Monthly Archives: October 2014

Shining Clarity

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At the end of a yoga class a while back, I was visited by a marvelous insight. The class sat facing the teacher after Savasana for our Namaste and goodbye. I caught sight of someone’s water bottle standing alone in the space between the group and the teacher. It was a clear orangey plastic and the water inside was glowing with light. Looking around, the room was rather dim. The windows were far away from this spot. Certainly, no direct shaft of light was hitting the bottle. I imagined that light is as dense and real a medium as air, and as ever-present. It takes a glowing water bottle to reveal that. As though the water is in league with the light — standing in the gravity-defying vertical column of that vessel.

The sudden insight was this: we are like that water in the bottle. Our substance can glow just like that — as the light flows around and through us. Continue reading →

Taking flight

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Recently, while playing the piano, it struck me that sometimes (okay, rarely) it feels like I’m suddenly taking flight. I’ll be playing a difficult piece, technically. I know all the notes, but my fingers still have to play them accurately. There’s so much to think about – dynamics, fingering, evenness of striking the keys, emotion – and yet it’s the very effort that gets in the way of playing it well, let alone transcendently.

Taking flight is that point where the effort falls away and everything just becomes easy and free and beautiful. Not by coincidence, that’s when it sounds the best. Continue reading →

Shedding Water

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Learning architecture properly takes years, decades really. Architecture students are notoriously dedicated to their design studios and lackluster about all other subjects, including what was called in my day, “Tech,” but is now “Building Science,” the study of the physical realities of buildings. Tech Professors were always the geekiest and most boring people, wash-ups from related professions like mechanical equipment sales. Stupid from all nighters in the design studio, we weathered their classes in a sleep-deprived haze. We pried our eyelids open in cavernous basement classrooms to view forensic slides of rotted insulation and rusting metal structures, failures that could have been avoided with better window flashing.

Jim Tuley, my graduate school detailing professor, changed all that. He approached detailing – the intricate thinking-through of how a building is put together – with the focus of a Zen monk and the casual profanity of a 1960s Malibu surfer. Continue reading →

Scarcity: It’s What’s for Breakfast

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2014_7.13

I am an aspiring author. There, I’ve said it. Four years of architecture school, two-and-a-half years of grad school, five years of internship, six months of daily studying, a week of exams, licensure, some more jobs, five businesses, dozens of projects and – now you say, you want to be a writer? What are you thinking?

What can I say? I got the call. You know, the call that Joseph Campbell talks about that kicks off the “hero’s journey.” D.H. Lawrence, in this poem, named it the “three strange angels” who knock on your door in the middle of the night. You don’t really want to answer, but you know it can’t be avoided. They’ll just keep coming back until you answer. Continue reading →

Following the Muse

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I have been journaling daily for two or three years and have come to depend on it as much as I need sleep. This turning inward has served me in many ways: practice getting in the flow of writing, a source of wisdom, keeping me honest (self-deception doesn’t fly on those pages), guiding me to juicy questions and insights, putting ideas together in new ways, and generally reminding me that I am not alone. This journal is my muse, spirit guide, big sister, unconditionally loving mother, and best friend, all rolled into a slim, black-bound, creamy-paged Moleskine. Continue reading →