Photo: From the Brooklyn Museum of Art Another evocative passage by way of Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Eyes of the Skin. (More quotes from the book here, and more will be posted in the future since I have been in a state of awe regarding this book for some time.) The role of the hand and […]
Wisdom
The Strange Notes of our Wildness
The flying foxes (bats) in Sydney’s Hyde Park. They are an extreme statement of wildness very close at hand. It is not skill, knowledge, intellect, good luck or bad, but choosing to feel the strange notes of our wildness, for there is not nothingness despite the easy magic of despair. Another moment spent in the […]
- Technology
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Getting Closer to Wise
Is it a fence or a tree? Or both? A friend described her experience with a therapy technique that has helped her family tremendously. She distilled the approach down to 2 sentences: I am doing the best I can. I can do better. Learning to hold these two dialectical statements as true at the same […]
Going with Gist Rather than Speed
It’s inevitable. You just can’t ignore the fact that you used to run more effortlessly. That you used to acquire new information rapidly. That new data went into a file that was always open (as opposed to the vague middle-age hope that you can get “same day service” on a search for something you know […]
In Praise of Everyday Living
Partially frozen fountain at Ojo Caliente, New Mexico I am in a bit of a detached and quiet place these days, a state of mind that is drawing me to Zen concepts, Zen words. One of my daily rituals when I arrive at the studio is to flip open Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao […]
The Complex Whole
Monastery in Ladakh, 2008 Terrance Keenan’s book, St. Nadie in Winter: Zen Encounters with Loneliness, has been my companion while traveling for the last few days. An enigmatic mix of Zen wisdom—part personal memoir, poetry and recovery confessional—Keenan has offered me a rich variation on that unique conversation that can happen with a book. Early […]
Feeling the Dream
Mandala, a symbol of enduring mystery (Rubin Museum of Art) A few months ago New Directions came out with a reissue of Jorge Luis Borges’ Seven Nights. Based on a lecture series Borges delivered in Buenos Aires in 1977, the book is full of the themes that will feel familiar to anyone who has read […]
- Art Making
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The Oleaginous Zone
Bless Jerry Saltz for keeping the cultural landscape lively. His Facebook page and passionate following are legendary and talked about everywhere (and sometimes with a derision that smells to me like rank envy.) His blend of the personal with a genuine advocacy for art and artists is unique in the high visibility cultural critic realm. […]
Something to Say
Green glass in my studio window Continuing on a theme of Fitzgerald… To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and worry and endless ratiocination of subject – of endless trying to dig out the essential truth, the essential justice. As a first premise you have to develop a conscience and if […]
Choose Ye This Day
Outside a Hindu shrine in Maharashtra, India In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. –David Foster Wallace If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If […]