DUCK DEFEATS DOG: Seeing Nature's Courage

At sunset, walking along Carte Madera Creek, I spotted a mother duck leading six duckings in classic formation. To my left, a huge dog, a Labrador, charged down the bank, leaped into the water and paddled toward the ducks. The mother quacked wildly and sped away, the ducklings in swift tow. The dog pursued them. From my right, an egret, white wings spread wide, squawked and swooped over the dog. Undeterred, the dog gained on the ducks. Still quacking, the mother duck wheeled around and charged at the dog. The egret circled and swooped at the dog again. The dog turned and head for shore. Two ducks flapped into the scene and planted themselves, wing to wing, in the water between the dog and the mother with her ducklings. The dog climbed onto the bank and shook the water from his fur.

When I usually walk along this waterway I delight in the beauty and variety of the birds gathering food, preening their feathers and gliding the air currents. To see this individual and collective show of courage opened a connection I can't put into words yet. It has something to do with the shared journey of the soul dwelling on the earth, something to do with what connects us through our different appearances as ducks, dogs, egrets and humans.

The Power of Anonymous Art & Nature

One of the qualities of nature that is never mentioned in attempts to dwell in harmony with the earth is that nature creates anonymously. We may call a mountain "Everest" or a lake "Tahoe" but the mountain and the lake never claim those titles. They are too busy with other work to worry if they are the tallest and the most beautiful.

This thought was sparked the other day when I heard about an art exhibit where the doors opened before the staff had a chance to put the names of the artists and the titles next to each painting. The people attending the exhibit we confused; they didn't know how to evaluate the work and whether the person who created it was worthy of respect or not. Some were angry; not having the names posted was so unprofessional. Few, if any, looked at the art and opened to a direct encounter with it. Without the conceptual framework of name, style, price, and all the other things that they believed made something worth their attention, the art lovers were lost. Many artists whose work would be shown in such an exhibit would have been outraged; how will I get paid? How will people know I created this great work.

What if nature took a similar approach. What if bees only buzzed around flowers labeled with the maker's name? What if water only flowed along approved waterways? What if an apple tree only produced fruit with a copyright and the assurance that its would get a percentage of each use of its apples? Nature, in it's anonymous flow, doesn't worry about the concerns of naming, categorizing, and controlling that drive so much of our activity.

The problem isn't that we want to draw attention to ourselves or receive benefit for our creations. It's that labeling and listing what we see limits our experience of life. The moment we jam a tree into the box and divide it up into "tree", "oak", "quercus", useful, beautiful, cost to maintain, historic or not, etc, we jam ourselves into a mode of perceived that looks at the past and future. We miss what's happening at the moment of encounter. We miss the encounter and interact with our ideas about the tree and not the tree.

On the other hand, our minds are made to label. Its helpful to remember that walking through poison oak, then taking a hot bath, will put you into a world of hurt. The problem is not the narrative, it's believing that the constant talk of the mind is the reality of the oak tree and the poison oak. Seeing through the narrative and opening our perception to what is actually before us is the way great artists make breakthrough art. Maybe its the way we can dwell in actual harmony with the earth.

The Architecture of Healing

We've forgotten the power of architecture. The thought thunders through my brain as I descend into the Great Kiva at Aztec New Mexico. Three-foot thick adobe walls wrap the circular room. Overhead, massive tree-trunk beams weave a latticework roof. Stillness charges the space. My lungs sigh. Mind hums. At the midpoint of the ceiling, a shaft of sunlight blasts through a square opening. Wheeling Sun churns stable Earth. Opposing forces unite and swirl. This structure is not designed by a clever ego. It did not arise from the same worldview that built the sterile new hospital a mile down the road. This is not a place of fear and wounding side effects. Instead, the kiva frames the mystery of being and becoming. It is an architecture of healing.

In the kiva that day, I saw that most attempts to create healing places are based on the belief that we can separate ourselves from the processes of living. It's a world that says we can divide life into parts and keep the "good" while tossing out the "bad." In the process we fail to see that attempting break life up is what causes breakdowns, mentally, physically and spiritually.

On the other hand, the kiva embodies what I have encountered in sacred, healing places around the world. It concretizes the truly holistic worldview that provides a space where all the forces of life are invited to play out their roles in the cosmic earth dance. Birth, growth, decay, death and renewal are embraced as sustainers of the bodies of individuals and the world. To me, these sacred places say, "Fighting with life and trying to control it is wounding. Embracing its uncertainty and its change is healing."

The Music in Everyday Architecture

"I call architecture frozen music." It's easy to catch a buzz of inspiration from Goethe's famous phrase, then move along through the day. If I stop for a moment and take his observation to heart, I see the buildings and city around me as a world of suspended rhythms, melodies and harmonies. Like bells ready to intoned or guitars ready to strummed, the walls and windows I pass are ready to be seen in ways that resonate their silence into sound. The shapes of roofs and pillars are primed to be encountered in ways that reveal their rhythmic structure. When you add in shifting sunlight and shadows, patterns of color, textures of stone, wood and other materials, the symphony is staggering.

From this perspective, designing architecture is akin to composing a song or a sonata. In fact, this was the organizing principle of architecture for centuries. "...the numbers by which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight, are the same which please our eyes and our minds...We shall therefore borrow all our rules for harmonic relations from the musicians to whom this kind of number is extremely well known, and from those particular things wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and complete," wrote the Renaissance architect, Alberti.

With this in mind, look around the room you are in. Take in the forms, colors, textures and qualities of light. Imagine them as sounds and rhythms and see what you discover. The next time to set the table for a meal, imagine you are arranging the notes and beats of a song. See how it changes your experience of the objects. Maybe the music frozen in the design of each thing will melt and into a more connected and fluid experience of place.

Soul Fires at the Core of Dwelling

Primal acts of place-making renew the world. The vital task of caring for the hearth narrates the whole story of creation. In Ireland, the tradition of Smooring the Fire embodies the birth of diversity from the oneness of existence. At the end of the day, the cooking and warming fire is put to rest, but not extinguished in the following ritual. "The embers are spread evenly on the hearth--which is generally in the middle of the hearth--and formed into a circle. This circle is then divided into three equal sections, a small boss being left in the middle. A line of peat is laid between each section, each peat touching the boss, which forms a common center. The first peat is laid down in the name of the God of Life, the second in the name of the God of Peace, the third in the name of the God of Grace. The circle is then covered with ashes sufficient to subdue but not to extinguish the fire, in the name of the Three of Light. The heap, slightly raised in the center, is called 'Tula nan,' the Hearth of the Three. When the smooring operation is complete, the woman closes her eyes, stretches her hand, and softly intones one of the many formulae current for these occasions."

This ritual links the structure of home to the structure of conscious through which we perceive the world. Within the oneness of Being a spark of consciousness awakens to itself. The One appears to become the Three, The Perceiver, The Perceived and The Process of Perception. Every experience in life and architecture is seen through this lens. I (Perceiver) look out (Process of Perception) at the garden of the world (Perceived). How I interpret what I see determine how I shape the world into structures for dwelling. With each perception, I am smooring the fire of of living, tend the hearth of new creation.

Touching Architecture's Soul

A gleaming cube of glass and steel shimmering against the sky can dazzle my eye and glow in my mind. Curling up on a cozy sofa can soothe my heart and ease my bones. Yet, there are folds in my being that seek out the currents of the soul, places where I feel truly alive. Throughout my life I've been drawn to places were I touch those primal currents. I'm not sure what pulls me there. It's not to fantasize about idealized days of yore. It's not to find some solid ground in the shifting terrain of the contemporary world or to solve an esoteric puzzle. It's not to escape the confusing questions about how to live a sane life in an insane world. In fact, it's the opposite.

When I descend a rough wooden ladder into an ancient kiva or climb a mountain of steps to a hand carved temple, I encounter forces that are hidden by the distractions of modern life. I remember that much of what we do is an attempt to escape these elemental powers animating the world. Pressing schedules, flashy entertainments and constant focus on problems keeps us feeling in control or that we had better get in control. When I sit on a granite ledge in a dimly lit cave shrine, feel the cool air on my shoulders, and listen to utter silence, I re-enter the womb of raw life force. I experience an outer, physical structure that reflects and resonates with the silent, still core of Being within me and the world.

Why I do this, what it means, what is the effect, I don't know and don't care. These concerns come from the part of my brain that believes life is better when everything fits into a neat, little box. Luckily, as sure as the ocean tides ebb and flow, the indescribable currents within me seek out and flow toward places where I can touch the silent/humming of the soul.

Digital Monuments to Freedom

Monuments mostly capture ideas, lives and events in frozen gestures and forms. The Statue of Liberty steadily holds the torch of freedom aloft; Lincoln sits stonily in his temple; bronze Marines stand in mind-hoist, about to plant a rigid bronze flag, replicating the flag raised at Iwo Jima. In these digital times, however, vivid monuments to the human drama are elusive and fleeting. The powerful images beaming from Iran are today's monuments, vital this morning and gone by night.

The beauty of these digital monuments is that they are made of flowing energy and shifting imagination. For thousands of years memorials and shrines, made of stone and rigid belief, were intended to capture life in mental amber. They preserved the false image of the perfect instant, the unblemished gesture. Now, digital monuments honor the dynamism of actual life. The heros and gods don't dwell on the granite peak of Mount Olympus, they live in the shifting pictures and sounds reflecting messy real time heroics in the streets halfway round the globe.

Certainly democracy can be made real in honestly counted votes. In the streets of Tehran, it is being born and finding new life through the monumental the gestures of the people.

Design is Life Awakening to Its Possibilities

Design expresses the process of life becoming consciousness of itself. Usually, we don't think of it this way. Instead, we imagine designed objects, like buildings, computers and shoes, being the work of an individual designer shaping raw materials into a form that serves our needs. "Does this _______ make me happy?" is the central question regarding everything from coffee cups to cities. While this has its practical value, it mainly has the effect of reducing the life force within us to a judge who divides the world into things that are satisfying and things that are not. The mind constantly works to stay satisfied, but suffers from almost continual dissatisfaction.  Cue up Mick singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction."

Maybe design isn't mainly about satisfying our personal preferences. Perhaps creating buildings, roads, bicycles and eyeglasses is a process of life working through us to discover its possibilities. I'm not talking about life as some Wizard of Oz character standing behind a curtain pulling levers and pushing buttons to make things happen. I'm talking about it as a spaciousness within which flows of energy move into matter, shaping and reshaping it for nor reason but to explore possibilities. It does this endlessly through countless beings, substances, patterns, randomness and who knows what else.

From this perspective, we are released from the tyranny of "getting it right" and are free to choose kitchen sinks, doorknobs, and roof shingles as acts of play. The size and arrangements of rooms can become a reflection of how the life force within you actually wants to inhabit the world, not how your mind believes it should dwell here.

Instead of judging various the buildings in your neighborhood according to whether or not they conform to rules of right and wrong design, take a few minutes to experience them as waves in the ocean existence. Imagine them as a momentary picture of life energy rising and falling, shifting into forms that will eventually move into other forms. Watch how the sunlight explores the possibilities of color and shadow as it travels across the exterior walls. See how the plants change the scene at different times of the year. See the life force within you experiencing the life force around you as waves of energy discovering its possibilities through matter. 

Creating Beyond Ego

I love creative genius. I delight in participating in the creative process and feel frustrated when the creative juices running through me crash into obstacles. With the me-centered structure of the human mind coloring every thought word and action, I, like most people, have seen myself as the center of my creative endeavors. For a number of years, however, that sense of authorship has been crumbling. The sense of creative control and mastery I once thought was mine has given way to the experience of being a wave in the creative ocean of living.

Instead, it appears more authentic to own up to the fact that my personal viewpoint is not the source, course and manifestation of the creative process. As an architect, my work is the continuation of a line of designers and builders that stretches into the dim past when someone used some branches to make a primal shelter for a sacred fire. In the future, there will be countless architects and builders struggling with the same issues of making a roof both waterproof and inspiring. With each design choice, I draw on the past and peer into future possibilities. Yet, I do this through a cultural lens that I learned from those who came before me. Look and any design magazine and you will see that most of the buildings of a certain era share qualities of design that reflect the mindset of that era.

Beyond that, I daily inherit countless other factors that shape my creative work. The language I speak, my gender, where I live on the planet, the food I eat, etc. are not of my making, but they influence my thinking and actions. The more I look at this situation the more I realize that the me I hold as so individual and separate has little individuality and no separateness. 

To my sense of creative identity, this is terrifying and confusing. It's terrifying because my identify is based in the idea that separateness protects me and makes my actions worthwhile. It's confusing because I'm unsure how to create from a place that is not self-centered.

In response, I've abandoned goal-oriented projects. The bright ideas that once spurred me to engage in writing a book that might take months or years of sweat and to complete now dissolve almost as soon as they arise. Now, I open to the creative flow and see where it takes me. Currently, something is developing that, interestingly enough, may be the most original work I've done. Why I'm pursuing this, I don't know. Fantasies of saving the world while gaining fame and fortune seem childish. They dilute the task at hand. I seem to be creating simply because that's what I do. I'm less like the image of the genius artist in his studio and more like an apple tree producing fruit.

In this time of so many sincere efforts to save the planet, the children and other valuable causes, I wonder if we might be more effective if we checked our ego-centered notions of creativity and healing at the door, sensed our individual waves of identity as movements in the ocean of living, and let the genuine currents moving within carry us away.

 

The Shimmering Gate of the Mind, Architecture & World

Architecture provides a shimmering gate into the fluid structure of the mind and the world. We're usually too busy to notice this. When I stop for a moment and really look, I realize I'm not seeing the building in front of me at all. Instead, I'm seeing my thoughts about it. More likely, I'm seeing my thoughts about 1,000 other things. The constant mind flow cascades like a waterfall between me and the object I imagine I'm looking at. The me in this case is that silent observer that is aware of my thoughts. What I'm looking at might be a gas station or a museum, but I can't them for the flood of thought between us. 

The problem with this is that I believe my thoughts are the architecture. But they are simply the story my mind is spinning about the architecture. "It's this style."..."It's well designed."..."It's a piece of crap."... "I could have designed it better."... And the problem with that is being lost in my mind's thought video reinforces the sense of a separate self that can be supported or harmed. It reinforces a disconnect from life, instilling fear and isolation.

Becoming aware of this process of me, the mind stream and the architecture on the other side of it, allows me to see through the waterfall of thoughts and actually perceive the architecture. When that happens, I see how the architecture is a solidification of the cultural mind-stream we dwell within. I see reflections of the collective hopes and fears, the creativity and mediocrity, the economics and the politics. I see how we live within structures of the mind and believe we are living in the world.

Looking deeper still, I see passed the designed form into spaciousness, into that silent hum of unmoving movement. That's when things get interesting. I see that a piece of architecture doesn't have to be only about itself. It doesn't have to scream, "Look at me!" It can be a gateway into the womb of creative energy and wisdom. It can be can opening to connection and peace. Architecture can be a portal to new possibilities and freedom.