An act of creation is not just about making something new, something that never existed before. It’s also about the impact that the created object has on its surroundings. Think about public sculpture that is placed on a highway median simply because the space is available and the city council believes that art will “class…
To me maintenance feels like a chore. It’s something you have to do, but it detracts from all the things you could be doing. But there’s another way of looking at maintenance. You are keeping something alive. In this sense you aren’t simply maintaining. You are gardening. The Garden and Desire A garden is a…
There seems to be something in the human heart that longs for a garden. Perhaps a garden is an analogy for wholeness. Maybe it’s something more. We are stardustBillion year old carbonWe are goldenCaught in the devil’s bargainAnd we’ve got to get ourselvesback to the garden Joni Mitchell – Woodstock This devil’s bargain, at least…
In this fictionalized account of a real two-week motorcycle trip that Robert Pirsig took with his son Christopher and two friends, Pirsig explores a number of philosophical themes through informal observations that he calls “Chautauquas.” At the start of the story Pirsig sets up a conflict between two mindsets, the Romantic and the Classical. The…
In Zen Buddhsim there is an idea of “just sitting”. One is not trying to attain enlightenment or achieve any goal other than sitting. One aspires to sit completely. Robert Pirsig makes an connection with motorcycle repair, that it can be “just fixing.” One is completely absorbed in the work of repair, to the point…
Wild Rye has gone through a couple of phases, including a stint as a sort of adventure blog. There were trail notes, gear reviews, and survival tips. Well, Wild Rye isn’t really an adventure blog now. But some of these posts are still informative and if you’ve gotten this far, by all means take a…
Early in his career as an architect Christopher Alexander began to notice that certain buildings, plazas, and parks had a transcendent quality. They were more interesting to look at, and felt better to be a part of, than many other buildings. There was a vibrancy and presence to this structures that set them apart. But…
This is the fourth part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this fourth book introduces a second aspect of living structure, and that’s the essence of the “Self.” When a building or a work…
This is the third part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this third book he presents practical examples of projects that he has participated in. He shares experimental processes and methods. At the heart…
This is the second part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this second book he goes into more detail about the unfolding process and how certain changes of form will preserve the inherent structure…
This is the first part of an extensive four part essay by Christopher Alexander, exploring the deep fundamentals of architecture, especially what gives a building a transcendent feeling of being “alive.” In this first book he explores this quality of life, and how it can be found in everything from forests to minerals. For example,…
There is a distinction between life and things that are alive. Life includes things that are are alive, cats. It also includes things that are not alive but are the byproducts of life processes – sofas. And in between are viruses – organisms that have no homeostasis and cannot reproduce without host cells – meaning…
Almost all of us have a sense of awe when we see a magnificent sunset or walk through a dense forest. We have the same feeling when we visit a great cathedral or see a work of art. There is something about the colors, the complexity, the arrangement, the variation, that strikes us deeply but…
One of the things that surprised Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi when he was doing surveys about pleasure and enjoyment was the universal agreement on what constituted an enjoyable experience. He found that people from all cultures, all stages of life shared the same sense of what made an activity truly enjoyable. Moreover, widely differing activities from art…
If we think about structure and space in different ways than we are accustomed to, we start to see that structures that we previously regarded as inanimate actually do have degrees of life. In fact there is not a clear distinction between things that are alive and things that are not alive. It is actually…
