You can write, but you can’t edit…

I was walking down the street the other day, when my bike had a flat. It’s almost unheard of that I’d make the walk in to work, since the bike ride takes just about 10 minutes. However, at this time of year a morning walk can be really wonderful. There are puddles and sunshine and there’s that good old crisp fall air. In a poetic mood, I drafted this poem in my head:

The trees grow from golden pools
or red skirts dropped to their ankles
in lust last night

And immediately thought of posting it to my faceybook page, where just the night before I had posted:

The late night laundry/agitates in the basement/soap in a dark tub

and

warm from the dryer/knits, delicates, and denim/so many colors

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I generally believe that the poetry that I write mostly in my head doesn’t do so well once it’s written down, and even those verses that translate to physicality fairly well don’t always last for me. Almost as soon as I had written the little tree ditty down, I realized that what sounded lovely in my mind was really trite/derivative/uninteresting. Nice to think, but not so necessary to share. (I do realize the irony here.)

On that line of thought, and what with walking into work, where all I do all day is edit, I pondered for a moment the fact that much of our communication these days is unedited. I imagine that was always the case – kind of like buildings that were designed by architects, communiques that were edited must only make up a small portion of documents, and an even smaller portion of all communication. Kind of interesting to just ponder for a moment all the communication in the world. But, I digress. While this has always been the case, now we proudly share these mostly unedited thoughts in a public and fairly long-term manner. I don’t wish to make this another post about the problems of our modern world, but I couldn’t help but thinking that editing is sorely missing from our world. I am excited and interested by our vast new opportunities for self expression – I’m here, aren’t I – but I wonder what we loose when we don’t review, rewrite, and on occasion, censor ourselves. In particular, what are the political implications to this manner of comporting ourselves?

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On a different note, I’ve failed recently. I intended to write something wonderful for Blog Action Day, and to participate in 350.org’s giant day of climate action. In fact, I begged off the first one and casually ignored the second to go watch a Ducks game. If I’m not taking climate action, who is?

I have succeeded, on the other hand, in enjoying life a good bit more than I was before. I’m sewing and making other projects. I am cooking delicious food, going out with friends, reading books, and actually finishing my portfolio. I’m trying to capture the lovely sunny moments before it all goes grey for months on end.

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A final note on two recent Harper’s articles: this month’s Notebook and September’s article “Dehumanized.”

In this month’s notebook, entitled “The Cold we Caused,” Steven Stoll returns to the theme Mark Slouka wrote about in September. Stoll sums up Slouka’s position quite well, despite the fact that he’s applying his criticism to climate change rather than what happens “When math and science rule the school.” Stoll says, “By confirming the human role in climate change, and by declaring a warming world injurious to the public good, the EPA has swung a club against perhaps the grandest capitalist conceit of the twentieth century: that society forms part of the economy, not the other way around.”

On reading Dehumanized, I was certainly convinced by Slouka’s statement that we cannot forever argue for the humanities based on an economic basis, but that we must be able to find other values useful in our society. Slouka’s call for a return to the civic, the political, and the societal concern struck me as important, but difficult to undertake, as any paradigm shift is. Yet while reading Stoll’s article reinforced Slouka’s position, it also made me consider that this argument seems particularly applicable while our economy is in shambles. I wonder to what extent the downfall of the economy influenced this perspective, or revealed this truth, and to what extent that same downfall might allow us to approach these seemingly intractable problems in a different way. Could there be some sort of progress on these matters?

Little victories

We picked a theme for HOPES 15!  It’s “Thinking Small,” and here are the bits I’ve been working on so far:

Solving our ecological problems will require massive change, as Bruce Mau has suggested.  Yet even as we must think big, we must also remember to think small.  Visions are accomplished incrementally; details are important; impacts must be studied and limited; the meek among us require protection.  Join us as we consider the meaning of “local” and “appropriate,” as we ponder the ripple effect.  Help us contemplate nanotechnology and microclimates.  Plant the tiny seeds to grow the revolutionary change.

 

Topics:

Scale – buildings, economies (Schumacher), “local” discussion

Nature – microclimates, invertebrate communities, guerilla gardening, agricultural questions

Activism – small change/massive change, beginner’s steps (Radical Simplicity)

Ethics – Nanotechnology, appropriate technology, design for the meek/forgotten, design for children

Other – Visioning: what’s the importance of thinking small and thinking big, what can we miss by doing too much of one/the other?; Finding focus in an interdisciplinary field

We’re already gathering ideas for speakers, too.  I’m very excited about this topic: I think that it’s amazingly open ended, yet gets to really important questions and still maintains a core idea that’s very strong.  I can imagine that when we share this idea with everyone (after we come up with a manifesto that’s a lot less cheesy and a lot more focused), people will immediately think about something interesting, and that’s pretty good.

 

Right after the HOPES meeting I headed to the fields for our last game of the season in the A-league.  Rumpus was holding even with Strike Force Seven when I got there.  We kept it pretty even, but they put up a couple of points on us as the game was coming to a close – 5 minutes left and we were down, but we came back even and finally won at universe point.  There was something amazing going on.  At one point, I laid out for a disc I knew I didn’t have, but that was the moment where I decided to go all in.  I think pretty much everyone else was there with me, too.  

So, Rumpus Room is spring A-league champions.  After the game, we headed back to my house.  I got to throw my first party in my very own house!  We had pizza and I made cookies as folks showed up.  A full-party game of Apples to Apples developed, and we just had a good time together (and with players from Kremlin, the other team that we hung out with all season).

 

This morning, I taught my last section for Architectural Context.  It’s pretty amazing to have two semesters of college-level instruction under my belt.  I can’t imagine how long it takes until you really feel like you’re in the right place, like you’re really the one who should be talking.  I feel like that at certain moments, but I think that’s just because I’ve never been afraid to give my opinion, not because I think my thoughts are so worthy of professorial consideration.  One way or the other, I’ll just have a little bit of grading left.  Summer is coming on quickly.

 

So, there are three bits of info.  Lots more going on – other productive meetings, work plans for the summer, obsessive checking of Facebook as if there were actual people there that I could see and talk to, hitting the upload limit for my Flickr account, excellent cooking, and productive errand running.  Hopefully, with such great things happening, and a full weekend coming up, this little sore throat and stuffy nose go away.  And, on that note, I shall get to bed now.

Late Night Thought

Just a little late night thought.  Snow here has been wonderful; transformed everything into a close/parallel universe.  I feel happy, and like love is happening even though I have no object of affection.  Keep making progress with school, had enough time to make dinner tonight with actual vegetables.  What will tomorrow bring?

I am posting

because it’s been a long time.  School is really packed, but less so now that I dropped my Pritzker Prizewinners class.  I think I’ll catch up with work this weekend, though, and I’m getting to work on studio again already, so I’m very happy with the decision.

Part of the reason I’m behind is because last weekend I played with the Fighting Merkins at Winter Thing, a little tournament here in Eugene.  We came in second to a bunch of high schoolers heading to junior worlds in a few months.  More than that result, however, the weekend was a fantastic amount of fun.  Good to play again, with those folks especially.

It’s late at night and I just spent a couple of hours doing structures calculations/organizing my gmail account/uploading photos to flickr/researching jobs opportunities and classes for the ecological design certificate/mostly doing structures calculations.  Point being, I’m not very eloquent.  I did have to break the no blogging spell, though.

More and more and more.  Soon.

Jens

Last night I headed up to Portland to see Jens Lekman in concert.

It was amazing, better than I could have ever hoped. The wait outside the venue was cold and I missed the chance to meet up with the Portland crew – it turned out that their midterm was 5-8pm. Inside, though, the opening band was good (Throw Me the Statue), and I slipped forward into the crowd as they played.

Shortly after they finished, Viktor Sjoberg came out and started to mix a bit on his laptop – it built up until Jens and crew came out with piccolos and flutes flashing and started off the set with Into Eternity. Here’s the rough setlist (the order is a bit jumbled):
Into Eternity
Opposite of Hallelujah
Your Arms Around Me
Sipping on the Sweet Nectar
The Cold Swedish Winter
Maple Leaves
Postcard to Nina
You Are the Light
A Strange Time in My Life (partial)
A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill
Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo
You Can Call Me Al
Shirin
Pocketful of Money

I danced along to all of it, throughly enjoying the matching outfits, amazed at how faithful to the albums the performance was, but even better, which I didn’t think was possible.

I’m not sure how to put into words how happy it all made me, but, it did, beyond all reason. Here’s one reason, which the happiness is beyond, but which it rests squarely upon: I had the sense that as polished as the performance was, mistakes were ok, and more than that, being a little goofy, and able to laugh at the world and one’s self in a non-depricating way was really important.

That may not make a whole lot of sense, and I thought I was going to be able to write about the experience a bit more coherently, but I’m not sure that I can. Suffice it to say, it was entirely worth the very low ticket price, and the gas money and time committment of driving up from Eugene.

And now, off to sleep, having decided against the study abroad option, as hard as it was. Wish me luck on my structures test tomorrow…and wish me even more luck in getting through the rest of the semester – I think its really going to ramp up from here as we move towards the final.