekend!)

Take Care, be good to each other.

We converged in darkness, in silence, perhaps 1,000 or more strong. A few footfalls the only sound as the carillon played through spiritual after spiritual.

Then the carillon stopped.

In the distance a muffled march could be heard, its cadence distinct in its deliberateness. Each stride fell in unison among the 22 approaching. The strides were held apart with five seconds as they grew closer and more distinct.

As the thousand stood silently in the darkness, a darkness made out of respect, the leader of the 21 appeared as an apparition in white, dark sash separating his body into two distinct parts in the darkness. Then more apparations came into view. Moving as if they were one mechanism, deliberate steps now separated by thirty seconds.

The leader positioned the 21 at the back of the space we made by standing in silence. Each movement was now separated by sixty seconds.

With no audible command, the first rank of seven pointed their weapons to the sky and released the first volley. The flash and thunder of the report startled me off my feet. Another sixty seconds to lower the weapons. The second rank raised another volley of seven flashes, executed as one machine might. Sixty seconds more. The third rank raised the final volley whereupon the twenty one guns had spoken to the campus and parted the night with their flash and thunder.

Sixty more seconds. A chorus of bugles plays taps towards the west, then the south, then the north, but never the east as the sun will not rise again on the faces of those that were remembered tonight.

As the echo of the last notes faded. The thousand began moving out of the darkness, in silence, towards the light.

The names of those passed was unspoken this night but will be called to muster in fifteen days.

Traditions.

These quiet traditions, respected by those in uniform and those in flip flops, begin to define the values of this family.

That the thousand appeared in the darkness, making a space to hold the families of those Aggies who won’t see graduation, that they came and left in silence, paying respect for peers that most didn’t know speaks volumes for the character of this university family where honor is not simply a code but is a commitment to each other.

…Silver Taps 4.6.10…

In ten days another university family will construct another stone in the wall of tradition. 1,175 miles east and north of here, they will remember thirty two lost at the hand of one. It will be quiet here. I’ll look their way at 9:30.

Be good to each other. Honor each other, remember.

I’m reading quotes about living with mistakes tonight. As a parent, I got to make many…picking up the salt instead of the sugar cannister for the koolaid, not combing the carpet for iron pills before going to the emergency room, not fighting for my instincts… I let people close to me convince me that I was over protective, and let them convince me later that I was underprotective. So, I’m thinking about how to live with mistakes.

These are some quotes I’ve come across:
Can you leave it all behind? Cause you can’t go back.
That’s a pretty good one. Now I need some quotes on how to leave it all behind….

Yes, the past can hurt but the way I see it you can either run from it or learn from it.
This one is spot on I think. I had read “Wherever you go…There you are” which was like a smack in the head with a board. I’ve walked away from a few things. Mostly not trusting my instincts, partly not wanting to confront conflicts, and partly, having played the cards up to the brink, and had to follow through and leave or fold. Leaving is marginally better. But the key is learning. Don’t ignore the little voice inside. Something that seems out of control is probably out of control. Do what you can to help, but, look at the bigger picture…we all have people who we need to be ready to help…and doing that sometimes means not helping one, to be able to help the other….That’s convoluted and probably is equivocating, but, if you throw yourself on the fire, you won’t be able to help the next person that falls in.

Never say sorry for something you meant to do.
This one is especially tricky. Life throws things at you, sometimes they are disasters, sometimes tragedies, sometimes potential disaster/tragedy, and sometimes life throws you a chance. It gets hard when life throws all of them at you in the same few weeks. Take the opportunity, work through the disaster as best you can, honor and remember the tragedy (today’s task), and put contingencies in place for the potential disasters/tragedies. And no, there’s no way you can do them all and keep everyone happy. Mostly because, people in disasters, people who’ve endured tragedy, don’t know what they need from you, and if you haven’t experienced something similar, you don’t know either. So if you meant to accept the opportunity, and then the disaster and tragedy occurs, you do your best, and know it won’t be enough.

Don’t be afraid to go after what you want to do, and what you want to be. But don’t be afraid to be willing to pay the price.
And of course with this one, the real challenge is, you never know the price until later. Sometimes two years later. You pay it, of course, but if you’d known the real price up front…well maybe it wouldn’t have seemed like an opportunity….

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mending whole was good as new. What is broken is broken – and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
This one is, from my experience, true, and I’m remembering it this few weeks.

Look after each other. Help each other remember it at its best.

Its kind of a gray Sunday morning here at brook hollow. Some bird songs I didn’t know woke me early. The birds know the days are getting longer, that Spring is just around the corner! I know this to be true as well since I’ve had my monster-pike dream, Bob and I casting to a pair of logs in a shallow bay a few weeks after ice-out, and watching the logs slowly swim away from the disturbance of our lures…the biggest fish I’d ever seen. I also saw another harbinger of Spring, the Cubs getting severely whooped by the Sox…so baseball is back!

I put the plaster in the oven to cook a bit more this morning. Yesterday’s day long exercise in melting out the wax hemispheres worked out pretty well I think. The paraffin does stain the plaster a bit, but I’ll see if I can sand that out this afternoon. I started making the shield elements for a new little assemblage yesterday as well, melting paraffin in the arced faces of the broken vase, then melting jeweler’s wire into the backside to support it. Seems to be working well so far. I tried to fly too close to the sun while doing it though. While paraffin is nicely white and variably translucent, I was hoping for a bit of color variation, so started melting some beeswax too.

Unwrapping the beeswax filled brook hollow with the scent of honey, amazing at first, a bit too much after a while. I went over the top when i tried to melt some it into those same glass-vase forms. The color was incredible, a golden color very close to honey. As I stood with the oven door open (got it a bit too hot and smoked up the place a little) and was breathing in the vaporized beeswax, my body reminded me that the last allergic reaction I had was to bee venom. I remembered the panic, tightness in my chest and trouble breathing from afternoons playing baseball in the “prairie” across the street from where I grew up. I’d run home, gasping and Mom would give me a tablespoon of some cough syrup and take me to Dr. Yahiro. I liked him, instead of a jolt of epinephrine, he gave me my own bottle of coca-cola and a hershey bar! He’d turn out the lights and talk to my Mom and I about controlling my breathing, giving me a cadence to follow, and wait until the caffeine and sugar had defeated my asthma.

So when I had the problem yesterday, I reached for the dove chocolates and a pepsi, seemed to do the trick, but left me feeling kind of worn out. Which is the long way around of saying the plaster is baking and I’m breathing well.

I took on the task of putting up 27 little canvases I’ve been piling paint on the last month or so. http://picasaweb.google.com/mjobrien1953/PrimitivePaintings#

Its kind of tricky since the wall isn’t flat and working alone the challenges of drawing a level line some eight feet long are more imposing than a person might think. I tried to use a high tech vacuum-adhered laser level thingy to project a laser line across the wall, but being the wall was bowed, the line didn’t make it the full distance. So I went back to basics, a four foot masons level, folding wood ruler, pencil hammer and nails.

Each of the tools used in the basic approach made me think of who gave me the tool, how they gave it to me, and how perfectly old memories fit your hands. The level is mahogany with inlaid brass edges. It was the first tool Erin and Maggie gave me. I remember their eyes as they handed it to me. I was really excited to receive it, a level that long made of nice wood and brass was a luxury I wouldn’t have indulged in myself. I don’t get to use it often, but remember leveling ground with it in the backyard on lee street, setting the first joists of Dad’s cabin addition with it, leveling cabinets in my office, the ghost ornament stencils here at brook hollow and today, my composition of three rows making 27 places for the canvases.

As I was marking out the locations for the nails, Melody Gardot sang “why you wanna leave when its so easy just to stay” which stopped me in my tracks. I lost the level line and had to start over. But the lyric says something about the power of momentum. Each painting, done each morning, was an exercise in overcoming inertia. Inertia is resistance…and I believe it to be what holds back so much change.

Inertia comes in many flavors…the “its cold and I don’t want to get out from under the covers” flavor (overcome with wool socks)…the “I’m not an artist, what i do isn’t art” flavor (overcome by painting, not making art)…the “supply store is too far away”…(just deal with it) the “it might be a mistake,” “i might mess it up,” “it won’t be like i expect it to be”…which i think can only be overcome by actually acting.

Action is never without risk. I’ve told my students (and myself) “when in doubt…act…you seldom get anywhere sitting on your bottom…as long as you are falling on your face when you fail, you’re moving in the right direction.” I do believe this, we have to act to overcome inertia, whether the goal is to intensify where we are, or move towards where we think we need to be…and make no mistake, there will be casualties…a stubbed toe moving towards the canvas in the early morning darkness…a wounded ego taking yourself public and finding out that the world really doesn’t notice…safe footing is always risked…and the immediate reward is seldom enough to overcome the discomfort, hurt, and pain you inflict on others by acting…

I read this line once “I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.”

I can’t say I fully understand that, but have been disappointing people around me pretty regularly…its instinct…but knowing i’ve disappointed many…is never far from my surface.

Nothing brings this out more than Spring it seems. The lengthening days, flowers appearing, warming temperatures are all signs of renewal. But the Springs that weigh on me happened recently, Spring of 2007 and Spring of 2008 were loss upon loss, each loss getting closer and heavier. And of the three losses, I know only one is mine. The others I don’t lay claim to. But they resonate like aftershocks, sending new waves of panic, anxiety, doubt rushing through. When they happened, you change modes, becoming organizer, resourcer, travel agent, scribe, and belated, if not ineffective protector.

After these roles pass, become unnecessary, whatever there is to feel comes home to roost. I know my mistake was not finding a way to integrate loss in my life when it happened and that my efforts at composing twenty seven in three today won’t be anything helpful in twenty days when my family and four other families try to get through the day, hundreds, thousands of miles apart, not being able to make it feel better, just trying to get through it. A few days later, my brother, sisters and I will do that again, and and fourteen days after that, thousands who were in blacksburg will do the same.

I have a friend who lost his Mom this week. I’m hoping he’ll not do as i did, but take time with his families now.

Spring’s happy, easter will be celebrated around the world from stonehenge to golgatha…the message is from the shortest day to the day of the vernal equinox there is a path of momentum, forward to longer days, more time for growth…which all seems to build off the past year’s life. We’ll see.

Remembering all who’ve lost in Spring’s past, I’m with you on those days, I won’t pester you as I know now that each of us has to feel…but…call if you’d like to chat.

Be very good to each other this season.
My best to you.

Its been pretty quiet here at Brook Hollow the last few weeks. The raccoons have carried off the last of the bird seed from the deck and I’ve had some seriously quiet time to make some things and pay more attention to things that are less obvious.

I was thinking back on an early October morning at the bonfire memorial here at Texas A&M. The sun was just breaking over the horizon, and the ground fog neatly filled the memorial grounds. All I could see were the topmost parts of the portals memorializing each student that died that early morning, the fog filled the rest of the bowl, it was a space, but the fog had given it a visible form. That form had been there since the memorial was constructed, and though I had visited it a number of times, I never could see the form of that space.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise as just a month or two later, a friend here sat with two students in my studio and rapidly diagnosed a missing design element that I hadn’t been able to put my finger on. He figured out that the physical hints, sometimes boundary walls, sometimes a lower portion of the ceiling, sometimes a pool of light, were describing a space that had very little form, and the design suffered from that lack of cohesion in the “invisible” part of the building design. I say this shouldn’t be a surprise because back in the Spring of 1987, when I interviewed for a teaching position, a senior faculty member, upon seeing a drawing I had done of the Pantheon in Rome, asked me if I saw myself as the black lines that defined the circular space of the floorplan, or of the whitespace defined within the lines. Without thinking I replied “the black.”

Some years later I chose to share half of my administrative position with a colleague I didn’t really know very well, but had an instinct that he would bring to the position, what I didn’t have. It turned out he had been asked a similar question by the same faculty member and had replied “the white.”

I’ve spent years, maybe decades learning about the visible things that make buildings, cars, organisms, streets and cities, how they work, why they don’t, and the visible signs of distress they exhibit before not working anymore.

As it turns out, what’s inside the things, be it wall, diesel, or street-front are evidence of an attitude, set of values, even beliefs. Its just harder to learn than the external appearances and components. The “way” of Volkswagen and Kia are different. They value different things, though both make similar four-wheeled contraptions. You only get a sense for the values when you actually look, maybe start to take apart whats under the skin. You find bolts that are inaccessible in one, and a sense the car was designed to be maintained in the other. Plastic bits that break and require replacement, and metal screws to remove and repair…all kinds of little differences that you can’t know with a first look at the appearance.

So the quiet weeks here have provoked some actions I wouldn’t have predicted months earlier. I’m painting, not anything a person would recognize, but enjoying the freedom of not having an appearance to imitate, seeing the form that results from the paint and brush, the weight or tremor in my hand, the stillness or energy inside me. I have no clue what it means, but instincts say to keep painting so I’ll listen to them.

When moving to Texas, I threw in some bits of materials that were the subject of skeptical comments back in Virginia. A great chunk of pine, some blocks of cedar, wire, a piece of 5/4 fir from the trim ornaments I carved over Erin and Maggie’s windows on Lee Street. I didn’t know why I kept them, or why I moved them, just that they were potentially something.

I’ve been combining those bits with some plaster cast in dollar store glass vases. I had chosen the glassware for some aspect of their external appearance, but upon removing the plaster (cook overnight and drip cold water on the glass…pop!) one can see some nuances resulting from the glass blowing or casting process that were invisible when just looking at the outside. Subtle peaks and smooth edge transitions that are inside the glass, are never really visible when we use these vases for their functional purpose. When filled with water and flowers, the vase surrenders any beauty it may have inside to the flash and attention lavished on the flowers.

So inside, there can be a complexity and nuance that might not be apparent from a first look…. I’m learning that, slowly, seeing what’s in the mirror may not be all there is to it.

Take a look at what’s inside of people and things around. I’m learning that what I thought I knew, I didn’t. And what I thought I didn’t know, some part of my inner form or instinct, kind of knew but somehow i kept looking at the flowers and so never saw.

These things make less sense the more one types so I’ll stop now.

Be good to each other, maybe a bit more tolerance will allow an insight the first look doesn’t afford.

Take Care

The days are sloooowly getting longer now. The sun is up to wake me each morning, but still not around when I get home.

Tonight the moon was pretty impressive. A brilliant small crescent was all that was visible of the moon, with only the faintest hint of the rest of its circular profile visible in the early night. It struck me that the moon was smiling, something I’d never noticed before.

It was too low on the western horizon to take a photo, but its an image I’ll long remember. I don’t have too many strong memories of the night sky, one other I remember is sitting with a group of people outside after Pat and Paul’s wedding. It was really dark, we were somewhere near Larry Byrd’s hometown not too close to city lights, and the clear night was filled with stars. What made it especially memorable was being able to see the ecliptic plane. This incredible alignment of the planets of our solar system appeared in the sky, making a connect-the-dots tilted arc. It was as if the heavens aligned for their wedding.

As I try to sleep, my mind seems to come to life at full speed. The list of things that need doing, things I’d like to do, things I must do the next day, things I didn’t get done today, all seem to scroll by in an endless loop. Sometimes I wake up and write them down. This often helps me sleep because by the time I get to the end of the list, its almost time to wake up.

The “to-do’s” don’t weigh on me too often. Tomorrow’s an exception to that rule…talking about negotiated settlements is pretty unsettling. But the “wish I hadn’t” list is one that weighs heavily on me. It’s kind of a long scroll, one that seems to increase logarithmically with age, an indication that I’m on the gradual downslope part of life maybe.

I’ve learned from some of the “wish I hadn’ts” on the list, but not as many, or as quickly as I should. Some go hand in hand with “wish I hads” mostly those are “wish I had seen then what I can see now” mostly those are decades-old but, they’re still around. I’ve had instincts, feelings about people, places, requests, demands and usually I shrug them off, being convinced I was over-reacting, and things will get better in time. They can, but only if a person works them out right when they occur. It’s true you can’t second-guess life. If I had put my foot down, acted on my instincts, some lives would have been very very different, which is to say, longer I think. I remember feeling that a high-school friend was working unusually hard to avoid me during one week. I told myself he was changing groups, from our nerdy lunch club to one of the more with-it groups of kids, and something about them didn’t seem right, but, I thought, who am I to say? I learned he had gone to a party with them, and then inexplicably, climbed a high tension tower and grabbed the wire. There’s been a few things like that, mostly between high school and a few years ago, that I remember on most nights, knowing, but not knowing, what would have made a difference? What would make a difference tomorrow?

A list of simple sayings scrolls through most evenings. They aren’t original, and I usually can’t consistently live them, but are usually my final thoughts before drifting off:
…when in doubt, act…
…as long as you fall on your face, you’re moving in the right direction
…the right thing is seldom the path to pleasure, but is still the right thing
…initiative distinguishes one from the many
…leaders are more interested in the success of their team, than their own
…know what you live for, live for your purpose
…if you don’t know the right answer, give three or more, then choose the best of what you have
…(this one is easy in design work, impossible in life for me) put your problems together to make a new question, a new possibility
…don’t hit “send” for a few hours…or days
…every once in a while, be the grasshopper, not the ant…

Some other things that scroll past, vividly good, and not so good, but on the same scroll: the birth of my daughters (incredibly good), missing the death of my father, touching an oak box on a cold windy hill and having it knock me down, a silent drift down a windless shoreline at dawn, seeing the first snow of the season, seeing the last snow of the season, shaking the hands of students coming off the graduation stage, not being there with my students on an early April day, being there when a poet lifted a university on her shoulders, watching someone laugh from their toes-when you never thought you’d see them laugh again, seeing the pain i’ve caused in others, finding a universe in a tidepool and infinity on a beach…

You get the picture, sleeping is hard, not just for me, but lots of us. I think we have to let ourselves off the hook sometimes…usually by owning up to what we did and what we felt. Others help us by standing by, standing up, sometimes standing in. Ok, I’ve lost the train of thought. It must be time for sleep!

Take Care, help each other off the hook, read the faces around you and do what you can, but let them do the final lifting to get off the hook, you can’t do it for them…

Smile to each other, like tonight’s moon did to us all.

I’m making scrambled eggs for dinner tonight.

I was walking around the kitchen, holding the eggs, looking in the fridge for other ingredients. Trying to think healthy and not immediately grab the cheese, of course I dropped one. It didn’t splat, but hit right on the round end, cracking enough to begin leaking. I put it in a bowl and it emptied out. Not all at once, I had to shake it a few times but didn’t break it further. Once empty, I was amazed at its lightness, and its strength.

Looking closer, feeling the surface, you could tell it wasn’t actually smooth. There were bumps on it. The shell was thicker in some places, and thinner in others.

We think about eggshells “being formed” as if it was an automatic process…I guess it is a biological function, uncontrollable by the chicken, but I like to think that some higher power, call it what you will, supreme being, evolutionary imperative, its not important to name specifically. Somehow, there was a knowledge that life, as it is taking form, needs protection.

Protection from what? All things external to the womb? Sure to a large extent, the shell protects from impact, too much light, its not a universal shield though. The egg must still be kept warm, and protected against being squashed.

You hear people say “so and so is coming out of their shell” as a way of saying a person is emerging as themselves, and are ready to face the world without the protection the shell offered. It takes work to get out of ones shell I think.

I remember seeing on “The Wonderful World of Disney” shows about chicks breaking out of shells, alligators breaking out of shells, turtles, even a duckbill platypus! The process was remarkably similar for all the species, what was inside began poking, pecking, chipping away at the shell until it cracked. Then there always seemed to be a period of resting. Then more poking and pecking, and the hole in the shell got bigger, and bigger. Then more resting. Then a final burst of energy, and what was inside flopped out into the nest. Usually they were a mess, still covered with what nourished them, feathers askew, and exhausted by the process. They’d rest some more, then finally roll and tumble and scramble around the nest. Probing its limits, poking their head outside.

I remember seeing the parent alligator scooping up the squeaking, emerging babies in their mouth, and shuttling back and forth between the safety of the nest, and the safety of the water giving the emergent generation an extra chance to survive the first few moments in the world.

Turtles weren’t so lucky. They’d emerge en masse and sprint (for a turtle) to the edge of the water, hoping their mass numbers would let a few survive being plucked up by seabirds.

I can’t remember any species moving in and out of their shells. But I think it would be a handy trait to have. To be able to retreat to the quiet place where you first became aware. Kept warm by your family nest so you could re-emerge from time to time. There’s probably a reason why nature doesn’t do that. Still, I’d like to leave it in the suggestion box.

I pull back to my shell from time to time in life. Mine isn’t the translucent perfection of an egg, with its clear form. Mine seems to change, a competition here, a book there, obscure details in history I really don’t know why I enjoy learning, writing this blog, a bit of wood and a sharp tool, a fountain pen and a good piece of handmade paper. These are safe places for me. Its true, you could say I hide in them. But its not really hiding I don’t think. Its just a safe, quiet place to develop.

That’s what makes a shell more than a boundary. Its really three dimensional. A space for growth.

Its true that to re-emerge, one will have to invest effort. Poking, pecking at the shell until you hear it crack, see a bit of daylight, then you can rest for a little while and build up some energy to make the crack larger, pressing the pieces to the side and taking that first breath of air. I remember that’s what the first step out of the car in the pine woods at the lake was like… a first breath. Then some more rest, building energy, flopping around, learning the limits of the nest, and preparing for the mad dash to the edge of the water. Operating on instinct, knowing there are risks, predators looking to feed themselves. But believing that if you make it, life in the water will be more fulfilling than in the nest, in the shell.

If you come across my shell, step lightly, I’m in here working, building energy for the next emergence.

Step lightly wherever you tread. Respect the shells you come across. If you see an emergent floundering, help get them safe passage to the water.

Be good to each other.

Time for dinner.

I fell down yesterday, big time. Somehow I thought I could actually catch up with a fly ball over my head…on lumpy ground…that was very very soft following a few days of rain.

I saw that the ball was over my head almost right after Marcel hit it. I took the right first step, but was backpedaling before I knew it. At the last moment, glove over and behind my head, I did what you’re not supposed to do, jumped.

The ball smacked the glove, I closed the pocket around it but was already in full stumble, falling on my back, my speed (well.. it WAS technically speed… just not fast) took me over on my neck, shoulder and splashed down on my knee. In true ESPN form I lifted the glove up to show the 7? year old I was playing with that I had caught the ball.

It didn’t take long for my body to tell me this was a silly thing to do and this morning as I lay on the wood floor warmed by the sun, picking at my all-vitamin cereal while a pan of fresh brownies sits on the stove, my body is still asking me “what did you think you were doing catching that ball?”

But that moment when the ball hit the glove was a pure instant. I didn’t think, I just acted. Didn’t evaluate the ground, just jumped. As I ache this morning I was wondering…was I just in denial about my age when I put the glove on?

Maybe when faced with the opportunity for something good its hard to make an informed choice. (thinking about brownies for breakfast instead of wheat flakes) Somewhere deep inside though, we’re often fighting with the inner voices that say “c’mon, have some fun” and “hey! act your age”

So if you can’t always get what you want, how do you know that what you’re getting is what you need? I’m sure its all about balance, and if mine was better maybe I wouldn’t have rolled and splatted in the field after the catch. Instinctively, we take risks. Sometimes we make the catch, sometimes we splat…and pay for it later.

But thinking back to the moment the ball hit the glove, there was a feeling of satisfaction I don’t think I could have had watching others leap and fall.

This is all pretty convoluted. I’m thinking of the satisfaction my Dad had in making fires in his fireplace, even if it meant going up on the roof to point the brick chimney. The fire in the fireplace took him back somewhere, gave him satisfaction that he could still split wood, still knew how to build up the tinder to have a “one match” fire, satisfaction in the sound, the smell, the heat, all things that are pure moments, real things done at a risk, but so much more rewarding than watching a fire on tv.

So we can proceed through life safely, not taking risks, denying ourselves brownies for breakfast, or we can deny our limitations and jump for the ball. Might as well jump, even though I know there will be some aches and pains as a result.

unless…

On the way home I remember making what i thought was a similarly amazing catch during American Legion baseball tryouts. The other players on the field congratulated me on the way into the dugout, I felt pretty good at that moment. Then a coach sat down next to me and said “son, you have slow feet,” pretty much saying that if I was faster, I wouldn’t have to make spectacular falling catches.

So, if I was better prepared, had worked to be ready to jump, maybe I wouldn’t have splatted so hard.

All this of course is a way to talk about love and the risks we take with it. If we do the work (on ourselves…no fair “fixing” the other person) maybe we’ll have faster feet, be able to chase down the ball over our head AND avoid rolling and splatting in the mud.

I can see another question though, sometimes a second baseman needs to look carefully at the fly ball and tell the outfielder “its yours.” There’s another blog there but it’ll be even more confusing than this one.

I’ll finish my healthy cereal now, and just peek at the brownies.

Take Care, do the work to be prepared for the fly, avoid the splat.
Be good to each other.